Welcome to the Knowledge Project.
I'm your host Shane Parrish, curator behind the Fernham Street blog, which is an intellectual hub of interestingness covering topics like human misjudgment, decision -making, strategy, philosophy, and culture.
The Knowledge Project allows me to interview amazing people from around the world to deconstruct why they're good at what they do and get inside their head.
It's more conversation than prescription.
It's about seeing the world as they see it.
The next episode is one of two interviews that I conducted while visiting Greece this summer.
Greek history, which is deep -rooted in many things, is philosophy, democracy, and culture, has laid the foundation of so much of what we know and what we live today.
Today I'm going to speak with Aristotle Kostkinnes, one of the best guides you can find in Athens.
In order to be a guide in Greece, an individual must complete two and a half year program at the School of Tourist Guides in Greece, which is the state school under the Ministry of Development.
Some of the courses in the curriculum include ancient Greek history, Byzantine history, prehistoric archaeology, mythology, geology, history of theatre, and the psychology of the tourists.
Along with completing the required written and oral exams, the professionals must also complete 110 hours of lessons in a museum about archaeology and 260 hours of visiting sites and practicing guides.
It's not like you just walk up to the bus and get a guide here.
I contacted Athens Walking Tours to find out who their best guide was, and that's how I came to meet Aristotle.
With his first degree in archaeology, Aristotle decided to continue his studies in order to become a certified guide in Athens.
And we're lucky that he did.
Today you'll hear us speak about the history of Athens over the past 3 ,000 years, the influence of Greek culture has had across the world, and some insights on what surprises him meeting visitors from different countries.
I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.
Hi and welcome. Thank you.
Welcome. You're welcome to Greece, in Athens.
Do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself, Aristotle?
My name is Aristotle Koskinas.
I'm an archaeologist and qualified tourist guide.
I was born in Athens, and I have lived in this city for most of my life.
Although I had to go out for my university studies to be trained as a tourist guide, so I have been outside of Athens for several years.
But I have returned to this big city, and I'm working since, say, 2003 as a tourist guide, which is my full -time job.
And archaeology now has become passion, I wouldn't call it a hobby, but I pursue my research when I have some spare time, which fortunately, it is limited, and fortunately financially, because I'm busy, I'm working.
On the other hand, I have a ton of roof tiles waiting for me to study them.
I'm getting phone calls from the directors of the Dixx, Enoch and Aristotle.
We have found some new roof tiles.
Where are you coming over to see them?
November, December, next year probably.
How many people live in Athens?
How many? About 5 million people, although those who are registered are about 4 million.
It just happens that during the census, people leave and go back to their villages or towns, because they believe that if they register there, the government will have a different approach and attitude towards their local communities.
But the population of the greater Athens area is 5 million, which is about 40 percent of the population of the country.
We're about 11 million, according to the census of 2011.
What do you find most interesting about being a professional tour guide?
That's not true. That's a difficult question.
Well, first of all, I come in contact with different people every time, and I have the opportunity to talk to them about the history of Athens and Greece.
Of course, it's my version of the history of Athens and Greece.
I try to make them see the country through my eyes, and that's what makes it interesting.
Sometimes, however, you have people who are not particularly interested about the history.
They just want to take a selfie, in which case, it's not that interesting for me to do that, because you can find a place to take a selfie.
There are plenty of opportunities in the city to take a selfie.
Now, you cannot see it.
The audience cannot see that, but wherever you have, you have a look at the acropolis, so it's great.
The history of Greece dates back so far and goes on for so long, and it's so vast.
It seems like there's an endless amount of threads that you could pick up for someone who wants to learn, or somebody looking for where to start.
Where would you suggest?
Well, reading or visiting.
For example, if you visit the country, you want to have an introduction to its history.
I would say Athens will be the first place of choice, because you have the National Archaeological Museum, which has antiquities from all the periods of Greek history, from the Neolithic, say 7000 BC to the Roman.
Although, now, just a note.
When we say the history of Greece, we must make a distinction.
You have the history of Greece as a country, which starts back in the Paleolithic period, 200 ,000, 300 ,000 BC, and then you have the history of the Greek people, which started a little later than that, because there's a debate about it.
The archaeology, we can prove that the Greek people arrived in this region during the second millennium BC.
So if you want to be very strict and precise, the history of the Greek nation starts in the second millennium.
But in the narrative of the formation of the Greek state, if you read the books, you will see that the Minoan Cretans are also included in the history of the Greek nation, the people of the Cyclades, who were living here since the 4th millennium BC, were also included in the Greek.
