"Had the Greeks, says the Abbe Milot, been as wise as they were courageous, they would have been admonished by experience of the necessity of a closer union, and would have availed themselves of the peace which followed their success against the Persian arms, to establish such a reformation. Instead of this obvious policy, Athens and Sparta, inflated with the victories and the glory they had acquired, became first rivals and then enemies; and did each other infinitely more mischief than they had suffered from Xerxes. Their mutual jealousies, fears, hatreds, and injuries ended in the celebrated Peloponnesian war; which itself ended in the ruin and slavery of the Athenians who had begun it."
- Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, in the Federalist Papers (Federalist No. 18)
So I once read a book history of Ancient Greece, and I've even been learning the Ancient Greek language since 2013 (as some of you already know). I'm almost done reading my intro textbook on the subject, actually, and so I've spent many hours studying this topic over these past few years. (Update, 2017: I actually finished the intro textbook recently.) Nonetheless, I actually learned a lot from this three-hour TV program on this topic; since it is well-researched, well-presented, and it interviews the experts. I've gotten pretty deep into their culture already through these language exploits, but I nonetheless learned much from this documentary, and not just because it shows pictures of the actual places and artifacts from the time. (Although it does do plenty of that, and supplements my reading with the visuals.)
Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens
So how did I learn something from this, you might be asking? What was it that was so new to me that my textbooks hadn't shown me this information before? Why was it that I learned something from a medium that is usually brief, and occasionally superficial?
Greek statesman Cleisthenes
No attempts here to cover everything (which may be wise)
Part of it is that, like any good treatment of a complex topic in a short amount of time, they don't try to cover everything. Rather, they focus on a few things and run with them, going into depth with them as need be. It's nothing like a comprehensive history by any means, but it dedicated a substantial portion of its first episode to the statesman Cleisthenes, who is given only a few pages in the textbook that I read about Ancient Greece. Or to give another example, it dedicated a substantial portion of its second episode to Themistocles, who is likewise given short coverage in the textbook that I read about Ancient Greece. (Although the textbook does go into somewhat more detail on Pericles, who is the primary topic of the third - and final - episode. But even here, the documentary had some new things to say for me.)
Greek statesman Themistocles
Greek statesman Pericles
The power of good visuals to bring history to life
Thus it was that a 150-minute TV program gave me some information that a 368-page textbook didn't. This is a testament to the power of good television to give people information about history, when it's done right. There was a computer-animated naval battle, for example, which did a fantastic job at bringing this topic to life visually, in a way that no textbook could ever duplicate. This is not to question the effectiveness of the textbooks, mind you, but I've always been a believer in the power of good visuals to bring something like history to life. The textbook that I read beats PBS in comprehensiveness by far, I should acknowledge here. But what PBS does cover, it covers well, and that would seem enough for me as a history buff.
Reconstruction of a Greek ship called a "trireme"
Primarily a political history, although the trial of Socrates is also covered briefly
This documentary is mainly a political history, which is focused on statesmen and battles - both on land and sea - that make for better television than ideas. (Although I am a big believer in discussing ideas as well, particularly the kind that the Ancient Greeks left us through their most distinguished philosophers.) The main exception to this program's focus on trade and foreign policy is its discussion of Socrates, the most famous Greek philosopher. This takes up a substantial part of an episode otherwise focused on Pericles, and I refer here to the last episode. This is one part of Greek history that I already knew something about before watching this documentary. I've read the words of Socrates at his famous trial, and read the words that he spoke in the last (and final) moments before his execution. PBS doesn't go into much depth on these events, but the visuals that they give here helped to bring it to life in a way that I hadn't seen before. They allowed me to see the marketplace where the trial took place, the location of the prison cell where Socrates was held after the verdict, and the place where he died by hemlock poison at the hands of his executioners. These were all things that I had imagined somewhat differently before this.
