The Lagrangian

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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- [Lecturer] All right, so
today I'm gonna be talking

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about the Lagrangian.

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Now we talked about Lagrange multipliers.

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This is a highly related concept.

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In fact, it's not really
teaching anything new.

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This is just repackaging
stuff that we already know.

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So to remind you of the setup,

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this is gonna be a constrained
optimization problem setup

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so we'll have some kind
of multivariable function.

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F of x, y, and the one
I have pictured here is,

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let's see, it's x squared times e to the y

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times y so what I have shown here

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is a contour line for this function.

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So that is, we say what
happens if we set this equal

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to some constant, and we ask
about all values of x and y

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such that this holds,

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such that this function
outputs that constant,

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and if I choose a different constant,

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and that contour line can
look a little bit different,

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it's kinda nice that it has similar shapes

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so that's the function, and
we're trying to maximize it.

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The goal is to maximize this guy,

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and of course, it's not just that.

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The reason we call it a
constrained optimization problem

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is 'cause there's some kind of constraint,

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some kind of other function, g of x, y.

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In this case, x squared plus y squared,

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and we want to say that this has to equal

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some specific amount.

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In this case, I'm gonna
set it equal to four.

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So we say you can't look at any x, y

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to maximize this function.

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You are limited to the values of x and y

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that satisfy this property,

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and I talked about this in
the last couple of videos,

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and kind of the cool thing
that we found was that you look

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through the various
different contour lines of f,

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and the maximum will be
achieved when that contour line

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is just perfectly parallel
to this contour of g,

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and you know, a pretty classic example

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for what these sorts of things could mean,

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or how it's used in
practice is if this was,

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say a revenue function
for some kind of company.

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You're kind of modeling your revenues

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based on different choices

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you could make running that company,

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and the constraint that
you'd have would be,

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let's say a budget so
I'm just gonna go ahead

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and write budget or B for budget here

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so you're trying to maximize revenues,

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and then you have some
sort of dollar limit

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for what you're willing to spend,

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and these, of course, are just
kind of made-up functions.

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You'd never have a budget
that looks like a circle

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and this kind of random
configuration for your revenue

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but in principle, you
know what I mean, right?

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So the way that we took advantage
of this tangency property,

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and I think this is pretty clever.

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Let me just kind of redraw it over here.

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You're looking at the point
where the two functions

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are just tangent to each
other is that the gradient,

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the gradient vector for
the thing we're maximizing,

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which in this case is
R, is gonna be parallel

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or proportional to the gradient
vector of the constraint,

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which in this case is B,
is gonna be proportional

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to the gradient of the constraint,

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and what this means is that
if we were going to solve

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a set of equations, what you set up

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is you compute that gradient of R,

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and it'll involve two
different partial derivatives,

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and you set it equal
not to the gradient of B

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'cause it's not necessarily equal

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to the gradient of B but it's proportional

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with some kind of
proportionality constant, lambda.

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That's kind of a squarely lambda.

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Lambda.

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That one doesn't look
good either, does it?

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Why are lambdas so hard to draw?

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Right, that looks fine.

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So the gradient of the revenue

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is proportional to the
gradient of the budget,

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and we did a couple of examples

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of solving this kind of thing.

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This gives you two separate equations

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from the two partial derivatives,

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and then you use this right
here, this budget constraint

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as your third equation,
and the Lagrangian,

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the point of this video,
this Lagrangian function

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is basically just a way to
package up this equation

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along with this equation
into a single entity

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so it's not really adding new information,

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and if you're solving things by hand,

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it doesn't really do anything for you

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but what makes it nice is
that it's something easier

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to hand a computer, and
I'll show you what I mean.

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So I'm gonna define the Lagrangian itself,

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which we write with this kind
of funky looking script, L,

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and it's a function with the same inputs

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that your revenue function

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or the thing that you're
maximizing has along with lambda,

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along with that Lagrange multiplier,

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and the way that we define it,

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and I'm gonna need some extra room

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so I'm gonna say it's equal to,

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and kinda define it down here,

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the revenue function or whatever it is

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that you're maximizing, the
function that you're maximizing

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minus lambda, that Lagrange multiplier

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so that's just another
input to this new function

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that we're defining multiplied
by the constraint function,

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in this case, B evaluated at x, y

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minus whatever that constraint value is.

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In this case, I put in four
so you write minus four.

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If we wanted to be more general,

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maybe we would write b for
whatever your budget is

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so over here, you're
subtracting off little b

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so this here is a new
multivariable function, right?

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It's something where you
could input x, y, and lambda,

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and just kind of plug it all in,

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and you'd get some kind of value,

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and remember b, in this
case, is a constant

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so I'll go ahead and write that

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that this right here is
not considered a variable.

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This is just some constant.

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Your variables are x, y, and lambda.

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And this would seem like a
totally weird and random thing

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to do if you just saw it out of context,

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or if it was unmotivated
but what's kind of neat,

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and we'll go ahead and
work through this right now

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is that when you take this,

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is that when you take the
gradient of this function

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called the Lagrangian, and
you set it equal to zero,

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that's gonna encapsulate all
three equations that you need,

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and I'll show you what I mean by that.

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So let's just remember the gradient of L,

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that's a vector.

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That's got three different components

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since L has three different inputs.

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You're gonna have the
partial derivative of L

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with respect to x.

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You're gonna have the
partial derivative of L

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with respect to y.

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And then finally the
partial derivative of L

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with respect to lambda,
our Lagrange multiplier,

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which we're considering
an input to this function.

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And remember whenever we write
that the vector equals zero,

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really we mean the zero vector.

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Often you'll see it in
bold if it's in a textbook

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but what we're really saying

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is we set those three different functions,

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the three different partial
derivatives all equal to zero

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so this is just a nice like
closed form, compact way

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of saying that all of
its partial derivatives

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is equal to zero, and let's go ahead

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and think about what those
partial derivatives actually are.

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So this first one, the
partial with respect to x,

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partial derivative of the
Lagrangian with respect to x.

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It's kinda funny.

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Now you have all these curly symbols,

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the curly d, the curly l.

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It makes it look like you're
doing some truly advanced math

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but really it's just kind of
artificial fanciness, right?

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But anyway so we take
the partial derivative

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with respect to x, and
what that equals is well,

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it's whatever the partial derivative of R

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with respect to x is
minus, and then lambda.

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From x's perspective, lambda
just looks like a constant.

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So this can be lambda.

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And then this inside the parenthesis,

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the partial derivative of
that with respect to x,

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well, it's gonna be whatever
the partial derivative of B is

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with respect to x but
subtracting off that constant,

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that doesn't change the derivative

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so this right here is the
partial derivative of lambda

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with respect to x.

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Now if you set that equal to zero.

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I don't know.

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I've kind of run out of
room on the right here

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but if you set that equal to zero,

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that's the same as just saying
that the partial derivative

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of R with respect to x equals lambda

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times the partial derivative
of B with respect to x,

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and if you think what's gonna happen

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when you unfold this property,

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the gradient of R is
proportional to the gradient of B

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written up here.

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That's just the first
portion of this, right?

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If we're setting the gradients equal,

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then the first component of that

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is to say that the partial derivative of R

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with respect to x is equal to lambda

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times the partial derivative
of B with respect to x.

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And then if you do this for y,

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if we take the partial derivative

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of this Lagrangian function

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with respect to y,

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it's very similar, right?

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It's gonna be, well, you just
take the partial derivative

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of R with respect to y.

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In fact, it all looks just identical.

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Whatever R is, you take
as partial derivative

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with respect to y, and
then we subtract off.

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Lambda looks like a constant
as far as y is concerned,

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and then that's multiplied by, well,

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what's the partial derivative of this term

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inside the parenthesis with respect to y?

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Well, it's the partial
of B with respect to y.

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And again, again, if you imagine
setting that equal to zero,

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that's gonna be the same

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as setting this partial derivative term

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equal to lambda times this
partial derivative term, right?

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You kind of just bring
one to the other side.

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So this second component

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of our Lagrangian equals zero equation

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is just the second
function that we've seen

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in a lot of these examples
that we've been doing

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where you set one of the gradient vectors

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proportional to the other one,

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and the only real difference here

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from stuff that we've seen already,

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and even then it's not that different

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is that what happens when we
take the partial derivative

00:09:07.272 --> 00:09:10.772
of this Lagrangian with respect to lambda,

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and I'll go ahead and give it

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that kind of green lambda color here.

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Well, when we take that
partial derivative,

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if we kinda look up with the
definition of the function,

00:09:20.517 --> 00:09:22.981
R, R never has a lambda in it, right?

00:09:22.981 --> 00:09:24.701
It's purely a function of x and y

00:09:24.701 --> 00:09:26.730
so that looks just like a constant

00:09:26.730 --> 00:09:29.058
when we're differentiating
with respect to lambda

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so that's just gonna be zero

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when we take its partial derivative.

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And then this next
component, B of x, y minus b,

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all of that just looks like a constant

00:09:40.142 --> 00:09:41.531
as far as lambda is concerned, right?

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There's x's, there's y,
there is this constant b

00:09:44.311 --> 00:09:46.296
but none of these things
have lambdas in them

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so when we take the partial derivative

00:09:48.127 --> 00:09:49.487
with respect to lambda,

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this just looks like some big
constant times lambda itself.

00:09:54.787 --> 00:09:56.009
So what we're gonna get

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is I guess we're subtracting off, right?

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Up here, we're kind of
writing a minus sign.

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We're subtracting off

00:10:02.999 --> 00:10:04.986
all the stuff that was
in those parenthesis,

00:10:04.986 --> 00:10:05.819
B of x, y

00:10:07.693 --> 00:10:09.610
minus b, that constant.

00:10:10.649 --> 00:10:11.618
And this whole thing,

00:10:11.618 --> 00:10:14.369
if we set that whole thing equal to zero,

00:10:14.369 --> 00:10:15.300
well, that's pretty much the same

00:10:15.300 --> 00:10:19.405
as setting B of x, y
minus b equal to zero,

00:10:19.405 --> 00:10:21.535
and that, that's really
just the same as saying,

00:10:21.535 --> 00:10:23.952
"Hey, we're setting B of x, y

00:10:25.476 --> 00:10:27.556
"equal to that little b," right?

00:10:27.556 --> 00:10:30.048
Setting this partial
derivative of the Lagrangian

00:10:30.048 --> 00:10:33.759
with respect to the Lagrange
multiplier equal to zero

00:10:33.759 --> 00:10:36.043
boils down to the constraint, right?

00:10:36.043 --> 00:10:40.148
The third equation that we need to solve.

00:10:40.148 --> 00:10:42.953
So in that way, setting the gradient

00:10:42.953 --> 00:10:45.357
of this Lagrangian function equal to zero

00:10:45.357 --> 00:10:47.045
is just a very compact way

00:10:47.045 --> 00:10:49.266
of packaging three separate
equations that we need

00:10:49.266 --> 00:10:53.344
to solve the constrained
optimization problem,

00:10:53.344 --> 00:10:56.439
and I'll emphasize that in practice,

00:10:56.439 --> 00:10:59.412
if you actually see a function for R

00:10:59.412 --> 00:11:00.782
for the thing that you're maximizing,

00:11:00.782 --> 00:11:03.394
and a function for the budget,
it's much better I think

00:11:03.394 --> 00:11:05.814
to just directly think about
these parallel gradients,

00:11:05.814 --> 00:11:07.352
and kind of solve it from there

00:11:07.352 --> 00:11:09.218
because if you construct the Lagrangian,

00:11:09.218 --> 00:11:10.463
and then compute its gradient,

00:11:10.463 --> 00:11:13.106
all you're really doing
is repackaging it up

00:11:13.106 --> 00:11:14.703
only to unpackage it again

00:11:14.703 --> 00:11:17.304
but the point of this, kind of the reason

00:11:17.304 --> 00:11:19.172
that this is a very useful construct

00:11:19.172 --> 00:11:21.930
is that computers often
have really fast ways

00:11:21.930 --> 00:11:24.099
of solving things like this,

00:11:24.099 --> 00:11:28.131
things like the gradient of
some function equals zero,

00:11:28.131 --> 00:11:30.280
and the reason is because
that's how you solve

00:11:30.280 --> 00:11:32.945
unconstrained maximization
problems, right?

00:11:32.945 --> 00:11:35.092
This is very similar
to as if we just looked

00:11:35.092 --> 00:11:37.796
at this function L out of
context, and we're asked,

00:11:37.796 --> 00:11:40.017
"Hey, what is its maximum value?

