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of History early and ad-free right now.

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Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app

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or Apple Podcasts. It

0:18

was a fine day to be out on the

0:20

Aegean Sea, just a few hours sail away from

0:22

the welcoming harbor of Aegean. The

0:25

sailors knew the luxuries that awaited them on

0:27

shore. Cheap wine, lamb

0:29

coated in honey and roasted on

0:31

skewers, laughter and songs, and dry

0:33

land underneath their feet. They

0:37

fancied that they could smell the roasting lamb now

0:39

over the salt of the sea breeze that filled

0:41

their sails and pushed the ship onward toward land.

0:44

It was in sight now. They could see

0:47

the unfinished harbor of Athens, the Piraeus, and

0:49

the distance ahead of them. But

0:51

in their opinion, at least for now, Aegean had the

0:53

better port. Better food like those

0:55

lamb skewers and cheaper wine. The

0:59

sailors argued among themselves as they drew near her.

1:02

One made the case for a pork dish he

1:04

had sampled in a tury years before, something cooked

1:06

in wine. Another said that

1:08

a slab of beef with sweetened porridge, the product

1:10

of a tavern in Egypt, was the best he'd

1:12

ever had. Another

1:15

said the porridge and Carthage was better.

1:17

The Carthaginians added cheese, eggs and honey.

1:19

It was just what a man needed after weeks at sea.

1:23

They were all wrong, said another. What

1:25

they did with shellfish and Byzantium was exquisite,

1:27

better than any of those dishes. Clearly,

1:30

hard bread, sour drink, and salted meat had

1:32

taken their toll on the sailors. Even

1:35

more than wine, food was on their minds. There

1:40

was the harbor now coming up ahead of them. They

1:42

passed two of Aegeanist tri-rooms, low, sleek

1:45

warships as they entered the Little Bay.

1:48

The Aegentaeans were famed for their ships and

1:50

the quality of their sailors. One

1:52

of the men crewing this merchant vessel had grown up

1:55

in Aegean before leaving home. His uncle

1:57

still had a wine shop near the harbor, he said. He'd give

1:59

them a good price. price on their first jumps. The

2:02

rest of them were from all over. There

2:05

were a half dozen from Tyre, including the vessel's

2:07

owner and sailing master. That was where

2:09

the ship had been built a decade before, but it

2:11

had traveled far and wide since then. They

2:14

had picked up two crew in Cyprus on a recent

2:16

stop. Both of them spoke broken

2:18

Phoenician and a little ionic Greek, and nobody

2:20

knew where they were originally from. They

2:22

themselves weren't certain. There

2:25

was one man with an Egyptian father and a Greek

2:27

mother, the man who had extolled that slab of beef.

2:30

He'd been raised in Nalkratis in the north of Egypt,

2:33

but had spent a couple of years far to the

2:35

south along the Nile. Two

2:37

brothers had joined the crew during a one off

2:39

stop in Syracuse. They didn't say much

2:42

about their life beforehand, and nobody asked. A

2:45

bunch were short timers from the islands of the

2:47

Aegean or the Ionian cities. It

2:50

was a cosmopolitan group, one well suited

2:52

to a big wide hold merchant ship

2:54

built of the finest cedar that made

2:56

long voyages over the open sea. Most

2:59

crews were more local, people from the

3:01

same port or seashore village, cousins and

3:03

davours drawn together. Not

3:05

these, they were professionals, deep water sailors,

3:08

the flossom and jetsom of the Mediterranean.

3:11

Some would stick around for a while, others would slip

3:14

off at Aegean without a word of farewell. The

3:17

ship would keep going, maybe around the Aegean, maybe

3:19

to Sicily or Etruria, maybe

3:21

still further if the right cargo came along. The

3:24

sailors would keep the ship moving and the cargo

3:26

safe until then, looking forward to the wine and

3:28

the food wherever they came ashore. Maybe

3:31

the next port would have the best and

3:33

most affordable drink, an unforgettable goat stew or

3:35

fried fish so tender that it crumbled in

3:37

your mouth. They were

3:39

connoisseurs of these things, the offerings of a

3:41

Mediterranean they would travel for years to come.

3:46

By 500 BC the Mediterranean had changed

3:48

dramatically. Over the course of just a

3:50

few centuries, cities had cropped up along

3:52

its shores. Colonies of migrants from far

3:54

away had brought new ideas and ways

3:56

of doing things to its most distant

3:59

corners. Trade had

4:01

bound the entire sea together like never

4:03

before. In

4:05

today's episode, let's take stock of the Mediterranean

4:07

at that pivotal moment on the cusp of

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Tides of History. I'm Patrick Wyman. Thanks so

5:59

much for joining. Around

6:02

900 BC, at the dawn of the

6:04

Iron Age, the Mediterranean was still a series

6:06

of regions. The Eastern Mediterranean

6:09

retained some coherence, with ties between the

6:11

coastline of the Levant and Egypt. The

6:13

Aegean too had kept some of its

6:16

regional character after the Bronze Age collapse.

