Was he wrong to destroy Persepolis?

> they had large populations and a vast bank of knowledge stored in libraries and the minds of skilled artisans and merchants
>they not only held back civilization but shot themselves in the foot
>burning it down was totally an accident
>an accident

Holy shit, this post.

They surrendered to him. So yes.

>politics
>morals

He was wrong about everything.

alex himself was a farsiboo
>would wear persian robes
>styled himself as king of asia (his version of shahanshah/kang of kangz)
>got a persian wife
>thus had a greco-perso mutt

He was only wrong to leave any memory or evidence of the place

Yes!
>meme city
T. Brainlet

politics is applied morality

It was a different time back then

Were the Persians wrong in destroying Athens?

Alexander said it was his greatest regret.
So "no"s are just edgy faggots.

What's interesting about the destruction of Persepolis is that it isn't entirely clear what went down. Some of the contemporaneous historians writing on Alexander attribute the burning to an embittered prostitute present at Alexander's court who, taking advantage of the typically drunk Macedonians, incited a riot by encouraging them to destroy the place. According to the story, if I recall correctly, she had it out for the Persians because of a personal experience in which her hometown was demolished by them. However this version of events isn't typically taken seriously, as it follows a Greek tradition of blaming women for disasters in the same vein as Pandora.

Molten gold for y'all

He did it because he was drunk as fuck, and instantly regretted it, so I'd say yes.

Better question: was he justified in destroying Thebes?

Yes. They rebelled. Talk shit, get hit.

No, they were wrong in losing the war. How dare a massive empire not prepare a properly capable soldiery?
They had access to better iron, more gold and more people. They could easily have mustered a greek style army combined with their persion regular troops and completely fucked up greece. But instead they fucked themselves.

>get fucked over by Philip who is lenient with them
>rebel with Alexander's succession, he immediately puts an end to the horseshit by installing a garrison before they could mobilize
>rebel AGAIN while Alexander is contending with Danube tribes
>Alexander shows up, surrounds the city, demands they step down
>"fuck off tyrant"
>He razes the city

he did nothing wrong

Greece was really a backwater. There were lands that were far more important to Persia that received the attention that you describe, such as Egypt and Babylon. Every rebellion in these territories were put down with great efficiency.

Only if it was wrong for Xerxes to have burned down Athens.

thebes was on a bit of a power trip for a while there, please don't blame them

Why would they muster a Greece style army? There was nothing specular about Greek's way of warfare at the time. Some scholars even suggest that the Greeks fought like they did in the archaic period with a big blob of heavy infantry and missile troops.

Persia didn't do too bad. They won (498), the Marsyas (497), Labraunda (497), Malene (493) and Thermopylai (480) while also losing Marathon (490), Plataiai (479) and Mykale (479) in pitched battles. Indeed the Persians won a great deal of territory they lost during the Persian wars back. The Greek city-states never threatned the integrity of the empire. In the end the Persians were content in just throwing money at the Greeks for them to kill each other over. There was nothing special about the Greek troops and as a matter of fact Herodotus mentions parts of the Persian army armed "just like Greeks" like the Assyrians and Egyptians. The Persian immortals also carried tall wicker shields and wore armor made up of iron scales.

We have this inflated impression of the Greeks because of the Persian War but forget it was a war fought at the very edge of the periphery of the Persian Empire and in a (relatively) unfertile land. Its like playing up the Afghan warrior because they defeated the British in the 19th CE while forgetting the logistical difficulties and its relative importance to the British Empire.

>held back civilization
>implying this is wrong
>implying all progress is good progress
why don't you progress your life to it's end state by kys

>Woman is at fault
>"sexist, you're defacto incorrect"

I'm convinced a good deal of the people here, such as you, are retarded

>They could easily have mustered a greek style army
No they couldn't have, the Greek style of warfare was built on a tradition of localized competition and dependent on the local geography; there was no way for the Persians to develop something that would counter the Greek military, especially its Navy.
Maybe if they had marched elephants all the way across the fucking empire they could no something, but Hoplites were definitive defensive infantry of their era.

>and Thermopylai (480)

Greek strategic victory. Small Greek force delays a larger Persian force, most Greek and allies get away.

Herodotus claims the Greeks planned to hold the pass indefinitely. That Thermopylae is now being regarded as a delaying tactic is the height of revisionism to justify a failed defense. In any case, a 3 day delay in ancient terms means fuck all, the Persians burned Athens down, and conquered most of Greece. Go on about muh strategic victory.

They lost the war

Not because of Thermopylae.

baseless speculation

>hoplites
>defensive
Greek hoplites went into battle charging at everything. The extend of the Greeks tactical prowess was to simply bumrush their enrmies. Even the idea of a tightly knit shieldwall isnt true, Hans van Wees dismisses this in Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities

I think you might be mixing up your eras there.

Thus t b h
I dunno why people act like the Greeks won easily when they got pretty beat up meanwhile the Greeks never got to do any damage to the Persian heartlands. Xerses went and razed Athens, left and left the remainder of the task to his right hand man.

