Podcasts about corcyra

The Athenian expedition to Sicily was an unexpected chapter in the Peloponnesian War, characterized by strategic missteps and unforeseen outcomes. As the Athenian fleet set out to aid their allies in Sicily against Syracuse, they found themselves caught in the whirlwind of war that stretched across the Greek world. From the Athenian prisoners on Sphacteria to the civil unrest in Corcyra, each event cascaded into the next, shaping the trajectory of the war. The delayed arrival of Athenian reinforcements to Sicily allowed Syracuse to regroup and counter-attack, leading to a stalemate that ultimately required Athenian withdrawal—a testament to the volatility of war and the importance of timely strategic decisions.Amidst this complex backdrop, the Battle of Pylos stands as a testament to Athenian ingenuity and Spartan bravery. Demosthenes, the Athenian commander, overcame limited resources to construct strategic defenses at Pylos, setting the stage for a confrontation that would defy the expectations of both sides. The Spartans launched a ferocious assault, only to be repelled by the clever positioning and steadfastness of the Athenian defenders. The subsequent arrival of the Athenian fleet tipped the scales, demonstrating the razor-thin margin between victory and defeat in ancient warfare.The political theatre that followed was equally charged. The peace negotiations between Athens and Sparta revealed the delicate balance of power and the grave consequences of political decisions. Sparta's willingness to negotiate due to the potential loss of their elite hoplites showcased the high stakes of the conflict. Yet, the breakdown of talks plunged the Greek world back into the throes of war, underscoring the fragility of peace in a time of unyielding ambition and honour.The Siege of Sphacteria, a decisive engagement in the war, illustrated the strategic acumen of the Athenians under the joint command of Cleon and Demosthenes. Employing a mix of hoplites, archers, and light troops, the Athenians outmanoeuvred the Spartans, ultimately forcing a surrender that marked a watershed moment in Greek warfare. This victory, however, was not without its political machinations. The intense debates within the Athenian Assembly, the advocacy of Cleon, and the opposition from Nicias revealed the intricate relationship between military action and political manoeuvring.The surrender of the Spartan forces on Sphacteria was a moment that altered the course of the Peloponnesian War. The image of Spartan warriors, famed for their indomitable spirit, surrendering to their Athenian captors was a stark contrast to their ancestors' last stand at Thermopylae. This historic event not only shifted the balance of power but also sent ripples through the societal structures of Sparta, igniting fears of helot uprisings and prompting desperate, yet futile, diplomatic efforts to reclaim Pylos and negotiate peace.In sum, the Peloponnesian War's defining moments—from the Athenian naval might to the Spartan surrender on land—paint a vivid portrait of ancient warfare, political dynamics, and the enduring human quest for dominance. It's a narrative that continues to resonate through the ages, reminding us of the timeless lessons of history and the ever-present echoes of the past in our modern world. Support the Show.

Uncover the chilling drama of ancient conflict as we journey through the shadows of the Peloponnesian War—revealing the political chaos of Corcyra, and the tragedy of Plataea. This episode uncovers the tales of rebellion, siege, and the sobering reality of political strife, all through the compelling lens of Thucydides' historical narratives. Be prepared to witness the darker side of human nature, where the lust for power leads to a breakdown in social order and a wave of indiscriminate violence that shook the very foundations of Ancient Greece.Step into the political arena of Corcyra where calculated moves and internal turmoil illustrate the complexities of Greek politics. We navigate through the strategic decisions that inflamed tensions and trace the harrowing outcomes of a society caught in the crossfire of war. The episode lays bare the ruthless political manoeuvres in a landscape fraught with desperation and strategic miscalculations, providing you with a profound understanding of the motivations and consequences that characterized one of history's most infamous conflicts. Join us and experience the intensity of a period where the line between friend and foe was perilously thin. Support the show

Athens support of Corcyra had seen hostilities once again develop with Corinth who had been engaged in a dispute with the island polis. Athens would send ships to support Corcyra, as the Corinthian set sail to impose their will. Out of this affair would see the battle of Sybota take place and with it the first engagement seeing Athenian and Corinthian ships openly fight one another. This would see tension raised further and questions around the official statue between the two.Once the Athenians had learnt of what had taken place around Corcyra, they saw that war with Corinth was likely. They would now take measures to prepare for this coming conflict, though they would also attempt to not take any action that would breach the 30 years' peace. Early measures included preparing financially with decrees made on how funds were to be spent, this seeing Athens scale back its building projects for the time being. However other measures would be taken that targeted other regions.One would be known as the Potidaean affair, where Athens looked to secure their influence over the port city of Potidaea on the Chalcidice in Thrace. Potidaea was originally a Corinthian colony and still had ties to their mother