Greek philosopher Socrates
The execution of Socrates (which was by drinking hemlock poison)
The focus here is on Ancient Athens, rather than all of Ancient Greece
The documentary's title may actually be somewhat misleading in a small way. It implies that the documentary covers Ancient Greece as a whole, when really, it is just focused on Athens. (Perhaps "The Athenians: Crucible of Civilization" would have been a better title.) I suppose that the term "Greeks," though, conjures up more public interest than the term "Athenians" - a more specific term that references Greek divisions into city-states at that time. These divisions would likely be mostly forgotten to the general public, I think, and thus (perhaps) incapable of generating much interest among them. The Greeks really were the crucible of Western Civilization, though, and the Athenians were definitely "Greek" in every sense of the word. Thus, the title is not entirely inaccurate. Besides that, it's possible that a more specific title would have been less inspiring to the average viewer. Thus, one can overlook what inaccuracy there is here in view of the documentary's many strengths. It is, after all, one of the few TV programs to attempt to cover this history at all, which makes it somewhat unique in the world of television.
Statue of the Greek goddess Athena, patron goddess of Athens
Athenian democracy and the "dead white guys"
Since this program comes from the "PBS Empires" series, the topic that it focuses on most is how the great empire of Athens was built, and the secrets of its astonishing success story. To do so necessarily involves a detailed look at Greek democracy, I think, which was the first popular government in the world. This is something that the documentary covers well, which is refreshing when you consider how much these achievements are overlooked today. The left has an aversion to what it perceives as too many "dead white guys" in the school curriculum, and so political correctness has often polluted our discussion of the Greeks & Romans. Fortunately, though, this program manages to minimize the political correctness as much as possible here; since this program does not ignore conservative scholars like Victor Davis Hanson, and even interviews him in this documentary alongside the liberal scholars. This is one of those happy times when PBS actually achieves the balance that it claims to have, which shows that it can be objective when it puts its collective mind to it.
The Parthenon, also known as the Temple of Athena (the patron goddess of Athens)
Brilliant narration by Liam Neeson
The narration of Liam Neeson is among the best that I've heard, and is reminiscent of Charlton Heston at times (one of the best himself). These two actors are quite similar in many ways, I think, since they both seem to have the "face from another century" that makes them believable as larger-than-life figures. This "face from another century" makes them easy to identify with a topic like ancient history. Charlton Heston had a role in depicting ancient history more than once; with roles like Moses, El Cid, and Ben-Hur (perhaps his finest role). For Neeson, it's Star Wars, the Chronicles of Narnia, and programs like this one - which is up there with any of them in the grandeur of its topic.
Conclusion: This program is one of the most intriguing that PBS has ever made
Before this review gets much longer, let me close by saying that this is one of the most intriguing programs that PBS has come up with in recent years. As I mentioned earlier, it actually taught this three-year veteran of the Ancient Greek language some things that he didn't yet know about Greek history, and gave breathtaking visual depictions of some things that I already did know. I hope that this will bring Greek history to a new generation of the countries that are heirs of Western culture. As a group, this generation hasn't often heard these things in school in the way that they should have. (They would all benefit much, I think, from watching a documentary like this one.)
"The celebrated Pericles, in compliance with the resentment of a prostitute,[footnote] at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the SAMNIANS. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the MEGARENSIANS,[footnote] another nation of Greece, or to avoid a prosecution with which he was threatened as an accomplice of a supposed theft of the statuary Phidias,[footnote] or to get rid of the accusations prepared to be brought against him for dissipating the funds of the state in the purchase of popularity,[footnote] or from a combination of all these causes, was the primitive author of that famous and fatal war, distinguished in the Grecian annals by the name of the PELOPONNESIAN war; which, after various vicissitudes, intermissions, and renewals, terminated in the ruin of the Athenian commonwealth."
- Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist Papers (Federalist No. 6)
DVD at Amazon
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If you liked this post, you might also like:
Learning the basics of Ancient Greek from a book
Reading about the trial of Socrates in the original Greek
Reflections on learning about history of Ancient Greece
A review of Bettany Hughes’ “The Spartans”
A review of Bettany Hughes’ “Athens: The Dawn of Democracy”
A review of Michael Wood’s “In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great”
A review of “Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire” (History Channel)
A review of “Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire” (BBC)
A review of “The Roman Empire in the First Century” (PBS Empires)
Reflections on learning about history of Ancient Rome
Part of the series
PBS Empires
Egypt's Golden Empire
Kingdom of David: The Saga of the Israelites
The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization
Peter, Paul, and the Christian RevolutionThe Roman Empire in the First Century
Islam: Empire of Faith
The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance
Martin Luther
Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire
Napoleon
Queen Victoria's Empire
Part of another series about
European history
Ancient Greece
This list covers Europe through the Renaissance. For Europe since the Renaissance, click here.
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