>it looks pretty that means it was a grand city
As the user said Persepolis was a glorified palace, it had no large population or strategic purpose. Even Its posturing as the capitol of the Persian empire was pretty much just in name. The only people who actually lived there were basically just attendants to the ruler /administrators so yes it was a meme 'city.'

So you're really telling me Salamis and Marathon were not the decisive battles, but rather a failed defense at Thermopylae? Are you a brainlet?

>the Greek hoplites weren't primarily defensive infantry
Thermopylae has questions for you
It's true that the reliance on the phalanx is historically overstated, at least until the time of Alexander, but the element that DEFINED Hoplites was their shield and collective defensive abilities when in formation - much more so than anything the Persian national army had on its end, with its reliance on thin static shield walls and missile troops, peltasts and skirmishers.

If the Persians had managed to get their cavalry on-point it would have also shattered the Greeks, but greater Greece was historically unkind to chariots and horseback warfare in general.

Defensive infantry does not mean "sat in one spot the whole battle"

Greece was fighting a defensive war, they weren't aiming to do damage to the Persian heartlands - though Xenophon's Anabasis has been used as a speculative grounds to say that an allied Greek force could have marched on central Persia, had Cleomenes not been a daft cunt.

>Athenian slanders work for centuries to painting Alexander as a corrupt bloodthirsty despot
>worst 'atrocities' they came up with were a drunken brawl and burning down an empty palace

>burn palace to ground
>ends up being the best preserved monument from the time period

Based Alexander

I have wrote about it in the past but for most of the classical hoplites didnt fight defensively. Their tactics involved running into battle, most hoplites had not even the ability to maintain cohesion on the move. Thucydides tells us marching in step was a foreign concept to all Greeks except the Spartans, he also tells us that the Athenians fell into complete chaos trying to do basic manouvers.
Hoplites fought aggresively, not defensivle. Herodotus even tells us that the Spartans fought by feigning retreats and luring the Persians out of formation.

Why the poison king pic?

To be fair Xenophon's account of the Ten Thousand was about a mercenary army used during a civil war.

Marching in formation is not the same as defensive fighting.
To quote Herodotus directly:
"One result of the disposition of the Athenians prior to the battle [of Marathon] was the weakening of their centre by the effort to extend the line sufficiently to cover the whole Persian front; the two wings were strong, but the line in the centre was only a few ranks deep. [...] the Athenians advanced at a run towards the enemy, not less than a mile away." Histories VI 111-112
"The struggle at Marathon was long drawn-out. In the centre, held by the Persians themselves and the Sacae, the advantage was with the foreigners... but the Athenians on one wing and Plataeans on the other were both victorious. [...] drawing the two wings together into a single unit, they turned their attention to the Persians who had broken through the centre."
Histories VI 113
So yes, the hoplites advanced at a run, but as I said before, "defensive warfare" does not mean "standing in one place the whole time". Once the Greek line was established it was used as the strongpoint for the entire force, even if the crucial portion for most land forces - the center - collapsed.
As for the Spartans, if my memory is correct the specific reference to their retreating style of warfare is taken from a time that greatly predates Herodotus (the subjugation of Tegea iirc) and I wouldn't put much stock into it on that basis. We know from Thermopylae, a battle much more contemporary with accounts of it that have survived, that the Spartans used a static Hoplite line.

Just to clear up the distinction between defensive and offensive warfare, compare the methods of Persian warfare developed in the radically different geography of the near East - their method of assaulting fortified cities was particularly brutal, and they suffered few sieges to last more than a week or two. And of course, the infamous shock troop tactics of the Immortals.

True, but consider that the Spartans had been petitioned to support Ionia early in the revolt by Aristagoras, but refused on the grounds that a thirty days' march inland was impossible. Xenophon's Anabasis shows that this much was definitely possible. A Spartan invasion force put in at Cilicia with support from an Ionian navy and troops pulled from across Anatolia probably could have accomplished quite a bit.
Hell, Athens sacked Sardis without even meaning to.

I believe we only have two accounts on how the Spartans fought in the Greco-Persian Wars. One by Herodotus and another by Plato.

>The Lakedaimonians fought memorably, showing themselves skilled fighters amidst unskilled on many occasions, as when they would turn their backs and feign flight. The barbarians would see them fleeing and give chase with shouting and noise, but when the Lakedaimonians were overtaken, they would turn to face the barbarians and overthrow innumerable Persians. Herodotos 7.211.3

>For they say that at Plataea, when the Spartans came up to the men with wicker shields, they were not willing to stand and fight against these, but fled; when, however, the Persian ranks weree broken, the Spartans kept turning round and fighting like cavalry, and so won that great battle. Plato Laches 191c

Oh, I must have remembered incorrectly in the case of Herodotus. It is a bit baseless to assert that the Spartan style of fighting would have been standard throughout Greece, but until I have more primary sources on hand I'll limit my argument to being that the Athenian hoplites specifically fought in a defensive style. I'm preparing to pick up Thucydides and Xenophon soon, so I'll see how they corroborate or invalidate that point.