00:11:40.017 --> 00:11:42.068
"What are the critical
points that it has?"

00:11:42.068 --> 00:11:45.080
And you said it's gradient equal to zero.

00:11:45.080 --> 00:11:46.772
So kind of the whole
point of this Lagrangian

00:11:46.772 --> 00:11:49.692
is that it turns our
constrained optimization problem

00:11:49.692 --> 00:11:53.130
involving R and B and this
new made-up variable lambda

00:11:53.130 --> 00:11:56.161
into an unconstrained optimization problem

00:11:56.161 --> 00:11:58.982
where we're just setting the
gradient of some function

00:11:58.982 --> 00:12:02.146
equal to zero so computers can
often do that really quickly

00:12:02.146 --> 00:12:04.354
so if you just hand the
computer this function,

00:12:04.354 --> 00:12:06.227
it will be able to find you an answer

00:12:06.227 --> 00:12:08.352
whereas it's harder to say, "Hey computer,

00:12:08.352 --> 00:12:10.749
"I want you to think about when
the gradients are parallel,

00:12:10.749 --> 00:12:12.758
"and also consider this
constraint function."

00:12:12.758 --> 00:12:16.662
It's just sort of a cleaner
way to package it all up.

00:12:16.662 --> 00:12:17.984
So with that, I'll see you next video

00:12:17.984 --> 00:12:19.982
where I'm gonna talk
about the significance

00:12:19.982 --> 00:12:23.054
of this lambda term, how it's
not just a ghost variable

00:12:23.054 --> 00:12:25.432
but it actually has a
pretty nice interpretation

00:12:25.432 --> 00:12:27.516
for a given constrained problem.


Jamestown - Bacon's Rebellion

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:00.294 --> 00:00:02.993
- [Instructor] So in the last
video we were talking about

00:00:02.993 --> 00:00:06.576
the system of labor in
the Chesapeake area,

00:00:07.936 --> 00:00:10.081
surrounding the Chesapeake Bay,

00:00:10.081 --> 00:00:14.135
in the early English colonies in America.

00:00:14.135 --> 00:00:16.520
And one thing that seemed
a little bit strange there

00:00:16.520 --> 00:00:20.687
was that even though the first
ship with enslaved Africans

00:00:22.558 --> 00:00:24.891
arrived in Virginia in 1619,

00:00:27.825 --> 00:00:31.992
slavery wasn't actually
the dominant form of labor

00:00:33.335 --> 00:00:37.335
in Virginia until much
later, in the late 1600s.

00:00:38.408 --> 00:00:42.971
In fact, the vast majority
of laborers in Virginia

00:00:42.971 --> 00:00:46.992
were in fact white indentured servants.

00:00:46.992 --> 00:00:51.705
And these indentured servants
would come from England,

00:00:51.705 --> 00:00:55.607
and the planter that
they proposed to work for

00:00:55.607 --> 00:01:00.083
would pay their passage
across the Atlantic.

00:01:00.083 --> 00:01:02.314
And in exchange the servant would

00:01:02.314 --> 00:01:05.220
agree to work for that planter

00:01:05.220 --> 00:01:08.314
for a period of three to seven years.

00:01:08.314 --> 00:01:09.901
And this is an example of what

00:01:09.901 --> 00:01:12.450
one of these indentures
might have looked like.

00:01:12.450 --> 00:01:15.605
It's in old-timey writing,
so it's a little hard to see,

00:01:15.605 --> 00:01:18.672
but here you can see
that there's three years

00:01:18.672 --> 00:01:21.211
is the amount of time
that this person promises.

00:01:21.211 --> 00:01:23.194
This is from Pennsylvania.

00:01:23.194 --> 00:01:25.701
Kinda gives you a good sense
of how someone would say,

00:01:25.701 --> 00:01:28.857
"Alright I'm gonna work for
this person for this long,

00:01:28.857 --> 00:01:31.171
"in exchange for my passage,

00:01:31.171 --> 00:01:33.090
"and it's a contract."

00:01:33.090 --> 00:01:36.700
And this was a pretty
good deal for planters

00:01:36.700 --> 00:01:38.392
because for every person that they

00:01:38.392 --> 00:01:40.266
brought over from England,

00:01:40.266 --> 00:01:42.583
they got another 50 acres of land,

00:01:42.583 --> 00:01:45.011
meaning that if you had
the money to bring over

00:01:45.011 --> 00:01:46.509
quite a few servants,

00:01:46.509 --> 00:01:49.850
you could expand your
landholdings very fast.

00:01:49.850 --> 00:01:51.952
And the other good thing about this,

00:01:51.952 --> 00:01:53.974
at least in terms of the planters

00:01:53.974 --> 00:01:56.295
was that these indentured servants

00:01:56.295 --> 00:01:58.962
had a pretty high rate of death.

00:02:00.002 --> 00:02:04.755
It was not healthy to live in
this swampy area of Virginia.

00:02:04.755 --> 00:02:07.863
So quite frequently, planters
didn't actually have to

00:02:07.863 --> 00:02:09.748
make good on their promise

00:02:09.748 --> 00:02:12.121
to set these indentured servants up

00:02:12.121 --> 00:02:15.099
with some land of their
own, some tools to work it,

00:02:15.099 --> 00:02:18.023
because they didn't survive
through their indenture.

00:02:18.023 --> 00:02:21.405
So if this system of indentured servitude,

00:02:21.405 --> 00:02:25.621
and the headright system
that gave planters more land

00:02:25.621 --> 00:02:27.920
for bringing over more servants,

00:02:27.920 --> 00:02:30.131
was working out so well for them,

00:02:30.131 --> 00:02:33.199
why did African slavery become

00:02:33.199 --> 00:02:35.366
the dominant form of labor

00:02:36.786 --> 00:02:39.536
in Virginia, starting about 1700?

00:02:41.507 --> 00:02:44.665
Now when we think about
tobacco cultivation,

00:02:44.665 --> 00:02:47.315
and later, cotton cultivation,

00:02:47.315 --> 00:02:49.809
in the American south
before the Civil War,

00:02:49.809 --> 00:02:53.311
what we think of is
enslaved African laborers.

00:02:53.311 --> 00:02:55.633
And indeed, by the year 1700,

00:02:55.633 --> 00:02:59.800
about 15% of the population
living in Virginia

00:03:00.636 --> 00:03:02.436
was enslaved Africans,

00:03:02.436 --> 00:03:06.347
going from just a handful at
the beginning of the century.

00:03:06.347 --> 00:03:09.816
So what caused this incredible transition

00:03:09.816 --> 00:03:13.273
in not only labor, but also racism,

00:03:13.273 --> 00:03:15.663
to happen in early America?

00:03:15.663 --> 00:03:17.972
Well there's one major
event that historians

00:03:17.972 --> 00:03:22.663
tend to point to as a turning
point in American slavery.

00:03:22.663 --> 00:03:26.830
And that is the rebellion led
by Nathaniel Bacon in 1676.

00:03:28.519 --> 00:03:31.422
So let's talk a little
bit more about that.

00:03:31.422 --> 00:03:33.984
So to understand Bacon's rebellion,

00:03:33.984 --> 00:03:35.951
we have to backtrack a little bit,

00:03:35.951 --> 00:03:39.022
and talk about the
development of political power

00:03:39.022 --> 00:03:41.022
and tobacco in Virginia.

00:03:41.974 --> 00:03:45.092
So in 1619, the Virginia
Company established

00:03:45.092 --> 00:03:47.975
the first government in Virginia.

00:03:47.975 --> 00:03:51.058
It was called the House of Burgesses.

00:03:52.131 --> 00:03:55.791
And this is really important
because it is, in effect,

00:03:55.791 --> 00:03:59.958
the first at least
semi-democratic form of government

00:04:01.911 --> 00:04:04.132
in the new world.

00:04:04.132 --> 00:04:06.858
In a way, it's kind of like a parliament

00:04:06.858 --> 00:04:09.806
that was set up for Virginia

00:04:09.806 --> 00:04:12.339
so that they could debate local issues.

00:04:12.339 --> 00:04:14.196
And it's going to be
the House of Burgesses

00:04:14.196 --> 00:04:17.049
and its later House of Delegates

00:04:17.049 --> 00:04:20.986
that ends up leading the charge
for the American Revolution

00:04:20.986 --> 00:04:23.636
more than a century later than this.

00:04:23.636 --> 00:04:25.453
But as we think about the
way that political power

00:04:25.453 --> 00:04:27.228
was distributed in Virginia,

00:04:27.228 --> 00:04:30.422
you can guess who might have a lot of say

00:04:30.422 --> 00:04:31.895
in the House of Burgesses,

00:04:31.895 --> 00:04:34.727
and these are the tobacco planters.

00:04:34.727 --> 00:04:37.496
So the government of Virginia,

00:04:37.496 --> 00:04:41.936
although it is a democracy
of these land-owning men,

00:04:41.936 --> 00:04:45.958
is still got most of the
power at the very top.

00:04:45.958 --> 00:04:47.659
'Cause as we talked
about in the last video,

00:04:47.659 --> 00:04:50.958
the power system in Virginia looked like

00:04:50.958 --> 00:04:54.017
a handful of planters at the top,

00:04:54.017 --> 00:04:55.850
a very small number of

00:04:57.341 --> 00:04:58.841
free white farmers

00:05:02.534 --> 00:05:06.145
who had their own land, but
nothing like the gigantic

00:05:06.145 --> 00:05:09.641
tracts of tobacco plantations
that the planters had,

00:05:09.641 --> 00:05:13.474
then a whole lot of white
indentured servants,

00:05:15.232 --> 00:05:18.315
who have very little political power,

00:05:19.323 --> 00:05:23.493
since they are at basically
the mercy of the planters.

00:05:23.493 --> 00:05:27.326
And then, just a tiny
handful of black slaves.

00:05:30.241 --> 00:05:32.583
And in this time period,
white indentured servants

00:05:32.583 --> 00:05:36.750
and black slaves, black free
people, also a tiny number,

00:05:38.350 --> 00:05:41.106
didn't have that much difference

00:05:41.106 --> 00:05:43.272
when it came to political rights.

00:05:43.272 --> 00:05:46.015
In fact, white indentured
servants frequently complained

00:05:46.015 --> 00:05:49.434
that they felt that slaves
were treated better than them.

00:05:49.434 --> 00:05:54.352
Which may have been the case,
because they were worth more.

00:05:54.352 --> 00:05:56.616
Remember they were worth
hundreds of pounds,

00:05:56.616 --> 00:05:58.514
whereas white indentured servants

00:05:58.514 --> 00:06:02.580
cost just a couple of pounds
to come over, frequently died,

00:06:02.580 --> 00:06:05.680
so they were less of an
investment than slaves.

00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:07.436
The other important factor here

00:06:07.436 --> 00:06:10.660
is just what it takes to grow tobacco.

00:06:10.660 --> 00:06:12.981
Tobacco is a labor-intensive
crop, we know,

00:06:12.981 --> 00:06:16.903
but it's also kind of a
crop that is extremely hard

00:06:16.903 --> 00:06:18.527
on the soil.

00:06:18.527 --> 00:06:20.796
It depletes the soil fast.

00:06:20.796 --> 00:06:25.773
Which means that there is a
constant need for new soil.

00:06:25.773 --> 00:06:28.443
And when you're coming from the coast,

00:06:28.443 --> 00:06:31.040
here's our Atlantic Ocean over here,

00:06:31.040 --> 00:06:33.138
and this is Virginia,

00:06:33.138 --> 00:06:37.055
and our Jamestown colony
along the River James,

00:06:37.941 --> 00:06:41.441
more and more planters, as they come over,

00:06:42.467 --> 00:06:44.438
remember we have this headright system,

00:06:44.438 --> 00:06:47.455
we have a system that says
that if indentured servants

00:06:47.455 --> 00:06:50.264
finish out the terms of their indenture,

00:06:50.264 --> 00:06:51.937
they get land of their own,

00:06:51.937 --> 00:06:56.104
means there is constant pressure
to add more and more land

00:06:57.378 --> 00:07:00.521
so you can farm more and more tobacco.

00:07:00.521 --> 00:07:04.688
And you start going farther
and farther into the interior.

00:07:05.706 --> 00:07:06.667
So what does this mean?

00:07:06.667 --> 00:07:10.834
It means that land becomes
relatively scarce pretty fast.