city, Athens seeing Potidaea at risk of going into revolt due to Corinthian incitement. Athens would make demands on the city to take down its walls and expel any Corinthians within. However, Potidaea would resist and obtain Corinthian support along with other allies. This would see Athens having to commit to an ever-growing situation developing around Potidaea where they would end up being forced into laying siege to the city.The second measure taken by Athens during this period that would also be seen to have a major impact on a future war with Sparta developing, would be that of the Megarian Decree. This would see Athens impose economic sanctions on the polis that sat at the exit of the Corinthian isthmus, leading into Attica. Megara was a member of the Peloponnesian league, with this economic strangle hold having flow on effects to their other trading partners within the league. These actions by Athens plus other would see Corinth put forward a case to Sparta and the other Peloponnesian that action was needed against Athens, less they sit by and watch Athens dominate all of Greece.Support the show

Athens had now taken the decision to send aide to Corcyra after having swayed from one side of the argument to the other. However, the assistance would be limited, with it being defensive in nature. Athens would send a small force of 10 triremes to Corcyra to lend their support with the commanders being instructed they were to only engage the Corinthians if Corcyrean territory was directly threatened.This decision taken by Athens did not deter the Corinthians however, they would still set in motion the fleet that had been assembled. This would end up seeing the Corcyrean and Corinthian fleets meeting in a naval engagement known as the battle of Sybota in the waters between Corcyra and the mainland. Athens with its 10 triremes would also line up within the Corcyrean battle line where they would face the Corinthian contingent.The battle would be joined as the sun rose in an old-fashioned melee at sea, perhaps a little primitive to the tactical manoeuvres Athens had perfected. To begin with Athens would not engage in combat, but would charge at the Corinthian line whenever they saw the Corcyreans were in trouble. They would peel off at the last minute, where their aim was to buy their allies time to recover. However, as the battle wore on Corcyra was now in real trouble of breaking. This would see Athens now charge in more recklessly to where they would be in open combat with Corinthian ships.Athens intervention would see that the Corcyrean fleet remained intact and both sides were able to withdraw to their camps as night came on. The next day both fleets would be back in the water but battle would not develop. Corinth had a number of factors to consider now, one being their status with Athens. Both sides would claim victory in the engagement with Corinth departing back home, though, Corcyra would remain intact, still in control of their waters. The situation in Greece was now growing more volatile with each passing action, this time with a breach in the 30 years peace.Support the show

The analogy of a powder keg in historical events it often used to describe a volatile situation that is waiting to explode into something larger. The most famous example of this is the events leading up to the breakout of World War 1. A seemingly remote region in the Balkans would see an act of violence take place that would end up embroiling all the empires within Europe in the most destructive war to that time.A similar powder keg situation would develop in the ancient Greek world just before the breakout of the Peloponnesian War. This would be in a region north of Greece on the Albanian coast line far away from the interests of both Sparta and Athens. What would unfold here would be known as the affaire of Epidamnus, a colony both Corinth and Corcyra would lay claim to and enter into conflict over.Both Corinth and Corcyra would engage in battle over the developments around Epidamnus, Corinth suffering a defeat at sea. This would not deter them and they would divert more resources towards bringing a renewed offensive against Corcyra. This would see Corcyra, not a part of any alliance, now look for assistance in this growing threat.Corcyra would look towards Athens for this help and would send a delegation to try and secure this assistance. Corinth would also have an envoy in Athens having learnt of Corcyra's intentions and both would now present their cases to the Athenians to decide upon. Athens would debate what was presented to them in two separate assemblies before arriving at the fateful decision to assist Corcyra. This decision along with the consequences and developments that would follow would see the situation become more volatile than ever.Art by https://manu67.artstation.com/ Support the show

In this third installment of the Peloponnesian War podcast, we take a look at life after Pericles and the years 428 and 427 BC.  Leaders of Mytilene's oligarchy have decided that now is the time to leave the Athenian-led alliance.  The conflict in Plataea also finally comes to an end while another bloody civil conflict between factions in Corcyra gets out of hand and shocks the Greek world.  At the end of it, the Athenians head west to see if they can exert their influence in southern Italy and Sicily.  The war is really heading up and who knows where the fires will spread to next! In this third installment of the Peloponnesian War podcast, we take a look at life after Pericles and the years 428 and 427 BC.  Leaders of Mytilene's oligarchy have decided that now is the time to leave the Athenian-led alliance.  The conflict in Plataea also finally comes to an end while another bloody civil conflict between factions in Corcyra gets out of hand and shocks the Greek world.  At the end of it, the Athenians head west to see if they can exert their influence in southern Italy and Sicily.  The war is really heading up and who knows where the fires will spread to next! Contents:00:00 Introduction01:10 Revolt of Mytilene06:25 Judgement of Mytilene: Cleon vs. Diodotus 13:41 The Fate of Plataea16:07 Civil War in Corcyra22:05 Sicily and Syracuse25:43 Thank You and PatronsSupport the show

