From: "Adam Flinton" 


"William F. Zachmann"  wrote in
message news:3e71e63b{at}w3.nls.net...
> Adam,
>
> Unfortunately, your education in history seems to have left some rather
> large gaps unfilled.  Athens vs. Sparta (etc.) was little more than
practice
> time at the local gym!  If that were the only exercise of Greek military
> muscle in history the overall impact of Greek influence would have been
> about on par with that of, say, the Trobiand Islands.  Your historical
> omissions include the sack of Troy, Greek domination of the Mediterranean,
> and the conquest of Persia (ca. Xenophon).  And all that was merely a
> warm-up to Alexander the Great.
>

The Peloponnesian war was much much more than some practice at the local
gym. The richest greek state (Athens) was nearly totally destroyed &
the most martial one (Sparta) was.

The sack of troy was not much more than a inter-greek squabble possibly not
even to the level of practice at the local gym. The greeks wanted to get to
the black/friendly sea & the greeks in troy wanted to tax any shipping
going past.

As for the conquest of Persia by Xenophon.....I have just about managed
stopped chuckling enough to type. Xenophon was serving in a Persian army in
a Persian Civil war (Greeks were used as mercenaries by the Persians). He
then had to get back to Athens with his life by the skin of his teeth.

> Byzantium was, of course, the "Eastern Roman Empire" and rested on the
prior
> military might of Rome.  And the Ottoman Empire fell largely because it
> failed to keep up with the military might of the modernized armies of the
> Western European nations.  And it had come into power in the first place
as
> heir to the might of Byzantium, the Islamic expansion, and the Mongol
> expansion as well.
>

Of course it was but it rapdily adopted the greek civilzation even though
that civilization had been militarily crushed centuries before by Rome. The
Turks made their own empire & frankly if you think they just happened
to come across a patch of land noone wanted you're out of your mind.

> I do not mean to assert that cultural influence rests solely on military
> success but there is no question that militarily strong nations, on
average,
> have much more cultural and political than military weak ones.  Moreover,
> militarily weak nations that do have substantial real influence more often
> than not do so because of some prior period of military strength.
>

The only benefit the mil part can give is a period of stability where
you're not getting invaded. However this can also be provided by a foreign
mil force just as well as by your own (e.g. Rome protecting the Greek
people from invasion by others e.g. the Dacians).

Sparta as an example was not known for it's culture.

Adam

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