Athens vs Persia: The Legend of Themistocles

A legend of the great Greek city of Athens, Themistocles rose from obscurity to save ancient Greece and helped shape one of the greatest naval powers in history. Yet his story ends in exile, condemned as a traitor and serving the very empire he once defeated: Persia. In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Michael Scott to explore the extraordinary life of Themistocles. Together Tristan and Michael delve into the political intrigue of early Athenian democracy, charting Themistocles’ dramatic rise and equally dramatic fall. How did he persuade Athens to invest in its fleet and defeat Persia's great navy? Why did his career end in disgrace? And how did this architect of Greek victory ultimately find himself in the service of the Persian Empire, the very enemy he swore to destroy? MORE How to Party Like an Ancient Greek: Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000556058263 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0tdada74rpJ5VPL7BrIQ8c?si=6RhCM0_ORTep2URJRQVcCQ The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis: Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000695929043 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/2jgBbWwNQQiK0Hj2v3E09I?si=gDZdY0yDQZuaDFMLtIy5hw Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:45Tristan Hughes?

  He was one of the founding fathers of the Athenian Empire, the statesman who rose from relative obscurity to lead Athens to victory during its war against the mighty Persian Empire. The charismatic leader who convinced Athens to invest in its ships and to become one of the most prolific sea powers of ancient history, and who would then strengthen his beloved city on land too, building miles of fortifications that went on to bear his name: Themistocles. Those are the achievements many recognise this ancient Athenian for today. But Themistocles's reputation wasn't always so pristine.

• 1:26Tristan Hughes?

  In fact, the real Themistocles was a divisive political figure who experienced multiple rises and falls. A man who took advantage of a fledgling democracy in Athens at the turn of the 5th century BC to rise high, but then ultimately fall, ending his days condemned as a traitor and in the service of the Persian king. Yes, that's right. Themistocles ended his days working for the superpower he is today most famous for beating in battle. Welcome to The Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story: The Rise and Falls of Themistocles. Our guest is Dr Michael Scott, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Warwick University,

• 2:11Tristan Hughes?

  and the author of Themistocles: The Rise and Fall of Athens's Naval Mastermind.

• 2:20Tristan Hughes?

  Michael, what a pleasure to have you back on the show. It has been too long.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Well, it's fabulous to be here in the studio, like absolutely amazing.

• 2:28Tristan Hughes?

  And to talk about this fascinating figure of Themistocles, both a hero and a villain and a traitor. He's loved, but he's also hated. I mean, this is a guy who failed and succeeded. All of these contrasts, but they define his character so well.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, when Yale University Press came and they said, who would you want to write about for this ancient lives series that they were constructing? And pretty quickly, my mind sort of focused in on this guy Themistocles because, you know, I've lost count of the number of times I've mentioned him in lectures and talks over the years because he is so associated with these one or two really key moments in the story of Athenian and Greek history that are real turning points and real high points, you know, from the Greek perspective for their story. But actually, if you just move the focus away from those moments, what else does he get up to? What happens in between those moments? Who was he as a person? Kind of what's motivating him? Where does he come from?

• 3:25Speaker 01

  All of these questions are kind of less often asked. And it felt to me really important to actually do a bit of a work to fill in the blanks, to be able to understand Themistocles as a whole, as a character, as a life, you know, lived. And I have to say that at the same time as I started writing this book, my wife and I were expecting our son. And he was born about a week or so after I finished the first draft of the book. And the book is dedicated to him because what became really clear to me is Themistocles is famous, infamous for the amazing things, these amazing moments. And what we often do, I think, when we look at famous and successful people is we, we see in hindsight

• 4:08Speaker 01

  this great, successful career. And as a result, every step in that career ends up looking like it was a natural progression to the next successful thing, that the rise was assured, the success was inevitably going to happen, that they knew exactly what they were doing at every stage of their lives. What became really clear from really digging into the career of Themistocles is that his life was not at all like that, you know, that actually his start was very uncertain. His background, no one would have picked him out as being somebody that was going to go on to do something special. And more importantly, every decision he made, he didn't know that it was going to be a success and where it was going to lead to. And more importantly, as you've outlined, you know, as many decisions as he might have got right, he also got an

• 4:53Speaker 01

  equal number absolutely stonkingly wrong. And so what we've got here, I hope, is a portrait of a life as lives are really lived. And that's why it was really important for me in the subtitle of the book to make sure that it had, you know, Themistocles, the rise and fall of Athens's naval statesmen. And, you know, if I'd had my way, to be honest, I would have said the rises and the falls, or the rise and the fall, and the rise and the falls, and the rise and the fall again, because that is the reality of Themistocles's life. And to me, that makes him much more interesting.

• 5:24Tristan Hughes?

  It's more relatable, isn't it?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Much more interesting, much more, you know, much more relatable, but also as a reminder to my infant son, who at the moment is not reading Themistocles, you know, he's very much in Peppa Pig era, age two, but in the future, that, you know, when you look around you and you see these people with these great successful careers and brilliant things that they've done, actually digging into that always reveals a much more uncertain and a much more uneven career. And that is everyone's life.

• 5:49Tristan Hughes?

  I feel we should mention, though, first of all, those big moments that he is associated with. What are these moments that become almost the gateway drug for people to want to learn more about this figure?

