Cheap Empires - The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization (DVD) (Cassian Harrison) Price

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Customer Reviews of Empires - The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization

This series does not cover every aspect of Greek political and social life... nor does it delve into ancient Greek religious beliefs, but what it does do is cover with great clarity the roots of democracy and its influence on Greek society as a whole. It describes how descisions were made when the Persian threat was at its highest, and how the Athenians dealt with the brute military society of the Spartans.

To cover Greek history in great detail requires extensive reading of voluminous academic literature... I don't believe any video series can accomplish this without becoming tens of thousands of hours long and impossibly expensive to the consumer... This series (as most historiographical series do) takes some of the key events and personalities of its chosen history and conveys it intriguingly, thus serving to satiate viewers' curiosity and inspire them to learn more.

Not in-depth enough for Greek historians, but a great choice for the rest of us!

Salamis Toward Athens


As noted by a number of reviewers, this DVD should have been called "The Athenians". The program suffers from a lack of detail despite its narrow focus.

The program uses shots of (I guess) live models standing stock still, in order to provide some kind of image of various characters from Athenian history who are profiled. The classical Athenians are portrayed as backstabbing turncoats, but still, the characters come and go for the most part without any kind of before and after history. Socrates is an exception, but literally everyone knows that story already, so no new ground is covered.

Themistocles, the genius behind Athens' naval victory over the Persians, was "ostracized" after his success -- a sign that the "democracy" of Athens was really just another fascist oligarchy -- and eventually wound up living in honor among his former enemies, the Persians. His ostracism is mentioned, but his ultimate fate in the Persian Empire is not. It would have taken an additional five or ten seconds.

The same can be said about the actions of another estranged Athenian, one who gave Sparta the key to success against Athens. Perhaps another ten or twenty seconds would have sufficed.

At one point during the war, Sparta sued for peace. The "democratic" government of Athens refused to parley. And as it imposed more and more tribute on the so-called Delian League, more and more of the tributary towns dumped Athens or even jumped to the Spartan side.

The "democracy" existed just long enough to start a major war with a view to a swift victory, then turn down the victory, and even widen the war, suffering a major defeat in the process, and eventually losing everything.

We see almost nothing regarding other Greek cities, even Sparta, the city on which Athens made war. The pretext for the war arose from something else entirely, and was the result of something Sparta did (as well as its political system), but this is not discussed in the video.

The video "The Spartans" [B0000C508X] deals strictly with the Greek city of Sparta, with an entire "episode" on the Peloponnesian War. Despite its focus on a single city, "The Spartans" does a better job of giving a real picture of life and politics in classical Greece. If you get "The Greeks", be sure to get "The Spartans" in order to see more of the picture, including important details of their struggle with Athens that are omitted from "The Greeks".

I do not agree that there was a lot to Sparta. It wasn't a sophisticated place at all. Besides the oppressive social structure, the mandatory buggery, the racism / elitism, the eugenics program, the enslavement of its neighbors for centuries, the employment of women as baby machines, and its defeat of Athens, followed by its defeat at the hands of its neighbor, there's little to know about Sparta. But boy, what an interesting and frightening story.

The Persians dealt piecemeal with the Greeks as much as possible. That strategy worked in Anatolia and elsewhere. The Greek city-states managed some major defeats of the Persians alone or by alliances, but on the other hand savaged each other using the Persians either as a pretext (the Delian League) or as an ally (Sparta, in the denouement of the Peloponnesian War). None of this is explained in the DVD, and again, it wouldn't have added significantly to the length.

"The Greeks" is a little on the repetitive side, and heavy on irrelevant modern graphics, possibly because it was intended for school aged viewers. The narrator's voice comes off as a little pompous in my opinion, and the soundtrack is ponderous. It's worth having around as an introduction to the city of Athens, provided this isn't the only thing in your video library. Enjoy.

Low Budget Pulp
Lot's of dramatic music, words like "astounding", "astonishing", "amazing" and endless close-up shots of ancient pottery, trees blowing in the wind, armour hanging on walls etc makes this a boring DVD. They obviously had a low budget. The idea of telling the story of the Greeks is good but this DVD doesn't do it any justice. Skip it.