Paul Cartledge > Quotes

“All history is present history in the sense that the concerns of the present are bound somehow to affect the way history is studied and written. All history is also personal, since it is impossible to avoid the influence of one's own opinions and prejudices on the selection and emphasis of one's historical material.”
― Paul Cartledge

“Eventually, sometime in July, Xerxes’s land forces reached the border between Macedonia and Thessaly”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“THE CONQUEST OF GREECE would necessarily depend on cooperation between the Persians’ land army”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“of Greek ‘colonization’ which occupied the two centuries from about 700–500.”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“the horse failed to see it in advance and was startled and reared up, throwing Pharnouches,”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“a supposed night attack by loyalist Greeks on Xerxes’s camp in the very middle of the Thermopylae campaign,”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“There were indeed no citizens properly so called in Macedonia, only subjects (as in Persia),”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“The Greeks called these ‘Syrians’, but non-Greeks knew them as ‘Assyrians’.”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“If they were genuinely serious about putting up resistance, it was obvious where the next line should be drawn:”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“scattered around much of the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“who sought to explain them as well as – or rather than – praise them.”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“But loyalist Greeks from north of the Isthmus were also present in very small numbers at Thermopylae.”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“Advance by land west and south from Doriscus,”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“from, as the Greeks themselves said,”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“Simonides of Ceos the praise-singer,* the other main contemporary source for the events”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“In 484 or so mainland Greeks south of Macedonia first got wind of Xerxes’s hostile intentions and preparations.”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“who controlled the tiny and elite Spartan Gerousia,* or Senate (comprising its twenty-eight elected members,”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“athletic festivals with teams of horses that they had bred in their own stables.”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“for various Greek festivals, for instance, though not a single certain example survives.”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“their alliance system within the Peloponnese had been extended as far as the Isthmus of Corinth,”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“Again in 512 or so, in a bid to unseat the ruling ‘tyrant’ dynasty of the sons of Peisistratus,”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“and processes centring on Thermopylae, had a phenomenal photographic memory.”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“The Persians were the first power with any claim whatsoever to a ‘European’ identity”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“At a crucial moment, though, and in concert with the Corinthian allies,”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“Of the trireme warships the number in total was 1,207,”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“Ilium was just one of a whole host of such new Greek foundations established during the age of Greek ‘colonization”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“It was under the dominant influence of King Cleomenes I,”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“When Leonidas was killed at Thermopylae, Mardonius and Xerxes had him decapitated and his head stuck on a pole.”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“Aristagoras had, according to Herodotus, advised the Spartans to suspend their petty local wars”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

“against the clearly expressed wishes of the majority of Athenian citizens.”
― Paul Anthony Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World