Have modern despots read the Classics? Probably not. Or else they believe that History does not repeat itself.

The Greco-Persian Wars: an ancient mirror image of the current conflict around the Black Sea?

The events we have witnessed in this first quarter of the century seem to have surprised many of those who thought that the worst of human experience had already passed into history. They must have startled, above all, those more inattentive or uninterested in what is happening outside the borders of our technocratic backyard, a host headed by some gurus of emerging technologies and global neoliberalism, dazzled by the latest technological achievements, who seem to have believed (even after the economic crisis felt since 2008 and at least until the uncontrollable expansion of COVID19 and the new recession caused by the pandemic) that we had entered a new era of technical marvels capable of transforming human existence into something glorious.

No, we are not talking about Francis Fukuyama’s End of History, a theory so often refuted (and frequently misinterpreted); it is something even more remarkable and utopian because it would be much deeper and would be just around the corner: our bodies and minds with powers amplified by cyber-physical systems; the elimination of diseases through genomics leveraged by artificial intelligence; the use of revolutionary scientific methods to extend human life to levels that would tend towards immortality; the global elimination of poverty supported by unstoppable economic growth; and the fundamental contribution of new technologies to reducing the environmental impact of human activity on the planet and halting or even reversing climate change.

And above all, the lack of concern regarding the (inevitably controversial and fracturing) theme of investing in war means, even if only as a defensive measure, because it has become internalised (both by those who have never reflected on the matter, and by many of those who contested Fukuyama) that wars no longer happen between modern nations with supposedly democratic and liberal regimes, let alone among superpowers after the end of the Cold War.

Furthermore, in this scenario, and contrary to the hypothesis put forward by Fukuyama, life would not be sad after the End of History because we would have a whole playful universe (like the present Metaverse) and the interaction with Agents endowed with Generic Artificial Intelligence to continue creating history, albeit in a virtual way; after all, instead of The End of History and the Last Man, perhaps it would be just The Rebooting of History and The First Transhuman (but this is a topic still under development, which will be the subject of a future chronicle).

In short, the ultimate exponent of optimism (albeit unconscious) combined with political correctness at its best. A vision of the world and its future that we all (where I placed myself in the front platoon) ended up embracing at a given moment, to a greater or lesser extent. Utopia is always beautiful and it is good that it continues to feed our dreams, but the most stark reality is in front of us and I believe that we must rethink our vision of the world.

In these last two years of frequent forced stoppages (especially during the height of the pandemic) and of many uncertainties, I resumed my incipient reading of the classics, revisiting some, and initiating myself into others. And, without great surprise but with undeniable perplexity, I (re)discovered that everything there was to study or reflect upon has already been studied and explained for nearly three thousand years. It is this experience of rediscovery and re-learning that I intend to share in these notes.

It does not surprise me that certain current world leaders, more or less disguised as rulers elected by the people and who came to power more for their populism than for their wisdom, are unaware of the stories and lessons that the classical Greeks, Romans and Renaissance Europeans, as well as the Eastern classics, incorporated into their teachings and their works. What I already find really disappointing is that their advisers (who one would expect to be more erudite) do not know these teachings or are unable to pass them on in advising their rulers, for the good of all mankind… and themselves. Those leaders seem to have been inspired, at best, by dubious interpretations of Sun Tzu’s (544? — 496? BC) advice on the Art of War or by Readers’ Digest summaries of the ideas expressed in The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 -1527), for they seem to be making mistakes that those strategists had already clearly warned about.

In the following commentary I set out some of the lessons I have drawn from history and in particular from the study of the Classics:

1. Believing that history does not repeat itself or ignoring it may explain why the same mistakes of the past continue to be made.
2. In war, as in many other conflicts, it is not necessarily the strongest in material terms or the best positioned who win, but the most determined.
3. Pacifism is a noble philosophy but being well prepared to defend itself in the event of war may be the only way to guarantee the peace and freedom of a people in the medium and long term.
4. Difficult and unlikely alliances can be forged in the face of a common enemy whose threat outweighs the differences between potential allies.

The reasons for the ancestral tendency of human beings to wage war is a topic of discussion that gains particular emphasis and motivates the reflection of great thinkers after prolonged wars with profound civilisational consequences.

In Antiquity, Athenian general and historian Thucydides (c. 460 — c. 400 BC), by many considered the father of scientific history, discussed in his History of the Peloponnesian War the motivations and decision-making processes leading to war; among the reasons for war was the one that in recent times would be called the Thucydides Trap, and which has recently been invoked in connection with the tension between the USA and China but which one may question whether it would not be equally applicable to the current conflict in the Black Sea area: the tendency to war when the advance of an expanding power (Athens in ancient Greece) challenges the status of a dominant power (Sparta at the time).

In modern times, after the First World War, we find a profound reflection on the subject in the epistolary exchange of ideas between two of the most influential personalities and intellects of the 20th Century: Freud and Einstein: Why War? Reflections on the fate of the world.

“History does not repeat itself” is the most misleading common phrase we learn. In fact, it is human memory that is short-lived or purposefully obliterated.

