Sounds good I’m really looking forward to a break from election coverage.

I would like to comment on your reference of the movie “300″. This movie is a complete insult to the ancient Persian culture and provokes animosity against Iran. This film was seen as an attack on Persian history.
All the film’s producers needed to do was to consult Herodotus’ account of the Immortal Guards, a “body of picked Persian troops” whose attire bore no resemblance to the evil forces shown in 300: “First the Persians themselves: the dress of their troops consisted of the tiara, or soft felt cap, embroidered tunic with sleeves, a coat of mail looking like the scales of a fish, with trousers; for arms they carried large wicker shields, quivers slung below them, short spears, powerful bows, with cane arrows, and daggers swinging from belts beside the right thigh”.

In short, the movie’s exploitation of ancient history to launch a thinly-veiled attack on Persian history and identity is both harshly unfair and morally suspect.

My ears just perked up at Mr. Strassler’s mention of Simon’s Rock College. This is the school where as a teenager I learned to never be intimidated by anything I am given to read. I thank him for his contributions to this wonderful institution and its 30 year tradition of championing the early college movement.

I very much enjoyed the show today and look forward to reading Strassler’s new translation. However, I thought that he dodged the first caller’s question about inherent racism towards the Persians in Herodotus. I think Herodotus did express some racist tendencies. He is writing a history which will end in the supremacy of the Greeks over the Persians. It obviously works toward the promotion of all things Greek.

At the same time, this was not something new to the ancient world. I think it was something inherent in Greek culture. Each Greek city-state believed in its superiority over all the other city-states and beyond. I can cite two examples. 1. The Greek term for barbarian, “barbaros”, most likely comes from the Greeks’ inability to understand foreign dialects (think “ba-ba-ba”). This was later picked up by the Romans for their word for beard, “barba”, because of course only barbarians wore beards. 2. Aristotle believed that women & slaves were sub-human, yet himself was an outsider to Athens, a “metoikos”, who was not allowed to set up his Lyceum on city grounds.

I don’t think that it’s necessarily terrible to admit that there was racism in the ancient world. It was definitely there. What we need to do today is learn history’s lesson and admit is that racism is terrible and should become/remain a thing of the past.

Thanks for a wonderful subject. Interesting that he tried to bring a new standard of getting facts right so a history work could be authoritative, at a time when our public dialog, and even our recent history, people seem to not get the concept of the importance of accuracy and what a price we pay for not honoring it.

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