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there are effectively two, right? And the first is when Themistocles is, you know, he's in his 30s. He is now, at this point, we're talking about the late 490s and into the 480s BCE in Athens. And he is clearly a powerful and important voice within the Athenian city-state at this time. And he's got, he's playing important roles within the civic infrastructure and the political system. And he starts saying,

• 6:32Speaker 01

  We should think about the sea, people. We should think about building up not just our natural port, because Piraeus, which is the the modern day port of Athens, was not actually at the time the port that the Athenians used for their fleet. It was just around a bay or two around, a place called Phaleron, but he was he's associated with the story of kind of right, let's build up the Piraeus. It's a much better, more defensible, bigger harbour. And then when the Athenians in the middle of the 480s discover completely by accident, this big new seam of silver and the the place called Laryon and the territory of of Attica, the countryside around Athens, and they go, hmm, what should we do with it? You know, and there's a big debate. On the one hand, you know, Athens at this point is a fledgling

• 7:15Speaker 01

  democracy. And they go, well, we should divide it up equally. And, you know, each have an equal share. And Themistocles is accredited with saying, ah, now, let's use this to absolutely leapfrog all other competitors in the Greek world and build a navy that will catapult us into being the most preeminent sea power of the Greek world. And, you know, looking at that, it's a great tactical decision, because they were never going to be able to challenge on land. They were already really, really good Greek land armies, think the Spartans, think anyone else, right? But on sea, actually, there was a chance for Athens to become preeminent. And so they invest the money in this fleet. Now, that's a good decision in the world of the, you know, the Greek world, where, as you know, it's not one unified country, it's

• 7:59Speaker 01

  up to a thousand different city-states who are spending their entire time just basically shouting and at war with one another. And within that context, it's a good decision. But it becomes a brilliant decision when just a couple of years later, the Persians turn up and they turn up with this enormous Amada and land army. And suddenly Athens's navy is absolutely critical in helping to defeat that Persian navy at the Battle of Salamis, at which Themistocles is also credited with having a brilliant tactical idea to draw the Athenian, the Persian fleet, I should say, into the narrow straits of Salamis, between the island of Salamis and the territory of Attica, where the Athenian superior naval

• 8:44Speaker 01

  techniques and tactics and ships. Can actually have a chance to defeat the much bigger, in terms of numbers, Persian Navy. So that's the kind of moment number one, which is associated with the sea and with command and mastery of the sea that then becomes critical in the defeat of the Persians. And if there's a second moment, it's in the mid 470s, when Themistocles, you know, actually has had a fall. We think kind of he's this great general who has led the Athenians to victory at Salamis. He's been the brilliant architect of this naval kind of armada. And then he gets completely dropped. You know, the kind of next in the early 470s, you don't hear anything about him. The Athenian people have just shoved

• 9:28Speaker 01

  him aside and gone, thanks very much, and moved on. And he has to reinvent his importance with a new issue. And that new issue for him is wall building. And so he suddenly becomes the biggest proponent of Athens building itself, some really stout defensible city walls that will eventually become the city walls around Athens, city walls around the port of Piraeus, and the walls that link the two. So Athens is completely, if you like, protected from land attack and able to sustain long-term siege.

• 9:58Tristan Hughes?

  These are the so-called long walls.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  The so-called long walls of Athens. And again, within, you know, five or six decades, these will become absolutely instrumental in helping Athens to survive for as long as it did in the Great Greek Civil War, the Peloponnesian War that will break out. So, you know, building an armada at sea and focusing on Athenian mastery at sea and then protecting Athens itself through these city walls are these two big kind of key moments that Themistocles gets associated with.

• 10:27Tristan Hughes?

  So that's good to start us off there. But as we're going to explore, there is so much more. It is not just those big moments, but we can still explore them as well. To learn more about Themistocles today, do we have quite a lot of source material?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  We do and we don't. Interesting. So he appears in the great historical narratives of the of the era. So Herodotus, obviously writing his histories. Herodotus is writing in the 420s BCE. So sometime after Themistocles has died, it's definitely not a kind of. So Herodotus himself is hearing stories from others that have been passed down to him that he's then recording. And he's the so-called father of history. The so-called father of history, you know, kind of he's there, the guy who is, he comes up with the word history. Whereas it's a historia in the Greek, an investigation into why did the Greeks and Persians come to fight together in the Persian War? So obviously Themistocles, you know, has a role to play in that.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  He's also mentioned a lot by the next great historian of the of the Greek world, Thucydides, who's writing at the very end of the fifth century. But again, a little bit further away in time and reflecting. And then, you know, he gets picked up by different historians over the period, but you dialed through to the sort of the first centuries AD. And you're getting then Plutarch, who is writing a whole series of biographies. But specifically of people that he wants you to emulate, you know, Plutarch wrote about lives of people he thought would be good to try and copy. And so you get this, this biography of of Themistocles, but it's all the good bits, right? You know, so that, so that bit we were talking about where he gets dumped by the Athenian people after 480 and sort of gone, thank you.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  And, you know, now move on. There's nothing heroic to say about Themistocles during that period. And so Plutarch is absolutely silent about it. He's like, oh, let's skip over that and, you know, get back to when it, when he rises again. And then we have later biographers than Plutarch with Cornelius Napos. We have third and fourth century kind of rhetoricians who write these bizarre sort of fake court speeches of Themistocles and his dad who are going against one another. So there's lots of later evidence. The problem is, as ever, we'd love some actually contemporary evidence from the era of Themistocles.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  And that is few and well between this. There's no kind of historical narratives that are surviving. We do have some coins that Themistocles himself issued in the last era of his life that give us a really good indication of what he's directing what these coins look like. So they tell us a little bit about his mindset. We have some archaeological material, again, really closely associated with Themistocles that, you know, we can come back to, which gives those kind of ins. But otherwise, we are trying to construct an understanding of what this guy was like in a period of time for Athens, which was itself a period of fundamental change and which the Athenians later on

• 13:23Speaker 01

  were constantly mythologizing, because this is the era of the development of Athens's democracy. And so kind of trying to split apart real history from that mythologizing of the origins of something that would go on to become so important for them is a really tough thing to do.

• 13:40Tristan Hughes?