We're not certain what languages they were speaking, so we're not certain if they were Greeks or a different ethnic stock.
But anyway, visiting Athens, you'll get to see all that continuity from the 7th millennium BC to the Roman period.
And then you have other places, so you can see the modern revival of Greece and the modern sequel of the country after the war of independence against the Ottoman Turks, when Greece became a sovereign state in 1831 to the present.
So yeah, I know that Athens hasn't got the beaches and the white -washed churches that people are accustomed, and they know from the commercials, but you have stayed in Athens for at least a couple of days.
I think it's important to get to know the history of Greece.
What's the history of Athens, the city itself?
Well, we have to go back to the 4th millennium, about 3400 BC, when we have the first inhabitants who settled on the Acropolis and in the surrounding plain, and since that time the city has a continuous habitation.
So you say that the city has a history of 6 ,000 years, and several meters of archaeological remains beneath the modern city.
We had a period, well, until the 10th century BC, we cannot say that, well, you can't say that we have the city -state of Athens.
Just note in ancient Greece we had hundreds of independent city -states.
Athens sparked a Corinth, just to name three of the most important.
But we believe that the city -states were formed during the 10th century BC.
So since that time, since the 10th century on, you have the formation of the ancient city.
We started spreading out around the Acropolis.
And the heyday of Athens was the 5th century BC, when it had the strongest navy.
They controlled all the Aegean.
They had multiple sources of revenue from the harbor of the Eros, they had silver mines, manufacturing activities.
And in this period when the Athena democracy was developed, you had philosophy, art, but when we say the 5th century BC, it was a period between 480 to 430 BC, when Athens is at its strongest and the most prosperous period.
And then after 430 BC, they had to fight a long war against the city of Sparta and its allies.
It lasted for 27 years.
And that's a very controversial period in ancient Greek history, because we can say that all the sophisticated and refined Athenians would attend theatre, they wouldn't hesitate of exterminating an entire island, because they opposed their policies and their expansion.
For example, in 417 they destroyed the island of Milos, because the Milians refused to pay tribute to the Athenians.
And in 404, when the Athenians surrendered finally to the Spartans, Athens was at its knees.
Even their democracy was abolished for a year or so.
The city was revived, but not as a major political or military power.
It retained that aura of cultural center throughout the ancient times, I would say.
Not just in the classical period.
And then they had periods of prosperity, especially when it was supported and endowed by the rulers of the time, precisely because it was Athens' center of civilization and the fountain of culture and art.
During the late Roman period, after the third century AD, the city itself had been destroyed, so it had become a much smaller settlement.
After 267 was destroyed by the barbarian tribe of the Heruli, the city was confined in the zone around the Acropolis.
But then in the sixth century AD, the schools of the city were closed, after an imperial edict, and that was the final blow to the significance of Athens as a major educational center.
During the Middle Ages, it was a prosperous market town, and it still had the memory that it was Athens, of all the Athens of Pericles and the philosophers.
There is, in the twelfth century AD, a bishop was sent to Athens.
He was highly educated in the classics.
He imagined that he would see the city that was described in the ancient texts, and he was completely disappointed.
He was making references that, okay, this is not Athens, that's something completely different, that's something entirely alien to what I had in my imagination.
The city in the fifteenth century AD was occupied by the Ottoman Turks.
It is interesting that during the first 200 years of the Ottoman occupation, Athens prospered.
In the census of the sixteenth century, it had a population of 17 ,000 people, which makes it the fourth largest city of the Ottoman Empire in Europe.
I say this is interesting because it wasn't an administrative center.
Was it a trading outpost?
Not even because we don't have in other cities the Ottomans would build large markets.
In Athens there was just the bazaar, which was developed over the ruins of the ancient markets and the ancient libraries.
That's fascinating in the sense that you could see a building of Roman period, which was a library, and then it was repurposed into a bazaar during the Ottoman time, so you have the same location, but it was changing through the centuries.
No, it probably has to do with the thriving countryside, because during the Ottoman, the process of the Ottoman occupation on the countryside of Athens was not ravaged.
You had a strong population base, and you had the interaction between the city and the countryside.
That's the only reason, as far as we know.
Then, because in the eighteenth century the revenue and the taxation system changed in the Ottoman Empire, so instead of collecting the taxes directly, the Ottoman state would lease out the taxes to tax farmers, which would collect the taxes with interest for their own profit.
By the late eighteenth century this population has dropped to 11 ,000 people.
We have references that people would leave the city to be released from the tax burden.
People would mortar their farms to the monasteries or to wealthy Greeks or wealthy Ottomans, so gradually they had the accumulation of land to more and more people.
