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Are you seriously going to waste time and keystrokes defending an institution as hilariously, abjectly vile as the British Empire? I mean, really? Is this Niall Ferguson's account?
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Jan 18, 2015 18:05
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asdf32 posted:No they're not. Rome, Alexendander - definitely bad? Is this a poor attempt at a joke? Yes, they were, what's wrong with you?
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Jan 21, 2015 15:57
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davidb posted:No I do not realize. My understanding is that macedonians were basically greece. And greece is generally a civilization in high regard Yeah, there's these things called books. They have a lot of information in them! Information about things like the Macedonians being a poor and peripheral monarchy well to the north of the core of Hellenic civilization, considered a land of backwoods Thracian goat-herders by the Hellenic (the Greeks' term for themselves) polis-dwellers to the south. How they were a pariah state after the Second Persian War, when they joined the kingdoms and city-states that submitted to Xerxes, who only drifted back into amicable relations with the Hellenic cities to the south when the Athenians needed their lumber for shipbuilding during the Peloponnesian War, and even then were looked at as a weak and servile petty kingdom by poleis that valued their natural resources. That condition only changed in the time of Alexander's father, Philip II, who applied military and administrative reforms to the kingdom based on what he observed as a boy hostage surrendered by his father to Thebes. The royal standing army built by Philip's reforms and the Macedonian gold mines he had developed to pay the troops managed, over decades of campaigning, to bludgeon or intimidate the Greek city-states into acknowledging Macedon as not just a part of Hellenic civilization but hegemon of the Hellenic world--because Philip would slaughter their people and burn their cities if he refused. At the time of his death only Sparta, a much reduced power since its defeat by the Thebans at the Battle of Leuctra, refused submission to Philip's Pan-Hellenic League. So, essentially, you don't know what you're talking about. Luckily, there's books! You can correct your ignorance! I recommend Peter Green's Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography, which explores the topic of Macedonian history in accessible but scholarly detail.
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Jan 21, 2015 21:12
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davidb posted:Never claimed to be an expert on greek history so no thanks Ill skip those books got better things to do. So yeah...how about those barbarians Cool, wallow in your voluntary ignorance! It's always nice to know ahead of time when someone's opinions can be discounted as half-baked nonsense.
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Jan 21, 2015 21:24
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