6:18

We might say the same about the Tyrenean Sea. In

6:21

the far west, the southern coastline of Iberia formed

6:23

the most distant extension of an Atlantic world extending

6:25

all the way up to Britain and Ireland. Four

6:29

centuries later, however, the Mediterranean had become

6:31

a fully integrated space. It

6:33

still had its regions, of course, the networks

6:36

that were tied together in ever denser fashion,

6:38

but each of those regional networks was also

6:40

part of a larger whole. Goods

6:43

and people could make their way from Iberia to

6:45

the Levant, southern Gauls to

6:47

North Africa, or Egypt to Greece as

6:49

a matter of course rather than an

6:51

extraordinary singular voyage. Each

6:54

portion of the coastline was in turn connected to the

6:56

deep inland, tying the silver mines

6:58

of the Iberian interior to coinments thousands

7:00

of miles away, rick vineyards

7:02

clinging to hillsides around Corinth to consumers

7:05

in Carthage. The

7:07

distribution of peoples and languages around the

7:09

shores of the Mediterranean had changed dramatically

7:11

too. Colonists, primarily

7:13

from Greece and Phoenicia, had traveled

7:15

great distances to new homes, and

7:18

new groups of migrants and opportunistic elites had

7:20

taken advantage of the changing world to establish

7:23

themselves along the shores and river valleys. The

7:26

stage was set for the emergence of a world

7:28

that we can call classical. The

7:31

classical Mediterranean, with its striking and

7:33

widely shared cultural developments in art,

7:36

architecture, philosophy, literature, political thought, and

7:38

rhetoric, among many other things, was

7:40

based on a firm material foundation.

7:44

All of that built on was actually

7:46

predicated on the existence of an interconnected

7:48

economic space. Well, what do I

7:50

mean by that? Cultural developments don't

7:53

travel by themselves. They piggyback

7:55

on the everyday activities of people, and

7:57

those activities are much more likely to

7:59

involve trade. and subsistence than lofty

8:01

ideals of art and philosophy. Artists

8:05

who decorated fine ceramics with extraordinary paintings,

8:07

one of the hallmarks of the early

8:09

years of that interconnected Mediterranean, didn't usually

8:11

charter merchant vessels to take them from

8:14

Corinth to Syracuse or Rome. They

8:16

went on ships that were already traveling along

8:18

those routes. So

8:20

by 500 BC, the outlines of the classical

8:22

world had come into being. Not

8:25

entirely, not everywhere, but if we

8:27

squint, it's just possible to see

8:29

how we can get to Alexander

8:31

the Great, the Hellenistic world and

8:33

Rome's eventual political unification of the

8:35

Mediterranean basin. That hadn't

8:37

been true even a century before that. Momentous

8:41

things were happening around 500 BC. The

8:44

Greeks of the mainland were about to be confronted with the

8:46

full might of the Persian Empire. Centuries

8:49

of Phoenician activity in the Western Mediterranean

8:51

had created a new Punic world, and

8:54

the rising city of Carthage was about to take over

8:56

its leadership. The Greeks

8:58

of Sicily and southern Italy were fully established.

9:00

They were still a part of the broader

9:02

Greek world, but very much political, economic and

9:04

cultural players in their own right. Rome

9:07

was in the process of ridding itself of its

9:10

kings and reinventing itself as a republic, or something

9:12

like one. In the

9:14

east, the Persians dominated the entire

9:16

Mediterranean coast from Anatolia to Egypt,

9:19

and the general peace and prosperity they brought to

9:21

the region helped create an economic boom. In

9:24

today's episode, we'll tour that Mediterranean world

9:26

as it existed around 500 BC. We'll

9:30

travel the same trade routes that tied the

9:32

sea and its environs together, and we'll follow

9:34

the same paths that merchants, soldiers and slaves

9:36

took as they traversed the ever busier maritime

9:38

highways of the ancient world. More

9:41

generally, this is a good time to stop

9:43

and take stock of where we are before

9:45

another burst of investigation takes us through the

9:48

5th and 4th centuries BC. Carthage,

9:51

the early years of the Roman

9:53

Republic, Classical Greece, the Peloponnesian War

9:55

and the eventual rise of Macedonia.

10:00

need to grasp the economic networks that

10:02

tied people together, the political conflicts that

10:04

pulled them apart, the shared

10:06

cultural heritage and the striking new developments

10:08

that were emerging in this milieu. But

10:11

first, we need to talk about chronology and 500

10:14

BC more generally. It's

10:17

been quite a long time since I really

10:19

talked about chronology and periodization, or how and

10:21

why we divide up historical time into different

10:24

ages and periods. There

10:26

are all sorts of discussions that historians,

10:29

and it's mostly historians, have about periodization

10:31

and its value, or the lack thereof.

10:34

How we separate Bronze Age from Iron

10:36

Age, Classical from Medieval, Medieval from Modern,

10:38

and so on. The

10:41

reason it's often held to be overrated is

10:43

because the human experience is the summation of

10:45

so many different aspects of life, ranging from

10:47

religious belief and subsistence practices to the highest

10:50

of high politics. Now

10:52

generally speaking, we build chronologies on politics

10:54

because that's what's most accessible in the

10:57

textual record. Historians

10:59

or analysts or what have you wrote

11:01

about changes of dynasties and forms of

11:03

government or conquests and wars. Because

11:06

people in the past wrote about that, their

11:08

modern successors picked it up, valued it, and

11:11

used it as the basis for divvying up

11:13

historical time. On the

11:15

ground though, the shift from one dynasty to

11:17

another or even a conquest might not have

11:19

changed all that much about people's lives. It's

11:22

not like folks living at what we think of as

11:24

the end of the Middle Ages woke up one day

11:26

and thought, you know, I'm feeling more early modern now.

11:30

Even the broadest labels like Bronze Age or

11:32

Iron Age don't necessarily tell us that much.

11:36

People living in the Bronze Age often use stone

11:38

tools far more than bronze. They might

11:40

have even been aware of Iron's existence. By

11:43

contrast, Iron Age people might not actually have used

11:45

iron all that much. When

11:48

the Iron Age started might vary by hundreds of

11:50

years depending on precisely where we're talking about. In

11:53

The Aegean It started around 1000 BC, but in

11:55

Northwest Europe the Iron Age didn't begin for at

11:57

least a couple of centuries more. The.

12:01

Upshot is that these labels are just

12:03

that. Their labels. They're supposed to help

12:05

us locate ourselves in time at the

12:07

broadest possible levels like signposts on a

12:09

road. Whether. They're useful

12:11

or not depends entirely on whether they

12:13

serve that purpose. Now.