  There's very much a legend of Themistocles that evolves over the centuries that follow.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  And he's totally associated, his legend is totally associated with the legend of the development of democracy. And you can see why. I mean, if you dial back to, he's born 5243 B.C. When Athens is under a tyrant ruler, right? Democracy hasn't been invented. Word doesn't exist. No concept of it. When he's 10, there is the murder of the son of that tyrant ruler who had moved to become the tyrant after the death of his father at a big Athenian festival and things start to really shake in the kind of foundations of Athenian society. When he's 16, that's the big revolution moment of 508 B.C.E.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  When the whole of Athens supposedly rose up and threw off the tyrant ruler and decided to throw their lot in with this bizarre system where of equality, right? And it still wasn't called democracy at that moment. They didn't have that word, but you know, the entire political system of Athens changes when Themistocles is 16 years old. And as he becomes an adult, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, that's when Athens starts to suddenly, as a result, many think of this new political system really starts to grow in influence and power. So kind of he is literally growing up into a world that is itself in absolute tumultuous

• 15:07Speaker 01

  change and will become the system that everyone knows and talks about of Athenian democracy.

• 15:13Tristan Hughes?

  I love to cover those early years because when we often do one of these big figures from ancient history, usually the case is we know next to nothing about their earliest years. But do we, do we have any idea about Themistocles's background and what he would have been up to during those sixteen years, right at the end of the age of tyranny in Athens?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  You know, we can guess the picture of kind of of his day to day, right? And the kind of education that he might have had and the kind of experience he might have had.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  But I think what is really important to understand, from what we know about Themistocles, is that if the system around him had not changed in the direction that it did, it's very unlikely he would have amounted to anything.

• 15:58Tristan Hughes?

  Really?

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Because what what we know about him is that he is not from one of the elite aristocratic families of Athens that hitherto had pretty much governed what Athens went on to do.

• 16:11Tristan Hughes?

  But if Athens was a tyranny at that moment, is it, even if it one of those aristocratic families, they're not linked to the tyranny, but would they have usually been the big advisors or the the significant figures in that tyranny?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, kind of the, I mean, effectively at the period that Themistocles is born, there are two major rival families, you know, the Pisistratids and kind of on one hand, the Alcmaeonids. And between them, they're pretty much, you know, power sharing. I mean, it's it's hard not to draw the same, some kind of analogies to the modern world, you know, and the kind of dynasties of of families that kind of occupy political positions. And, you know, we can do that, but Themistocles, when he's born, you know, he's not from a poor family, but what would we call that modern middle class, middle mappa, maybe, but certainly not kind of the elite aristocrats. And his dad is, you know, operating really on the boundaries, he's in military, you know, he's operating at the boundaries of the Athenian world, kind of fighting force.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  He's an Athenian citizen, his dad, but the sources are really clear that his mum is not an Athenian. And then the sources differ on quite how non-Athenian she is. Sometimes, you know, she's just from another Greek city-state. Some people say she's from like, whoa, the far edges of the Greek world. Some people say, you know, she's a complete and utter foreigner. Some go so far as to say that she's a prostitute. So we've got this odd picture of Themistocles when he's born, you know, he's not from a great family. He's got a non-citizen mother. And then depending on which source you believe, like kind of a really non-citizen mother, you know, kind of. And so he's got a very liminal position in Athens when he's born. And, and, and he, he, he sort of comes under this definition of what the Greeks would

• 17:52Speaker 01

  refer to as a, what we translate as a bastard, you know, effectively. But what it means, he's only got one citizen parent. And that puts him in a very disadvantageous position, particularly if the political system had not gone on to change the, the way it did. But, you know, so he's growing up, we think at some point in his very early years, so in that first decade, he moves back from, from wherever he was stationed, kind of where his dad was stationed, back to not living in the centre of town in Athens, not in the big city, but actually in the sleepy countryside of Attica. Very nice. And so, but, you know, again, from a point of view of thinking about a political career, he's not where the action is, right? He's in this tiny little town, not amounting

• 18:36Speaker 01

  to a whole hill of beans in terms of his parentage and his opportunity. Enough money in the family to get a good decent education. And the later sources, you know, talk about him as a pupil, a student at school, as being really precocious and really intelligent, always pushing back against authority, i.e. all the things that we'd like to see in a child that will go on to do the things that Themistocles will, you know, do. And, you know, kind of then, as we said, at 16, he's seeing the system starts to change. And this new kind of system of equality emerging where there is a chance for any voice to emerge, if it's strong enough, powerful enough, and convincing enough.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  And some point in the kind of early twenties, he comes into the city of Athens. And we would love dearly to know more about how he then goes about climbing the kind of, call it a greasy pole, if you like, of kind of Athenian civic office, but he clearly puts in the graft and we hear snippets of it like, so he occupies the role of water commissioner at some point. Now, that sounds a bit dull, but on the other hand, in Greece, in antiquity, in the heat, actually, the person in charge of ensuring the water is super important. And he clearly does a good enough job at all of these roles because when he really comes into

• 20:00Speaker 01

  focus is at the end of the four nineties and he is archon, he's magistrate, he's appointed magistrate of the city and that's at the age of thirty one. And you had to be a minimum of thirty to occupy the role. So he gets there pretty quick after the minimum age. So clearly through his twenties, he has been building a rep in Athens where enough people have confidence in his ability to then entrust him with this, this key magistracy of the city.

• 20:32Tristan Hughes?