00:07:13.061 --> 00:07:16.874
And it also means that as white settlers

00:07:16.874 --> 00:07:20.313
continue to move west toward
the Appalachian mountains,

00:07:20.313 --> 00:07:21.866
which are over here,

00:07:21.866 --> 00:07:23.720
I hope you enjoy this beautiful map,

00:07:23.720 --> 00:07:25.654
it's certainly a work of art,

00:07:25.654 --> 00:07:30.608
they are running up against
more and more anger and conflict

00:07:30.608 --> 00:07:32.634
with Native Americans who are living

00:07:32.634 --> 00:07:37.526
in between the coast and
the Appalachian mountains.

00:07:37.526 --> 00:07:41.466
And now it's definitely in the interest of

00:07:41.466 --> 00:07:45.186
the House of Burgesses, the
government here at Jamestown,

00:07:45.186 --> 00:07:47.942
to make sure that there
is as little conflict

00:07:47.942 --> 00:07:49.928
with Native Americans as possible.

00:07:49.928 --> 00:07:53.463
Remember we had these wars of
extinction with the Powhatans.

00:07:53.463 --> 00:07:55.711
That wasn't a fun time for anyone.

00:07:55.711 --> 00:07:57.259
And so the House of Burgesses,

00:07:57.259 --> 00:08:01.265
which is now somewhat responsible
to the King of England,

00:08:01.265 --> 00:08:03.904
since he acquired it
from the Virginia Company

00:08:03.904 --> 00:08:06.071
as a royal colony in 1624,

00:08:07.669 --> 00:08:10.529
they have a relatively friendly attitude

00:08:10.529 --> 00:08:12.302
toward the Native Americans.

00:08:12.302 --> 00:08:14.006
They're hoping to avoid conflict.

00:08:14.006 --> 00:08:15.839
And so their governor,

00:08:16.735 --> 00:08:18.902
Governor William Berkeley,

00:08:20.948 --> 00:08:25.099
spelled Berkeley but pronounced
Barkley, I don't know why.

00:08:25.099 --> 00:08:28.550
He refuses to take on
another war of extinction

00:08:28.550 --> 00:08:30.493
against the Native Americans,

00:08:30.493 --> 00:08:34.610
which makes a lot of white
servants and white freeman

00:08:34.610 --> 00:08:36.327
pretty angry.

00:08:36.327 --> 00:08:38.679
It's the late 1600s now,

00:08:38.679 --> 00:08:42.063
and more and more of
these indentured servants

00:08:42.063 --> 00:08:46.832
are living to finish out
their terms of indenture.

00:08:46.832 --> 00:08:49.335
They have now built up some
immunity to these diseases

00:08:49.335 --> 00:08:52.854
that have killed so many
other people in Virginia.

00:08:52.854 --> 00:08:55.733
And they're finding it
really hard to make a living

00:08:55.733 --> 00:08:58.983
because the planters don't want to give

00:08:59.940 --> 00:09:02.791
quite so many rights, quite so many perks,

00:09:02.791 --> 00:09:04.601
to people who live out their indentures.

00:09:04.601 --> 00:09:06.951
Remember this was a good deal for planters

00:09:06.951 --> 00:09:11.415
when these white servants
never actually survived

00:09:11.415 --> 00:09:14.618
to make good on the promises of land.

00:09:14.618 --> 00:09:17.999
And now that they are, planters
don't want to extend them

00:09:17.999 --> 00:09:20.057
things like a promise of land,

00:09:20.057 --> 00:09:22.866
because land is already scarce.

00:09:22.866 --> 00:09:25.966
So when servants are
finishing up their indentures,

00:09:25.966 --> 00:09:29.503
they're finding it
difficult to make a living.

00:09:29.503 --> 00:09:31.891
They often have to continue to work

00:09:31.891 --> 00:09:35.396
for the planter they
had been indentured to

00:09:35.396 --> 00:09:36.891
for very small wages,

00:09:36.891 --> 00:09:38.375
they don't have land of their own,

00:09:38.375 --> 00:09:39.874
they can't get started.

00:09:39.874 --> 00:09:44.180
And this is a world composed
almost entirely of men,

00:09:44.180 --> 00:09:46.722
so they can't even find women to marry.

00:09:46.722 --> 00:09:49.217
And I think if there's
anything we've learned

00:09:49.217 --> 00:09:51.175
from U.S. history,

00:09:51.175 --> 00:09:53.249
it's that you never want

00:09:53.249 --> 00:09:57.416
a whole lot of unemployed,
angry, young men hanging about,

00:09:59.243 --> 00:10:01.892
because young men with a
lot of time on their hands

00:10:01.892 --> 00:10:03.417
get up to trouble.

00:10:03.417 --> 00:10:04.880
And one young man in particular

00:10:04.880 --> 00:10:08.734
was this fellow here, Nathaniel Bacon,

00:10:08.734 --> 00:10:13.384
who was incensed at
Governor Berkeley's refusal

00:10:13.384 --> 00:10:16.213
to take a harsher stance against

00:10:16.213 --> 00:10:17.815
the Native Americans on the west,

00:10:17.815 --> 00:10:20.235
where all of these white farmers

00:10:20.235 --> 00:10:22.213
wished that they could settle.

00:10:22.213 --> 00:10:25.300
And so he gets up a militia,

00:10:25.300 --> 00:10:27.300
full of young white men,

00:10:29.147 --> 00:10:31.685
and also African American men,

00:10:31.685 --> 00:10:35.136
to actually go after the Native Americans.

00:10:35.136 --> 00:10:39.303
So this is a biracial raid
force for Native Americans,

00:10:41.026 --> 00:10:43.741
and they raid Native American villages,

00:10:43.741 --> 00:10:47.850
and kill many Native
Americans living in the area,

00:10:47.850 --> 00:10:50.112
and Governor Berkeley wants them to stop.

00:10:50.112 --> 00:10:53.794
And instead of stopping,
they marched to Jamestown,

00:10:53.794 --> 00:10:58.293
the capital of Virginia,
and set it on fire.

00:10:58.293 --> 00:11:00.043
So this is a group of

00:11:01.286 --> 00:11:02.869
landless white men,

00:11:03.988 --> 00:11:06.235
landless African American men,

00:11:06.235 --> 00:11:08.318
who have rebelled against

00:11:09.342 --> 00:11:11.857
the government of Virginia.

00:11:11.857 --> 00:11:15.435
These are my flames,
the House of Burgesses.

00:11:15.435 --> 00:11:16.937
They run Berkeley out of town.

00:11:16.937 --> 00:11:20.562
And it's hard to know where
this would have ended,

00:11:20.562 --> 00:11:23.645
because Nathaniel Bacon himself died.

00:11:24.492 --> 00:11:26.256
And he died of illness,

00:11:26.256 --> 00:11:29.554
like many other Virginians
in this time period,

00:11:29.554 --> 00:11:33.368
so the rebellion kind of petered
out without his leadership.

00:11:33.368 --> 00:11:35.641
But clearly this was a really scary moment

00:11:35.641 --> 00:11:37.251
for the House of Burgesses,

00:11:37.251 --> 00:11:40.857
and for the leaders and
planters in Virginia.

00:11:40.857 --> 00:11:41.962
And they started to think,

00:11:41.962 --> 00:11:45.206
alright well maybe this
indentured servitude thing

00:11:45.206 --> 00:11:46.780
isn't working out so well,

00:11:46.780 --> 00:11:49.494
because once these indentures are up,

00:11:49.494 --> 00:11:53.498
we've got this whole set
of landless free whites

00:11:53.498 --> 00:11:56.375
who technically have the
rights of Englishmen,

00:11:56.375 --> 00:11:58.606
but we have little work for them,

00:11:58.606 --> 00:12:00.274
we have little land for them,

00:12:00.274 --> 00:12:03.859
and it's going to end up
with constant rebellion.

00:12:03.859 --> 00:12:07.869
So maybe we should think about
a different source of labor.

00:12:07.869 --> 00:12:10.726
One that will never get its freedom.

00:12:10.726 --> 00:12:12.738
And it just so happened that there were

00:12:12.738 --> 00:12:15.089
many such laborers for sale

00:12:15.089 --> 00:12:17.157
on the coast of west Africa.

00:12:17.157 --> 00:12:19.528
And we'll talk more about
that in the next video.


Alexander the Great conquers Persia

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:00.221 --> 00:00:03.321
- [Instructor] So where we
left off in the last video,

00:00:03.321 --> 00:00:07.834
we had Alexander the Great
consolidating his power

00:00:07.834 --> 00:00:10.151
over the Macedonian Empire.

00:00:10.151 --> 00:00:14.913
And in particular, he puts
down a rebellion in Thebes,

00:00:14.913 --> 00:00:16.256
destroys the city,

00:00:16.256 --> 00:00:18.294
which makes the other
city-states of Greece say,

00:00:18.294 --> 00:00:20.414
hey, we're not gonna mess
with this person anymore.

00:00:20.414 --> 00:00:21.757
And then Alexander says,

00:00:21.757 --> 00:00:24.202
I am now going to conquer Asia.

00:00:24.202 --> 00:00:26.352
I am now going to conquer
the Persian Empire,

00:00:26.352 --> 00:00:30.615
do what my father wanted
to do before he died.

00:00:30.615 --> 00:00:33.134
And so he puts one of
his father's generals,

00:00:33.134 --> 00:00:37.798
now one of his generals, in
charge of Greece, Antipater.

00:00:37.798 --> 00:00:40.230
Antipater, declares him regent,

00:00:40.230 --> 00:00:44.753
and then leads troops off
to what many people say

00:00:44.753 --> 00:00:46.954
is have the greatest,
or many historians call,

00:00:46.954 --> 00:00:49.370
the greatest adventure of all time.

00:00:49.370 --> 00:00:52.314
His attempt to conquer the Persian Empire

00:00:52.314 --> 00:00:54.842
and become the king of Asia.

00:00:54.842 --> 00:00:56.759
So the year is 334 BCE,

00:00:58.892 --> 00:01:01.581
and the first major battle that Alexander

00:01:01.581 --> 00:01:05.664
and his army encounters
is at the Granicus River,

00:01:06.997 --> 00:01:09.164
here in modern-day Turkey.

00:01:10.304 --> 00:01:13.548
Now, keep in mind that Alexander's force,

00:01:13.548 --> 00:01:15.972
depending on what time we're looking at,

00:01:15.972 --> 00:01:19.269
it numbers between 40 and 50,000 troops,

00:01:19.269 --> 00:01:23.347
a good number of them
infantry, some cavalry.

00:01:23.347 --> 00:01:26.399
And most of the battles
that we'll see him fight,

00:01:26.399 --> 00:01:29.709
especially the next two
against the Persian forces,

00:01:29.709 --> 00:01:31.455
he's hugely outnumbered.

00:01:31.455 --> 00:01:34.813
But at Granicus, he
actually has an advantage

00:01:34.813 --> 00:01:38.933
in terms of the number of infantry he has.

00:01:38.933 --> 00:01:42.073
He's slightly outnumbered
in terms of cavalry,

00:01:42.073 --> 00:01:44.903
but he's able to defeat
the Persian forces.

00:01:44.903 --> 00:01:47.495
Now these Persian forces,
they are significant.

00:01:47.495 --> 00:01:50.062
They're led by the Persian satraps,

00:01:50.062 --> 00:01:53.649
these are the governors
of the territories,

00:01:53.649 --> 00:01:54.502
I guess you could say.

00:01:54.502 --> 00:01:59.294
The Persian regions or provinces
in this area in Asia Minor.

00:01:59.294 --> 00:02:00.960
And he's able to defeat them.

00:02:00.960 --> 00:02:03.745
But as important as Granicus is,

00:02:03.745 --> 00:02:06.915
he still, Alexander still
has not come directly

00:02:06.915 --> 00:02:08.795
against Darius III.

00:02:08.795 --> 00:02:12.927
Darius III is the Shah in
Shah, the King of Kings,

00:02:12.927 --> 00:02:14.568
the king of Persia.

00:02:14.568 --> 00:02:17.909
And not to confuse Darius
III with the Darius

00:02:17.909 --> 00:02:22.186
who 150 years before this attacked Greece.

00:02:22.186 --> 00:02:23.646
So now you have Alexander,

00:02:23.646 --> 00:02:26.038
his first decisive victory
against the Persians.

00:02:26.038 --> 00:02:28.763
He makes his way down the Anatolian coast,

00:02:28.763 --> 00:02:31.125
in his mind liberating
many of these cities

00:02:31.125 --> 00:02:33.644
that used to be Greek cities.

