Could there be a better Monday Morning present?!? I don’t think so.
Update:
Folks, he said it, not me.
The few conservatives still able to hold up one end of a Socratic dialogue are those in the ostracized libertarian wing — interestingly enough, a group with a disproportionately high representation among fans of speculative fiction.
this was a great opinion piece… thanks for the link!
It’s explained in any history book. Iranians are ethnically Indo-European, not Turkic. The Greeks of that time used to go on a bit about the good-looking blonde Medes. So you can say it’s all a comic book and shouldn’t matter, but if you’re going to make an appeal to historical accuracy (it’s about Sparta and Persia!) you ought to get your history right, Neal Stephenson.
Oh are you smackin’ down Stephenson!?!? The heartbreak!
You are the person to answer this question, though. In the movie the Persian forces seemed to be not strictly PERSIAN, per se, but an amalgamation of troops from all of the conquered territories of Xerxes’ empire.
It was sort of a “It’s a Small World” ethnic mish-mash of an army. Everything I’ve ever read about Thermopylae was tactical and didn’t have much detail on the actual cultural make-up of the Persian forces. (And no, I haven’t read the Heroditus).
To the best of your knowledge were the Persian forces wholly Persian or more globalised?
Hmmmm. I’m weak on the details of this military stuff. I know that by Alexander’s time the Persian army was ethnically mixed. In fact, Xenophon and a squadron of Greeks served in the Persian army (well, actually in the army of a claimant of the Persian throne) for a bit, so that would put the use of mixed forces back as early as 400 BCE. That much I know for sure, but my impression is that the practice went back to Cyrus the Great in the 550s or so BCE, who was big on integrating conquered peoples into his administration. (The mix wasn’t the B-52 bomber movie kind of mix, with one of everyone in the same unit; it was lots of troops, each made up of a single ethnic group, generally incorporating the style of training and fighting that group was used to.) Which would mean that the armies that invaded Greece were mixed, but doesn’t speak to the composition of the particular force that was at Thermopylae. Sorry I can’t be of greater help.
you know, i think that what the director and the author of the comic books was trying to get across is this idea that sparta was a “small world” and the persian empire was a “big world” and that, to someone who’d never really seen anyone other than the culture they were used to, an army made up of forces from across the known world would SEEM to be populated by monsters, demons, and people so bizzare as to seem inhuman.
and for that, i think that they did a good job. historically innacurate to be sure… but it sure captured that idea of , “whoah, these guys are NOT like us!” ‘course… that’s a xenophobic viewpoint, but i would say that xenophobia, at least is somewhat historically accurate.
[...] I have them all the time. But I don’t think that Stephenson was just being glib when he said that the only conservatives capable of Socratic dialogue are the libertarians. To be sure it may have been a bit of an exaggeration, as I know quite a few Republicans willing to [...]
Spartans were certainly less likely than other Greeks of the time to have travelled widely. They were known to their fellow Hellenes as provincial and superstitious, and to dislike anything that wasn’t like Sparta, unlike the Athenians (who were notorious as “always seeking after some new thing”). But their world wasn’t unitary. The Hellenes themselves were ethnically mixed (dark-haired Ionians and blond Dorians), and both politically and culturally each city was a world unto itself, and each Greek was a foreigner in any other city. That’s what made the fact that the Spartans were willing to sacrifice themselves to protect all those foreigners (and in a way that would weaken them with respect to all those foreigners) so moving and admirable.
Please understand that I am perfectly comfortable with treating the movie as a representation of a comic/graphic novel, on its own terms. On those terms, it doesn’t need the least bit of historical justification. It’s just that when critics start doing the “it actually is historically accurate, because …” thing, I’m gonna start calling them on their history, if it’s too out there. And Stephenson assuming that Greeks and Persians looked the same 2500 years ago as today, that’s too out there for me.
And Stephenson assuming that Greeks and Persians looked the same 2500 years ago as today, that’s too out there for me.
Stephenson makes his living as a fantasist of sorts, so I don’t think he was right to make that historical pronouncement.
I do love him, though.
And Megaphonic had a very good point. Because I was honestly wondering what was up with the over-the-top freakishness of the Persian forces. There were all sort of deformities, scars and genetic anomalies in the Xerxes camp of the film.
Oh, yes, it’s a great point. Megaphonic, if it sounded like I was dismissing it, I didn’t mean to.
no no, i didn’t think that at all! i’m loving haveing a truly historical slant put on it!