  You can imagine a young and furry Themistocles, can't you? Like when that tyranny is overthrown, as I said, going to the big city, he's a teenager, but he's deciding, right, I'm going to make the most of this. And as you say, we wish we could know more about that decade or so, that first decade, but seemingly he crime, he climbs the new greasy democratic pole and by the time of his early thirties, he's in a really good position.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, but it could not have happened if the world around him hadn't changed at the time that it did, because he wouldn't have been listened to, he wouldn't have been given the chance to put his voice and his view forward.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr Kate Lister. Listen to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal and society, twice a week, every

• 21:56Speaker 02

  week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the award-winning network, History Hit.

• 22:17Tristan Hughes?

  The position of archon, should we see it something like the position of consul, that kind of really high position in the state?

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there were, in Athens, there were three kind of archons. They divided up kind of responsibilities for different things between. So one was a very religious focused archon, making sure that all the religious kind of rights and customs were abided by. So the gods were still on side. One was much more military focused, who would be actually the kind of general, you know, on the battlefield. And then the one in the middle, the one that Themistocles occupied, if you like, had a kind of political judicial sort of focus and mandate. And so in that year that he was archon, we know that Themistocles had to be involved in the trial

• 23:02Speaker 01

  of the great Athenian general Miltiades, who was put on trial for kind of getting involved in what we know as the Ionian revolt. So the very four, early 490s, Athens had decided, it's getting a bit, you know, a bit cocky, some good victories, it decided to send some ships to aid in a rebellion against the Persian king that was happening on the other side of the Aegean over in Ionia. And this all goes spectacularly wrong and Miltiades is involved and so he ends up on trial for treason in Athens during the year that Themistocles is kind of archon. So Themistocles could see at first hand quite how much this Athenian thing that had been created,

• 23:47Speaker 01

  this Athenian system of equality that will come to be known as democracy in the decades to come.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Like pick people up, Mr. Hides was a famous guy, really important, you know, thing. And then absolutely slap them down again.

• 24:00Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  And during that trial, when his archon Miltiades is actually acquitted. And he will go on then to play a brilliant role in a couple of years' time at the Battle of Marathon, which is when the Persians first invade Greece. But there were examples in front of Themistocles' eyes from that very moment onwards of how much the Athenian state liked to raise people up, raise people up and then chuck them down.

• 24:24Tristan Hughes?

  In a weird kind of way, how fickle the Athenian state could be, kind of going on the urges of the public, the emotions that were there that you see time and time again in Athenian democracy from then on.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the scary and not very pleasant underbelly of a direct democratic system that it is about the will of the collective people. And even more scarily, within the Athenian case, you know, this was not a will that was decided, you know, and views that were decided upon patient, thoughtful reflection and study of documents and evidence and all of it. It effectively was a system that listened to what people had to say and got swayed by how convincing the people were that said it.

• 25:06Tristan Hughes?

  It's the rise of the demagogues, isn't it?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  You know, so effectively if you could swing the people, you know, if you were a great orator, if you were a great persuader, and as Themistocles, you know, clearly kind of became, you had a really good chance to get the people going one way or the other. But at the same time, the Athenian, what becomes really crucial in the kind of Athenian self-identity is that it's about the collective, it's not about the individual. And so all of these individuals, like Miltiades, like a number of others, like Themistocles, eventually. If they step over that line and start saying, well, I did this, you know, I led you to victory. I'm responsible. The Athenian people were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  You know, it's about us. It's our victory. And that line was, you know, really at the core of understanding the Athenian collective identity and the reasons that individuals fell foul of it.

• 26:05Tristan Hughes?

  So it's still four nine four, is it? That's the time of when he's Arkon.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:10Tristan Hughes?

  And do we know of any other big events during this time? Is there a story with Persian ambassadors?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so, you know, at this point, there had been that Ionian revolt back in the early four nineties that the Athenians had seen fit to send some ships to support. It had gone spectacularly wrong. The Persian king is going, who are these? I mean, these upstart little kind of Greek fleas on the hide of the great Persian empire, you know? And so, you know, tough, and had sent ambassadors through Persia going, right, you know, you guys all have to submit to me. And the way you do that is you offer me token gifts of earth and water from your land.

• 26:55Tristan Hughes?

  As it goes to the Greek cities.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, right. You know, come on. And the threat was, if you don't, I'll rock up in due course with an army and I'll crush you. You know, most Greek cities went, yep, absolutely. Here's, here's the earth and the water. The Athenians sit there, you know, they've got their assembly now and they sit there and they discuss what to do. And then the story goes that on the one hand, some are saying, no, you know, let's, let's, let's not give earth and water. No, let's not give earth and water and let's kill those messengers, which was a big deal, right? Because they're sacred, they're sacred to the gods, you know, messengers in that sense. You're not supposed to harm them. Don't shoot the messenger, right? Kind of thing. And Themistocles goes on further, yes, kill them, and let's kind of kill them in a really unpleasant way.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  So, so clearly Themistocles here is, is part of a kind of dialogue where he's trying to gain a certain amount of influence, credence, visibility within the public dialogue. And one of the ways he can do that is by putting up a more extreme suggestion than anyone else's. Now, kind of what happens is they do, you know, famously kill the messengers. And of course, the Persian king ain't too happy about this and so lands on the plains of Marathon, which is in the territory of Attica, outside of Athens with a fleet. And he also brings with him the old tyrant that the Athenians had chucked out back in 508 BCE to reinstate, you know, kind of as the ruler. So this becomes not only a sort of, I'm going to teach you Greeks a lesson for,

• 28:25Speaker 01

  and particularly you Athenians, a lesson for refusing me. But I'm going to take away this system of equality you've got and I'm going to put you back under the rule of a friendly tyrant. Now Themistocles is there fighting at the battle of Marathon.

• 28:36Tristan Hughes?

