34: Persia's Greek War with Trevor Culley

This is a teaser of the bonus episode, "Themistocles Pt 2" found over on Patreon. A single line from Delphi forces Athens to gamble everything: “the wooden wall.” Is it an old barricade on the Acropol...

27 Apr 6min

Athens is the greatest naval power in Greece, yet in Sicily it starts to feel helpless. We pick up the story at the moment Nicias sends a careful, politically protective message home and the Athenian ...

24 Apr 38min

This is a teaser of the bonus episode, "Themistocles Pt 1" found over on Patreon. Athens doesn’t wake up one day as the master of the Aegean. It gets argued into that future, one hard political fight ...

25 Mar 5min

A general sends home a letter that sounds like a warning and Athens treats it like a challenge. Nicias lays out the ugly reality at the Siege of Syracuse: stretched supply lines, sickness in camp, fad...

24 Mar 38min

What if the alliance that crushed Persia had become a lasting settlement? We revisit the brief window after Plataea and Mycale when Greece looked coordinated, and we test a bold idea: Athens commands ...

22 Feb 6min

Siege lines rose like ribs around Syracuse, and for a moment it looked inevitable: Athens would seal the city by land and sea and claim a victory to match its ambition. Then a Spartan named Gylippus f...

20 Feb 39min

Victory monuments told one story; Persian strategy told another. We pull back the curtain on how the Achaemenid Empire absorbed defeat at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale yet remained a decisive force by ...

23 Jan 6min

A shocked city, a careful army, and a plateau that decides everything. We follow the tense weeks after Athens’ first win outside Syracuse, when momentum gave way to method. Nicias, often branded cauti...

22 Jan 43min