Prologue
The philosopher Heraclitus, in the sixth century BC, said that war is the father and king of all things. History has proven him right. Countless wars have shaken and often destroyed societies and civilizations for millennia. Philosophers, legislators and intellectuals have spoken and written in vain that war is tears, rivers of blood, the death of innocents and the birth of hatred and revenge for more wars. Rarely, however, does war also become a cause of freedom and rebirth.
Persians and Greeks
In the fifth century BC, the Persians had a vast monarchical empire in Asia Minor that bordered the Greek states near the Aegean Sea. Greek states such as Miletus were cradles of philosophy, science, and culture. In the seventh century BC, one of the Greek states, Miletus, gave us the first Greek natural philosopher Thales, and Anaximander and Anaximenes in the sixth century BC. Thales investigated the Earth and the Sky. He proposed that the Earth floats on water. That is, water was the basic element of everything. He predicted eclipses of the Sun. He was an astronomer and cosmologist. And his student, Anaximander, spoke of the infinite, which created the universe. Anaximenes taught that air was the basic element of the universe.
Miletus, as well as other cities in Asia Minor and Ionia, were beacons of Greek science and philosophy. They had excellent relations with the cities in mainland Greece. They worshipped the gods of Homer and Hesiod and of course spoke Greek. Their athletes competed in the Olympic and other Panhellenic games.
Persia did not favor the neighboring Greek states, which asked for help from the states of Greece. In 499 BC, Athens and Eretria in Euboea helped the Ionian states. A few years later, in 490 BC, the Persian King Darius took revenge on Eretria. He destroyed it and enslaved its inhabitants.
These Persian hostilities against the Ionian states, and particularly the barbaric attack and destruction of Eretria, an ally of Athens, became the spark of the Persian wars against Greece from 490 to 479 BC.
In 490 BC, a large Persian army arrived at Marathon in Attica. The Athenian army was small in number compared to the Persians, but brave and ready to die for freedom. The Athenians won through courage, virtue, and strategy. Ten years later, in 480 BC, the Persians launched a second invasion of Greece with an even larger army and navy than their invasion in 490 BC.
In the fifth century BC, the ancient historian Herodotus wrote the Stories of the Persian Wars. Herodotus tells us that the competition between states facilitated the Persians' policy of conquest in Greece. The Persian king Xerxes was so ambitious that he planned to conquer Greece so that his empire would reach the sky and the Sun would illuminate only the Earth that belonged to him (Herodotus, Stories 7.8). Xerxes flooded Greece with hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The invaders burned Athens and the Parthenon. The Athenians had abandoned their city for the island of Salamis. They were allies with the Spartans. The oath of the Athenians and Spartans was freedom or death. They would fight the enemies to the last hoplite. Athens had a powerful fleet of Triremes and Sparta an invincible army. The Athenian general Themistocles gave the impression to the Persian King Xerxes that he preferred the Persians to defeat the Athenians. Themistocles persuaded Xerxes to send his fleet to Salamis. Xerxes fell into Themistocles' strategic trap. The large and numerous Persian ships had difficulty coordinating, organizing, and moving in the waters between Salamis and Attica. The Greek triremes sank most of the Persian warships. The Greek triumph at the naval battle of Salamis was the result of virtue, strategy, utmost daring, bravery, heroism and love of country and freedom.
The general Themistocles was a hero. He earned the praise of the historian Thucydides (Peloponnesian War 1.138.3) and the philosopher and priest of Apollo Plutarch (Themistocles 17).
The Athenian poet Aeschylus, who fought at Salamis, wrote the play Persians which the Athenians witnessed in the theater of Dionysus in 472 BC, just 8 years after the naval battle of Salamis. Aeschylus urges the brave Greek warriors to fight and “liberate their homeland, to liberate their women, their children, the sanctuaries of their ancestral gods and the tombs of their ancestors. The fight against the Persians is the highest good and virtue”: “O children of the Greeks, liberate your homeland, liberate your children, women, gods of your ancestors, and the tombs of your ancestors: now it is time for all battles.” (Persians 402 - 405).
The virtues of the Persians were the opposite of the virtues of the Greeks. The Persians did not fight for their homeland. They had no homeland. They were slaves of kings without rights, justice and freedom. Aeschylus was certain of the defeat of the Persians. Xerxes was an absolute monarch. His values included hubris, megalomania and greed. He was a tyrant of tyrants.
The naval battle of Salamis and the existence of a monarch like Xerxes remain timeless examples of freedom and tyranny. Two thousand five hundred years later, in the second decade of the 21st century,th century, Xerxes lives and reigns. On the contrary, Aeschylus' homeland faces new Persians (Mongol Turks) who demand land and water, that is, the sovereignty of the Aegean.
Epilogue
The Greece of 2026 is not the Greece of 480 BC. The Greece of 2026 is the result of dramatic political and cultural disasters. The Greece of 2026 is stripped of its ancient beauty, philosophy, science, Parthenon, Plato's Academy, democracy, Olympic and other Panhellenic games, theater of Dionysus, Delphi of Apollo, Mysteries of Eleusis, sanctuaries of the ancestral gods and hundreds of temples for piety to the gods and tombs of the ancestors.
What does Greece of 2026 have? It has a huge foreign priesthood that for almost 1,600 years has been converting most Greeks into Jewish Christians, eliminating everything ancient Greek from the country and education. It has laws, many foreign archaeologists, a government, sciences and schools that have foreign ideals. And the government serves foreign interests. In other words, the Greece of 2026 is a Greece on the surface, albeit one that has difficulties dealing with its ancient Greek civilization.
The country has never had its own rebirth, so that it can return to its own civilization. This must be done as soon as possible. Aeschylus' "now above all struggles" covers the struggle for the rebirth of today's Greeks into ancient Greeks. This is the main struggle, which is above all. With such determination and virtue and boldness, the transformed Greeks will face the new Persians Mongols Turks again in a victorious Salamis.
photo
Battle of Salamis, 480 BC. Painting by Wilhelm von Kaubach. Public Domain.