Sign up for bonus episodes at www.themidnighttrainpodcast.com    Well since last week's episode left Logan up at night with nightmares and I still can't get the stains out of my shorts; we have decided to make this week's episode a little more on the lighter side. So we are diving deep into the wonderful world of politics! You got it, today we are going to discuss The Biden Administrations wonderful and brilliant plans and maybe even get an interview with Brandon himself! HA like that would ever happen. Fuck those guys. We are actually talking about the Antikythera Mechanism, and the mysteries surrounding it.   The Antikythera mechanism is a hand-powered orrery( a mechanical model of our solar system) from Ancient Greece that has been dubbed the world's first analog computer since it was used to forecast celestial locations and eclipses decades in advance. The ancient Olympic Games' four-year cycle, which was akin to an Olympiad, could also be followed using this method.   In 1901, wreckage from a shipwreck off the shore of the Greek island of Antikythera included this artifact. Archaeologist Valerios Stais recognized it as bearing a gear on May 17, 1902. The gadget, which was found as a single lump and then fragmented into three primary components that are now divided into 82 individual shards following conservation efforts, was contained in the remnants of a wooden box that measured 34 cm 18 cm 9 cm (13.4 in 7.1 in 3.5 in). While several of these shards have inscriptions, four of them have gears. The biggest gear has 223 teeth and is around 13 centimeters (5.1 in) in diameter.   Using contemporary computer x-ray tomography and high resolution surface scanning, a team at Cardiff University led by Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth was able to image inside fragments of the crust-encased mechanism in 2008 and decipher the faintest writing that had once been inscribed on the machine's outer casing. This shows that it contained 37 bronze meshing gears that allowed it to mimic the Moon's erratic orbit, where the Moon's velocity is higher in its perigee than in its apogee, follow the motions of the Moon and Sun across the zodiac, and anticipate eclipses. Astronomer Hipparchus of Rhodes researched this motion in the second century BC, and it is possible that he was consulted when building the device. It is believed that a piece of the system, which also determined the locations of the five classical planets, is missing.   The device has been variously dated to between 150 and 100 BC, or to 205 BC, and it is thought to have been devised and built by Greek scientists. In any event, it had to have been built prior to the shipwreck, which has been dated to around 70–60 BC by many lines of evidence. Researchers suggested in 2022 that the machine's initial calibration date, rather than the actual date of manufacture, would have been December 23, 178 BC. Some academics disagree, arguing that the calibration date should be 204 BC. Up to the astronomical clocks of Richard of Wallingford and Giovanni de' Dondi in the fourteenth century, comparable complicated machines had not been seen.   The National Archaeological Museum in Athens currently has all of the Antikythera mechanism's fragments as well as a variety of reproductions and artistic reconstructions that show how it would have appeared and operated.   During the first voyage with the Hellenic Royal Navy, in 1900–1901, Captain Dimitrios Kontos and a crew of sponge divers from Symi island found the Antikythera shipwreck. Off Point Glyphadia on the Greek island of Antikythera, at a depth of 45 meters (148 feet), a Roman cargo ship wreck was discovered. The crew found various huge items, including the mechanism, ceramics, special glassware, jewelry, bronze and marble statues, and more. In 1901, most likely that July, the mechanism was pulled from the rubble. The mechanism's origin remains unknown, however it has been speculated that it was transported from Rhodes to Rome along with other seized goods to assist a triumphant procession that Julius Caesar was staging.   The National Museum of Archaeology in Athens received all the salvaged debris pieces for storage and examination. The museum personnel spent two years assembling more visible artifacts, like the sculptures, but the mechanism, which looked like a mass of tarnished brass and wood, remained unseen. The mechanism underwent deformational modifications as a result of not treating it after removal from saltwater.   Archaeologist Valerios Stais discovered a gear wheel lodged in one of the rocks on May 17, 1902. Although most experts judged the object to be prochronistic and too complicated to have been created during the same era as the other components that had been unearthed, he originally thought it was an astronomical clock. Before British science historian and Yale University professor Derek J. de Solla Price developed an interest in the object in 1951, investigations into the object were abandoned. The 82 pieces were photographed using X-ray and gamma-ray technology in 1971 by Price and Greek nuclear researcher Charalampos Karakalos. In 1974, Price issued a 70-page report summarizing their findings.   