  We know he was.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was there, kind of, you know, he was one of the soldiers, could have been in charge of his contingent from his kind of group as well. But the, the big lead on the day, the big general on the day is that same guy Miltides, who kind of was acquitted from treason when Themistocles was archon. And it's Miltides that sort of is, is, is held responsible for the victory. But of course, he's not allowed to be held responsible for the victory because it's an Athenian collective, you know. And amazingly, the, the Athenians are victorious over the Persians at Marathon and the Persians depart again. And so Themistocles is, is at the forefront of that first Persian engagement with Athens. And, you know, that will be something that the later biographers

• 29:22Speaker 01

  like to kind of point to going, you know, it was Themistocles who saw that this was not over. Persians left, but he knew, you know. And this is the kind of vision of the, of the brilliant tactician and the brilliant foresightedness and the kind of thing that they would be back as opposed to the rest of the Athenians who thought, yay, job done, threat over. Let's go back to life as normal.

• 29:43Tristan Hughes?

  And do they like, these biographers later, who are trying to lord Themistocles as the man who can read the future, who knows what's going to happen next. Do they like portraying the other argument few, well, through one particular prominent voice in the assembly, that idea that there's this big rival back in Athens who is supporting the other, like the other idea, what they should do with the money and so on and so forth.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there is a guy that will be the sort of long term rival.

• 30:10Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, the counterpart is a guy called Aristides and you know, Plutarch also liked him. There's a life of Aristides as well, you know, there's good things to say about him as well. And but between the two of them, they are set up to be Themistocles, who's the impetuous, swift thinking, breaking tradition, coming up with the, you know, the impossible idea when everyone thought there was lost kind of guy. And Aristides is the slow but sure sensible, trustworthy, thoughtful individual. So post marathon, Aristides and Themistocles were both fighting there at the battle. It's Aristides who is given the honour of standing guard over all the loot that the Greeks and particularly the Athenians have captured off the Persians

• 30:51Speaker 01

  after the battle, while everyone else has to run off back to Athens, the marathon race, back to Athens to kind of help defend in case the Persians were to come back. And you know, Themistocles in the sources, at later sources, is kind of like be cheesed off that Aristides gets this honour and you know, you can see that he's cheesed off because some of the sources talk about the fact that he goes, well, well, you know, I mean, if you want to be a banker, kind of sort of thing, and trying to rubbish the honour that Aristides has been given. But throughout their lives, throughout the next decade, so particularly the 480s and the 470s, Aristides and Themistocles become these big yin and yang kind of voices within the Athenian assembly that are butting heads

• 31:32Speaker 01

  on most of the key decision moments and and offering up two, two views and two ways to go.

• 31:37Tristan Hughes?

  And does it ever get so far as that one might want to try and get the other one executed? Or is there a certain limit to their political rivalry?

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Well, no, I, I mean, it's gloves off. I mean, it's definitely gloves off. So, so in the 480s, we, you know, we've had the invasion of, of Marathon, great. Into the 480s, that's the, the decade when Themistocles is.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Convincing the Athenian assembly to spend that that money. The silver mines. The silver mine money in the four eighties on building the big fleet. So clearly he's he's having some success, you know, persuading them what to do. And during that point in time, you know, Aristides ends up sort of losing that debate. And what happens in the four eighties in particular is the Athenian people in that kind of again, the power of the collective is rising, the the power of the individual, they they likely listening to the individual, the individual can have influence, but it can't be about the individual. A new system of political expulsion is invented called ostracism. Right, okay.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Now ostracism, we call it ostracism today because what the Greeks did, the Athenians did, was they would write the name of a particular individual on a little piece of broken pottery that in ancient Greek was called an ostricon. And so ostricon, the thing you voted on for the exile vote has given us our word ostracism. And the Athenians would turn up and basically they would write the name of the person who they thought really needed to be kicked out of the city. And the person with the most votes got kicked out for 10 years. And so there it's 10 years. Yeah. So and it's clear that the four eighties is the moment when the Athenians kind of grasp this

• 33:16Speaker 01

  power that they have. So ostracism probably existed in the system theoretically from from before that. But they've never used it. And then suddenly in the four eighties, half of the known cases of ostracism from the entirety of the fifth century BCE happened in the four eighties. So clearly the Athenians at this moment just go, right, you know, kind of like, we've got this power to exercise over individuals who are getting too big for their boots, who are perhaps too associated with tyranny or kind of, you know, we just, we just want to get rid of them. And ostracism very quickly becomes one of those political weapons whereby the different voices, you know, I mean, it's dog eat here, it's Hunger Games, it's, you

• 33:58Speaker 01

  know, Beast Games, or whatever you want the analogy to be, because we know that all of them are being voted for. Themistocles' name appears on those ostriches through the 480s, but he's just not the guy with the most votes.

• 34:10Tristan Hughes?

  Is this one of those amazing bits of archaeological evidence that you mentioned earlier?

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 34:13Tristan Hughes?

  His name are one of those things.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  So these ostriches survive because after the vote, they're just discarded, you know, kind of. And then we dig them up and, and we can, they, they basically end up being buried in sort of particular caches that we can then date to particular votes. But Aristides, his rival, does end up getting ostracized as part of that towards the end of the 480s. And so you can see that this is a, this is a highly dynamic system in which these individuals who are rising to prominence and are wanting to put forward their views and they're wanting to convince the people of a particular course of action, it was not without the danger of ending up becoming the butt of the Athenians going, you're out.

• 34:51Tristan Hughes?

