When I was a child, I thought it was quite strange that there was such a thing as Medic Wars (in Spanish guerras médicas), because I was thinking something like medic = doctor, so it felt like some kind of oxymoron.
Logically, the name refers to wars related to the Medes, i. e. the inhabitants of Media, an empire absorbed by the Persians and that’s why in Antiquity the two names were sometimes used more or less interchangeably.
In English the thing is simpler, because the conflict is usually referred to simply as Persian Wars.
Well.
During the Persian Wars, the Greeks crushed the Persians in the famous battle of Marathon.
Their joy did not last long, because a few years later the Persians, with the new king Xerxes at the head of an army of (according to Herodotus) two million warriors, headed for Greece once again.
The Athenians were in despair, so they asked their two best generals, Aristides and Themistocles, how to save their culi in the face of an army of this size.
One said one thing and the other said something else.
But one thing they knew for sure: if there was any chance of getting out of it, it was under a single command and a single plan.
So they decided to resort to ostracism: they would vote which of the two generals should be expelled from the city so as not to hinder the other. (The Greeks did not mess around, no).
During the vote, Aristides was there like any other citizen, (I assume, to vote against Themistocles).
Then, a farmer standing next to him, not knowing who he was, addressed him: he didn’t know how to write, and asked if he could please help him to vote.
Aristides told him that of course, of course, and thought it would be a good idea to ask who he wanted to vote against.
And the farmer told him that he wanted to kick Aristides out.
So, Aristides helped that farmer to vote against himself, because he had always considered himself a just man.
I don’t think that vote was decisive, but it was Aristides who “won” the vote and was expelled from the city.
Well.
You too can be like Aristides.
Absolutely in every email you have, at the bottom, a link to unsubscribe. When you get tired of me, just click on it, and that’s it.
You don’t have to write to me justifying yourself: you just click and that’s it.
It’s automatic.
You don’t want to receive any more emails from me → you click the unsubscribe button → ostracism for you.
I can guess that at the moment that’s not what you want, and I hope you’ll stick around for years.
Many of this kind of stories are told by Greek historians (for which of course you need Greek), but also many Roman authors tell them, and for that you just need Latin.
Vale!
Paco
P. S. Aristides asked the farmer why he wanted to expel Aristides: had he ever done him any harm, and the farmer replied that he had not, but that he was simply fed up with hearing about him as “the just”. Ahhhh…