In 2012 and 2015, two more searches at the Antikythera wreck site turned up artifacts and another ship that may or may not be related to the treasure ship on which the mechanism was discovered. A bronze disc decorated with a bull's head was also discovered. Some speculated that the disc, which has four "ears" with holes in them, may have served as a "cog wheel" in the Antikythera mechanism. There doesn't seem to be any proof that it was a component of the mechanism; it's more probable that the disc was a bronze ornament on some furniture.   The earliest analog computer is typically referred to as the Antikythera mechanism. The production of the device must have had undiscovered ancestors throughout the Hellenistic era based on its quality and intricacy. It is believed to have been erected either in the late second century BC or the early first century BC, and its construction was based on mathematical and astronomical ideas created by Greek scientists during the second century BC.   Since they recognized the calendar on the Metonic Spiral as originating from Corinth or one of its colonies in northwest Greece or Sicily, further investigation by the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project in 2008 showed that the idea for the mechanism may have originated in the colonies of Corinth. The Antikythera Mechanism Research Initiative contended in 2008 that Syracuse could suggest a relationship with the school of Archimedes because it was a Corinthian colony and the home of Archimedes. In 2017, it was shown that the Metonic Spiral's calendar is of the Corinthian type and cannot be a Syracuse calendar. Another idea postulates that the device's origin may have come from the ancient Greek city of Pergamon, site of the Library of Pergamum, and claims that coins discovered by Jacques Cousteau at the wreck site in the 1970s correspond to the time of the device's creation. It was second in significance to the Library of Alexandria during the Hellenistic era due to its extensive collection of art and scientific scrolls.   A theory that the gadget was built in an academy established by Stoic philosopher Posidonius on that Greek island is supported by the discovery of Rhodian-style vases aboard the ship that carried the object. Hipparchus, an astronomer active from around 140 BC to 120 BC, lived at Rhodes, which was a bustling commercial port and a center for astronomy and mechanical engineering. Hipparchus' hypothesis of the motion of the Moon is used by the mechanism, raising the likelihood that he may have developed it or at the very least worked on it. The island of Rhodes is situated between the latitudes of 35.85 and 36.50 degrees north; it has lately been proposed that the astronomical events on the Parapegma of the Antikythera mechanism operate best for latitudes in the range of 33.3-37.0 degrees north.   According to a research published in 2014 by Carman and Evans, the Saros Dial's start-up date corresponds to the astronomical lunar month that started soon after the new moon on April 28, 205 BC. This suggests a revised dating of about 200 BC. Carman and Evans claim that the Babylonian arithmetic style of prediction suits the device's predictive models considerably better than the conventional Greek trigonometric approach does. According to a 2017 study by Paul Iversen, the device's prototype originated in Rhodes, but this particular model was modified for a customer from Epirus in northwest Greece. Iversen contends that the device was likely built no earlier than a generation before the shipwreck, a date that is also supported by Jones.   In an effort to learn more about the mechanism, further dives were made in 2014 and 2015. A five-year investigative program that started in 2014 and finished in October 2019 was followed by a second five-year session that began in May 2020.   The original mechanism probably came in one encrusted piece from the Mediterranean. It broke into three main parts shortly after that. In the meanwhile, more little fragments have come loose from handling and cleaning, and the Cousteau expedition discovered other fragments on the ocean floor. Fragment F was found in this fashion in 2005, suggesting that other fragments may still remain in storage, undetected since their first retrieval. The majority of the mechanism and inscriptions are found on seven of the 82 known fragments, which are also mechanically noteworthy. Additionally, 16 smaller components include inscriptions that are illegible and fragmentary.    The twelve zodiacal signs are divided into equal 30-degree sectors on a fixed ring dial that represents the ecliptic on the mechanism's front face. Even though the borders of the constellations were arbitrary, this was consistent with the Babylonian practice of allocating an equal portion of the ecliptic to each zodiac sign. The Sothic Egyptian calendar, which has twelve months of 30 days plus five intercalary days, is marked off with a rotating ring that is located outside that dial. The Greek alphabetized versions of the Egyptian names for the months are used to identify them. To align the Egyptian calendar ring with the current zodiac points, the first procedure is to spin it. Due to the Egyptian calendar's disregard for leap days, a whole zodiac sign would cycle through every 120 years.   Now we cannot show you pictures because well you couldn't see them. So we will try to describe them as best we can and we can also post them online.    