  It's one of those fun what if moments, isn't it? If Themistocles had been ostracized in the 480s rather than his rival Aristides.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Quite literally, the course of history could have changed completely because Themistocles hangs in there. And then when the Persians come back, you know, at the end of, in 480 with a much bigger land army and fleet than ever before. And this is the moment when, you know, the land army will be held by the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, and the fleet will be sort of held, including by, by a sort of Greek fleet, but it's mainly an Athenian fleet because they've got this big, big, big fleet. And Themistocles is the kind of commander of the Athenian fleet at this time. You know, they're held parallel with Thermopylae on land. There's a battle of a place called Artemisium on sea. And then they have to all fall back, the 300s, you know, Spartans die, the fleet retreats. And

• 35:41Speaker 01

  you get to a point where the Greek fleet is, is in constant.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Possibility of falling completely apart, you know, all the Greek city states that are coming together are going, you know what, there's no way we can take on this Persian, the Persian fleet. We might as well just sail for our hometowns and scatter and every man for themselves kind of mentality. And Themistocles is the sort of one voice really that's trying to hold this fleet together and it ends up sheltering on the island of Salamis, which is just off the coast of Attica. At this point, you know, actually Themistocles has been instrumental, we think, in getting the Athenians to evacuate their city. So they've all fled out of Athens. The Persian king has come down through the whole of mainland Greece, occupied the city of Athens. The Athenians are sitting on the island of Salamis,

• 36:28Speaker 01

  they're seeing Athens burn, you know, smoke billowing up in the sky. The fleet's there and it is on the, the cusp of just disintegrating.

• 36:38Tristan Hughes?

  And is this where we get that story? You also do a lot of work on Delphi and the prophecies from the oracle at Delphi, this idea of trusting in their wooden wall. And Themistocles is like, that wooden wall, it's the ships, it's not actually a physical wall.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the, there's, the Athenians go to consult the great oracle at Delphi because why wouldn't you, right? It's such, such a kind of crisis existential moment. And, and the story is hilarious in that the Athenian ambassadors who go, the first time apparently, they speak to the, the Pythian priestess, the oracular priestess at Delphi, she just goes, run away, run away. And they go, no, no, we can't take that answer back, you know, give us another answer. And so you get this answer, this kind of prophetic sort of ambiguous phrase, you're trust in your wooden walls. And they have to take that back to Athens and they have to decide what that is. And some people think it's the, the old wooden wall that runs around the, the Acropolis, the great rock at the centre of Athens, on which the great sanctuary at the centre of Athens is. And so they think, right, everyone should run up to the Acropolis and, and, and you can understand that because

• 37:38Speaker 01

  actually in previous times and moments, that's what the Athenians have done, you know, and it's a pretty, pretty well defendable kind of rock rag, ancient volcanic plug thing, you know, kind of that, that could be, could be the answer. But Themistocles is the one saying, no, no, no, it's the wooden hulls of our ships, of our fleet, you know, we need to get out of Athens and we need to put our faith in the fact that we can actually use this fleet to turn the course of this war. But all of this fails, right? You appeal to the oracular kind of pronouncements. That's not going to hold the Greek fleet together. Then Themistocles turns to basically threats. And he says, right, if you don't all stay here, I'm going to take the Athenian fleet and we're going to sail to the other side of the Mediterranean and you guys are going to be toast because

• 38:22Speaker 01

  without us, you really don't have a chance. And that works for a little bit, but then even that doesn't start working. Then he goes, right, okay, what about if I kind of call on all the gods to come and support us? And there's these brilliant things that he does, like sends a ship off to a nearby island that has supposedly is the mythical home of a particular god. And there's a couch put on the sort of deck of the ship, you know? The god is invited to come off the island and sit on the couch and be transported back to fight in the line of the Greek fleet. So all of these kind of really kind of mythological, but inspiring sort of motivational sort of kind of things. But even that doesn't work, you know, to hold it together.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  And so we get to this infamous moment where around about the 25th of September, 480 BCE, Themistocles comes up with a plan, which effectively is this. He sends his slaves secretly at night across the Greek lines to the Persian camp, who are now occupying Athens and the fleet's all there, to get a message to the Persian king to say, Themistocles, the Athenian commander, wants to defect. And as a sign of this defection, I'm going to tell you that the Greek fleet, it all wants to escape and run away. So the best thing you can do is send your Persian fleet right now into the Straits of Salamis to stop them getting away. And then you can crush them once and for all. You know, signed, your best friend, you know, Themistocles.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Now, you know, people look at this and go, okay, with the benefit of hindsight, that this turns out to be a brilliant tactical move and the Greeks win at Salamis and defeat the Persian invasion. You see this as Themistocles, the brilliant tactician, tricking the Persian king into coming into the Straits of Salamis. But you could also see it as Themistocles really wanting to make sure he had options. Because if the Persian king had defeated the Greeks, that kind of sign would have helped Themistocles be spared the wrath of the Persian king because he'd helped the Persian king.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  So was this a moment in which Themistocles was reading the tea leaves and going, this could go either way.

• 40:34Tristan Hughes?

  Hmm.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  I'm going to make sure that both routes for me are open.

• 40:38Tristan Hughes?

  Hmm.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Or was this Themistocles, you know, brilliantly trapping the Persian king and assuring Greek victory?

• 40:47Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Over to you guys to decide.

• 40:50Tristan Hughes?

  I mean, whichever way he was thinking, it is pretty clever. But at the same time, I guess, even though he is, I mean, today he's seen as the man who wins the Battle of Salamis. Does it smear his reputation in the immediate years following?

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Well, this is the curious thing. So the Battle of Salamis turns out to be this great tactical victory because the Persian fleet bought the trick and sailed into the Straits of Salamis. Suddenly in these narrow straits, their numbers counted for nothing and the Greek fleet could pick them off, you know. And so there's this great moment where the Greek fleet defeats the Persian fleet and that turns the tide of the entire war. The Persian king leaves Greece almost immediately. And the following year, there's a great land battle at Plataea in 479, when the land army of the Persians is defeated. Because the Greeks have got momentum now, you know, kind of, and then the Persian threat dissipates. Themistocles plays no role in the Battle of Plataea. And this is this curious kind of rise and fall moment, the first rise and fall, if you like, that he's so instrumental at Salamis.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  And yet he's then given nothing. He's silenced for the first half, really, of the 470s. He's kind of just absent.