00:02:33.644 --> 00:02:35.589
Now if we zoom in a little bit,

00:02:35.589 --> 00:02:38.724
you can see the way this map is set up.

00:02:38.724 --> 00:02:41.273
Let me zoom in a little bit.

00:02:41.273 --> 00:02:45.423
Where you see these dotted
lines around a city,

00:02:45.423 --> 00:02:48.791
this means that Alexander's
forces siege the city.

00:02:48.791 --> 00:02:50.881
They surrounded it, they
didn't let anything go

00:02:50.881 --> 00:02:53.422
in or out until the city surrendered.

00:02:53.422 --> 00:02:56.058
And so you see this path of
Alexander and his forces.

00:02:56.058 --> 00:02:58.058
We then go into 333 BCE.

00:02:59.460 --> 00:03:04.390
Outside of the forward movement
of Alexander and his troops

00:03:04.390 --> 00:03:07.669
and their ability to take
over all of Asia Minor,

00:03:07.669 --> 00:03:10.703
modern-day Turkey in only
a matter of a little more

00:03:10.703 --> 00:03:11.806
than a year,

00:03:11.806 --> 00:03:14.886
what also happens in 333 BCE,

00:03:14.886 --> 00:03:16.049
since some of you might
have been wondering

00:03:16.049 --> 00:03:17.702
well, what ever happens to Sparta?

00:03:17.702 --> 00:03:19.928
Philip of Macedon never took over Sparta.

00:03:19.928 --> 00:03:21.965
Do they stay independent forever?

00:03:21.965 --> 00:03:23.557
And the simple answer is no.

00:03:23.557 --> 00:03:27.057
In 333 BCE, Antipater defeats the Spartans

00:03:30.431 --> 00:03:33.436
at the battle of
Megalopolis and forces them

00:03:33.436 --> 00:03:37.540
into what we now call
the League of Corinth.

00:03:37.540 --> 00:03:40.869
So let's keep now going
back to where Alexander is.

00:03:40.869 --> 00:03:43.179
So Antipater clearly was competent at

00:03:43.179 --> 00:03:45.512
maintaining power in Greece.

00:03:46.904 --> 00:03:49.397
And the next major battle that Alexander

00:03:49.397 --> 00:03:52.574
and his troops face is at Issus.

00:03:52.574 --> 00:03:55.849
And what makes Issus significant is that

00:03:55.849 --> 00:03:58.249
they are hugely outnumbered.

00:03:58.249 --> 00:04:00.413
Historians disagree by how
much they're outnumbered.

00:04:00.413 --> 00:04:02.948
Remember, we said Alexander's
forces were around

00:04:02.948 --> 00:04:04.248
40 or 50,0000,

00:04:04.248 --> 00:04:05.786
while the Persians at Issus,

00:04:05.786 --> 00:04:07.379
depending on which account you look at,

00:04:07.379 --> 00:04:11.642
were at least 150,000,
probably over 100,000.

00:04:11.642 --> 00:04:14.994
More ancient accounts talk
about many hundreds of thousands

00:04:14.994 --> 00:04:17.138
or even a million troops.

00:04:17.138 --> 00:04:20.601
What also made Issus
significant is this is where,

00:04:20.601 --> 00:04:23.711
this is the first time that Darius III,

00:04:23.711 --> 00:04:25.582
the Shah in Shah, the king of Persia,

00:04:25.582 --> 00:04:28.547
directly confronts Alexander.

00:04:28.547 --> 00:04:30.812
Well, Alexander once again is able to,

00:04:30.812 --> 00:04:34.979
or at least here is able
to overcome unlikely odds

00:04:36.282 --> 00:04:38.547
and defeat the Persian army,

00:04:38.547 --> 00:04:40.880
sending Darius into retreat.

00:04:41.872 --> 00:04:43.126
And he retreats so fast,

00:04:43.126 --> 00:04:46.350
he even leaves an
encampment where his mother,

00:04:46.350 --> 00:04:48.742
his wife, and his two daughters are there.

00:04:48.742 --> 00:04:52.184
And Alexander then takes them captive,

00:04:52.184 --> 00:04:53.972
but treats them very
nicely and then eventually

00:04:53.972 --> 00:04:55.989
marries one of the daughters.

00:04:55.989 --> 00:04:59.906
So after that defeat,
Darius is on the retreat,

00:05:00.982 --> 00:05:02.787
or after that defeat for Darius,

00:05:02.787 --> 00:05:04.170
this victory for Alexander,

00:05:04.170 --> 00:05:06.857
Alexander then goes on into the Lavant,

00:05:06.857 --> 00:05:11.024
modern-day Syria and Lebanon
and Israel and Palestine.

00:05:12.878 --> 00:05:15.770
And you can see he takes
siege of the cities

00:05:15.770 --> 00:05:17.626
of Tyre and Gaza,

00:05:17.626 --> 00:05:19.450
but by the time he gets through that,

00:05:19.450 --> 00:05:22.875
it's now 332 and he
makes his way into Egypt,

00:05:22.875 --> 00:05:24.629
and he's relatively unopposed.

00:05:24.629 --> 00:05:27.104
The satraps in Egypt to
say, okay, you know what?

00:05:27.104 --> 00:05:27.965
We recognize you.

00:05:27.965 --> 00:05:29.494
They treat him as a liberator,

00:05:29.494 --> 00:05:32.167
and he even takes a
pretty large detour to go

00:05:32.167 --> 00:05:34.834
to the Oracle for the god Ammon,

00:05:35.753 --> 00:05:39.920
and there he is reassured
that he is a son of Ammon.

00:05:41.517 --> 00:05:45.344
And he already is told
by his mother Olympius

00:05:45.344 --> 00:05:46.974
that he is the son of Zeus,

00:05:46.974 --> 00:05:48.680
and so many people call Alexander,

00:05:48.680 --> 00:05:52.105
or he calls himself now,
Alexander Zeus Ammon,

00:05:52.105 --> 00:05:54.392
the son of Zeus Ammon.

00:05:54.392 --> 00:05:56.543
So once again he's trying
to really make himself,

00:05:56.543 --> 00:05:58.053
or maybe he believes himself,

00:05:58.053 --> 00:06:00.829
that he is half god,
that he is a demi-god.

00:06:00.829 --> 00:06:03.304
But then he continues on with this,

00:06:03.304 --> 00:06:05.107
I guess you could say grand adventure,

00:06:05.107 --> 00:06:07.206
and I don't want to
romanticize it too much

00:06:07.206 --> 00:06:09.825
because even though he is in some way

00:06:09.825 --> 00:06:14.399
conquering and/or unifying
these large areas,

00:06:14.399 --> 00:06:17.273
there's also a lot of bloodshed,

00:06:17.273 --> 00:06:19.156
a lot of civilians dying.

00:06:19.156 --> 00:06:22.161
This is a very ugly thing
that only looks romantic

00:06:22.161 --> 00:06:24.729
from maybe a distance of
many thousands of years.

00:06:24.729 --> 00:06:25.891
But when you think about it,

00:06:25.891 --> 00:06:28.846
it would not have been
very pleasant to have lived

00:06:28.846 --> 00:06:31.588
in any of these cities that
Alexander and his troops

00:06:31.588 --> 00:06:33.684
are going through.

00:06:33.684 --> 00:06:35.460
But then he leaves Egypt,

00:06:35.460 --> 00:06:37.656
and the whole time after
the defeat of Issus,

00:06:37.656 --> 00:06:41.225
Darius keeps sending him treaties

00:06:41.225 --> 00:06:43.782
to say hey, maybe we
can work this thing out.

00:06:43.782 --> 00:06:47.818
Maybe you can just stop to
the west of the Euphrates.

00:06:47.818 --> 00:06:49.428
I'll give you this or that.

00:06:49.428 --> 00:06:51.798
But Alexander keeps
saying nope, not for me.

00:06:51.798 --> 00:06:53.315
I want to be the king of Asia.

00:06:53.315 --> 00:06:55.668
There's only one king of Asia.

00:06:55.668 --> 00:06:58.995
And so they eventually
meet again at Gaugamela.

00:06:58.995 --> 00:07:03.593
Once again, a very
significant battle in history

00:07:03.593 --> 00:07:06.340
where once again Darius is there

00:07:06.340 --> 00:07:10.507
and has a significant force
advantage over Alexander,

00:07:11.788 --> 00:07:13.932
and this time doesn't make the mistake

00:07:13.932 --> 00:07:16.573
of meeting him in a relatively narrow area

00:07:16.573 --> 00:07:19.610
where his force advantage
won't really be an advantage.

00:07:19.610 --> 00:07:21.063
But even at Gaugamela,

00:07:21.063 --> 00:07:24.540
Alexander is able to
decisively defeat him.

00:07:24.540 --> 00:07:28.707
And Darius has to flee over
the mountains to Ecbatana.

00:07:31.740 --> 00:07:33.764
My apologies, 'cause I
know I'm probably not

00:07:33.764 --> 00:07:35.647
pronouncing it perfectly.

00:07:35.647 --> 00:07:38.111
And Alexander and his forces then go on

00:07:38.111 --> 00:07:40.722
to capture Babylon and Susia,

00:07:40.722 --> 00:07:42.623
and Susia was actually one of the capitals

00:07:42.623 --> 00:07:44.735
of the Achaemenid Empire.

00:07:44.735 --> 00:07:46.691
So this whole way they're able
to get all of this treasure

00:07:46.691 --> 00:07:48.562
and start sending it back to Greece.

00:07:48.562 --> 00:07:51.143
And then, we eventually get to,

00:07:51.143 --> 00:07:53.958
and by this point having
been defeated at Issus

00:07:53.958 --> 00:07:57.614
and now Gaugamela and being on the run,

00:07:57.614 --> 00:08:01.550
the Persian Empire is, you
could say it's already fallen,

00:08:01.550 --> 00:08:03.557
or it's definitely falling,

00:08:03.557 --> 00:08:06.326
but it becomes really official once we get

00:08:06.326 --> 00:08:07.243
to 330 BCE.

00:08:09.444 --> 00:08:11.735
And remember, this is less than five years

00:08:11.735 --> 00:08:12.868
since Alexander started,

00:08:12.868 --> 00:08:14.560
and that's short by any time frame.

00:08:14.560 --> 00:08:16.571
But they're on foot and on horseback.

00:08:16.571 --> 00:08:18.386
This is not modern warfare where they have

00:08:18.386 --> 00:08:20.582
tanks and trucks and planes.

00:08:20.582 --> 00:08:23.382
And the facts are
conquered so much territory

00:08:23.382 --> 00:08:26.066
and empires over 200
years old in this short

00:08:26.066 --> 00:08:29.591
about of time frame is
kind of breathtaking.

00:08:29.591 --> 00:08:32.815
But it's in 330 where the forces go to

00:08:32.815 --> 00:08:35.355
the Achaemenid capital of Persepolis,

00:08:35.355 --> 00:08:37.561
the capital for over 200 years,

00:08:37.561 --> 00:08:39.396
and they sack that town.

00:08:39.396 --> 00:08:40.918
And not only do they sack that town,

00:08:40.918 --> 00:08:42.467
they destroy the town.

00:08:42.467 --> 00:08:43.984
And I'll repeat it again,

00:08:43.984 --> 00:08:45.973
Alexander the Great,
he's romanticized a lot,

00:08:45.973 --> 00:08:47.927
he's called the Great,

00:08:47.927 --> 00:08:51.100
but they destroy that town in a way that

00:08:51.100 --> 00:08:53.870
you would not make your parent's proud.

00:08:53.870 --> 00:08:55.168
Let's just put it that way.

00:08:55.168 --> 00:08:58.511
But at that point he is now
king of the Persian Empire.

00:08:58.511 --> 00:09:01.565
Darius is officially on the run.

00:09:01.565 --> 00:09:05.257
And what Alexander now
cares about is continuing

00:09:05.257 --> 00:09:08.336
this adventure, continuing
it east into what

00:09:08.336 --> 00:09:12.381
we now consider to be
Afghanistan, Turkemenistan,

00:09:12.381 --> 00:09:16.086
Uzbekistan, and modern-day Pakistan.

00:09:16.086 --> 00:09:18.709
He also wants to get Darius.

00:09:18.709 --> 00:09:20.909
Some would argue he wants
to kill him himself,

00:09:20.909 --> 00:09:23.588
some would argue that he wants to somehow

00:09:23.588 --> 00:09:27.057
have Darius declare
Alexander as the rightful

00:09:27.057 --> 00:09:29.738
Shah in Shah, king of Asia.

