Choose your friends ....The Delian League ....power politics in 5th century Greece on the wireless

Now this is one I am going to listen to.

Hoplite 5th century, 2018

It's the latest offer from In Our Time on BBC Radio 4.

"Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and evolution of an alliance which transformed the geopolitics of the classical world: the Delian League. 

Since the start of the 5th Century BCE, city states across Greece had been fighting a series of armed conflicts in the Greco-Persian Wars. 

After the defeat of a second Persian invasion in 478 BCE, a league of cities across Greece came together and formed a new alliance led by Athens. That alliance is now known as the Delian League, after the island of Delos where it was established. 

In the following decades, Athens used the Delian League to grow its own wealth and formidable naval power. But cities who tried to leave the alliance found themselves violently put down and their lands confiscated by the Athenians. 

What had begun as a cooperative alliance sworn to resist the Persian Empire gradually started to seem like it may have created another imperial power: the Athenian Empire.

With Leah Lazar, Lecturer in Hellenistic Culture at the University of Manchester, Polly Low, Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham, and, Paul Cartledge, AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge

Producer: Martha Owen"*

Location; In Our Time, BBC Radio 4

Pictures; Hoplite 5th century, 2018, Jona Lendering, his file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication and the Thermopylae pass at the area of the Phocian Wall, Author Fkerasar, Licensing, I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses

*The Delian League, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xp5l

Calling out a tyrant .......Demosthenes on Athenian appeasement ....... on the wireless

Now the Greek orator Demosthenes was pretty much just a name, but listening to this week's In Our Time radio discussion on the man is to realize I have missed out.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the speeches that became a byword for fierce attacks on political opponents. It was in the 4th century BC, in Athens, that Demosthenes delivered these speeches against the tyrant Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, when Philip appeared a growing threat to Athens and its allies and Demosthenes feared his fellow citizens were set on appeasement. 

In what became known as The Philippics, Demosthenes tried to persuade Athenians to act against Macedon before it was too late; eventually he succeeded in stirring them, even if the Macedonians later prevailed. For these speeches prompting resistance, Demosthenes became famous as one of the Athenian democracy’s greatest freedom fighters. 

Later, in Rome, Cicero's attacks on Mark Antony were styled on Demosthenes and these too became known as Philippics.

With Paul Cartledge, A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge, Kathryn Tempest, Reader in Latin Literature and Roman History at the University of Roehampton, and Jon Hesk, Reader in Greek and Classical Studies at the University of St Andrews

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Picture; Bust of Demosthenes, Roman copy after a Greek Hellenistic original, British Museum, photographed by Marie-Lan Nguyen in 2011 who as  the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

*Demosthenes' Philippics, In Our Time, Radio 4, Demosthenes' Philippics, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001f4ws