12:16

With that said, there are some dates that

12:18

stick out as major turning points. I.

12:20

Wrote a whole book on why the your fifteen hundred as

12:22

one of them. Might be a spoiler,

12:24

but it's because a whole bunch of things were

12:26

happening around the same time. And those

12:29

things came together and mutually reinforcing ways

12:31

to create periods of intense and rapid

12:33

change. We. Can dress

12:35

all that up in much fancier and

12:37

more technical terms like my personal preference

12:39

we would call a critical juncture but

12:41

now been the same thing. Was.

12:44

Stuff went down and happen pretty quickly in

12:46

the grand scheme of things, and the course

12:48

of history was set on a substantially different

12:50

path. As a result, This.

12:52

Is relevant to today's episode because I think

12:55

five hundred bc give or take a couple

12:57

of decades on either side represents that kind

12:59

of shift. Tell. That

13:01

to somebody who works on Ancient Greece and they'll look

13:03

at you like it's obvious. Five. Hundred

13:05

is the roughly accept a turning point from the

13:07

archaic to the classical periods when we're talking about

13:10

Greece. So of course was a major shift. We.

13:12

Can see that with the beginnings of

13:15

democracy in Athens, the defeat of the

13:17

Persian invasion, and flowerings of the philosophical,

13:19

dramatic and historical traditions, but was really

13:21

striking at least me is that big

13:24

things, but only happening in Greece of

13:26

that time. In. Rome. At

13:28

that same time they were expelling the park

13:30

ones and sounding the Republic. Even

13:32

if when and how those things happened

13:34

are rather less clear than textbook accounts

13:36

usually suggest this was indeed the timeframe.

13:39

Leaving. Aside the invasion of Greece, the

13:41

rise of the Person Empire, and it's

13:43

integration of the whole region from the

13:46

Indus Valley to the Balkans, Egypt, the

13:48

Caucasus was a massive development. for

13:50

our purposes those of the mediterranean the

13:52

entire eastern portion of the region and

13:55

by far it's most densely populated and

13:57

wealthy house was under the rule of

13:59

a single political entity for the first

14:01

time. Again, that happened in

14:03

the decades around 500 BC. In

14:07

the central Mediterranean, the emergence of Carthage as

14:09

a major political power happened right around 500

14:11

BC. That

14:13

was when the Carthaginians began to integrate

14:15

the other Phoenician founded colonies into its

14:17

sphere of influence and assign major commercial

14:19

treaties with cities like Rome. That

14:22

was also when they began to explore their

14:24

political and military ambitions in Sicily, the crossroads

14:27

of the Mediterranean. In

14:29

Southern Gaul, the Greek colony of Massilia was

14:31

reaching the point of maturity and its commercial

14:33

connections with the Celtic speaking people of the

14:35

region were intensifying. They too were

14:37

in the midst of their own transformation as

14:39

the whole stock period began to produce elites

14:42

of spectacular power and wealth. We

14:44

could go on and on, but it won't change

14:46

the basic point. The decades around 500

14:49

BC were the site of a major

14:51

series of shifts, especially in, but not

14:53

limited to Mediterranean politics. So

14:57

why then? What exactly was

14:59

going on that led to so many processes

15:01

and events happening right around that time? Well,

15:04

the first thing to note is that those

15:06

are events of which we're aware that

15:09

have entered the historical and sometimes even

15:11

the archeological records. The

15:13

historical record is fundamentally a written one.

15:16

And by 500 BC, the technology

15:18

of writing had both spread far

15:20

across the Mediterranean and rooted itself

15:22

deeply in the cultures it had

15:25

touched. People, especially

15:27

Greeks, but not just them, were

15:29

writing things down. They

15:31

were doing so in large enough numbers that some of

15:33

their works have survived to the present or

15:35

at least made it into the works of

15:38

other ancient historians whose texts have survived. In

15:41

other places, we don't have historical texts, but

15:43

we do have other kinds of records, inscriptions

15:46

on stone or metal, pottery fragments

15:48

with writing, things of that kind. By

15:51

500 BC, the Mediterranean had

15:53

become a fundamentally historical space.

15:57

Prehistory continued elsewhere, especially inland,

15:59

but... pretty much everywhere the sea

16:01

touched had entered the realm of written

16:03

history. But

16:06

writing was just a symptom of the larger development.

16:09

The Phoenician and Greek colonies that were scattered

16:11

around the central and western Mediterranean weren't really

16:14

colonies anymore in the sense of being satellites

16:16

of a far away and more sophisticated homeland

16:18

if that had ever actually been the case

16:20

in the first place. They

16:23

had become cities and powers in their own right.