The mechanism was turned by a now-lost little hand crank that was connected to the biggest gear, the four-spoked gear shown on the front of fragment A, gear b1, via a crown gear. As a result, the date indicator on the front dial was shifted to the appropriate day of the Egyptian calendar. Since the year cannot be changed, it is necessary to know the year that is currently in use. Alternatively, since most calendar cycles are not synchronized with the year, the cycles indicated by the various calendar cycle indicators on the back can be found in the Babylonian ephemeris tables for the day of the year that is currently in use. If the mechanism were in good operating order, the crank would easily be able to strike a certain day on the dial because it moves the date marker around 78 days each full rotation. The mechanism's interlocking gears would all revolve as the hand crank was turned, allowing for the simultaneous determination of the Sun's and Moon's positions, the moon's phase, the timing of an eclipse, the calendar cycle, and maybe the positions of planets.   The position of the spiral dial pointers on the two huge dials on the rear had to be observed by the operator as well. As the dials included four and five complete rotations of the pointers, the pointer had a "follower" that followed the spiral incisions in the metal. Before continuing, a pointer's follower had to be manually shifted to the opposite end of the spiral after reaching the terminal month place at either end of the spiral.   Two circular concentric scales may be seen on the front dial. The Greek zodiac signs are denoted on the inner scale, which is divided into degrees. A series of similar holes underneath the movable ring that rests flush with the surface and runs in a channel that makes up the outer scale are marked off with what appear to be days.   This outer ring has been thought to symbolize the 365-day Egyptian calendar ever since the mechanism was discovered, but new study contradicts this assumption and suggests it is really divided into 354 intervals. The Sothic and Callippic cycles had previously pointed to a 365 14-day solar year, as evidenced in Ptolemy III's proposed calendar reform of 238 BC. If one accepts the 365-day presupposition, it is acknowledged that the mechanism predates the Julian calendar reform. The dials aren't thought to represent his intended leap day, but by rotating the scale back one day every four years, the outer calendar dial may be adjusted against the inner dial to account for the effect of the extra quarter-day in the solar year.   The ring is most likely seen as a manifestation of a 354-day lunar calendar if one accepts the 354-day evidence. It is perhaps the first instance of the Egyptian civil-based lunar calendar postulated by Richard Anthony Parker in 1950, given the age of the mechanism's putative manufacture and the existence of Egyptian month names. The lunar calendar was intended to act as a daily indicator of succeeding lunations and to aid in the understanding of the Metonic(The moon phases return at the same time of year every almost precisely 19 years during the Metonic cycle. Although the recurrence is imperfect, careful examination shows that the Metonic cycle, which is defined as 235 synodic months, is only 2 hours, 4 minutes, and 58 seconds longer than 19 tropical years. In the fifth century BC, Meton of Athens determined that the cycle was exactly 6,940 days long. The creation of a lunisolar calendar is made easier by using these full integers.) and Saros(The saros, which may be used to forecast solar and lunar eclipses, is a period of exactly 223 synodic months, or around 6585.3211 days, or 18 years, 10, 11, or 12 days (depending on how many leap years there are). In what is known as an eclipse cycle, the Sun, Earth, and Moon return to about the same relative geometry, a nearly straight line, one saros time after an eclipse, and a nearly similar eclipse will take place. A sar is a saros's lower half.) dials as well as the Lunar phase pointer. Unknown gearing is assumed to move a pointer across this scale in synchrony with the rest of the mechanism's Metonic gearing. A one-in-76-year Callippic cycle correction and practical lunisolar intercalation were made possible by the movement and registration of the ring with respect to the underlying holes.   The dial also shows the Sun's location on the ecliptic in relation to the current year's date. The ecliptic serves as a useful reference for determining the locations of the Moon, the five planets known to the Greeks, and other celestial bodies whose orbits are similarly near to it.   The locations of bodies on the ecliptic were marked by at least two points. The position of the Moon was displayed by a lunar pointer, while the location of the mean Sun and the current date were also provided. The Moon position was the oldest known application of epicyclic gearing(Two gears positioned so that one gear's center spins around the other's center make up an epicyclic gear train, sometimes referred to as a planetary gearset.), and it mimicked the acceleration and deceleration of the Moon's elliptical orbit rather than being a simple mean Moon indicator that would signal movement uniformly across a circular orbit.   The system followed the Metonic calendar, anticipated solar eclipses, and computed the time of various panhellenic athletic competitions, including the Ancient Olympic Games, according to recent research published in the journal Nature in July 2008. The names of the months on the instrument closely resemble those found on calendars from Epirus in northwest Greece and with Corfu, which was formerly known as Corcyra.   Five dials are located on the rear of the mechanism: the Metonic, Saros, and two smaller ones, the so-called Olympiad Dial (recently renamed the Games dial since it did not track Olympiad years; the four-year cycle it closely matches is the Halieiad), the Callippic(a certain approximate common multiple of the synodic month and the tropical year that was put out by Callippus around 330 BC. It is a 76-year span that is an improvement over the Metonic cycle's 19 years.), and the Exeligmos(a time frame of 54 years, 33 days over which further eclipses with the same characteristics and position may be predicted.)   