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hawkwing_lbI have been thinking, since I read Xenophon's Anabasis, of how close the Greeks lived to those who were not Greeks. (I refuse to call them barbarians, because that merely feeds into Hellenist chauvinism.)
One of the things one forgets, when one reads 'classical' - or traditional, at least - histories of the Greeks is that the histories of Athens and Attica, Sparta and the Peleponnese, do not provide anything like a full picture of the Greek world. I forget how many city-states called themselves Greek after the Peleponnesian war, but it's something on the order of hundreds.
And these cities - some of them not even large enough to call city-states, really - occupied the islands, the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, where most of them spent time under the authority of Persian satraps and alongside Persian modes of living, and the coast of the Dardanelles and Black Sea. And this is interesting, because the Anabasis made it clear that along the Black Sea and up into Thrace, the Greek communities lived very close to non-Greek communities, at war or at peace with them depending on the season and who was passing through.
And it occured to me, you know - I don't think I've seen this sort of set-up done well in fiction, have I? Fantasy does feudaloid, medievaloid, and imperial, standard, and a couple of other permutations (mostly Chinese and/or Norse related, that I can think of) if you're lucky. But I am trying to think of sort of interestingly Greekish fantasy, and coming up blank.
Anyone?
One of the things one forgets, when one reads 'classical' - or traditional, at least - histories of the Greeks is that the histories of Athens and Attica, Sparta and the Peleponnese, do not provide anything like a full picture of the Greek world. I forget how many city-states called themselves Greek after the Peleponnesian war, but it's something on the order of hundreds.
And these cities - some of them not even large enough to call city-states, really - occupied the islands, the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, where most of them spent time under the authority of Persian satraps and alongside Persian modes of living, and the coast of the Dardanelles and Black Sea. And this is interesting, because the Anabasis made it clear that along the Black Sea and up into Thrace, the Greek communities lived very close to non-Greek communities, at war or at peace with them depending on the season and who was passing through.
And it occured to me, you know - I don't think I've seen this sort of set-up done well in fiction, have I? Fantasy does feudaloid, medievaloid, and imperial, standard, and a couple of other permutations (mostly Chinese and/or Norse related, that I can think of) if you're lucky. But I am trying to think of sort of interestingly Greekish fantasy, and coming up blank.
Anyone?
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Date: 2009-08-31 12:01 pm (UTC)Or at least that's how I feel about it.
But Paladin is my One Perfect Book, and I have to ration my re-readings of it, lest I end up getting tired of it. :)
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Date: 2009-09-01 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-01 09:46 pm (UTC)