A Short Walk through Our Long History

Ok, I know, there’s nothing more eye-rollingly boring than medieval literature, right? Wrong! It’s super interesting, in the stories that are told, and in the development of English as a language, and in the development of the novel as a literary genre. Did you read Harry Potter? Those were good novels, right? Both the concept of a novel, and also some of the cool things in Harry Potter, like wiza...

You probably have heard of Prince William and his wife Kate. You might have heard of their official titles, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Or William’s dad, Prince Charles. He’s the Prince of Wales. Have you ever wondered where these titles come from? I mean, William and Kate don’t own the city of Cambridge or anything, do they? Is Prince Charles in charge of Wales in some way? I mean, the Bri...

Last episode, we talked about the Charles the Hammer and his son Charlemagne, and the Carolingian renaissance in France and western Europe. After Charley and Charley were gone, though, Europe settled back into a period of relative darkness, without much central control. There wasn’t really one dominant power in any part of Europe, and partly because of this, the Dark Ages was a time when a lot of...

Last episode, we talked about the rise of Islam, and how it swept over the Middle East, Central Asia, and across North Africa. And I mentioned that the Islamic Caliphate, which was controlled by the Umayyad dynasty at that time, conquered Spain, and pushed their way up into France. In 732, however, in France, the Caliphate ran into a Frankish king with one of the greatest nicknames of all time: Ch...

Ok, so Europe was reeling from the volcanic winter of 536, and then the subsequent Plague of Justinian in 541, and it was beginning to descend into the Dark Ages. But nearby, in the Arabian Peninsula, things were just about to get really busy. In AD 570, in the small desert town of Mecca, a boy was born into the Arab tribe of Quraysh, the tribe that controlled Mecca. This boy was named Muhammad ib...

Before we get fully into the Middle Ages, and all the cool barbarian stuff that happens there, like Vikings, let’s take stock of the rest of how the rest of the world was doing in AD 476. Because while we were focused on Rome, there was actually stuff going on in the rest of the world

I’m going to begin this episode with a famous quote from Edward Gibbon, from his massive work, the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness...... The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so...

In the late 200’s while the Roman Empire was struggling with a long series of bad emperors and empire-wide troubles with barbarians, Christianity was spreading all throughout the empire. However, not everyone was happy about this.

From the time that Caesar Augustus took control and turned Rome into an Empire, until about 200 years later, Rome enjoyed a time of unparalleled peace and prosperity. This became know as the Pax Romana - the Roman Peace.

Remember how, a few episodes ago, we left Julius Caesar on the floor of the Senate, in a pool of blood? Well, that’s NOT how we left Jesus at the end of the last episode. It’s a very distinctive claim by his followers - that he did die, but that he rose from the dead.

There’s really no debate that Jesus was one of the most important people in all of history, but there are two ways to look at that. On the one hand, his life, death, and resurrection definitely started one of the world’s largest and most influential religions. Even those who do not claim to be Jesus’ followers are aware of that. But the other way to look at his life makes him even more significant...

In two places in the the New Testament, the Apostle Paul uses the phrase, ‘in the fullness of time,’ to indicate that in some way, the time was ripe for the Messiah to arrive. Paul doesn’t explain what he meant, but I think we can come up with some ideas. We’ll come back to that thought, the idea that the time when Jesus lived was not accidental.

So last episode we left Julius Caesar lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Some in the Senate were very happy about this, but generally speaking, most of Rome liked Caesar, and were not happy about it. The Senators who assassinated him had a clear picture of what they didn’t want: a tyrant ruling over them. But they did not have a clear picture of what they did want, and they didn’t have anyone...

We’re about to look at one of the most interesting, most famous people in all of history - Julius Caesar. If you had to choose the 5 most famous people of all time, Caesar might make the list. He’s that famous. Why is he interesting? Look at his resume: conquered gaul, became part of the triumvirate that ruled Rome, wrote books and poems, won lots of amazing battles, invaded Britain, conquered Egy...

In order to cover Caesar well, I think I’m going to spend this episode not on Caesar, but on the events that lead up to Caesar. Also, the stuff leading up to Caesar is really interesting in itself, and it’s relevant to us today, for a couple of reasons.

Throughout Roman history, from the early days of the republic to the last days of the empire, Rome was threatened by barbarian tribes. They came marching down from northern Europe every couple of hundred years, and occasionally captured and burned Rome. But Rome’s biggest threat was not the barbarians, at least, not until the very end. At the height of the strength of the Roman Republic, Rome face...

When Rome got rid of her last king, an aftereffect was that Rome had a long-lasting hatred of tyrants, and so the government they set up was designed to prevent any one man from taking power. Not to say that their original government was completely fair and just - at first the government of the Republic was completely run by the patricians. The plebeians were left out. When they got rid of Tarquin...

OK, I’ve been building up to Rome for basically this whole podcast so far, and now it’s time to finally start talking about it. In this episode, I want to answer the question, ‘Why is Rome so important?’

So we’re back in the mid-500’s BC, and we are back in India, slowly working our way around to talking about the Buddha. Before I talk about his life though, I think I need to give just a bit of background on the religion and culture of India at the time. So we’re going to talk a little about Hinduism, before we talk about Buddhism. Boy, talk about a couple of topics that are hard to explain. Hindu...

The really golden part of the Golden Age of Greece took place in a pretty small area, actually. It took place mostly on the Attic peninsula, and mostly in the city of Athens. But most scholars include the years after Athens was destroyed as part of the Golden Age, the years when Greece was conquered and ruled by the Macedonians, and then Greek culture was spread all over the eastern Mediterranean....

As the battles between Athens and Sparta were going on, oddly enough, some very important philosophical questions were being asked; questions that philosophers and theologians are still talking about to this day. The enigmatic man asking these questions was named Socrates, and though he himself wrote nothing of his own words, it’s quite possible that the only single person who wasn’t a writer hims...

Episode 10 -  The Peloponnesian Wars Hi, my name is Clayton Mills.  Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History’ - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world.  This is Episode 10 -  The Peloponnesian Wars.   The Golden Age of Greece, which we focused on last episode, lasted from around 528 BC to 323 BC, and it was a time of great...

So what made it golden? What made it a classic? Well, there were two ascendent cities during this time, Athens and Sparta. They both were incredibly prosperous, and both laid claim to be the leading city in Greece. They fought several times during this period, and we’ll talk about those battles in the next episode. But what really made this time period unique was all of the stuff going on in Athen...