16:25

The rise of Carthage, a Phoenician founded settlement,

16:28

was mirrored by the rise of Syracuse, a

16:30

Greek founded settlement in Sicily. Neither

16:32

was taking orders from anybody else in 500

16:34

BC, and in fact they were carving out

16:36

their own spheres of influence, even empires. Croton

16:40

and Tarentum, two of the major urban

16:42

centers of Magna Graecia in southern Italy,

16:44

were as large or larger than just

16:46

about any city in mainland Greece. Gadiia,

16:49

today's Gades was a commercial port that

16:51

matched anything in Phoenicia itself. Beyond

16:55

sheer size, population, and wealth, these

16:57

settlements weren't cultural dependencies of the

16:59

homeland either. They were fully

17:01

fledged societies in their own right,

17:03

created by the ongoing interactions between

17:05

indigenous people and colonists than their

17:07

descendants. That had been

17:09

going on not for years or decades, but

17:12

centuries. To treat these

17:14

places as if they were still fledgling

17:16

colonies, rather than powers in their own

17:18

right, is to miss how thoroughly the

17:20

Mediterranean had been transformed. You're

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18:33

by 500 BC, the Mediterranean looked nothing

18:36

like it had 400 years before. Formerly

18:39

marginal areas were now densely populated,

18:42

agricultural and urban landscapes. There

18:45

were orders of magnitude more people living on the land

18:47

than had been the case and a great many of

18:49

those people were now living in cities. And

18:52

the relative blink of a historical eye,

18:54

cities had become one of the defining

18:56

features of an interconnected Mediterranean. Many

18:59

of them had tens of thousands of inhabitants. There

19:02

hadn't been cities through huge stretches of

19:04

the sea before and whether urbanism was

19:06

an import from the East, as archaeologists

19:09

and historians used to believe, or an

19:11

independent development as most now argue, is

19:13

less important than the simple fact of

19:15

it. Villages and

19:17

towns or fresh foundations had become

19:20

thriving cities with monumental temples, towering

19:22

walls and most of all, bustling

19:24

ports. Let's

19:27

start with a bird's eye view of the whole. We

19:29

can divide the Mediterranean into four rough

19:31

zones at this time, the areas in

19:33

which the individual towns and cities were

19:35

more tightly tied to one another than

19:37

to places outside. Basically,

19:39

we're looking at the product of human

19:41

and natural geography, the areas within which

19:44

the majority of traffic took place. Remember,

19:47

most of the trade in the Mediterranean was on

19:49

a small local scale, a boat going

19:51

from one little port or beach town to the

19:53

next, a cart full or two of grain going

19:55

from one valley to the next. The

19:57

scale then moved upward, but the volume of trade did not change. Ministers

20:00

the roots got longer. So

20:02

when we're talking about what tied these regions together,

20:05

it was simply the volume of traffic within them.

20:08

The. Largest and most important port cities

20:10

almost always sat at the intersection of

20:12

multiple zones. The places where those patterns

20:15

of traffic overlapped. The.

20:17

Western zone extended out into the Atlantic

20:19

coast, the Morocco and today Spain and

20:21

Southern Portugal, and then brand north along

20:23

the coast of Iberia and east along

20:25

the coast of North Africa. This

20:28

was the zone for nice dominance. It's

20:30

major hub was got the if today's

20:32

Cadiz facing the Atlantic in southern Spain.

20:35

At. The it was already an old

20:37

city by five hundred bc was nearing

20:39

four hundred years names, and it marked

20:41

the westernmost meter destination for traffic across

20:44

the Mediterranean. There were

20:46

other finish unfounded cities and towns along

20:48

the Iberian coastline. Many of them, such

20:50

as Malaga, Few. Were

20:52

as straightforwardly commercial as got the or had

20:54

been at It's Foundation. They.

20:56

Were centers of agriculture including wine and

20:58

all of production as well as fishing,

21:01

metallurgy, and pottery making. Thousands.

21:04

Of Phoenicians a decamped for the west over

21:06

the preceding centuries, and their descendants were spread

21:08

along the coasts at regular intervals. The.

21:12

Phoenicians weren't the only people living there are Not by

21:14

a longshot, There. Were tons of indigenous

21:16

Iberian to various stripes, Celtic speakers and

21:18

the existing people's of North Africa as

21:21

well. Especially along the

21:23

Iberian coastline, there were true hybrid

21:25

cultures coming into being combined various

21:27

traditions and heritage's some of the

21:29

nice an extraction and others indigenous.

21:32

In the fishing villages, craft towns,

21:34

and emporia of seven Iberia, it

21:36

was no longer a straightforward matter

21:38

of differentiating between colonists and locals.

21:41

actions might be worshipped in the

21:43

same town of the same small

21:45

region, While techniques viticulture imported from

21:47

Phoenicia coexisted with agricultural methods that

21:49

Iberian said practice for centuries. That.

21:52

Melting Pot in fact become common across

21:54

much of the Western and Central Mediterranean.

21:57

As. immigrants assimilated an altered the

21:59

society's which they came into contact. The

22:02

Greeks were more recent arrivals to the far west and

22:04

had founded several colonies in the region by 500 BC.

22:08

The most famous was Massilia, today's Marseille, in

22:10

southern Gaul, which was about a century old.

22:14

In the centuries to come, it would be one

22:16

of the dominant ports of the entire Mediterranean, but

22:18

in 500 it was still a relatively minor player.

22:21

The west really belonged to the Punic-speaking

22:23

world and to its indigenous inhabitants. Sardinia

22:26

is a great example of this. It was

22:29

a fundamental part of this greater Punic-speaking

22:31

world in the western Mediterranean, but

22:33

its indigenous inhabitants were still around and

22:35

they were still occupying their centuries old

22:37

stone towers called Nouradzi. Because

22:40

of its wealth of metal resources, the Phoenicians had come

22:42

there early and never left. In

22:44

fact, Sardinia was among their first stops on their

22:47

westward journeys. The later

22:49

arrivals integrated themselves with the local

22:51

population and Sardinia fit seamlessly within

22:53

both its own indigenous world and

22:55

that larger Punic context. From

22:59

there, things got a little harder to define. The

23:02

Phoenician-founded cities of western Sicily belonged more in

23:04

the western zone than the central, and the

23:06

most important of them in this period was

23:08

Motea. Motea was located on

23:10

an island just off the western coast of

23:12

Sicily, protected from the open sea by a

23:14

still larger island, which gave it both protection

23:16

from the elements and a fine natural harbor.