In my opinion, the historical summary that follows reveals parallels with current incidents taking place in virtually the same region around the Black Sea and its narrow, strategic passages to the eastern Mediterranean (a region that seems to be at the origin of history’s most decisive wars). These historical parallels may be pure coincidence, or perhaps not.

With this I intend to support my Assertion #1: Perhaps history repeats itself, after all, and it is worth learning from it…The problem is that human memory is short-lived or purposefully obliterated.

Since the time of the Persian emperor Cyrus II, known as Cyrus the Great (c. 600–530 BC) Persia had been invading regions of Greece, starting with Ionia (now part of Turkey) and appointing a series of tyrants to rule each of the conquered city-states. These invasions gave rise to the so-called Greco-Persian Wars, which would continue under the reigns of Cyrus’ successors, Darius I (522–486 BC) and his son Xerxes I (486–465 BC).

At the battle of Marathon (490 BC) the Hellenic forces had already defeated the overwhelmingly superior Persian army when Darius I tried to take Athens. Which already showed that a people or a coalition of peoples, even if greatly outnumbered and with much smaller means of warfare, but strongly determined to maintain their independence to the point of considering it more important than their own lives, could confront and defeat an enemy superiorly equipped for war. This historical episode would be dramatically illustrated in Aeschylus’ (c. 525 — c. 456 BC) tragedy Persians of 472 BC (a literary approach that in itself deserves to be further explored and to which I will return in a future chronicle).

This inspires my Assertion #2: It is not necessarily the strongest in material terms or the best positioned who win a war, but the most determined.

In fact, what we call Ancient Greece did not exist as a nation; Hellenic peoples were divided into a number of city-states that often fought among themselves, as was to occur in the long Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), made and broke alliances according to strategic and commercial interests, maintaining at best an unstable coexistence and therefore seeming incapable of facing and sustaining a continued conflict with a strongly structured empire and with a hierarchically organized power structure as was the Persian empire.

Thus, despite the defeat at Marathon, Darius’ claim to subjugate the region was maintained and his son Xerxes continued it. During the next ten years, the huge and powerful the Achaemenid Empire invaded Greece successively and managed to defeat the Greeks in a series of battles with several Hellenic city-states, in the so-called Greco-Persian Wars. In these wars Darius I succeeded in destroying a number of Greek cities and brought a number of others under his rule, fearful of suffering the same fate. As a result of these campaigns, Persia became capable of decisively influencing the Greek political system and affirming the hegemonic position of Sparta, the prominent Greek city-state with whom he had allied.

However, something fundamental changed in Greek strategy during that ten-year period, something that would prove fatal to Xerxes’ intention to dominate the Hellenic region. After the Greeks were defeated in the famous and tragic Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC (which inspired the hit movie “300” in 2006), Athens decided to extend and reinforce its walls in a corridor that gave it access to the port of Piraeus, allowing it to obtain supplies by sea in the event of a siege. In the year 493 BC, a non-aristocratic politician named Themistocles (c. 524–459 BC) who had participated as a general in the battle of Marathon was elected Archon (magistrate with governing functions) of Athens and managed to convince the city to significantly increase the capacity of its Navy. This investment in the naval power of Athens was decisive for the victory of the Greeks over the Persians in the naval battle of Salamis (480 BC) that followed the land battle of Thermopylae and constituted a turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars; these wars would end the following year (479 BC) with the decisive victory of an alliance of Hellenic city-states over the Persians at the battle of Plataea.

With this I intend to support my Assertion #3: Being well prepared to defend itself in the event of an external threat may be the only way to guarantee the peace and freedom of a people in the medium and long term.

An unlikely alliance between several Greek city-states that had hitherto fought each other, including Sparta and Athens, was decisive in this victory over the Persians. Thus ended the Second Persian Invasion of Greece, putting a definitive end to the Achaemenid Empire’s attempt to dominate Greece.

This inspires my Assertion #4: To resist a powerful common threat, difficult or even previously unthinkable alliances can be forged.

War is the type of event that most extensively (in terms of the number, diversity, and spatial scope of those involved) and simultaneously most profoundly (in terms of inner conflict, both personal and collective) tests human nature and its capacities… for better and for worse. Therefore, I will return to this theme in subsequent comments to discuss the motivations and propose unconventional explanations for why so many leaders of modern nations take dangerous decisions with disastrous consequences for their own peoples, seemingly without having learned from the lessons of the past.

And, in between, to reflect on the following questions:

• Is War intrinsic to the Human Condition, at least in its current evolutionary state?
• Are we bound to self-destruct by having reached a technological advance for which our civilisation is not prepared and thus validating one of the hypothetical explanations of the Fermi Paradox?
• Or are we destined to make a reboot of History from time to time like in Isaac Asimov’s short story Nightfall?

My final objective with this series of notes is to discuss the theme that seems to me the most fascinating and from which the entire history of humanity flows: that of the emergence and evolution of generic intelligence, the human mind and consciousness, the limits that may be imposed on it by its neuro-somatic bases, the hypothetical overcoming of these limitations through artificial means, and the possible relation of all this to the question of the existence of a driving mechanism and a plausible orientation of human history even if there is no End of History.