That was the financial and social aid, that was a fatal blow to the city.
Was it they were trying to extract too much taxes, or was it just a report against them?
The idea was that every year the Ottoman treasury would have the sum that they had in the budget, and they wouldn't bother collecting it to build up the mechanism to collect it.
You had these entrepreneurs, actually they were usually members of the Ottoman elite, who would hire other people to do the dirty work.
They would say, okay, look, how many do you want from Athens?
You're supposed to take 40 ,000 coins?
This is 40 ,000 coins at the beginning of the year.
Coming back to Athens, these people would collect the taxes.
I'm suspecting a lot more than 40 ,000.
60 ,000, 70 ,000 because they had not only to make a profit, they also had to come up with the money to pay the other Ottoman officials, where they are superior, so they would get that grant, that concession.
There was a network of bribing, or not bribing, I know that people in Turkey would be interested in that, a gift exchange from the lower to the upper level.
And of course, those who suffered, most of them were the people on the lower level who had to give the money.
It contributes, yeah.
It was a distributive system, so if a small community had to pay, say, 100 coins, it didn't matter if you had 1 ,000 or 10 people, it would be still 100 coins.
So when people started living, you ended up with a few families taking all the burden of the taxation.
So there were at least two riots against those tax collectors in Athens during the 18th century, where Greeks and Muslims participated.
So it was not just an ethnic thing, it was a social and economic phenomenon.
So in 1821, when the Greek War of Independence was declared, the people were more than ready to join and expel the Ottoman authorities and the Ottoman population from the city.
Although Athens suffered a lot during the War of Independence, especially between 1826 and 1827, the Greeks were in possession of the Acropolis, which was a castle, always the Acropolis, was a castle.
The Ottoman army was besitting them, so imagine that, we know that by the end of that siege, there were only 40 buildings standing with their roofs out of 2 ,000 buildings.
1834, three years after the end of the war, Athens was declared the capital of Greece.
And again, that choice was ordained by the history of the city, not its significance as a town during the 19th century.
It was Athens, it was the city that was mentioned in all the ancient texts, it was a city where democracy was created, it was a city where philosophy.
So the first king of Greece, who was a German, by the way, and his advisors decided to establish the capital in Athens to showcase the link between modern Greece and its ancient glories.
There was even a plan, it was only a plan, fortunately, to build the royal residence on the Acropolis.
It never happened, thank God.
So the city that invented democracy ended up with a monarchy?
Well, it's not just the city, it was Greece.
During the War of Independence, we made the Declaration of Independence, we had the parliaments, and the constitutions that were drafted during the War of Independence were very progressive and liberal for the standards of that time.
Don't forget that the War of Independence started a few years after the end of the Napoleonic wars, so the monarchies of Europe wanted to retain the status quo, so they didn't want to hear anything about parliaments and elections.
During the War, unfortunately, the Greek people also were fighting a civil war.
That is interesting, we were fighting, actually, 42 civil wars during the War of Independence.
We were fighting against each other to establish who would be the ruler or the power broker when we would become independent.
We also contracted two loans from British banks, and all that money were just squandered during the civil wars, and to irrelevant purchases of military material.
We purchased six steamships, because we thought that this superior technology would give us an advantage over the Ottoman navy.
Of these six steamships, only one arrived during the war, and it was deployed.
It was actually the first steamship that was used in battles.
The other two arrived after the end of the war, the three were never built, although we had paid for them.
We even bought a frigate from the United States, we have ordered three, only one arrived.
We had paid for all of them, but it's another story.
But these loans were very important because by taking the loans, Greece acquired an entity, and the governments of England had to take care of their own interests, economic and political interests.
A form of legitimizing.
We were not recognized officially as people fighting against the Ottoman Turks, but essentially we were.
When you give money to someone, first of all, you have invested interest, that someone will be able to pay you the money, or give you the collateral in the end.
In a way, they're historians that would disagree with that, but an important factor in the success of the War of Independence was those two loans.
They were divisive, they were never used for the war itself, but politically they played an important role.
I think we paid those loans in the late 90s anyway, that's a Greek joke, they were still paying the bonds of the Greek War of Independence.
Then in 1827, finally, the European superpowers decided to intervene.
They sent us a joint fleet, England, France and Russia, they destroyed the Ottoman fleet.
Then it was just a matter of time when the Ottoman army and the Germans would leave the country.
Originally the plan was for Greece to become a vassal state to the Ottoman Empire, but due to the diplomacy of the first governor of Greece, who was a very competent diplomat, we were able to become an independent state.