00:09:29.738 --> 00:09:32.651
And so you can see the path
of Alexander and his forces.

00:09:32.651 --> 00:09:34.447
After they destroy Persepolis,

00:09:34.447 --> 00:09:37.571
they then go up, they turn northwards.

00:09:37.571 --> 00:09:40.167
They go through all of
these cities up here.

00:09:40.167 --> 00:09:42.167
Then in 329, they're on,

00:09:43.476 --> 00:09:47.095
they're following the trail of Darius.

00:09:47.095 --> 00:09:50.195
Darius eventually gets captured and killed

00:09:50.195 --> 00:09:52.151
by one of his satraps,

00:09:52.151 --> 00:09:54.604
someone by the name of Bessus.

00:09:54.604 --> 00:09:58.754
And Bessus, who is one of
the satraps of Bactria,

00:09:58.754 --> 00:10:02.671
kills Darius and declares
himself Artaxerxes V.

00:10:04.157 --> 00:10:06.648
He wants to be the Shah in Shah.

00:10:06.648 --> 00:10:11.219
Well, eventually Alexander
catches up with Bessus in 329.

00:10:11.219 --> 00:10:14.512
He's really angry that
Bessus has killed Darius.

00:10:14.512 --> 00:10:17.017
He's also likely angry
that Bessus is claiming

00:10:17.017 --> 00:10:18.532
that he is the Shah in Shah.

00:10:18.532 --> 00:10:21.624
And so he kills Bessus
in fairly brutal form.

00:10:21.624 --> 00:10:24.275
And there's different accounts
of how the killing happened,

00:10:24.275 --> 00:10:28.463
but all of them are
various degrees of brutal.

00:10:28.463 --> 00:10:32.832
But from there Alexander's
troops continued on eastward,

00:10:32.832 --> 00:10:36.151
continued on eastward
into what we now consider

00:10:36.151 --> 00:10:38.734
to be Afghanistan and Pakistan.

00:10:39.625 --> 00:10:44.250
And there he has the famous
battle with the king of Porus

00:10:44.250 --> 00:10:47.518
where he encounters
these 200 war elephants.

00:10:47.518 --> 00:10:50.412
But once again he's this
great military tactician,

00:10:50.412 --> 00:10:52.529
and he's able to defeat the king.

00:10:52.529 --> 00:10:54.653
And along this whole way
it's worth mentioning

00:10:54.653 --> 00:10:56.472
he sets up all of these towns,

00:10:56.472 --> 00:10:58.800
he sets up 20 Alexandrias.

00:10:58.800 --> 00:11:01.288
And near here he even
sets up a town named after

00:11:01.288 --> 00:11:05.025
his horse Bucephalus,
the town of Bucephala.

00:11:05.025 --> 00:11:08.094
And Alexander is eager to keep conquering.

00:11:08.094 --> 00:11:10.420
Once he defeats the
king of Porus, he says,

00:11:10.420 --> 00:11:13.113
hey, I want to go conquer
the rest of India.

00:11:13.113 --> 00:11:16.127
But his troops are far from
home and they are tired

00:11:16.127 --> 00:11:18.863
and they are spread thin
and they're getting sick.

00:11:18.863 --> 00:11:20.780
They are not so interested in that.

00:11:20.780 --> 00:11:23.751
So eventually Alexander says, all right,

00:11:23.751 --> 00:11:25.021
I'm with y'all.

00:11:25.021 --> 00:11:26.555
Let's go back.

00:11:26.555 --> 00:11:28.794
And the troops are really, really happy.

00:11:28.794 --> 00:11:30.500
They make their way back.

00:11:30.500 --> 00:11:33.299
You can see the path back after,

00:11:33.299 --> 00:11:36.886
and you can see as they follow
the Indus River in Pakistan.

00:11:36.886 --> 00:11:39.636
And eventually we get to 323 BCE,

00:11:45.123 --> 00:11:48.492
and Alexander is back in Babylon.

00:11:48.492 --> 00:11:52.537
And it's over there in
Babylon that Alexander dies

00:11:52.537 --> 00:11:54.897
at the ripe old age of 32.

00:11:54.897 --> 00:11:57.696
It's mindblowing to think
about how much happened

00:11:57.696 --> 00:12:00.657
in the 12 years that he was emperor

00:12:00.657 --> 00:12:04.824
of the Macedonians or even
the Shah in Shah of Persia.

00:12:06.234 --> 00:12:09.780
He was able to defeat an
empire over 200 years old.

00:12:09.780 --> 00:12:11.808
And what's significant about this is that

00:12:11.808 --> 00:12:13.139
as he conquered,

00:12:13.139 --> 00:12:15.592
he encouraged his troops to assimilate.

00:12:15.592 --> 00:12:17.476
In fact, he was criticized
for maybe assimilating

00:12:17.476 --> 00:12:19.440
a little bit too much.

00:12:19.440 --> 00:12:20.888
But he dies in Babylon,

00:12:20.888 --> 00:12:23.332
and it's not clear exactly why he dies.

00:12:23.332 --> 00:12:24.829
He was a major drinker.

00:12:24.829 --> 00:12:26.481
Some people say alcohol poisoning.

00:12:26.481 --> 00:12:28.519
Some people say it was direct poisoning.

00:12:28.519 --> 00:12:29.966
But needless to say,

00:12:29.966 --> 00:12:34.086
this was one of the
most significant decades

00:12:34.086 --> 00:12:38.253
in human history, this conquest
of Alexander the Great.


Alexander the Great takes power

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.912
- [Instructor] Now,
we're going to talk about

00:00:00.912 --> 00:00:03.929
one of the most famous conquerors
in all of human history,

00:00:03.929 --> 00:00:06.398
and that is Alexander the Great.

00:00:06.398 --> 00:00:07.662
But before talking about

00:00:07.662 --> 00:00:09.548
all of the things that he conquered,

00:00:09.548 --> 00:00:11.622
let's think about how he got started out

00:00:11.622 --> 00:00:15.048
and in particular, how he's
able to consolidate control

00:00:15.048 --> 00:00:18.298
over the empire that his father begins.

00:00:19.230 --> 00:00:20.794
So, in the last video,

00:00:20.794 --> 00:00:23.567
we saw that exiting the Peloponnesian War,

00:00:23.567 --> 00:00:25.372
the Greeks were weak.

00:00:25.372 --> 00:00:28.458
Sparta and its allies,
the Peloponnesian League,

00:00:28.458 --> 00:00:32.920
they had won, but the Greeks
were ripe for being conquered.

00:00:32.920 --> 00:00:35.883
And they end up being
conquered by Philip II,

00:00:35.883 --> 00:00:39.466
King of Macedonia, and
he rules from Pella.

00:00:40.461 --> 00:00:44.432
And shortly after he
becomes king, his son,

00:00:44.432 --> 00:00:47.886
his first son, Alexander, is born.

00:00:47.886 --> 00:00:52.053
And Alexander is the son that
Philip has with Olympias.

00:00:52.903 --> 00:00:56.986
Olympias is the daughter
of the king of Molossia,

00:00:58.149 --> 00:01:01.402
which makes her Molossian
and not Macedonian,

00:01:01.402 --> 00:01:03.773
which is going to be
somewhat important later on

00:01:03.773 --> 00:01:06.086
when Philip II dies.

00:01:06.086 --> 00:01:09.693
But the early part of
Alexander's life is quite good

00:01:09.693 --> 00:01:12.729
and he seems to be in favor
with his father, Philip II.

00:01:12.729 --> 00:01:16.896
After all, Alexander seems like
a decent heir to the throne.

00:01:18.108 --> 00:01:21.020
Early in his life, he gets from his father

00:01:21.020 --> 00:01:24.060
what is arguably the best
tutor, for sure of the time,

00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:27.894
probably the best tutor in
human history, in Aristotle.

00:01:27.894 --> 00:01:31.273
And the way that his father convinces him

00:01:31.273 --> 00:01:35.010
to tutor Alexander when Alexander's 13,

00:01:35.010 --> 00:01:38.955
he tutors him from when Alexander
is about 13 to about 16,

00:01:38.955 --> 00:01:43.727
is Philip destroys
Aristotle's village of Stagira

00:01:43.727 --> 00:01:46.322
as he conquers Greece.

00:01:46.322 --> 00:01:50.367
And Aristotle says, "Okay,
sure, I'll tutor your son.

00:01:50.367 --> 00:01:54.955
"But in exchange for that, why
don't you rebuild my hometown

00:01:54.955 --> 00:01:58.267
"and free all of the people
who had been enslaved

00:01:58.267 --> 00:02:00.128
"after the town was conquered?"

00:02:00.128 --> 00:02:03.180
And so, Philip agrees;
Alexander gets a great tutor.

00:02:03.180 --> 00:02:07.958
There's also the stories of
how Alexander carried favor

00:02:07.958 --> 00:02:11.021
with his father by taming
the famous horse Bucephalus,

00:02:11.021 --> 00:02:13.615
who Alexander will
eventually ride into Asia

00:02:13.615 --> 00:02:16.703
as he conquers the
Persian Empire and beyond.

00:02:16.703 --> 00:02:19.344
And Philip, very proud of his young son

00:02:19.344 --> 00:02:23.090
being able to conquer this
seemingly untamable horse,

00:02:23.090 --> 00:02:27.362
as Philip conquers, as he conquers Greece,

00:02:27.362 --> 00:02:30.690
Alexander is alongside him leading troops,

00:02:30.690 --> 00:02:33.391
showing him to be a
capable military general,

00:02:33.391 --> 00:02:34.860
a capable leader.

00:02:34.860 --> 00:02:38.731
So, all seems to be working
out well for Alexander

00:02:38.731 --> 00:02:41.814
until Philip takes what ends up being

00:02:43.146 --> 00:02:45.520
his seventh and last wife.

00:02:45.520 --> 00:02:48.858
Until then, Olympias was his favored wife.

00:02:48.858 --> 00:02:51.086
And Olympias is a bit of a character,

00:02:51.086 --> 00:02:52.820
at least from the point of historians.

00:02:52.820 --> 00:02:54.358
And you should take all of
this with a grain of salt

00:02:54.358 --> 00:02:56.283
because many of these
histories and these stories

00:02:56.283 --> 00:02:57.933
were written hundreds of years later,

00:02:57.933 --> 00:03:00.285
and so it's not clear how
much was a true account

00:03:00.285 --> 00:03:02.472
versus how much was made up.

00:03:02.472 --> 00:03:05.869
But beyond Olympias not being Macedonian,

00:03:05.869 --> 00:03:09.353
she is from Molossia, she is
also, according to Plutarch,

00:03:09.353 --> 00:03:12.897
part of the Cult of Dionysus
and she worships snakes

00:03:12.897 --> 00:03:15.215
and potentially even sleeps with snakes,

00:03:15.215 --> 00:03:18.252
which is really off-putting
to a lot of the Macedonians.

00:03:18.252 --> 00:03:22.169
And so, when King Philip,
in around 337 or 338,

00:03:23.918 --> 00:03:28.085
finds a Macedonian to marry
and her name is Cleopatra,

00:03:29.347 --> 00:03:31.684
not the famous Cleopatra from history,

00:03:31.684 --> 00:03:34.679
we'll talk about her
in a few hundred years,

00:03:34.679 --> 00:03:38.718
but you see here, Philip II,
he takes his seventh wife.

00:03:38.718 --> 00:03:39.655
I don't list them all here.

00:03:39.655 --> 00:03:43.338
I only list Olympias here
who he marries in 357 BCE.

00:03:43.338 --> 00:03:47.532
And then they have Alexander,
born Alexander III,

00:03:47.532 --> 00:03:49.577
shortly thereafter the next year.

00:03:49.577 --> 00:03:51.714
They also have another
daughter, Cleopatra.

00:03:51.714 --> 00:03:53.631
Once again, not the Cleopatra

00:03:53.631 --> 00:03:56.202
when people refer to it in history.

00:03:56.202 --> 00:04:00.369
But then, around 337 or 338
BCE, he takes his seventh wife,

00:04:02.998 --> 00:04:05.733
and this seventh wife
is also named Cleopatra.

00:04:05.733 --> 00:04:07.428
She is Macedonian.

00:04:07.428 --> 00:04:11.178
Philip renames her
Eurydice after his mother.

00:04:13.379 --> 00:04:14.718
And so, you can imagine

00:04:14.718 --> 00:04:16.660
this is already a little bit threatening.

00:04:16.660 --> 00:04:19.684
Because, well, what if
this Cleopatra has a son?