23:20

It was typical of the sites the Phoenicians chose

23:22

for their colonies, not necessarily

23:24

blessed with an enormous agricultural hinterland,

23:26

but facing outward toward the sea

23:28

in a highly defensible location. But

23:32

Sicily as a whole sat on the

23:34

fault line between three different zones. It

23:36

was a meeting point between dramatically different

23:38

traditions oriented in different directions. The

23:41

Phoenicians were representatives of just one of those

23:43

traditions. The Greeks residing

23:45

mostly in its eastern half located in cities

23:48

such as Syracuse pulled it in

23:50

two different directions, north toward Italy

23:52

in the Tyrenean Sea, the second of our

23:54

four zones, and east toward Greece in the

23:56

Aegean, the third zone we'll discuss today. Of

24:00

course, there was Sicily's indigenous populace,

24:02

which in itself consisted of at

24:04

least three different groups of varying

24:06

linguistic backgrounds. It

24:08

wasn't just natural geography at its central

24:10

location, but also human geography that would

24:13

make Sicily a battleground for centuries to

24:15

come. If

24:17

we go just a few days south from Sicily,

24:19

we reach one of the great and expanding port

24:21

cities of the whole Mediterranean, Carthage.

24:24

If we stick to our four-zone model of

24:26

the Mediterranean, we can make a good argument

24:29

that all four of those zones met at

24:31

Carthage. It was originally

24:33

a Phoenician colony, of course, and it retained

24:35

that Phoenician heritage in its language and some

24:37

of its core cultural traditions, but Carthage was

24:40

well on its way to becoming a power

24:42

in its own right. The

24:44

Punic world, rather than being oriented toward

24:46

the increasingly distant home city such as

24:49

Tyre, would look instead to Carthage

24:51

as their natural center over the coming

24:53

centuries. That transition

24:55

is something we'll talk about in the coming weeks on Tyres.

24:59

In 500 BC, there was still a ton

25:01

of traffic coming eastward from Phoenicia itself that

25:03

either terminated or at least passed through Carthage

25:05

on its way further west. Trade

25:08

from Sardinia, Sicily, and the Western Mediterranean

25:11

all came through Carthage. Traders

25:13

from Greece and the Aegean were a common

25:16

sight, and so were their material goods, such

25:18

as fine pottery, for which the Carthaginians had

25:20

long had a particular taste. Carthaginian

25:24

merchants were a common sight in the Tyrean

25:26

Sea, the second of our four zones, and

25:28

it was right around this time that the

25:30

Carthaginian authorities would sign their first treaty with

25:32

a growing city called Rome. Far

25:35

more so than Rome itself, it's easy to see

25:38

how and why Carthage became a power to be

25:40

reckoned with in the Mediterranean. Its

25:43

fine port, its extensive commercial connections,

25:45

and the exceptional agricultural potential of

25:47

the surrounding region made it a

25:49

natural candidate to exercise enormous power

25:51

and influence far beyond its corner

25:53

of North Africa. The

25:55

Tyrean Sea is the name for the body of

25:57

water off the west coast of Italy, the sea-bound

26:00

by Sicily in the north, Corsica and Sardinia

26:02

in the west, and Italy in the east. We

26:05

might include the Ligurian Sea right at the top

26:07

of the Italian boot as an extension of this

26:10

region. In 500 BC, the

26:13

dominant force in this region was

26:15

the Etruscans, the non-Indo-European-speaking people of

26:17

Italy. They weren't politically

26:19

unified, but instead inhabited a group

26:21

of culturally related but rival city-states

26:23

extending through northern and especially central

26:26

Italy, all the way to the

26:28

doorstep of Rome. Rome

26:30

was very much a part of this Etruscan

26:33

political world, and the expulsion of the Tarquin

26:35

dynasty, who were of Etruscan origin, was

26:37

less a rejection of the Etruscans than a

26:39

continuation of how political business in this part

26:42

of the world was done. Part

26:45

of the reason for these intense

26:47

rivalries and aristocratic competition was the

26:49

sheer wealth and density of this

26:51

Etruscan slash Latin-Tyranian world, with the

26:53

Greeks of Magna Graecia and Sicily

26:55

a strong presence on its southern

26:57

edge. The cities

26:59

were separated from one another by no more

27:01

than a few dozen miles, and the intervening

27:04

countryside was full of towns and villages. The

27:07

hills of Italy were rich in a variety

27:09

of metals, and the inhabitants of Italy were

27:11

expert miners, smelters, and smiths. In

27:14

fact, the metal trade had grown and grown.

27:16

It had become truly industrial in scale by

27:18

500 BC, with enormous mines

27:20

and smelteries and a highly developed trade

27:22

network taking their products across the region.

27:26

The elites who controlled access to and

27:28

trade in these metals and metal products

27:31

were tremendously wealthy, and their wealth translated

27:33

directly into political power and ambition. It

27:37

was almost certainly these metal resources that had

27:39

first drawn the Greeks to the region a

27:41

couple of centuries before, and by now the

27:43

Tyrrhenian Sea was a quite cosmopolitan place. There

27:46

were plenty of Greeks living in the cities

27:49

of Etruria and Latium, Rome included, and both

27:51

imports of Greek goods and local imitations or

27:53

knockoffs were a common sight. They

27:56

were an even greater presence in southern Italy, where they

27:58

had arrived in numbers. over the past 200 or

28:01

so years. Greek-founded

28:03

colonies were scattered across Campania, including Naples,

28:05

forming the western edge of what we

28:07

know as Magna Graecia, Greater Greece. Yet

28:11

politically, the Greeks weren't necessarily dominant

28:13

throughout that region. Etruscan

28:15

elites were a major presence in Campania,

28:17

and the indigenous italic speakers, mainly oscans,

28:20

were resurgent at this time. They took

28:22

control of several cities in the interior.