Both the front and rear doors of the wooden casing that houses the mechanism have inscriptions on them. The "instruction manual" looks to be behind the rear door. "76 years, 19 years" is inscribed on one of its parts, denoting the Callippic and Metonic cycles. "223" for the Saros cycle is also written. Another piece of it has the phrase "on the spiral subdivisions 235," which alludes to the Metonic dial.   The mechanism is exceptional due to the degree of miniaturization and the intricacy of its components, which is equivalent to that of astronomical clocks from the fourteenth century. Although mechanism specialist Michael Wright has argued that the Greeks of this era were capable of designing a system with many more gears, it includes at least 30 gears. Whether the device contained signs for each of the five planets known to the ancient Greeks is a subject of significant controversy. With the exception of one 63-toothed gear that is otherwise unaccounted for, no gearing for such a planetary display is still in existence.   It is quite likely that the mechanism featured additional gearing that was either removed before being placed onboard the ship or lost in or after the shipwreck due to the enormous gap between the mean Sun gear and the front of the box as well as the size and mechanical characteristics on the mean Sun gear. Numerous attempts to mimic what the Greeks of the time would have done have been made as a result of the absence of evidence and the nature of the front section of the mechanism, and of course various solutions have been proposed as a result of the lack of evidence.   Michael Wright was the first to create a model that included a simulation of a future planetarium system in addition to the existing mechanism. He said that corrections for the deeper, more fundamental solar anomaly would have been undertaken in addition to the lunar anomaly (known as the "first anomaly"). Along with the well-known "mean sun" (present time) and lunar pointers, he also provided pointers for this "real sun," Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.   A solution that differs significantly from Wright's was published by Evans, Carman, and Thorndike. Their suggestion focused on the uneven spacing of the letters on the front clock face, which seemed to them to imply an off-center sun indication arrangement. By eliminating the requirement to imitate the solar anomaly, this would simplify the mechanism. Additionally, they proposed that simple dials for each individual planet would display data such as significant planetary cycle events, initial and final appearances in the night sky, and apparent direction changes rather than accurate planetary indication, which is rendered impossible by the offset inscriptions. Compared to Wright's concept, this system would result in a far more straightforward gear system with significantly lower forces and complexity.   After much investigation and labor, Freeth and Jones released their idea in 2012. They developed a concise and workable answer to the planetary indicator puzzle. They also suggest that the date pointer, which displays the mean position of the Sun and the date on the month dial, be separated to display the solar anomaly (i.e., the sun's apparent location in the zodiac dial). If the two dials are properly synced, Wright's front panel display may be shown on the other dials as well. However, unlike Wright's model, this one is simply a 3-D computer simulation and has not been physically constructed.   Similar devices A first-century BC philosophical debate by Cicero, De re publica (54-51 BC), discusses two devices that some contemporary authors believe to be some sort of planetarium or orrery, forecasting the motions of the Sun, Moon, and the five planets known at the time. After Archimedes' demise at the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, the Roman commander Marcus Claudius Marcellus took both of them to Rome. One of these devices was the sole thing Marcellus preserved during the siege because of his admiration for Archimedes (the second was placed in the Temple of Virtue). The instrument was kept as a family heirloom, and according to Philus, who was present during a conversation Cicero imagined had taken place in Scipio Aemilianus's villa in the year 129 BC, Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, who served as consul with Marcellus's nephew in 166 BC and is credited by Pliny the Elder with being the first Roman to have written a book explaining solar and lunar eclipses, gave both a "learned explanation" and working demonstrations of the device.   According to Pappus of Alexandria (290–c. 350 AD), Archimedes had penned a now-lost treatise titled On Sphere-Making that described how to build these contraptions. Many of his innovations are described in the ancient documents that have survived, some of which even have crude illustrations. His odometer is one such instrument; the Romans later used a similar device to set their mile marks (described by Vitruvius, Heron of Alexandria and in the time of Emperor Commodus). Although the pictures in the literature looked to be practical, attempts to build them as shown had been unsuccessful. The system worked properly when the square-toothed gears in the illustration were swapped out for the angled gears found in the Antikythera mechanism.   This technique existed as early as the third century BC, if Cicero's story is accurate. Later Roman authors including Lactantius (Divinarum Institutionum Libri VII), Claudian (In sphaeram Archimedes), and Proclus (Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements of Geometry) in the fourth and fifth century also make reference to Archimedes' invention.   