00:04:19.684 --> 00:04:21.725
And she eventually does have a son.

00:04:21.725 --> 00:04:24.818
And now, that son would
be pure Macedonian,

00:04:24.818 --> 00:04:28.222
as opposed to Alexander,
who is only half-Macedonian.

00:04:28.222 --> 00:04:30.317
And this becomes quite pointed

00:04:30.317 --> 00:04:33.379
at the wedding of Philip and Cleopatra,

00:04:33.379 --> 00:04:36.962
the Macedonian Cleopatra,
in 337 or 338 BCE

00:04:38.292 --> 00:04:40.194
when we have this account, and once again,

00:04:40.194 --> 00:04:41.964
take all of this with a grain of salt.

00:04:41.964 --> 00:04:43.571
This is an account by Plutarch

00:04:43.571 --> 00:04:46.083
that was written 400 years later.

00:04:46.083 --> 00:04:49.804
But Plutarch writes, "At
the wedding of Cleopatra,"

00:04:49.804 --> 00:04:51.395
this is Cleopatra Eurydice,

00:04:51.395 --> 00:04:53.882
this is the Macedonian
Cleopatra, the young one,

00:04:53.882 --> 00:04:56.685
"whom Philip fell in
love with and married,

00:04:56.685 --> 00:04:59.779
"she being much too young
for him, her uncle Attalus,"

00:04:59.779 --> 00:05:03.071
and you see him on our
little family tree here,

00:05:03.071 --> 00:05:07.904
this is Cleopatra's Uncle
Attalus, a Macedonian,

00:05:07.904 --> 00:05:11.100
"her uncle Attalus in his drink

00:05:11.100 --> 00:05:13.418
"desired the Macedonians
would implore the gods

00:05:13.418 --> 00:05:16.090
"to give them a lawful
successor to the kingdom

00:05:16.090 --> 00:05:17.740
"by his niece."

00:05:17.740 --> 00:05:19.349
Let me underline that.

00:05:19.349 --> 00:05:21.684
Give them a lawful
successor to the kingdom.

00:05:21.684 --> 00:05:22.517
You might be saying,

00:05:22.517 --> 00:05:24.077
"Wait, I thought Alexander
was a lawful successor?"

00:05:24.077 --> 00:05:26.957
And Alexander's probably
thinking the same thing.

00:05:26.957 --> 00:05:28.983
"This so irritated Alexander

00:05:28.983 --> 00:05:31.118
"that throwing one of
the cups at his head,"

00:05:31.118 --> 00:05:34.571
throwing it at Attalus' head,
"'you villain,' he said.

00:05:34.571 --> 00:05:39.126
"'What, am I then a bastard?'
Then Philip," Alexander's dad,

00:05:39.126 --> 00:05:41.554
"taking Attalus' part," so he
wouldn't take his son's side,

00:05:41.554 --> 00:05:43.381
he takes the side of his in-laws,

00:05:43.381 --> 00:05:45.558
"rose up and would have
run his son through,

00:05:45.558 --> 00:05:47.294
"but by good fortune for them both,

00:05:47.294 --> 00:05:50.204
"either his over-hasty rage,
or the wine he had drunk,

00:05:50.204 --> 00:05:53.490
"made his foot slip, so that
he fell down on the floor.

00:05:53.490 --> 00:05:56.493
"At which Alexander
reproachfully insulted over him:

00:05:56.493 --> 00:05:59.662
"'See there,' said he, 'the
man who makes preparations

00:05:59.662 --> 00:06:01.658
"'to pass out of Europe into Asia,

00:06:01.658 --> 00:06:05.921
"'overturned in passing
from one seat to another.'"

00:06:05.921 --> 00:06:09.187
So, if this account by
Plutarch is even vaguely true,

00:06:09.187 --> 00:06:11.679
it shows this real tension that is forming

00:06:11.679 --> 00:06:14.345
between Alexander and his father.

00:06:14.345 --> 00:06:15.880
And it's of course being goaded on,

00:06:15.880 --> 00:06:19.584
or likely to be goaded on,
by his mother, Olympias,

00:06:19.584 --> 00:06:22.220
who was the primary wife for a little bit

00:06:22.220 --> 00:06:24.463
but now she's being pushed aside

00:06:24.463 --> 00:06:27.684
in favor of this Macedonian, Cleopatra.

00:06:27.684 --> 00:06:31.154
And so she actually goes
into voluntary exile,

00:06:31.154 --> 00:06:34.779
Alexander follows her, and
so things are quite tense.

00:06:34.779 --> 00:06:37.350
And they really come to a boiling point,

00:06:37.350 --> 00:06:41.222
or everything gets released
a year or two later,

00:06:41.222 --> 00:06:45.781
when Olympias' other child,
Cleopatra, the other Cleopatra,

00:06:45.781 --> 00:06:47.487
not Cleopatra Eurydice

00:06:47.487 --> 00:06:49.964
and not the famous Cleopatra from history,

00:06:49.964 --> 00:06:53.225
she gets married to Olympias' brother.

00:06:53.225 --> 00:06:55.687
And so, she's marrying her uncle.

00:06:55.687 --> 00:06:58.782
Many strange things happened
like this in the ancient world.

00:06:58.782 --> 00:07:02.304
This is 336 BCE and this
is the famous wedding

00:07:02.304 --> 00:07:06.471
where Phillip II is
assassinated by his bodyguard,

00:07:07.382 --> 00:07:11.269
who was likely Phillip II's former lover.

00:07:11.269 --> 00:07:13.998
But once Phillip II gets assassinated,

00:07:13.998 --> 00:07:16.170
you could imagine that many people

00:07:16.170 --> 00:07:19.478
are wanting to have a go at the throne,

00:07:19.478 --> 00:07:24.467
in particular, Alexander,
aided by his mother, Olympias.

00:07:24.467 --> 00:07:28.498
And so immediately, there
starts to be a consolidation

00:07:28.498 --> 00:07:31.435
of power and the first
way to consolidate power

00:07:31.435 --> 00:07:36.359
is to kill off all of the
folks who might threaten you.

00:07:36.359 --> 00:07:38.880
And so Olympias and Alexander,

00:07:38.880 --> 00:07:42.149
and many historians give
credit mainly to Olympias,

00:07:42.149 --> 00:07:45.261
some say Alexander was
involved more or less,

00:07:45.261 --> 00:07:47.254
but they go on a killing spree.

00:07:47.254 --> 00:07:50.667
Europa is killed, Caranus is killed.

00:07:50.667 --> 00:07:53.686
These are the children
of Cleopatra Eurydice.

00:07:53.686 --> 00:07:57.661
At the time of this, we're
talking 336, 335 BCE,

00:07:57.661 --> 00:07:59.435
they would have been toddlers.

00:07:59.435 --> 00:08:02.024
They would have been two,
at most three years old.

00:08:02.024 --> 00:08:03.078
They're being killed.

00:08:03.078 --> 00:08:05.330
There are some accounts
that Cleopatra is killed

00:08:05.330 --> 00:08:07.274
or she is forced to hang herself.

00:08:07.274 --> 00:08:09.906
There's some accounts that
some combination of them

00:08:09.906 --> 00:08:11.851
are burned alive.

00:08:11.851 --> 00:08:15.514
Alexander goes after
Attalus, the famous uncle

00:08:15.514 --> 00:08:19.918
who insulted him at the wedding
party only a few years ago.

00:08:19.918 --> 00:08:22.570
He kills his cousin, Amyntus,

00:08:22.570 --> 00:08:25.991
who might have had a claim
to the throne, other princes.

00:08:25.991 --> 00:08:28.053
So this is this bloody, bloody period.

00:08:28.053 --> 00:08:31.045
So even though sometimes people
glorify some of these rulers

00:08:31.045 --> 00:08:33.950
like Alexander the Great, that
they unified all these people

00:08:33.950 --> 00:08:36.860
and they pushed culture
throughout the world,

00:08:36.860 --> 00:08:38.330
or however you want to talk about it,

00:08:38.330 --> 00:08:41.480
they usually come to
power in very brutal ways.

00:08:41.480 --> 00:08:43.674
And their conquering is also very brutal.

00:08:43.674 --> 00:08:45.593
You really shouldn't romanticize,

00:08:45.593 --> 00:08:47.244
oh let's conquer other people.

00:08:47.244 --> 00:08:50.575
A war is ugly and when
there's multiple factions

00:08:50.575 --> 00:08:54.101
coming to a throne, that is also ugly.

00:08:54.101 --> 00:08:56.908
So, we're shortly after
Phillip II's death.

00:08:56.908 --> 00:08:58.705
Alexander, with the help of his mother,

00:08:58.705 --> 00:09:01.521
is able to consolidate
power within his family,

00:09:01.521 --> 00:09:03.144
really secure his place

00:09:03.144 --> 00:09:06.227
as the king of the Macedonian Empire.

00:09:07.442 --> 00:09:08.275
And so the next thing

00:09:08.275 --> 00:09:12.312
is to secure his hold
on the empire militarily

00:09:12.312 --> 00:09:15.142
and you immediately
start having rebellions

00:09:15.142 --> 00:09:17.892
to the North and West of Macedon.

00:09:20.538 --> 00:09:23.702
And so, in particular, the Illyrians,

00:09:23.702 --> 00:09:26.793
which is in modern-day Albania,

00:09:26.793 --> 00:09:28.938
so this region right over here.

00:09:28.938 --> 00:09:30.688
They start to revolt.

00:09:31.715 --> 00:09:34.260
Alexander goes and makes a point

00:09:34.260 --> 00:09:36.760
of sieging the pass at Peliam.

00:09:38.665 --> 00:09:41.982
This is a very strategic
location but while he's there

00:09:41.982 --> 00:09:45.197
with his military forces,
so while he's there

00:09:45.197 --> 00:09:47.324
with his military forces, you can imagine

00:09:47.324 --> 00:09:48.916
the other city-states of Greece,

00:09:48.916 --> 00:09:51.915
in particular Athens and Thebes,
say hey now's our chance.

00:09:51.915 --> 00:09:53.665
King Phillip is dead,

00:09:54.523 --> 00:09:57.095
Alexander's out fighting
with the Illyrians,

00:09:57.095 --> 00:09:59.847
let's rise up and regain our independence.

00:09:59.847 --> 00:10:01.383
And many of them thought that Alexander

00:10:01.383 --> 00:10:04.504
might have already died in the
previous military campaign.

00:10:04.504 --> 00:10:06.527
And so you can imagine
they were very surprised

00:10:06.527 --> 00:10:10.448
after Alexander took control
through a siege at Peliam,

00:10:10.448 --> 00:10:12.975
and is able to come down
surprisingly quickly.

00:10:12.975 --> 00:10:15.045
He really makes his soldiers march

00:10:15.045 --> 00:10:18.077
hundreds of kilometers
in a matter of weeks,

00:10:18.077 --> 00:10:21.410
to come down and put down the rebellion,

00:10:24.154 --> 00:10:26.323
from his point of view, at Thebes.

00:10:26.323 --> 00:10:29.680
And the Thebans refuse to stop rebelling

00:10:29.680 --> 00:10:32.638
and so in retaliation, Alexander the Great

00:10:32.638 --> 00:10:36.805
completely destroys Thebes,
this famous city of antiquity.

00:10:39.429 --> 00:10:41.591
Only a few decades before this time,

00:10:41.591 --> 00:10:45.094
the leading city-state in all of Greece.

00:10:45.094 --> 00:10:48.790
And so he destroys Thebes,
he enslaves its people,

00:10:48.790 --> 00:10:51.843
but that's what allows
him to essentially scare

00:10:51.843 --> 00:10:54.516
the rest of the city-states
of Greece to come in line.

00:10:54.516 --> 00:10:55.854
He hasn't conquered Sparta,

00:10:55.854 --> 00:11:00.168
or his empire hasn't conquered
Sparta, that will happen soon

00:11:00.168 --> 00:11:02.642
but the rest, it really
consolidates his power.

00:11:02.642 --> 00:11:05.225
And now, we're talking 335 BCE,

00:11:06.270 --> 00:11:09.243
he's ready to think about doing
what his father was planning

00:11:09.243 --> 00:11:12.660
and going off and trying to conquer Asia.


Philip of Macedon unifies Greece

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:00.161 --> 00:00:01.756
- [Instructor] The fifth century in Greece

00:00:01.756 --> 00:00:03.611
started off with the Persian invasions,

00:00:03.611 --> 00:00:05.800
and ended with the Peloponnesian War,

00:00:05.800 --> 00:00:09.018
and now we're entering into
the fourth century in Greece.