Part of the agreement was that Greece would become monarchy, and since we didn't have any nobility in Greece, there were people who called themselves barons and princes, but they didn't have any real claim.
But also, because of the civil war, people were reluctant to accept one or the other of the factions.
So when we were offered the Greek people believed that and outside would bring stability in the Greek society.
So the prince from Bavaria, Otto, was appointed the king of Greece.
For him it must have been quite a shock.
When he came to the country, he was 17 years old.
Maybe he knew about the history of Greece.
He must have seen the warriors who came as the delegation to offer him the crown.
But we have descriptions of his arrival, that he was a little shaky, that he even lost his footing when he came off the boat.
So he was grabbed by one of his bodyguards, who had been quite humiliated in arrival for a king just to fall in the sea.
And Otto... well, the father of Otto, King Ludwig of Bavaria, was fascinated with Greek history and culture.
He had created a large collection of Greek art.
The Gleptothek in Munich is actually started as his collection.
And of course he was happy to have his son as the ruler of Greece.
So Athens was chosen as the capital and that's actually the milestone for the modern history of Athens in 1834.
And since then you have a history of expansion and growth.
In 1834 the city had only 4 ,000 people because it was after the war people had left.
In just 60 years when the first Olympic Games were held in Athens, the population was more than 100 ,000.
And you have that increase.
There were also two periods of dramatic population increase.
The first was in 1922.
By that time the city had about 700 ,000 people.
But within one year a quarter of a million were added to the population.
That was after the First World War.
Greece got a mandate to garrison the area around the city of Izmir, Greek Izmirna, where more than 80 % of the population were Greeks.
And the idea was that after five years there had been a referendum and the inhabitants of that region would decide if they wanted to be united with Greece or they would have an autonomous status.
And the plan of the Greek government was that the Greek populations that were Greeks and Christians would leave the area in Anatolia and come into this resort.
So we would have 150 % Greeks in that area.
It didn't work that way because the Turks started their own war of independence.
And it was up to the Greek army to pursue them.
By 1922 we were defending the frontier 700 kilometers long.
At one point our army reached 50 kilometers of Ankara.
My grandfather who was in that campaign had stories that we could see Ankara somewhere in the distance but then we had to retreat.
And in 1922 the Turkish army counterattacks, the city of Izmir was destroyed and thousands of people were killed.
And the next year when the peace treaty was signed they agreed for a mandatory exchange of populations.
One and a half million Greeks left their villages and towns in Turkey.
They were settled in Greece and about half a million Turks and Muslims left northern Greece and they went to Turkey.
I don't remember the name of the villas but there is a ghost village in Turkey which used to be 100 % Greek and they saved the house immediately after when the people left it.
They all left at the same time.
And imagine that you have several municipalities in Athens who started as refugee camps.
And then they became communities that were added to the city.
Whenever you see on the map New Smyrna, New Philadelphia, they have the names of the communities from which these people came originally.
I want to talk a little bit about Greek culture.
That's kind of taken on its own term and own meaning throughout the world.
And it sounds like more and more we're meeting Athenian culture historically.
Can you walk us through what is...
You mean a cultural, historical culture or the modern culture?
A little bit of both.
What does the modern culture connotate and where do they become that way from the historic perspective?
Well, the modern culture...
Well, modern Greece is a curious mix of the memory of its ancient glories and globalization.
First of all, you have the culture of Athens.
It's a melting pot where you have Greeks from all around.
Someone has said that Athens is just an agglomeration of thousands of villages.
Because you have people from Corfu, you have people from South and Greece, you have good people from Crete.
These people brought their own customs, their own ideas.
They had to adjust in the environment of the big city.
Don't imagine that every year during the festivals you have, in every neighborhood of Athens, you have a traditional festival.
It's like all elements of traditional Greek culture have been put into a mixer.
And now we see them through a modern filter.
So you have... We celebrate all the religious festivals, which is a great opportunity for eating and drinking and meeting with friends.
You see now modern Greeks using devices and computers and all that.
On the other hand, sometimes they still have the social restrictions that they have carried from their villages.
They say, okay, let's behave this way, because the people of our environment will start making comments.
So they still have the mentality of the small community.
Although they live in a big city and they live in the way...
I don't know if it's...
Is historic Greek culture really Mediterranean culture in the sense that I believe the Romans conquered Greece, but Greek culture permeated throughout Roman Empire?
Well, Greek culture, the Romans recognized that.
The supremacy of the Greek civilization of the Greek culture.
One of the Roman authors said that Greece was captured with our weapons, but the culture of Greece managed to...
We are the captives of the Greeks because of their culture.
So what did they mean when they said Greek culture?