Cicero also said that another such device was built "recently" by his friend Posidonius, "... each one of the revolutions of which brings about the same movement in the Sun and Moon and five wandering stars [planets] as is brought about each day and night in the heavens"   Given that the third device was almost certainly in Posidonius's possession by that time and that both the Archimedes-made and Cicero-mentioned machines were found in Rome at least 30 years after the shipwreck's estimated date, it is unlikely that any one of these machines was the Antikythera mechanism discovered in the wreck. The researchers who rebuilt the Antikythera mechanism concur that it was too complex to have been a singular invention.   This proof that the Antikythera mechanism was not unique strengthens the argument that there was a tradition of complex mechanical technology in ancient Greece that was later, at least in part, transmitted to the Byzantine and Islamic worlds. During the Middle Ages, complex mechanical devices that were still simpler than the Antikythera mechanism were built in these cultures.A fifth- or sixth-century Byzantine Empire geared calendar fragment that was mounted to a sundial and maybe used to help tell time has been discovered. The Caliph of Baghdad commissioned Bani Ms's Kitab al-Hiyal, also known as the Book of Ingenious Devices, in the early ninth century AD. Over a hundred mechanical devices were detailed in this document, some of which may have been found in monastic manuscripts from antiquity. Around 1000, the scholar al-Biruni described a geared calendar that was comparable to the Byzantine mechanism, and a 13th-century astrolabe also had a clockwork system that is similar to it. It's probable that this medieval technology was brought to Europe and had a part in the region's development of mechanical clocks.   Su Song, a Chinese polymath, built a mechanical clock tower in the 11th century that, among other things, measured the positions of several stars and planets that were shown on an armillary sphere that spun mechanically.   Conspiracy Corner The Antikythera Mechanism was thought to have been created between 150 and 100 BCE at first, but recent research dates its development to approximately 205 BCE. It's interesting that this technology seems to have just vanished because comparable items didn't start turning up until the 14th century. But why did the ancient Greeks permit such a significant development to be forgotten over time? Posidonius carried on the work of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus by instructing students at an astronomy academy. Posidonius invented a contraption that "in each rotation reproduces the identical motions of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets that take place in the skies every day and night," according to Cicero, one of Posidonius' students. Which remarkably resembles the Antikythera Mechanism. However, when the Mechanism was created in the second century BCE, Posidonius was not yet alive. Hipparchus was, though. Posidonius could have built an instrument based on Hipparchus' Antikythera Mechanism, which he made many years before. What about Posidonius' instrument, though? A time traveler from the future may have developed the Mechanism, or it may genuinely be a futuristic gadget that was taken back to ancient Greece and put there on purpose if it dates to the second century BCE and equivalent technology didn't start emerging until decades later. Some people think the entire thing is a hoax despite overwhelming scientific proof to the contrary. After all, it is challenging to reconcile the Antikythera mechanism's antiquity with its growth in technology. The Turk, a fictional chess-playing robot constructed in the 18th century, has been likened to the mechanism by some. But scientists easily acknowledge that The Turk is a fraud. Why would they fabricate evidence of the mechanism's reliability? What would they be attempting to conceal? Even though it is quite old, the Antikythera mechanism represented an enormous advance in technology. So how did the Greeks of antiquity come up with the concept, much alone construct it? They didn't, according to The Ancient Aliens: “Beings with advanced knowledge of astronomical bodies, mathematics and precision engineering tools created the device or gave the knowledge for its creation to someone during the first century BC. But the knowledge was not recorded or wasn't passed down to anyone else.” Therefore, aliens either provided humanity the ability to make this gadget or the knowledge to do so, but they didn't do anything to assure that we built on it or learnt from it. It seems like the aliens weren't planning ahead very well. This theory, like the extraterrestrial one, is based simply on the observation that the Antikythera mechanism seems to be too technologically sophisticated for its period. The mythical Atlantis was a highly developed metropolis that vanished into the ocean. Many people think the city genuinely exists, despite the fact that Plato only described it in a sequence of allegories. And some of those individuals believe the Antikythera mechanism proves Atlantis existed since it was too sophisticated for any known culture at the time; they believe Atlantis, not Greece, is where the mechanism originated. According to the notion of intelligent design, a higher power purposefully created many things on Earth because they are too sophisticated to have arisen by simple evolution. Because the Antikythera mechanism is so much more sophisticated than any other artifact from that age, some people think it is proof of intelligent design. If this is the case, you have to question what