00:00:09.018 --> 00:00:12.035
And as we enter into the fourth century,

00:00:12.035 --> 00:00:14.290
Thebes is the dominant city state,

00:00:14.290 --> 00:00:17.083
but as we get into the mid fourth century,

00:00:17.083 --> 00:00:18.666
and especially the end of it,

00:00:18.666 --> 00:00:21.667
we will see that all of
Greece gets dominated,

00:00:21.667 --> 00:00:25.934
and then unified, by the
Makedonians, or the Macedonians,

00:00:25.934 --> 00:00:29.437
and in particular, the first unifier here

00:00:29.437 --> 00:00:31.866
was Philip of Macedon.

00:00:31.866 --> 00:00:33.338
This is a bust of him.

00:00:33.338 --> 00:00:37.338
And he's known, as he
comes to power in 359 BCE,

00:00:39.168 --> 00:00:42.752
he comes to power, his
father was king of Makedon,

00:00:42.752 --> 00:00:46.526
but then his older
brothers die, he becomes,

00:00:46.526 --> 00:00:49.541
it's actually his nephew
who is heir to the throne.

00:00:49.541 --> 00:00:52.737
He becomes regent for his infant nephew,

00:00:52.737 --> 00:00:54.796
which means that he has
the power temporarily,

00:00:54.796 --> 00:00:56.923
but then he actually takes full control,

00:00:56.923 --> 00:00:59.707
and becomes king of Macedon, or Makedon,

00:00:59.707 --> 00:01:02.790
as it's often pronounced, in 359 BCE.

00:01:03.935 --> 00:01:07.814
And what he then goes off about doing is

00:01:07.814 --> 00:01:11.489
taking over most of the Greek city states.

00:01:11.489 --> 00:01:13.617
And, eventually, he's able to unify

00:01:13.617 --> 00:01:15.987
most of the Greek city states.

00:01:15.987 --> 00:01:18.399
And you can see on this map here,

00:01:18.399 --> 00:01:20.469
which I got from Wikipedia.

00:01:20.469 --> 00:01:23.610
This is a little bit of
information about the map.

00:01:23.610 --> 00:01:28.508
You can see how he expanded
his empire over time.

00:01:28.508 --> 00:01:33.124
Remember, 359 BCE, he
becomes king of Macedon.

00:01:33.124 --> 00:01:35.957
In 352, he's moving into Thessaly.

00:01:39.077 --> 00:01:42.577
Then, in the 340s, he's going into Thrace.

00:01:44.793 --> 00:01:48.730
So he's going into Thrace and Molossia.

00:01:48.730 --> 00:01:50.252
And Molossia's interesting.

00:01:50.252 --> 00:01:54.461
The king of Molossia, he
actually ends up marrying

00:01:54.461 --> 00:01:57.493
the king of Molossia's daughter, Olympius,

00:01:57.493 --> 00:02:00.811
who ends up being Alexander
the Great's mother.

00:02:00.811 --> 00:02:02.453
And she's a pretty interesting character,

00:02:02.453 --> 00:02:03.510
as we will see in a little bit.

00:02:03.510 --> 00:02:06.574
She was part of this cult
that worshiped snakes.

00:02:06.574 --> 00:02:09.536
It's believed that she slept with snakes.

00:02:09.536 --> 00:02:13.255
But, he goes off and continues to conquer.

00:02:13.255 --> 00:02:15.702
Eventually, he's able to subjugate

00:02:15.702 --> 00:02:18.051
most of the city states of Greece,

00:02:18.051 --> 00:02:19.884
except for Sparta.

00:02:19.884 --> 00:02:23.384
And that takes us to 337, right over here,

00:02:26.892 --> 00:02:30.112
where he's able to establish
the League of Corinth.

00:02:30.112 --> 00:02:31.566
It was only called the League of Corinth

00:02:31.566 --> 00:02:33.875
after the fact, but he gets the leaders

00:02:33.875 --> 00:02:37.291
of the significant city
states together in Corinth.

00:02:37.291 --> 00:02:39.153
That's why it's called
the League of Corinth,

00:02:39.153 --> 00:02:41.617
and they swear their oath, essentially,

00:02:41.617 --> 00:02:46.267
to Philip, king of Makedon,
who they call the Hegemon.

00:02:46.267 --> 00:02:48.088
And what's really important about that

00:02:48.088 --> 00:02:51.546
is he's able to unify
the Greek city states,

00:02:51.546 --> 00:02:53.046
outside of Sparta,

00:02:54.622 --> 00:02:58.101
and in doing so, he sets
things up for his son,

00:02:58.101 --> 00:03:00.657
the famous Alexander the Great,

00:03:00.657 --> 00:03:02.610
to continue to unify Greece.

00:03:02.610 --> 00:03:05.793
Alexander the Great's actually
able to subjugate Sparta.

00:03:05.793 --> 00:03:08.973
But then, more famously,
he goes off to conquer

00:03:08.973 --> 00:03:12.341
the entire Persian
Empire, and then beyond,

00:03:12.341 --> 00:03:13.410
in his short life.

00:03:13.410 --> 00:03:16.197
And we'll have at least
another video on that.

00:03:16.197 --> 00:03:19.098
But just to get a feel for what happened

00:03:19.098 --> 00:03:22.098
at the League of Corinth in 337 BCE,

00:03:23.062 --> 00:03:24.895
I will share this oath

00:03:27.697 --> 00:03:31.339
that the variouscity
states had to commit to.

00:03:31.339 --> 00:03:35.132
And it says, "I swear
by Zeus, Gaia, Helios,

00:03:35.132 --> 00:03:37.743
"Poseidon, and all the gods and goddesses.

00:03:37.743 --> 00:03:40.125
"I will abide by the common peace,

00:03:40.125 --> 00:03:42.870
"and I will neither break
the agreement with Philip,

00:03:42.870 --> 00:03:45.404
"nor take up arms on land or sea,

00:03:45.404 --> 00:03:48.474
"harming any of those
abiding by the oaths.

00:03:48.474 --> 00:03:51.106
"Nor shall I take any city or fortress,

00:03:51.106 --> 00:03:53.784
"nor harbor by craft or contrivance,

00:03:53.784 --> 00:03:57.389
"with intent of war against
the participants of the war.

00:03:57.389 --> 00:03:59.205
"Nor shall I depose the kingship

00:03:59.205 --> 00:04:01.083
"of Philip or his descendants,

00:04:01.083 --> 00:04:03.605
"nor the constitutions
existing in each state,

00:04:03.605 --> 00:04:06.157
"when they swore the oaths of the peace.

00:04:06.157 --> 00:04:08.854
"Nor shall I do anything
contrary to these agreements,

00:04:08.854 --> 00:04:11.774
"nor shall I allow anyone
else, as far as possible.

00:04:11.774 --> 00:04:14.564
"But if anyone does commit
any breach of the treaty,

00:04:14.564 --> 00:04:17.659
"I shall go in support as
called by those who need,

00:04:17.659 --> 00:04:20.790
"and I shall fight the
transgressors of the common peace,

00:04:20.790 --> 00:04:24.957
"as decided by the council,
and called on by the Hegemon."

00:04:27.144 --> 00:04:31.311
Who is, when the oath is made,
who is Philip of Macedonia.

00:04:33.514 --> 00:04:37.718
Now, unfortunately for
Philip, this happens in 337,

00:04:37.718 --> 00:04:40.997
where, for the most part,
he's the first to unify

00:04:40.997 --> 00:04:44.137
the Greek city states, outside of Sparta.

00:04:44.137 --> 00:04:46.989
But he's only able to live
about a year after that.

00:04:46.989 --> 00:04:49.906
A year later, we're now in 336 BCE,

00:04:52.112 --> 00:04:56.651
and he's in the old capitol
of the Makedonian kingdom,

00:04:56.651 --> 00:04:58.998
which is very close to Pella,

00:04:58.998 --> 00:05:02.085
celebrating the wedding of his daughter

00:05:02.085 --> 00:05:03.918
to his brother in law.

00:05:05.155 --> 00:05:08.750
So his daughter, who
is Alexander's sister,

00:05:08.750 --> 00:05:12.070
she's being married to Olympius's brother.

00:05:12.070 --> 00:05:15.446
So he's marrying his
daughter to her uncle.

00:05:15.446 --> 00:05:18.088
And it is during that wedding that

00:05:18.088 --> 00:05:22.027
Philip of Macedon is killed by Pausanias,

00:05:22.027 --> 00:05:24.025
who is his bodyguard.

00:05:24.025 --> 00:05:26.323
And there's a lot of
really interesting stories.

00:05:26.323 --> 00:05:30.023
So, he's killed at the wedding in 336 BCE,

00:05:30.023 --> 00:05:31.580
and there's a lot of
really interesting stories

00:05:31.580 --> 00:05:34.323
about what the motivation
for Pausanias was.

00:05:34.323 --> 00:05:36.075
There are many accounts that say that

00:05:36.075 --> 00:05:38.457
Pausanias was Philip's lover,

00:05:38.457 --> 00:05:40.654
he was, on some level jealous,

00:05:40.654 --> 00:05:43.010
and he was on some level because

00:05:43.010 --> 00:05:46.139
another relative of Philip
affronted Pausanias,

00:05:46.139 --> 00:05:47.802
and Philip didn't go to defend him.

00:05:47.802 --> 00:05:51.348
There's some narratives that
this was arranged, somehow,

00:05:51.348 --> 00:05:55.515
by Olympius, Philip's wife
and the mother of Alexander,

00:05:56.618 --> 00:05:59.242
to put Alexander on the throne.

00:05:59.242 --> 00:06:01.037
There're some motivations there because,

00:06:01.037 --> 00:06:03.865
also, shortly before the assassination,

00:06:03.865 --> 00:06:07.682
he took a second wife, which
was his more favored wife,

00:06:07.682 --> 00:06:09.142
as opposed to Olympius.

00:06:09.142 --> 00:06:11.325
So there's a lot of really
interesting accounts,

00:06:11.325 --> 00:06:13.307
and I encourage you to read up on it.

00:06:13.307 --> 00:06:14.814
But the interesting thing is,

00:06:14.814 --> 00:06:17.314
is after he gets assassinated,

00:06:18.256 --> 00:06:22.729
well, then there's a bit
of a scramble for power.

00:06:22.729 --> 00:06:25.774
But it leaves Alexander the Great,

00:06:25.774 --> 00:06:28.851
or eventually, Alexander
the Third officially,

00:06:28.851 --> 00:06:30.623
but eventually Alexander the Great

00:06:30.623 --> 00:06:32.290
becomes the Hegemon,

00:06:33.170 --> 00:06:34.935
and he's eventually, in his short life,

00:06:34.935 --> 00:06:38.451
he's only 20 years old
when he becomes king,

00:06:38.451 --> 00:06:41.667
he's able to, as we'll see
in the next few videos,

00:06:41.667 --> 00:06:45.000
take over all of the
Persian Empire and beyond,

00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:46.274
and subjugate Sparta.

00:06:46.274 --> 00:06:48.469
So he further unifies the Greeks,

00:06:48.469 --> 00:06:51.719
and takes on the mighty Persian Empire.


The Peloponnesian War

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:00.525 --> 00:00:03.664
- [Instructor] As we've already
seen, the 5th Century BCE

00:00:03.664 --> 00:00:07.990
starts off with Athens and
Sparta and various Greek

00:00:07.990 --> 00:00:10.927
city-states fighting on
the same side against

00:00:10.927 --> 00:00:12.677
the Persian invaders.

00:00:14.130 --> 00:00:16.367
But as we saw in the last
video, as soon as the Persians

00:00:16.367 --> 00:00:20.872
are dealt with, tensions
start to rise between Athens

00:00:20.872 --> 00:00:23.567
and Sparta and their various allies.

00:00:23.567 --> 00:00:27.130
Sparta gets worried that
the Athenian Navy is looking

00:00:27.130 --> 00:00:29.428
maybe a little bit too
strong, they were decisively

00:00:29.428 --> 00:00:32.830
important in the Second Persian Invasion,

00:00:32.830 --> 00:00:37.174
and they build this Delian
League, whose purpose

00:00:37.174 --> 00:00:40.145
is to go on the offensive
against the Persians,

00:00:40.145 --> 00:00:42.449
but more and more so it
was starting to look like

00:00:42.449 --> 00:00:44.069
an Athenian empire.

00:00:44.069 --> 00:00:46.804
And a lot of this you can
imagine, it's like a game of Risk.