Well, you can say philosophy, the art, primarily the arts, and literature.
That's when you say, when you say in the historical perspective, what the Romans took from the Greeks was, first of all, the arts, which they adjusted to their own social and political requirements.
They also took the luxury of the Greeks, because by the time the Romans had occupied Greece, you had Greek and Oriental elements that were fused and you have all this idea of good living, of drinking, of commensality, perfumes, textiles, carpets, things that the Romans...
There were some Roman traditionalists who said, no, no, these are decadent things.
We don't need them.
We don't even need their statues and poetry.
They're not worthy for us as Roman warriors.
But by the first century BC, you started having all the Roman elite assimilating the Greek ways of life and entertainment, collecting Greek arts.
When they ran out of originals, they started producing copies, so there was an entire industry of producing copies or Greek workings of earlier Greek statues.
You go to several all around the world, and most of the statues that we have, the exception is Greece, where we have a lot of originals, but anyway, you have their Roman copies of ancient Greek originals.
You had Romans who would study in Athens, because Athens still had that distinction, that if you want to be educated, you'll go to Athens.
It's like they go to Harvard or Cambridge or Oxford.
During the Roman period, Athens was a nice, calm college city where you had all the philosophers and you had students from all around.
What did it mean to get a Greek education?
What did that consist of back in that period?
Well, first of all, there was a small number of people who could do it.
By the Roman period, only the elite could be educated at that high level.
I'm not talking about knowing how to read and write, but being trained in the art of rhetorics to study philosophy.
Poets, authors, politicians could do it.
Other wealthy people could also do it.
I think that some people would visit Athens and study in Athens just as a novourish...
so on. I've studied in Athens, and I'm writing the Athenian dialect or the Athenian way.
During the Roman period, that's what they perceive as Greek culture, the Athenian expression of Greek culture.
Let's face it, because most of the history of Greece was written by Athenians or by people who were living in Athens, or they were writing about Athens.
It's an Athenocentric perspective that we get about ancient Greek history.
Of course, during the third and the second centuries BC, you had other cities which were even more important.
For example, we have the city of Alexandria, which was a metropolis of half a million people with its own centre of production of art.
You had there the Museum and the Library of Alexandria, which was a major centre of advanced research and studies.
You had the city of Beirut, which was famous for its low studies.
Even with that, Athens was still the first among equals, because it had the long tradition, because everything started from Athens.
Speaking of starting in Athens, can you walk me through a little bit of the history of philosophy in Greece, specifically in Athens?
Despite my name, I'm not much of a philosopher, but anyway, we divide Greek philosophy more or less into periods.
We have the pre -Socratic philosophy and the philosophers after Socrates.
Socrates says the pivot and all that.
During the sixth and the early fifth century BC, philosophers were particularly active in cities such as Miletus or Ephesus, the big cities along the east coast of the Aegean.
They started researching the origins of nature.
You can call them more like physical philosophers.
Some of them were also pursuing issues such as morality, but primarily they were looking at what the world is made of.
Is it air, fire, soil, is a combination of all that?
What happens when these elements come into conflict and all that?
With Socrates, in Athens, who was active during the second half of the fifth century BC, at least the Socrates we know through the writings of Plato, because Socrates never wrote anything.
I think that Plato used Socrates as his own mouthpiece.
He has 30 % real Socrates and 70 % Plato.
What is good and what is evil and what makes you good and evil.
Things that characterize the pursuit of modern philosophy.
And with his student Plato and then with Aristotle, two generations after Socrates.
Of course, there is a difference.
Plato was searching about spiritual and elevated issues.
Aristotle was more down to earth.
That's why in the painting The School of Athens, which is in Florence, I think, they saw Plato pointing upwards and Aristotle pointing downwards.
It's interesting. Plato believed that the ideas were these internal elements, and what we see in real life is just a pale shadow of the ideas.
You have to reach further to find the true meaning, the true essence of things.
Aristotle was more about what we can get from experiencing and studying the environment and the nature around us.
He was writing books about physics, about mathematics, about zoology, about plants, about politics.
He was more like what today we would call a scientist, with a wide field of expertise.
Again, in Athens you have philosophers who, such as the Stoics or the Picurians, who were trying to find a way to cope with the adversities of life.
They were creating their own ideas of how you behave and what is your life in order to deal with anxiety.
The goal was to reach apathy, that you are not affected by your daughter dies.
You will see that, you will think it over and say it just happens.
But that's because during the 4th and 3rd centuries, this was a time and later, it was a very insecure time.
First of all, the Greek campaign of Alexander the Great, the Greek world had expanded tremendously.