• 41:57Tristan Hughes?

  Gosh, and do we know why? Did he just get, once again, too big for his boots? And then we're just like, right, okay, well done. You won the big battle. Now remember, it's a democracy. You didn't win it, actually. We won the battle.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  You know, I think there's definitely an element of that. We won the battle. I think by this time, everyone kind of is pretty. Kind of frustrated with him as a character because he's been sitting there lambasting everyone, shouting at everyone, trying to convince everyone, pushing everyone to stay together. So frankly, I think people are quite happy not to be listening to him. But also because there's a complete change of direction. The sea is no longer the key thing. They've won the battle of the sea. Now it's about the battle of land. And he's not the premier land general. You know, they've got others that they listen to and do listen to for the for the Battle of Plataea. So kind of you can see how the spotlight, kind of Athenian spotlight, very quickly shifts off him because the need shifts off him.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  And he's left there in the 470s, having to kind of reinvent and find another issue to reclaim the spotlight. And that's when he gets on his City Walls gig.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors. And even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Brought to you

• 43:54Speaker 02

  by the award winning network, History Hit.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Shall we go to that final act, that final fall of Peristocles in Athens? Because I love this part of the story. It's not, he was always against the Persians. And actually, what you mentioned about Salamis, that kind of actually, look at the two sides of the coin for him going to the Persian king.

• 44:28Tristan Hughes?

  He isn't always an enemy. How does he actually end up in favour with Persia?

• 44:34Speaker 01

  It's one of those great stories. Through the 470s, so no role post Salamis, fine. Finds his city wall kind of gig, everyone kind of, he's at the top of his game again. But clearly by the end of the 470s, he's forgotten that crucial lesson about don't get too big for your boots. It's about the collective, not the individual. And you know, one of the best moments, which is confirmed by the archaeology, you know, we found this particular temple that he sets up in his kind of home little area of the centre of Athens. He sets up a temple to Artemis, right? Artemis with an epithet, so a particular emphasis on Artemis being worshipped to that temple. Artemis Aristobulus, Artemis the good counsellor. Fine. Except he goes and puts a bust of himself in the temple precinct, you know, you know, it's not subtle.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  And in a system whereby it's not about you, it's about the collective, that goes down like a lead balloon.

• 45:26Tristan Hughes?

  Putting yourself as a statue.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:28Tristan Hughes?

  Right next to a god.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Saying it's my great counsel that has saved you, you know, the Athenian. And so in 471, there is an ostracism vote. Guess who gets the most votes? It's Themistocles. So he's out of Athens, but you know, he's not out and out for the camp forever. Cause exile, the ostracism exile was supposed to be, we just want you out and gone for a while. But after that, you can come back and it will be fine.

• 45:52Tristan Hughes?

  Contemplate, you know.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Just reflect, you know, kind of take, take a chill. What happens in the next couple of years is the people who really hate him in Athens actually get him in, involved with a treason plot against the Greeks that also involves a Spartan general. And suddenly he finds himself on trial for treason in Athens. And he doesn't go back, he's in exile, he doesn't go back to Athens to stand trial. And he's therefore then tried in absentia, found guilty and thus sentenced to death. Right? So suddenly things have changed pretty quick. And he is now, you know, no way back for him in Athens. And in fact, actually those people really, and the Athenian people are so fed up with him and so kind of