00:00:46.804 --> 00:00:49.958
The more you take over, the
more resources you have,

00:00:49.958 --> 00:00:51.737
the more that you can
build more ships and have

00:00:51.737 --> 00:00:54.789
more soldiers so that you
can take on even more.

00:00:54.789 --> 00:00:56.965
So as Sparta and Athens
are starting to become more

00:00:56.965 --> 00:01:01.819
and more rivals, Sparta's
getting insecure about Athens'

00:01:01.819 --> 00:01:06.260
influence and their resources,
and their military power.

00:01:06.260 --> 00:01:08.101
And we even saw it in
the last video, you have

00:01:08.101 --> 00:01:10.394
an earthquake in Sparta,
potentially right around

00:01:10.394 --> 00:01:12.307
the same time that Sparta
was planning an invasion

00:01:12.307 --> 00:01:15.327
of Athens, leaving the
Spartans vulnerable.

00:01:15.327 --> 00:01:19.051
There's a Helot uprising,
these Spartan slaves.

00:01:19.051 --> 00:01:23.126
The Athenians send Hoplites to
apparently help the Spartans

00:01:23.126 --> 00:01:24.960
but the Spartans are
suspicious of it and they

00:01:24.960 --> 00:01:26.042
send them back.

00:01:26.042 --> 00:01:30.735
And then it culminates
with the skirmish you have

00:01:30.735 --> 00:01:34.590
between Megara and Corinth,
which were historically

00:01:34.590 --> 00:01:38.473
two Spartan allies, but
Athens decides to take sides,

00:01:38.473 --> 00:01:42.049
gets an alliance with Megara,
and that's one thing too many

00:01:42.049 --> 00:01:45.071
for the Spartans, and so they declare war,

00:01:45.071 --> 00:01:47.707
and you have what's called
the First Peloponnesian War.

00:01:47.707 --> 00:01:50.090
But that's not the Peloponnesian
War, that's the first

00:01:50.090 --> 00:01:52.151
time that you start
having very open conflict

00:01:52.151 --> 00:01:55.934
between the Spartans and the Athenians.

00:01:55.934 --> 00:01:58.234
And these conflicts last
for, on the order of about

00:01:58.234 --> 00:02:02.094
15 years, and they're
ended with what's called

00:02:02.094 --> 00:02:04.033
the Peace of 30 Years.

00:02:04.033 --> 00:02:06.711
But as we will see, this
Peace of 30 Years only lasts

00:02:06.711 --> 00:02:07.961
about 15 years.

00:02:10.273 --> 00:02:13.425
And the whole time,
tensions continue to arise.

00:02:13.425 --> 00:02:17.718
The Delian League, or you could
call it the Athenian power,

00:02:17.718 --> 00:02:19.158
the Athenian empire I should say,

00:02:19.158 --> 00:02:21.072
is getting more and more powerful.

00:02:21.072 --> 00:02:23.685
The Athenian Navy is getting
more and more powerful.

00:02:23.685 --> 00:02:25.755
And once again, things
culminate, and now this is

00:02:25.755 --> 00:02:28.681
the beginning of the
actual Peloponnesian War,

00:02:28.681 --> 00:02:30.693
the thing that people are
referring to when they talk

00:02:30.693 --> 00:02:32.062
about the Peloponnesian War.

00:02:32.062 --> 00:02:34.812
In 431 BCE, the King of Sparta is

00:02:40.228 --> 00:02:43.895
convinced or is, I guess
you could say he is

00:02:45.944 --> 00:02:50.073
influenced to, even though he
himself was somewhat skeptical

00:02:50.073 --> 00:02:53.580
of the idea, he decides to invade Attica.

00:02:53.580 --> 00:02:55.415
Attica's something
you'll hear a lot about.

00:02:55.415 --> 00:02:57.239
It is this region right
over here, this little

00:02:57.239 --> 00:03:00.272
out-jutting of land, that Athens is on.

00:03:00.272 --> 00:03:02.966
And this first phase of
the Peloponnesian War

00:03:02.966 --> 00:03:07.522
is called the Archidamian War,
named for the King of Sparta

00:03:07.522 --> 00:03:11.689
who somewhat reluctantly
decides to invade Attica.

00:03:13.873 --> 00:03:17.290
And so that's stage one, Archidamian War.

00:03:21.764 --> 00:03:24.990
And the Archidamian War,
its essential ingredients

00:03:24.990 --> 00:03:27.291
are you have Sparta with its dominant army

00:03:27.291 --> 00:03:31.124
going and having repeated
attacks onto Attica,

00:03:32.180 --> 00:03:34.523
and the Athenians with their dominant navy

00:03:34.523 --> 00:03:37.776
going and having raids
throughout the Peloponnese

00:03:37.776 --> 00:03:40.015
and along the Aegean Coast.

00:03:40.015 --> 00:03:43.674
So here you have the Athenians,
let me do the Athenians

00:03:43.674 --> 00:03:46.178
and the Spartans in two
different colors, actually.

00:03:46.178 --> 00:03:47.146
So here you go.

00:03:47.146 --> 00:03:49.961
Let's do the Spartans in this red color,

00:03:49.961 --> 00:03:54.230
attacking Attica with their
army, and now let's have

00:03:54.230 --> 00:03:57.221
the Athenians with this
light blue color coming here

00:03:57.221 --> 00:04:00.037
and attacking various
points, various points

00:04:00.037 --> 00:04:04.204
on the Peloponnese and in
the Aegean, further extending

00:04:06.062 --> 00:04:08.001
their influence.

00:04:08.001 --> 00:04:11.274
Now that first phase ends, and
it goes on for quite a bit,

00:04:11.274 --> 00:04:13.641
it goes on for about 10 years, ends with

00:04:13.641 --> 00:04:17.258
the Peace of Nicias, but as you will see

00:04:17.258 --> 00:04:21.008
and that was actually intended
to be a 50-year peace,

00:04:21.008 --> 00:04:23.997
but you'll see it
doesn't last long at all.

00:04:23.997 --> 00:04:28.439
The skirmishes continue,
and in 415, the Athenians

00:04:28.439 --> 00:04:31.578
say hey, we want to extend our power.

00:04:31.578 --> 00:04:33.255
Remember, it's like this
game of Risk, the more

00:04:33.255 --> 00:04:35.838
city-states you take over,
the more citizens that

00:04:35.838 --> 00:04:38.864
you're able to tax, the
more soldiers you will have,

00:04:38.864 --> 00:04:40.674
the more wealth you will
have, the more shipbuilding

00:04:40.674 --> 00:04:42.323
capability you will have.

00:04:42.323 --> 00:04:45.440
So the Athenians get this
great idea to sail all the way

00:04:45.440 --> 00:04:48.219
to Syracuse and just to be
clear where Syracuse is,

00:04:48.219 --> 00:04:51.529
Syracuse is over here
on the coast of Sicily.

00:04:51.529 --> 00:04:54.305
Now this is a long distance
in this ancient world.

00:04:54.305 --> 00:04:56.421
They get this idea to sail
all the way to Syracuse

00:04:56.421 --> 00:04:59.558
to try to take it over,
and essentially to extend

00:04:59.558 --> 00:05:01.218
their empire.

00:05:01.218 --> 00:05:05.385
So this right over here is
in 415, this long voyage

00:05:08.069 --> 00:05:12.082
to take over Syracuse,
and it is disastrous.

00:05:12.082 --> 00:05:15.138
The fleet that tries to go
is able to be destroyed,

00:05:15.138 --> 00:05:18.160
and they get the folks in
Syracuse are able to get

00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:21.803
the assistance of the Spartans,
and so that Greek fleet

00:05:21.803 --> 00:05:22.636
is destroyed.

00:05:22.636 --> 00:05:24.354
And this is often viewed
as the second phase

00:05:24.354 --> 00:05:26.612
of the Peloponnesian War.

00:05:26.612 --> 00:05:29.779
And so this is the Attack at Syracuse.

00:05:30.627 --> 00:05:34.626
Attack at Syracuse, the failed
attempt of the Athenians

00:05:34.626 --> 00:05:37.376
to get Syracuse, to get Syracuse.

00:05:38.850 --> 00:05:41.691
And this is a two-year period
of time, because once again,

00:05:41.691 --> 00:05:44.153
this is no joke to send
your navy and to try to get

00:05:44.153 --> 00:05:45.153
at Syracuse.

00:05:46.335 --> 00:05:50.374
And then that takes us
into the third phase,

00:05:50.374 --> 00:05:53.867
the third phase of the Peloponnesian War,

00:05:53.867 --> 00:05:56.406
let me scroll this over a little bit.

00:05:56.406 --> 00:05:59.944
The third phase is often
called the Ionian War.

00:05:59.944 --> 00:06:00.861
Ionian War.

00:06:06.689 --> 00:06:09.547
Ionia is this region
that's now in modern day,

00:06:09.547 --> 00:06:11.949
off the coast of modern-day Turkey.

00:06:11.949 --> 00:06:14.658
You have many of the
city-states that were part of

00:06:14.658 --> 00:06:17.391
this Athenian empire,
they're starting to revolt.

00:06:17.391 --> 00:06:21.230
You can imagine that the
Spartans are trying to help

00:06:21.230 --> 00:06:23.505
those revolts because they're
trying to get the Athenians

00:06:23.505 --> 00:06:24.880
wherever they are.

00:06:24.880 --> 00:06:28.463
This is often also
called the Decelean War.

00:06:32.315 --> 00:06:36.196
Decelea, I'm probably
not pronouncing it well,

00:06:36.196 --> 00:06:39.135
is a little village right over
here at the top of Attica,

00:06:39.135 --> 00:06:41.380
and it was a strategic
location that went over

00:06:41.380 --> 00:06:43.794
to the Spartans and that's
where the Decelean War

00:06:43.794 --> 00:06:44.961
gets its name.

00:06:45.833 --> 00:06:48.928
But over the course of this
third phase, the Spartans

00:06:48.928 --> 00:06:50.931
get help from the Persians.

00:06:50.931 --> 00:06:53.414
Remember this was their enemy,
they had unified the Spartans

00:06:53.414 --> 00:06:55.425
and Athenians had unified
against the Persians,

00:06:55.425 --> 00:06:56.609
but some time has passed.

00:06:56.609 --> 00:07:00.348
We're now 70 or 80 years later,
and the Spartans say hey,

00:07:00.348 --> 00:07:02.217
we want to win this thing decisively.

00:07:02.217 --> 00:07:06.558
They get the help of the
Persians and finally in 405 BCE

00:07:06.558 --> 00:07:10.308
there's decisive naval
battle at Aegospotami,

00:07:13.086 --> 00:07:15.591
and I'm sorry to all of you
Greeks out there that might

00:07:15.591 --> 00:07:17.741
be listening, I know my
pronunciation is not perfect

00:07:17.741 --> 00:07:21.302
or close to perfect, but
this is a decisive victory

00:07:21.302 --> 00:07:23.111
right over here for the Spartans.

00:07:23.111 --> 00:07:27.230
They're able to destroy the Athenian Navy,

00:07:27.230 --> 00:07:30.111
and that causes, that's
the decisive victory,

00:07:30.111 --> 00:07:33.223
and then in 404, this is in 405, in 404,

00:07:33.223 --> 00:07:36.758
the Athenians surrender and
the famous Peloponnesian War

00:07:36.758 --> 00:07:39.147
is over, the Spartans are victorious.

00:07:39.147 --> 00:07:41.907
But it's not a great victory
because as you can imagine,

00:07:41.907 --> 00:07:45.282
you have towns that have
been destroyed, large parts

00:07:45.282 --> 00:07:49.449
of Greece have been weakened,
and it leaves the whole area

00:07:51.941 --> 00:07:54.213
open to attack from others.

00:07:54.213 --> 00:07:56.947
And as we will see in the next
century, in the 4th century,

00:07:56.947 --> 00:08:00.657
we have Phillip of Macedon,
or Macedon depending on how

00:08:00.657 --> 00:08:02.841
you want to pronounce it,
who's able to use that

00:08:02.841 --> 00:08:05.660
vulnerable, and the
Macedonians or the Macedonians

00:08:05.660 --> 00:08:08.027
they are related to the
Greek people, but he's able

00:08:08.027 --> 00:08:10.914
to use that vulnerability
that happens over the course

00:08:10.914 --> 00:08:14.732
of the 5th century to attack
the city-states of Greece,

00:08:14.732 --> 00:08:17.878
but he actually is able to unify them.