What used to be a small area of a few hundred cities became a cosmopolis of thousands of kilometers.
Greek would travel all the way to modern Afghanistan and even there Alexander the Great had created Greek cities.
Cities that were, according to the model of Athens, because that's interesting.
He was a monarch but he was using Athens as the model for his new creations.
Greek had become the common language for thousands, millions of people.
People who were not ethnic Greeks but they would learn Greek because that was the lingua franca of the time.
You have, politically things changed.
Your life depended not on the decisions of a small city council of your fellow citizens, independent on what a king would decide, hundreds of kilometers away.
So because of all these changes, because life had become very fluid, societies were also changing, there were also a lot of sources of stress and anxiety, so they had to find a way to deal with those.
That's why you have the different approaches.
And then during the Roman period you have reworkings of the same ideas of Plato, Aristotle, of the Epicureans, of the Stoics.
The Roman emperor, Marco Sorelius, was a Stoic himself and you can see in his writings that he follows the tenets of the Stoic philosophy.
What else happened in the Alexander the Great period?
Can you walk me through a little bit of that in Greece?
Well, in the period of Alexander, you have, first of all, in 338 BC because that's when things started, for Greece and Alexander.
Philip II, the father of Alexander, defeated the Greek city -states of the Battle of Caronea.
And according to most of the of ancient and modern historians, that battle spelled the end of the independence of the Greek city -states.
Philip had, I think his policy was a little more complicated than that.
He guaranteed the independence of all the Greek city -states.
But what Philip considered as independence was that, okay, I'm not going to be involved in your internal affairs, but I'm going to guarantee your territorial integrity and status, but you are not going to be able to expand or attack another city -state because I'll be here to guarantee the peace.
And that's why he created, we call it the League of Corinth, because he would meet in Corinth where all the Greek city -states, not all of them, but most of them participated.
And they declared Philip the commander -in -chief of the army of that league, which would be the police force enforcing the order in peace in Greece.
But also he would be the commander -in -chief of the campaign against the Persian Empire.
And then Alexander, his son, presented the campaign as a common Greek endeavor against the Persians to prevent the Persians from what they have done in Greece during their own invasion.
There were some Greek cities who retained their independence, even the nominal independence, such as the Spartans, who never participated, although they didn't have any way of affecting the situation.
They said, no, we are the Spartans and we don't want to participate.
He said that when Philip asked them, do you want me to come to visit your city as a friend or as an enemy?
And the reply was, neither.
We don't want you in the city.
They asked in a very laconic Spartan way.
When Philip visited Sparta, he destroyed the gandar side around them.
He saw them, who's the power now, and he left.
And when later Alexander had his first victory against the Persians, he dedicated 300 suits of armor, which were made of gold, that were dedicated on the Acropolis here in Athens.
And there was an inscription saying Alexander and the Greeks accept the Spartans.
Ha! Ha! So, in 336, Philip is murdered, and Alexander becomes king of Macedonia, and of course he takes on the mantle of being the commander -in -chief of all the Greeks.
And three years later he starts his campaign, which was indeed a very fast world tour of conquest.
In just ten years he destroyed the Persian Empire, and he created his own empire.
Well, actually, in a way he replaced the hiking of Persian, and he became the hiking of Persian.
That's interesting about Alexander.
He didn't say, okay, now all of you become Macedonians.
I am the successor of the hiking.
When he went to Egypt, he said, I'm the successor of the pharaohs.
When he went to Jerusalem, he said, yes, I recognize that there's one god.
In his diplomacy he was very wise not to suppress the pre -existing situation.
He just used it for his own needs.
Alexander died early.
He was 36? I think he was 33.
He died in 323. Being Alexander he wanted to continue his campaigns.
That was interesting that he had plans of conquering the Arabian Peninsula.
He had plans of conquering Northern Africa and Carthage.
I think if he had another 10, 15 years of life, the map of the world and world history has been very different.
Probably we would never have had the Roman Empire, because he would have conquered Rome.
If you have the tactical and strategic genius of Alexander with the battle -hardened army, with all the resources of the East, I don't think that the Romans could stand against it.
When he died, he had two minor sons who were used as pawns in the political games afterwards, both of them were assassinated a few years later.
That empire was dissolved into three, then there became four kingdoms, then there became actually spin -offs from all different kingdoms.
Did Greece go back to the city states?
We still had the city states, but most of Greece was under the control of the Macedonians.
You had Macedonian garrisons in the cities.
Important fortresses were under Macedonian control.
