Herodotus: Foreshadowing And Betrayal Of Theban

Herodotus, consider as the father of history, was born in the ancient Halicarnassus, current Turkey, and lived between 485 and 425 BC, about 150 years previous to the creation of the Library of Alexandria. Moreover, due to Persian rule over greece, Herodotus fled to Samos resulting from his conflicts with the local government and will not return until 450 BC, when he participated part in the campaign to defeat Lygdamis, to once again leave the city after the completion of the campaign. Furthermore, Herodotus traveled to Athens at the time of its peak, allowed him to contemplate the great political and cultural boom of the city. During his stay in Athens, Herodotus met Pericles, and became friends with both Sophocles and Anaxagoras, focusing

Themistocles was aware that the only way to defeat the Persians was to cut of their naval power, so he devised a plan. He sent a slave to the Persians with a message that they were escaping, and the Persians sent ships to meet there escapees. The Athenian ships were prepared to face them. Their specialty in sea battles, along with the narrowness and swirls of the sea gave the Athenians an advantage. This strategy is what ultimately brought victory to the Greeks, as it left the Persians without a supply line and weakened their forces. The two events, the battle at Marathon and the battle at Salamis, showed that Athens was a great contributor to the war, both land and sea.

The story provides gritty, graphic detail of life and combat in Fifth Century BC Greece. It fleshes out the history of the actual event at Thermopylae as recorded by Herodotus, and gives the reader a true feel for what it must have been like to fight as a Spartan hoplite in a phalanx against the Persians. Connection between your book and the field of history/social studies This book shows a battle between free men and slaves, many against few, and they both fight for different reasons. King Leonidas of Sparta fights for freedom and his country, on the contrary King Xerxes of Persia fights for individual power and slavery trying to cement his name in the

Sophocles, a great tragedian, was the one who gave Greek tragedies their traditional form. An important part of traditional Greek tragedies is the presence of a tragic hero. All tragic heroes should have the characteristics of rank, a tragic flaw, a downfall, and a recognition of mistakes. The seemingly tragic hero is Antigone. She wants to bury her brother Polyneices even though this would be going against Creon, who is her uncle and the king. When Antigone buries Polyneices Creon sentences her to death because of it. In Antigone by Sophocles the tragic hero is not Antigone because she only meets the characteristic of a tragic flaw, hers being pride, but doesn 't meet the other three characteristics of a

The Greek drama “Oedipus The King” evidently leads to the unveiling of a tragedy. Oedipus, the protagonist of the play uncovers his tragic birth story and the curse he had been baring his whole life. Oedipus is notorious for his personal insight that helped him defeat Sphinx, which lead him to becoming the king of Thebes. He is admired by the people of Thebes and is considered to be a mature, inelegant and a rational leader. From his birth, his story began with a prophecy that Oedipus would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. Through out the play numerous people, who tell him of his unknown past, visit Oedipus. Blind to the truth he casts them away until a blind man named Therisis gives a sight of truth to Oedipus. As Oedipus learns the truth he realizes the great evil his life carries. After finding his wife and also mother hung in her bedroom, Oedipus blinds himself with the gold pins that held Jocasta’s robe. Oedipus blind to the truth is finally able to see when the old blind man visits him and tells him the truth about his life. Both metaphorically and physically sight plays a significant role in understanding the irony of a blind man seeing the truth while Oedipus who isn’t blind doesn’t seem to the truth that’s right in front of him.

The Battle of Thermopylae, which Herodotus recorded in his writing The Histories, was one of the most arduous and notable battles of western history. Herodotus was an extremely significant historian who lived during the 5th century B.C. In this primary source writing, he portrays how Xerxes was superstitious and tyrannical, how the battle informs you about the Spartan culture, how the values of Greek promoted society, and he displayed how significant the Persian invasion was on Greek development, for example, their political and intellectual expansion. The Persian King Xerxes

Throughout Herodotus’ The History, Oracles, and dreams play an important role. While the gods have almost no presence throughout the book, the Oracles and/or dreams are linked to many of the major events.

The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during the second Persian invasion of Greece. It took place simultaneously with the naval battle at Artemisium, in August or September 480 BC, at the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae. The Persian invasion was a delayed response to the defeat of the first Persian invasion of Greece, which had been ended by the Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC.