28:26

The Tyrrhenian zone was a mosaic of

28:28

peoples, and politically, it was no less

28:30

complex and confusing. We

28:32

know that Rome would eventually come to

28:34

dominate not only this region, but the

28:36

whole Mediterranean. In 500 BC, there was no reason

28:38

to think that would be the case. The

28:41

smart money was more likely to have been on

28:43

the Etruscans or the Greeks rather than Rome, though

28:45

even at this stage, Rome did have a great

28:47

deal going for it. The

28:49

biggest thing, if you'll pardon the pun, was its

28:52

sheer size. The city already

28:54

had tens of thousands of residents and

28:56

was larger than its nearest Etruscan neighbors,

28:58

which had more limited agricultural hinterlands and

29:01

more close rivals. The

29:03

Etruscan city of Veii was close to Rome,

29:05

just a short distance up to Tybur, but

29:07

Latium itself had no cities that were anywhere

29:09

close to Rome in size. Still,

29:12

Rome was a bit player on the edges

29:14

at this point, it wasn't an obvious hegemonic

29:16

power in the making. It would

29:18

take a massive series of upheavals and trials

29:21

over the course of the fifth and fourth

29:23

centuries BC, some of them external but many

29:25

within the city itself, to make Rome a

29:27

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the south of Rome where the cities of

30:22

Magna Graecia and the fertile, densely populated countryside

30:24

of Campania. Further to the

30:26

south, the Tyrrean zone edged into what we can

30:28

call the Greek zone, the third of our four

30:30

regions. It was centered on the

30:33

Greek mainland, as we might expect, but it extended

30:35

far beyond, forming a rough triangle with Greece

30:37

itself in the middle. The

30:39

foot of the Italian boot and the eastern coast

30:41

of Sicily were one corner, the

30:43

city of Cyrene in North Africa was

30:45

another, and the western coast of Anatolia,

30:47

the Ionian cities were the last. We

30:50

could find Greeks outside that zone, of course,

30:53

a great many of them, but within that

30:55

region, the Greeks were unquestionably dominant. By

30:57

500 BC, there were simply so many of

31:00

them. A population boom

31:02

had begun in Greece in the

31:04

eighth century BC, roughly doubling the

31:06

population until unused land was rare,

31:08

villages multiplied, and some of those

31:10

villages had grown into true cities. At

31:13

the same time as these processes were happening

31:15

within Greece, some people began to leave. They

31:18

founded dozens upon dozens of colonies, everywhere

31:20

from the Black Sea to the Western

31:22

Mediterranean, but the vast majority of them

31:25

were situated within that triagular region I

31:27

just laid out. The

31:29

most prominent of the new foundations were located

31:31

on the western edge of the Ionian Sea,

31:34

the body of water at the head of

31:36

the Adriatic separating the Greek mainland from Sicily

31:38

in southern Italy. Syracuse,

31:40

Croton, and Taurus, Tarentum, grew until

31:42

they were as large or larger

31:44

than any city in Greece proper.

31:47

Their fertile agricultural hinterlands, thriving craft

31:50

workshops, and bustling ports made them

31:52

wealthy and prosperous. The.

31:55

Foundations continued all the way up to 500

31:57

BC and after, filling in the open spaces

31:59

with. Greek speakers of all stripes.

32:03

Now. It's easy for us to look at these people

32:05

and call them all Greeks. When. They

32:07

thought of themselves. However, they were far more likely

32:10

to think in terms of their cities of origin

32:12

than a share of identity as Greeks. After.

32:15

All their dialects varied greatly, sometimes to

32:17

the point where they weren't mutually intelligible.

32:20

Political. Forms for the same from one place

32:22

to another. They. Competed with one

32:24

another for dominance and craft production

32:26

and trade, but also in athletics,

32:28

singing, and even generosity to religious

32:30

shrines. Commercial. Rivalries

32:32

could easily turn into something more

32:34

serious. Most. Of

32:36

all their cities fought each other constantly

32:38

of a scraps of territory, for control

32:41

of trade and for prestige. So.

32:43

While we might label them on Greeks, that's

32:45

not an accurate representation of how they felt

32:48

about one another. When

32:50

the person showed up on the fringes of

32:52

the Greek world, for example, there were plenty

32:54

of cities and factions within cities. the chose

32:56

to ally themselves with the great king. That.

32:59

Wasn't a betrayal of Greek unity because

33:01

that simply didn't exist. The.

33:03

Idea was laughable, and the great kings armies

33:05

were full of Greeks. Still,

33:08

There was an emerging sense of greatness as

33:10

we get closer to and past five hundred

33:12

bc. When. That was reinforced by events

33:15

and institutions that brought people together from

33:17

all across the Greek world. Religious.

33:20

Festivals and games for the most important among

33:22

them usually held it places that were held

33:24

in common, not the property of a single

33:26

city. And. As we

33:28

think of that emerging Greek world, it's

33:30

essential to understand that it extended far

33:32

beyond the Greek mainland. There.

33:34

Had been Greeks and and it's holiest since the

33:36

Mycenaean period and those cities were every bit as

33:38

old as and in the mainland. Many.

33:41

Of the colonial, foundations had grown to outstrip

33:43

their parents cities. The point

33:45

is that Greece living in Syracuse or Ionian,

33:48

or say, Reni in North Africa were no

33:50

less Greek than someone born in Athens or

33:52

Quartz. That distinction simply wouldn't have made sense

33:54

to them. The

33:57

Greeks were a fractious lot and they fought not

33:59

only among. themselves but also with non-Greeks.

34:02

In Campania, Greeks fought against Etruscans

34:04

and the native italic speakers, mainly

34:06

Oskans. Sicily would soon become

34:08

a battleground between the rising Carthaginians and

34:10

the emerging Greek tyrants of the area,

34:12

especially those of Syracuse. The

34:15

largest conflict of all would erupt at the eastern

34:17

fringe of the Greek zone, where the Ionian cities

34:19

had come under the control of the Persian Empire

34:21

in the second half of the sixth century BC.