The kingdom of the Ptolemies, who were ruling Egypt, who wanted to undermine the Macedonians, and the Greeks when they wanted to start a rebellion against the Macedonian garrisons.
It happened a couple of times, but with meager successes, just for a few years.
When the Romans finally arrived, and they defeated for the first time the kingdom of Macedonia, they declared their dependence of the Greeks.
It was very fashionable for declaring the independence of the Greeks.
You can take care of your own affairs, but we call the sorts of important issues of diplomacy and strategy.
Independent to an extent.
You have municipal independence, and outside your territory, consult us.
It's pretty much how politics still works today, right?
You have municipal dependence and provincial...
Monarchs didn't say that in the 4th century, we see the institution of the city states started declining, and you can say that politically, it did, because now the Greek world was not all that a mosaic of small or large city states was interacted with each other.
In order to survive, you either had to pledge your allegiance, or to be subjugated by one of the great kingdoms, or you had to participate in a federation or an alliance which were formed to stand against the kingdoms, where again you would lose part of your independence.
But on the other hand, the idea of the city state as a model of civic organization thrived during that time.
First of all, you have all these new cities that were created by Alexander the Great.
They were modeled on the system of the city states.
They would have their citizens, their city councils, the Agora, the theater, the sanctuary, the gymnasium, where people would work out and educate.
Then you have several more cities that were created by the successors of Alexander.
So the model of the city states thrives throughout as an organization system, not politically, because they didn't have the resources to cope with the greater powers of the time.
If we were going to start reading about Greek history, where would you start?
What would you recommend people start with in terms of if they want to come visit, but before they come they want to learn about?
Well, definitely they should read a general overview of Greek history, and there are a couple in English.
And then, again, for general reading there are books about the companion to Greek history or the Oxford dictionary of classical Greece, or the Cambridge dictionary of classical Greece, where they would get, first of all, the frame of Greek history, but also details about politics, about religion, about everyday
life. About warfare, about technology, for ancient Greece, I think that should be the approach.
But Greece is not just ancient history, Greece had a rich history during the Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages were especially rich in military events.
And then, and modern Greece, which is very interesting to see the wave of ascendancy and collapse, ascendancy and collapse, triumph and disaster.
Now we're in the disaster curve, down curve.
There are also books that have been written recently about this.
So, yes, I think first, a general overview about ancient Greek history and the different aspects of its culture, and then move on to the modern.
Because the modern history of Greece, it's unknown to the general audience.
When they hear of Greece, they know of the Acropolis, maybe Mycenaean, which is the late Bronze Age, because it's related to Troy.
But the modern history of Greece, what happened here in the Second World War, what happened after the Second World War, because knowing the modern history of Greece, they will understand where we have this situation now, in the last five years.
You interact with tourists all the time.
What most surprises them about Greece?
Well, first of all, especially in the last five years, a large number of people are surprised that we still operate.
That the museums are open, because I've been told, you see, they're doing construction.
I said, yes, why? Because you have, you're bankrupt.
Well, not exactly, because we are, but not exactly bankrupt.
Because they get through the media completely...
A distorted view. Yeah, a distorted view of what's going on in Greece.
Even when, for example, we had the, in 2010, 2011, when we had all these demonstrations and riots, people believed that they would come to Athens, and they would find a post -apocalyptic landscape of buildings on fire, police patrolling in the streets, helicopters.
And probably Batman jumping from roof to roof, but anyway.
We had situations like this, but there were just for a couple of days, confined in a very small area of the city, you would be, I will give you one example.
It was in 2011, May.
I had a tour on the Acropolis, and then we come to the Agora, and then we had lunch in the Plaka, which is not very far from Sintagma Square, where the demonstrations take place.
So we finished the tour, and I made the mistake of switching on my radio to listen to the news, and I listened that there is a demonstration, and the National Garden is on fire.
I said, what? The National Garden is on fire?
So I walked towards the square, which is just about five minutes away if you are in a hurry, because I went to see the National Garden on fire, and what was the National Garden on fire?
Just a pine tree, slightly cinched, on the fence.
Now, if I was in my house, being in Athenia, I would believe that the National Garden was burned by the demonstrators.
So you get what people listen and see through the media, and the idea they have about this.
So yes, I think that's when they are surprised about the current situation.
Other times, other people are surprised that the archaeological sites don't close at three o 'clock, because there are some archaeological sites that even in the summer close at three o 'clock.
And then you have to explain to them that it's limited where the Greek Ministry of Culture hasn't got the budget to hire the extra personnel, and they think that it's better to have the sites closed instead of hiring extra people.
So I have to ask the last question.
