“Beyond Glory and Guts: Unveiling the Untold Secrets of the Spartan 300”
To begin with, as you are no doubt aware, Ancient Greece wasn’t one country, but several independent city-states, with the most famous today being Athens and Sparta, though Ancient Greek city-states could be found all the way into modern day Western Turkey, and in colonies around Italy and Sicily. All of these locals spoke Greek and were considered to be part of a greater Greek culture, even if they weren’t unified into one federal state.
On the other end of things, off in Central Asia there was a state unifying several related and unrelated peoples into a Persian empire: the Achaemenid Empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BCE, which at its height, contained two fifths of all humans within its borders. Its eastern territory stretched to modern day Pakistan and the Aral Sea, while its western territory stretched to Egypt, Thrace, and Macedon. This empire also conquered the kingdom of Lydia, which previously conquered the Ionian Greek city-states in 547 BCE.
As to how they managed this vast empire, the Achaemenids were masters of infrastructure, logistics, and long-range communication. This enabled them, among other things, to successfully consolidate their rule over the Ionian Greeks and helped keep the Greeks divided.
To further help manage things, Cyrus and his predecessors installed tyrants to rule over the Ionian city states. Important to note here is that “tyrants” meant something very different for the ancient Greeks than it does for us today. It didn’t have that ring of authoritarian and unpopular rule. In fact, usually tyrants returned power to ordinary residents of the city-state, and away from the aristocrats of the region. Sometimes they even advocated for democratic reform to broaden enfranchisement.