34:25

It was Athens' support in the opening

34:27

days of the Ionian Revolt that resulted

34:29

first in the expedition that was defeated

34:31

at Marathon, and eventually in the massive

34:33

invasion of Greece led by Xerxes in

34:35

480 BC. The

34:38

politics of the Greek world were messy and

34:40

hard to understand even for those steeped in

34:42

them, and to the Persians they were practically

34:44

incomprehensible. Speaking

34:47

of the Persians, it's hard to overstate

34:49

the magnitude of what the first three

34:51

Persian kings, Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius I

34:53

achieved in the second half of the

34:55

sixth century BC. The

34:58

fact that the Persians are so often associated

35:00

with their interactions with the Greek world is

35:02

a great historical crime. The

35:04

Greeks were minor players on the edges

35:06

of a far larger and greater imperial

35:08

space, and viewing everything through the lens

35:10

the Greeks had for centuries led us

35:13

to misunderstand and undervalue the Persians. Beginning

35:16

humbly in the mountains of western

35:18

Iran, Cyrus the Great succeeded in

35:21

conquering Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the Iranian

35:23

Plateau before his death. Cambyses,

35:25

his son and successor, added the

35:27

exceptionally populous and fertile realm of

35:29

Egypt. Darius extended Persian

35:32

rule all the way to the Indus Valley

35:34

of South Asia, into the steppes around the

35:36

Black Sea, and onto the European continent north

35:38

of Greece. There

35:41

had never been an empire anywhere close

35:43

to its size before, not even close,

35:45

and it wasn't a stretch for rulers like

35:47

Darius and Xerxes to term themselves Great King.

35:50

By and large, and there were exceptions

35:52

especially in times of rebellion, Persian rule was quite peaceful and

35:54

prosperous. Trade flowed even further. easily

36:00

between the fertile plain of Mesopotamia, the

36:02

highlands of Iran, the Nile Valley, and

36:04

the port cities of the Mediterranean. Minted

36:08

coins, a recent innovation, spread throughout the

36:10

Persian Empire. People moved

36:12

around in great numbers, some of them driven

36:14

by the needs and directives of the great

36:16

kings, others pulled by opportunities. Some

36:19

Greeks, for example, traveled all the way to the

36:21

Persian heartland. All

36:23

of this resulted in a vast increase in

36:25

the possibilities of trade and movement that extended

36:28

all the way into the Mediterranean. The

36:32

eastern zone of the Mediterranean was under Persian control

36:34

by 500 BC. The

36:37

Ionian coast of Anatolia facing the Aegean,

36:39

the island of Cyprus, the Syrian coastline,

36:41

the rich trading cities of Phoenicia, Egypt,

36:44

and Libya, all of that fell

36:46

under the rule of the great king, though

36:48

in practice the satraps, governors, had a great

36:50

deal of autonomy. They

36:52

were in effect subsidiary rulers with enormous freedom

36:54

of action, so long as their ambitions didn't

36:57

place them in direct conflict with the great

36:59

king. When that did

37:01

happen, they were dealt with decisively. For

37:04

the most part, the interests of the great king

37:06

and his most important servants aligned. They

37:09

benefited from the spoils of further conquest

37:11

and the exceptional prosperity flowing through Persian

37:14

rule of lands, from the economic and

37:16

political integration of the region, and the

37:18

lack of invasions and external threats. Somewhat

37:22

ironically, the composition of the Persian fleet that came to

37:24

Greece in 480 BC is

37:26

a great representative of the maritime connections

37:28

that the Persians controlled in the eastern

37:31

Mediterranean. Their fleet

37:33

consisted of Phoenicians, Syrians, Egyptians, Cypriots,

37:35

Cilician, that's the corner where Anatolia

37:37

and Syria meet, along with Lycians,

37:39

the Ionian Greeks from western Anatolia,

37:41

and the Greeks of the Hellespont

37:43

in the Black Sea. That's

37:46

according to Herodotus and there's no good reason to doubt him

37:48

on any of it. So

37:52

that was the Mediterranean, a bird's eye view of

37:54

it, around 500 BC. But

37:57

before we go, we should try to understand how it

37:59

actually functions. how ships and people moved around

38:01

it from place to place. Let's

38:04

imagine our friends from the start of this episode, the

38:06

sailors who love to argue about the varieties of port

38:08

food and the quality and price of the wine, going

38:11

on a series of voyages around the Mediterranean. It

38:15

is extremely unlikely, indeed impossible, that they would have

38:17

done the whole thing in a single leap. Instead,

38:19

they would have traveled from point to point,

38:22

port to port. After

38:24

their stopover in Ijina, near Athens, let's imagine they

38:26

went back to Phoenicia, and that's where we'll start.

38:31

So we'll start our journey in the east, in

38:33

the port of Tyre, where that ship had been

38:35

built, the ancient Phoenician city whose colonists had founded

38:37

so many new cities far to the west. Tyre,

38:40

Sidon, Biblas, and the other port cities of

38:42

the Levant were the most important nodes in

38:45

the eastern Mediterranean. They were

38:47

the endpoints for much of the inland

38:49

trade and centers of distribution for both

38:51

those and locally manufactured goods, like the

38:53

purple dye for which Phoenicia was famous.

