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Athens and Sparta Adventures: Chapter 7: Thirty Years of Peace

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Alopeke: A deme of the city of Athens. Home to several notable Greeks, including a particularly sexy one apparently.

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Athens and Sparta Adventures: Chapter 7: Thirty Years of Peace

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Thrasybulus of Miletus: The wheat-stalk-removing tyrant in question, as the anecdote was recorded by Herodotus (5.92f).

Periander: The second tyrant of Corinth and one of the Seven Sages, credited with making Corinth prosperous in the 7th/6th century BCE. We’re not sure if he’s a fair and just dude or a wicked nasty dude, but Herodotus seems to think he took a cue from our friend Thrasybulus above. 

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Athens and Sparta Adventures: Chapter 7: Thirty Years of Peace

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Eumenides: The final play in the Oresteia, Eumenides situates the solution to Orestes’ murder of Clytemnestra in the court of Athens, where Apollo and Athena preside alongside the people of Athens. Apollo argues that avenging Agamemnon’s murder was more relevant and important and that -logically- women barely have any role in child bearing compared to men anyway (???) and thus matricide is ok because reasons and Orestes should be absolved of his crime. Athena, being the logical goddess of wisdom and therefore very masculine-minded, concedes to this argument after Apollo points out that she popped out of her dad’s head that one time (???????).  

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Athens and Sparta Adventures: Chapter 7: Thirty Years of Peace

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Paradise Garden: A garden enclosed by walls, popular in Achaemenid Persia, which grew to adopt connotations with later conceptions of “paradise”, such as the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

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Athens and Sparta Adventures: Chapter 7: Thirty Years of Peace

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Iphigenia: Agamemnon’s eldest daughter, whom he sacrificed to Artemis in order to appease her so that the Greeks could sail to Troy. Also the main character of two plays by Euripides (that I would talk your ear off about if I could).

Atreus: The grandson of Tantalus and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, subject of a family curse that just keeps giving and giving. 

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Athens and Sparta Adventures: Chapter 7: Thirty Years of Peace

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Troy: A famous city in Asia Minor (now Turkey) also known as Ilion, the stage of the Trojan War in Homer’s Iliad. According to legend, the Greeks took ten years to siege the mighty city and were finally able to do so with the aid of the Trojan Horse.

The Iliad: One of the two quintessential Greek epics attributed to Homer and the closest Greek religion might get to a text of biblical proportions. Knowing and reciting Homeric epic was the basis of education across the Greek world. The Iliad describes the Trojan War, the Odyssey and here the Oresteia describes the fall out afterwards.

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Athens and Sparta Adventures: Chapter 7: Thirty Years of Peace

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Oresteia: A trilogy of Greek tragedy by Aeschylus, one of the oldest Athenian playwrights. By the time it would have been performed here, it was probably already a classic. This is the opening third of the plays, Agamemnon, which centers around the murder of the titular character by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus upon Agamemnon’s return to Argos from the Trojan War. The other body in the opening panel is Cassandra, a priestess fated never to have her prophecies believed whom Agamemnon brought home as a spoil of war.

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Athens and Sparta Adventures: Chapter 7: Thirty Years of Peace

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The Long Walls: The walls that connected Athens to its harbour at Piraeus. It was thought by the Athenians that the walls were part of a great defense against Persia, while the Spartans only saw the risks of Persia taking over such an easily defensible fortress. 

Xenia: Ancient Greek rules and customs surrounding hospitality and the relationship between guests and hosts. This was something Zeus himself presided over, and violations were taken extremely seriously. A classic example of a violation is almost every instance in the Odyssey, think of the guest-host relationship between Odysseus and Polyphemus the cyclops!

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