• 46:33Speaker 01

  their blood is heated, if you like, for Themistocles at this point, that he tries to find a somebody in Greece that will give him safe. You know, safe home, safe, secure kind of lodging and, and no one will touch him. So he's, you know, he's sitting there going, hang on a second, I was the savior of Greece and I'm now no longer safe in Greece at all. And he looks at it and to his credit, he goes. Right, I'll get on a ship for Persia then. He's in his 50s at this point, you know, so I think a 50 year old man sails across the seas to Persia. He has to somehow make his way safely across the Persian Empire into the court of the Persian king. And he somehow manages to do this and he stands in front of the Persian king and it could be the same guy that he tricked at Salamis.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Or if there's a changeover of Persian king. So it could be Xerxes. Could be Xerxes, could be his son, right, kind of what, but one of these is either I tricked your dad or I tricked you, right? You know, the Persian king, whoever he is, knows Themistocles by name, right? It's that kind of like, there's a bounty on his head kind of thing. And he stands there and he goes, give me a year to learn Persian. So I can speak to you in your own language and talk to you about this, but I can be of use to you. And the Persian king gives him that year and, and to his credit, it is said that no Greek had ever learnt Persian as good as Themistocles. And as a result, Themistocles went on to have a closer relationship with the Persian king than any Greek had hitherto, you know, before him.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Was in his inner circle, et cetera. He's given a living, he's given some towns to sort of, you know, mini rule over. That's when he issues his coinage, you know, that we have kind of surviving. So, so kind of this third act, as you say, we've had this initial rise and fall, Salamis and then Plataea silence. Second rise and fall, kind of city walls and then exile out of Greece and, and, and treason. And he's, you know, kind of sentenced to death. And then this third rise where he becomes this trusted advisor of the Persian king. And the final fall is sort of into the, the 50s and Themistocles, it basically eventually the Persian king turns around to him and goes, right, I'm now ready to attack Greece again.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Time for you to make good on your promise to advise me how to do it properly. And Themistocles at that point sees no way forward in that he, so the sources tell us, doesn't want to actually betray Greece to that degree, despite everything Greece has done to him. And so commit suicide. Right. Has the honorable way out. And, and so, you know, the odd thing is that at the end of Themistocles's life, when he dies, he's, you know, he's honoured by the Persian king, they respect, he respects the decision, he gets a nice tomb built in, in the Persian empire, near the, the towns where he was living.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  But in Greece, he is still the exiled, condemned traitor, and no friend of Greece. Wow. So the question is, how do we go from that? Yes. To by the end of the fifth century, Thucydides in his great history, calling Themistocles, the most illustrious Greek of his generation. How? How? You know, how can you completely retell history? And it comes back again to that changing Athenian political system. And, you know, the other lesson, I think, kind of that's really come out for me from Themistocles in this book, you know, thinking again for myself, for others, my son Wilbur, you know, kind of growing up, it kind of is that reputations are an odd thing.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  And actually they're made for you by others, not, you know, you making them for yourself in, in many ways. So Themistocles at his death is absolutely persona non grata in Greece. But you get into the four fifties, so the decade after, you know, kind of Themistocles's death, and then into the four forties, the decade after, that's the era when Athens's democracy becomes the democracy ruling an Athenian empire. The delian league turned. Delian league turned to empire. It's the building of the Parthenon moment, you know, it's Athens at the top of its game. And it's an Athens that realises it's at the top of its game because of what? Oh, its fleet, right, which is able to have that imperial power extending across the Aegean.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  And so as a result, they look, take a look back at their, their kind of history and they realise that this guy, who, you know, has committed treason apparently and exile from Athens, was the one seemingly responsible for putting Athens on this course. And so very quickly, four fifteen into the four forties, his reputation is completely rehabilitated in Athens. Whitewash and forget the bit about, you know, him heading off to Persia. This is the guy who helped Athens become the supreme empire that she is today. A portrait of Themistocles is hung inside the Parthenon. And it's still there for centuries. So Pausanias, the great tour guide of the second century A D, says he sees the kind of portrait.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Themistocles's sons are invited back to live in Athens in all splendor, you know, kind of he's risen up as this hero. A tomb is built for him kind of in the Piraeus. And then, of course, in the next decade, the four thirties through to the end of the fifth century, that will be when Athens is suddenly fighting the great Peloponnesian, you know, Greek civil war. And what's going to become really helpful to the great, the Athenians at that point is their city walls. Oh, who was, oh, it was Themistocles. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What a great guy he was, you know. So suddenly the two, the two moments that he then gets so well associated with the fleet and the city walls become these mythological kind of reasons for Athens's supremacy and survival.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  And so by the end of the fifth century, he is completely rehabilitated as a hero. And then that is reconfirmed, if you like, in the following century, in the fourth century, when all of the Athenians, Athens has lost her empire, she's lost her walls, she's lost everything. And they hark back to these glory days of, you know, great heroes like Themistocles. And there we have him.

• 52:44Tristan Hughes?

  And that positive legacy of Themistocles has, I mean, by and large, existed, endured down to the present day.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:50Tristan Hughes?

  I guess it's no surprise then that when someone says Themistocles, you will think immediately of Salamis, of being a hero of Athens. And actually, the story of him going to Persia, it's much less well known.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Or, or, you know, making the absolutely. Obvious mistake of setting up a temple to his own brilliance in Athens. I mean, and doing all sorts of things where, you know, quite, when you look at it closely, he gets the decisions wrong as much as he gets the decisions right. And yet we've got this story that is so kind of preeminent of him. It's not like, so Cicero, right? We've got a great Roman orator kind of thing. But when he's looking at history, he actually talks about the fact that he's really puzzled by why Themistocles has the reputation that he does. Because, you know, why are the Athenians sort of honoring this guy who did two things in two moments more than they're honoring people who created entire systems that benefited the Athenians for decades?

• 53:48Speaker 01

  You know, so, so there are people who look at this and go, ah, this is a bit odd, you know, kind of, but it is, it is an oddity that is explained by understanding what happens post Themistocles's death and what the Athenians need and the heroes they need in the decades after he's died.

• 54:04Tristan Hughes?

  Hashtag justice for Aristides. That is the reason, like, Michael, this has been absolutely brilliant. I'm guessing that's, that's what you'd want to leave the reader of your book thinking about, the kind of the rises and the falls and like, there is so much more to this figure's character.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, you know, particularly to this character, absolutely. Seeing him in the round, seeing him as an individual, understanding the world that changed around him as he grew up, which actually made so much of what he did possible. Alongside the extraordinary strokes of good luck he had. And the fact that even then, at the end of the day, his life, when it ends in Greece, he's persona non grata. And it's that story afterwards, that kind of reevaluation and retelling of history that rises him up to becoming the great hero we know today. And as a result, to be both reassured that life is full of ups and downs, everyone's is, and reputations are a very odd and tricky thing indeed.

• 55:00Tristan Hughes?

  Wise words to end this on, Michael. Last but certainly not least, your book, all about the life and legend of Themistocles, it is called.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Themistocles, The Rise and Fall, or Rises and Falls, Rises and Falls of Athens's Naval Statesman is out now with Yeo University Press.

• 55:14Tristan Hughes?

  Michael, always a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming back on the show.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  It's been great to be here. Thanks so much, Justin.

• 55:22Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Professor Michael Scott talking through the story of Themistocles, his rises and falls. What a fascinating figure. Thank you so much for listening to the episode. Michael will be back in due course for a follow-up episode on another great story, a place in ancient Greece, one of the most fascinating sanctuaries ever built in antiquity. That is to come in the near future. Can't wait to share that episode with you. But in the meantime, once again, thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you've been enjoying the ancients, then please make sure you're following the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us. You'll be doing us a big favour.

• 56:04Tristan Hughes?

  If you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. I would certainly very much appreciate it. Now, don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

• 57:30Tristan Hughes?

  The.