(urth) Essential Background Reading for Soldier Series
thalassocrat at nym.hush.com
thalassocrat at nym.hush.com
Thu Nov 30 18:41:05 PST 2006
On Fri, 01 Dec 2006 09:17:31 +1100 Michael Straight
<mfstraight at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Holy essential background reading, Batman! I wish I'd known that
>ten years ago.
>
>Now I'm wondering what else I need to have read.
I think knowing something about what happened afterwards is useful.
Pausanias was supposed to have conspired with the Persians with the
intent of taking over one of the Spartan king positions. He was
also supposed to have plotted to arm & free the helots in supports
of this coup (or something like that; can't remember exact
details). He was betrayed, and the ephors/"judges" locked him up in
a temple & starved him to death.
Apart from the color this sheds on the Gaea/Artemis stuff, I think
it also helps to make sense of the oracle spoken by Cleomenes at
Acheron. "Seek peace" is obvious. "Don't drink from Lethe's cup" =
don't rely on Latro the forgetful as a talisman of vistory. "Ask
who will make the defenders of Sestos yield" = "Hunger", a warning
about his eventual fate.
Themistocles was dogged by accusations of arrogance and corruption.
Interestingly, one example of the former was supposed to have been
his building a temple to Artemis next to his house (or something
like that). He was exiled & then hounded out of Greece, also
accused of Persian plots by the later Spartan leadership. He did in
fact "defect", and ended up as an aristocratic subject of the Great
King in charge of <somewhere>.
One thing I don't quite understand is Gaea's alternative plan for
the helots: if she doesn't succeed with her Pausanias as helot-
liberating king play, she will nevertheless use them to destroy
Sparta via an uprising. There was some kind of uprising in the next
decade, after an earthquake, but the Spartans suppressed it fairly
quickly. After that I don't know of any real revolt until the
helots were "freed" a few centuries later by some of the later
kings. Is it just that Gaea in this part of the world is too old &
feeble to make her plans work?
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