Charles could see Erik giving up as sharply as he felt it, the small spark that he’d come to label in his own mind as ‘life force’ dwindling to an ember and extinguishing. He was stepping forward before he could stop himself, blooding rushing in his ears against time as he spoke. “Dēsístite!“

To start with, In the Odyssey book 1 uses foreshadowing and imagery in a way that I have never read before. There were many parts in the book where I stopped and wondered if I could think of myself in that situation. In this book using imagery such as “So saying she bound on her glittering golden sandals” creates images in the mind that the sandals must be powerful and , because of the details in the words, must be shiny and made of gold. By using an example of foreshadowing in the Odyssey book 1, “ So now all who escaped death in battle or by shipwreck had got safely home except Ulysses, and he, though he was longing to return to his wife and country, was detained by the goddess Calypso, who had got him into a large cave and wanted to marry him.” the reader can see that the story is going to be mainly about Ulysses and how he wanted to go back to his home but Calypso has him captured.

Sophocles uses foreshadowing to offer hints about Oedipus’s destiny in the play that allow audience to make reasonable predictions about what would eventually happen in the story. When Oedipus insults Tiresias because he hears that he is the curse and problem in Thebes, and he refuses to the prophecy and gets angry at the prophet, calling him a liar. However, Oedipus never realizes that Tiresias is the very one who foreshadows Oedipus’ tragic fate when he says “in thine eyes now light, but then Darkness” (line 417). The quote foreshadows that Oedipus will end up being blind although his eyes are full of light now, he will lose the light in the end. Tiresias’ words are eventually proved to be true when in the end Oedipus stabs out his eyes, being aware of his identity and his tragic destiny. It is very ironic that Tiresias, who tells the truth, is a blind man. Sophocles also uses words from Jocasta, Oedipus’ mother and wife, to foreshadow Oedipus’ upcoming tragedy. She says “and casts him to die. Through both his feet a blade of iron they drove” (Lines 720-21). The idea in this quote is that Jocasta is providing hints to the audience that Oedipus has hit part of the prophecy because he still hobbles and cannot walk like a healthy man due to his injury. Oedipus should have notice the similarities between his feet and the prophet, or maybe his hubris blinds him from seeing the truth. Throughout the play, Sophocles foreshadows in many events and gives the audience hints about

King Leonidas, a superior tactician, accurately assessed the Persian army’s motivations and capabilities and decided to use the natural terrain to his advantage. Assuming that the Persians would challenge the Greek forces from their staging point, derived from pervious knowledge during the Battle of Marathon and the Persians encampment location, King Leonidas had chosen to eventually maneuver his forces into the Pass of Thermopylae, also known as Hellespont; saddled between a mountain range and the Gulf of Maliakos (Frye, 2006). Hellespont would provide the Spartans some significant tactical advantages, where within the pass, at its narrowest portion which was only 50 feet wide; countering the Persian greatest strength of archery and mounted horsemen (Frye, 2006).

The protagonist of the Aeneid and known hero to many, Aeneas, was a man of many virtues. His courage and obedience towards the Roman gods are clearly shown all throughout the book, as well as his passion for justice. When he leaves his lover, Dido, at the bidding of the gods, he shows obedience even when it went against his own will. The time Aeneas travels into the underworld to find his deceased father, it shows great bravery. It is even seen by the example of the crew of Aeneas that he was an incredible person, judging by how loyal they were to him. But, even with all these wonderful attributes, Aeneas wasn’t the entirely heroic person we believe him to be.

Leonidas was the king of the Spartans during the time of the Persian War. The Spartans were the elite of the elite when it came to military strength. One of the greatest displays of his courage and honor was in his last battle, The Battle of Thermopylae. At the Battle of Thermopylae the Persians were trying to come down into Greece through the mountain pass Thermopylae. The odds were heavily against the Greeks with the Persians numbering in the hundreds of thousands and the Greeks only having a couple thousand Athenians and only 300 Spartan warriors under the command of King Leonidas. The Greeks stopped-up the pass with phalanxes and were slaughtering the Persians. The battle was looking like a major victory for the Greeks until the Persians discovered a back-road on a mountain pass and were about to surround the Greeks. King Leonidas told the remaining Athenian Greeks to flee back to Athens while he and his 300 hundred Spartans held off the Persians. The Spartan army caused massive damage to the Persian army by killing off thousands of them. All the Spartans died in that battle, along with Leonidas, but this weakened the Persians and allowed the

The battle of Thermopylae was the Greek’s first stand against the massive army of King Xerxes, and was the most influential battle of the entire war. Up to this point, the Persian army was seen as too massive and powerful to be stopped. The once warring city-states of Greece knew they couldn’t stand against the Persians alone, and knew in order to defend their homeland they would have to unite. A unity of command was agreed upon; King Leonidas of Sparta was chosen to lead the Greek forces. He was chosen to lead because of the unsurpassed warring abilities the Spartans were so well known for made him perfect for the objective of stopping the Persians.