If we are going to spend ten days, if somebody's going to spend ten days in Greece, knowing what you know about it, how would you recommend that people spend those ten days?
Definitely, a couple, maybe three days in Athens as an introduction, and to allow also time for the jet lag, because arriving from a trasantholatic flight and then going immediately for a tour is not always the best idea.
I know, I had three hours of sleep last week.
Also in Athens, it may sound strange, but you can take the tram and you can be at very nice beaches in just an hour, maybe half an hour.
Then, do a small, you can do, say three days, then you can do a small tour of the Peloponnese, or maybe you can use Athens as a base and you can do a full day to the city of Napoleon and to visit Mycenae, which is Bronze 8th citadel, and to a very impressive site.
The city of Napoleon is also very beautiful.
It was the first capital of Greece.
Unfortunately, for Napoleon the capital was transferred to Athens.
Why was that fortunate for them?
Because the city, it remained a very beautiful small city.
While Athens was also a very beautiful city, especially during the development of the sixties.
I don't know if you have walked through the Plaka already, but imagine that until 1960 most of the city of Athens had very beautiful architecture of the 19th and early 20th century and a few apartment office buildings of the modern style.
With all the development of the sixties, the old buildings were condemned.
I would say Athens, that if we were wise and we have kept Athens as it was in the sixties, we would have been a city as beautiful as Prague, even more beautiful.
Northern Greece is usually out of the thin airies.
It's a very beautiful area and with also very rich archaeology.
So if you are interested about Alexander the Great, and this period definitely a couple of days in Thessaloniki or in the cities close Thessaloniki.
And the islands. I know that people definitely would like to go to Santo Orini and Mykonos because that's where everyone is going.
But I would recommend if you want to visit the Cycladic Islands, to visit Naxos, Paros, I think that in ten days that would be ten days of Berlin have just to have a good taste.
So Athens, the mainland, the Peloponnese and then the islands.
Or you can visit just fly to Thessaloniki which saves a lot of time.
Fly to Thessaloniki, use Thessaloniki as a place to visit the sites related to Alexander and that period.
And then return to Athens and go to the islands.
That's a part of Athens that people don't see because they probably don't know about it or don't think about it that you would recommend that they check out.
Maybe a historic site, maybe a cultural site.
Well, a historic site.
The site of the Karamaikos, which was the formal cemetery of the ancient city is usually because it's the furthest away from all the sites.
And usually we don't go there.
And it's a very nice, it's a beautiful site and very interesting.
Now other areas of Athens.
Well, I would say there is a residential area called Metz.
It's a small area but it's not touristy at all.
But it works just the hour to walk through to see because it has its own particular character architecturally and the way it is organized.
Yeah, these are areas that personally don't see people, tourists that don't visit those areas a lot.
And then there are other, well, depending, if you want to see an interesting area, not very beautiful, but it's interesting, is the area of Gazi.
It's very close to the Karamaikos and it used to be an industrial neighborhood.
So from where you can see the construct with this large brown building.
It's that general area.
And it is an area in flux.
So you have the old industrial buildings which are used as entertainment venues or as cultural venues.
You have small houses where refugees and immigrants are staying.
And then next, you have the lofts and super modern architecture.
And it's also one of the, it has become one of the main entertainment areas of the city, has been gentrified.
It's good, for some people it's good.
And also it's an excellent gallery of street art.
So just, it is an area where, well, people go, but Greek Athenians go, but not a lot of tourists.
Because usually people visit in Athens for the first time.
They walk through the Placa, they walk in the area around the Acropolis.
They may go to Sintagma Square, maybe at the Hill of Lycoburgus.
Sometimes they don't have the time to visit other areas.
And it's difficult, I think, from the perspective of a tourist guy to tell him, okay, you have only one day in Athens.
Let's go to Gazi. Or let's go to the hills of the outside of the Acropolis where you can see an ancient street and the ruins of houses.
It's difficult to recommend things like that, because people say, okay, we want to see the highlights.
Not just around an ancient street, which may be even more interesting than the Parthenon.
Aristotle, this has been fascinating.
I think you're gonna have to come back next year to learn all about the Greek gods and the myths.
That's an inexhaustible subject.
We'll save that for another time.
Thank you so much, I really appreciate this.
Thank you for having me.
Hey, thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Aristotle as much as I did.
Having had the opportunity to speak one -on -one with him gave me a greater appreciation for the city.
I'd highly encourage that if you're curious about a place you're traveling, seek out a guide for professional tour to enhance your experience in learning along the way.
In the second episode from my trip to Greece, I talk about one of my favorite subjects, wine.
I hope you check it out.
Thanks.