38:56

From here, the sailors could go north

38:58

along the Syrian coastline with the smaller coastal

39:00

vessels that moved goods up and down the

39:02

seaboard from city to city, or south to

39:05

Egypt. But instead, the

39:07

crew took a cargo of purple dye and

39:09

preserved dates into open water to Cyprus. Cyprus

39:12

was a necalectic place, a mixture of

39:14

influences from all directions, Greece and its

39:17

holy, the Levant, and Egypt, and it

39:19

marked the intersection of the eastern and

39:21

Greek zones of the Mediterranean. It

39:24

was a key stopping point and center

39:26

of distribution, as well as the producer

39:28

of crafts, agricultural goods, and especially metal

39:30

ores. From

39:33

here, the crew picked up some copper and continued to

39:35

the west, into the Aegean. They

39:37

might stop at a port city like the island

39:39

of Samos, or they might continue to the Greek

39:41

mainland to Corinth or Athens. But

39:44

as we discussed at the beginning, they thought the food

39:46

was better at Aegean, so that was where they stopped

39:48

instead. From here,

39:51

they could head north to the Black Sea, but

39:53

instead they kept going west after rounding the Peloponnese.

39:56

Their destination was Syracuse, a straight shot west

39:59

across the east. the Ionian Sea with

40:01

a cargo of finely painted pottery. Those

40:04

sailors, again sick of hard bread, sour drink,

40:06

and salted meat, were out of sight

40:09

of land for an uncomfortably long period of time,

40:12

but in this busy port they could

40:14

rest before continuing, their noses leading them.

40:17

From here they'll go north, through the Straits

40:19

of Messina and into the Tyrenean Sea. The

40:22

sailors make a brief stop on the island of Ischia,

40:24

just offshore in the Bay of Naples, and then past

40:26

the mouth of the Tiber. Rome

40:30

is just upriver, but their ship is

40:32

headed for the metal-rich coast of Etruria

40:34

instead. They pass by

40:36

furnaces and smelteries belching smoke into the sky,

40:38

pick up a cargo of wine and ceramics.

40:42

They take that past Corsica and across

40:44

the Ligurian Sea to Massilia, the Greek-founded

40:46

port in southern Gaul. They

40:49

taste a beef dish of the kind favored

40:51

by the cattle-loving Celtic speakers who live upriver,

40:53

pronounce it passable. Other

40:55

traders will take the wine upriver to those

40:58

same Celtic speakers living in the interior, but

41:00

the crew will make their journey westward instead.

41:03

They stop to pick up supplies at indigenous

41:05

Iberian settlements along the eastern coast of Iberia

41:07

before they start to hear more of the

41:09

Punic language along the southern coast. Fishing

41:12

boats and trading ships are thick in the

41:15

water there, traveling from village to village and

41:17

city to city, part of the constant flow

41:19

of traffic in these waters. A

41:21

few more days' journey brings them to the great port

41:23

of Gadir and the Atlantic. Here

41:26

they snag a cargo of silver bullion and turn

41:28

to the east. They

41:31

skirt the coast of North Africa and stop for

41:33

food and water at trading stations where they hear

41:35

both the indigenous languages and Phoenician, which many of

41:37

them spoke. The ship

41:39

could turn north to Sardinia or stop

41:41

at Motia on the western coast of

41:43

Sicily, but no Mediterranean trip can afford

41:46

to skip the amenities of Carthage. They

41:49

all sample the characteristic dish of the city,

41:51

porridge mixed with eggs, cheese, and honey, and

41:53

they agree it's a quality meal. The

41:57

some of their silver stops here to be turned

41:59

into coinage. they pick up a load of

42:01

wheat and wine to take a short hop across the sea

42:03

to the island of Malta. From

42:05

Malta they go southeast to Greek-founded Cyrene and

42:08

Libya, then along the arid coast to the

42:10

mouth of the Nile, before finally turning back

42:12

to the north and returning to Tyre. For

42:18

our sailors, this whole journey has taken

42:20

two, three, maybe even four years to

42:22

complete. In that time

42:24

they've heard dozens of different languages and dialects,

42:26

from Phoenician to the varieties

42:28

of Greek to Etruscan, and then back to

42:31

Phoenician. They've seen a

42:33

tremendous variety of trade goods, from iron ore

42:35

to ceramics of all kinds, to agricultural products

42:37

to salted fish. Most

42:39

of that trade has been on a local scale,

42:42

from one inlet and coastal village to the next.

42:45

They've passed hundreds and hundreds of small

42:47

vessels, more boats than ships, going from

42:49

beach to beach or cove to cove.

42:52

It's easy to overstate the importance of

42:55

exceptionally long journeys of the kind we've

42:57

imagined here, but most of life in

42:59

the Mediterranean was just everyday people making

43:01

small trips. Those

43:03

were the kinds of connections that bound the

43:05

four zones together, and while they're less visible

43:08

than the archaeological and historical records, we shouldn't

43:10

forget about them. The

43:12

whole, an integrated economic and cultural space,

43:15

was built on the aggregate of small

43:17

pieces, little bricks and a much larger

43:19

wall. In

43:22

the end, all of those big processes, the dramatic

43:24

shifts we've seen take shape by 500 BC, were

43:27

made up of thousands of individual actions and lives. Next

43:33

time on Caius's History, we'll dig into the fascinating history of Carthage

43:35

and its rise to power.

43:38

We know Carthage would become a great power, Rome's rival

43:40

for control of the Mediterranean world,

43:43

but how did it become one in the first place? That's

43:45

what we'll explore. Hey

43:52

Prime members, you can listen to Tides of

43:55

History ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app

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today. Or you can listen ad-free with Wonder

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Replus. in Apple Podcasts. Before

44:01

you go, tell us about yourself by

44:04

completing a short survey at wondering.com/survey. Tides

44:10

of History is written and narrated by me Patrick

44:27

Rodd from Wondery. This has been Tides of History. Have

44:57

you ever visited Halo Top in his Cuisinart, or

45:00

Todd Graves who grew his fried

45:02

chicken restaurant,

45:04

Raising Cane's into one of the most successful fast food

45:06

chains in the U.S. All

45:10

of these great conversations can help you learn how to

45:12

think big, take risks, and navigate

45:15

crises in life and work from people who've

45:17

done all of that and more. On

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the Wondery app or wherever you

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