divine, omnipotent creature would spend time creating such a minute object for such a trivial goal. Greece's coast is home to the island of Rhodes. Greek artifacts were placed into the ship transporting the Mechanism, which was sailing for Rome. One explanation for this might be that the Antikythera mechanism was taken together with the spoils from the island of Rhodes. How come Rhodes was pillaged? following a victorious war against the Greeks, as part of Julius Caesar's triumphal procession. Could the loss of one of history's most significant and cutting-edge technical advancements be accidentally attributed to Julius Caesar? The Antikythera mechanism may have predicted the color of eclipses, which is thought to be impossible by scientists, according to new translations of texts on the device. Therefore, were the forecasts the mechanism provided only educated guesses, or did the ancient Greeks have knowledge that we do not? According to legend, an extraterrestrial species called the Annunaki (possible episode?) invaded and inhabited Earth (they were revered as gods in ancient Mesopotamia), leaving behind evidence of their presence. The Antikythera mechanism could be one of these hints. The Mechanism uses what appears to be distinct technology that was, as far as we are aware, extremely different from anything else that was built about 200 BCE. It estimates when lunar eclipses would occur, which advanced space invaders would undoubtedly know something about. An intriguing view on the process is held by Mike Edmunds from Cardiff University. The uniqueness and technological innovation of the item are frequently highlighted in reports about it. However, Edmunds speculates that the mechanism may have been in transit to a client when the ship carrying it went down. If one device was being delivered, might there possibly be others — if not on this ship, then potentially on others from Rhodes? — he asks in his essay. There may have been more of these amazing machines that have been lost to the passage of time or are still out there waiting to be found. MOVIES - films from the future - https://filmsfromthefuture.com/movies/

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Wargaming AGI Development, published by ryan b on March 19, 2022 on LessWrong. I think wargames would be a useful tool for exploring AGI development scenarios. More specifically, I mean wargames of the kind used to train military officers in strategy. I think this format would help explore things like timelines and takeoff scenarios, in a way that is both concrete and transparent. The thought cropped up because I have been popping into the AMA/Discussion post for Late 2021 MIRI Conversations over the course of the last week. Over the course of the MIRI conversations, and again in the AMA, I saw a lot of the tactic of offering or requesting concrete situations to test or illustrate some point. Wargaming feels to me like a good way to generate concrete situations. I think we could answer this question from So8res: What's a story, full of implausibly concrete details but nevertheless a member of some largish plausible-to-you cluster of possible outcomes, in which things go well? (Paying particular attention to how early AGI systems are deployed and to what purposes, or how catastrophic deployments are otherwise forestalled.) Over the same period I was reading the MIRI Conversations I was reading/re-reading a series of posts on wargaming at War on the Rocks, which I was linked to from the comments in a book-notes post about military innovation. The oldest article of the lot focuses on the usefulness of wargames for teaching and learning; the original motivation for the author was how poorly they thought teaching a course on Thucydides went. As a highlight, I would like to point out a case where they considered a decision that had historically poor outcomes, but gained awareness of good motivations: Remarkably, four of the five Athenian teams actually attacked Syracuse on Sicily's east coast! As they were all aware that such a course had led to an Athenian disaster 2,500 years before, I queried them about their decision. Their replies were the same: Each had noted that the Persians were stirring, which meant there was a growing threat to Athens' supply of wheat from the Black Sea. As there was an abundance of wheat near Syracuse, each Athenian team decided to secure it as a second food source (and simultaneously deny it to Sparta and its allies) in the event the wheat from the Black Sea was lost to them. Along the way, two of the teams secured Pylos so as to raise helot revolts that would damage the Spartan breadbasket. Two of the teams also ended revolts in Corcyra, which secured that island's fleet for Athenian purposes, and had the practical effect of blockading Corinth. So, it turns out there were a number of good strategic reasons for Athens to attack Syracuse. Who knew? Certainly not any War College graduate over the past few decades. The article also references benefits from playing the game Diplomacy, which has been mentioned around here for similar purposes for a long time. There was also a recent-history overview of wargaming in the US Defense arena, which links to a bunch of examples and extolls wargaming in a competitive format to develop the US Defense talent pool. I included it mostly for the links to real-world examples, which include but are not limited to: games about specific, current strategic problems; games about integrating AI into warfare; some historical cases from the tactical to the strategic level. The part that persuaded me we could directly lift from wargames to explore AGI development is the use of wargames for exploring future wars. The important thing is the inclusion of capabilities which don't exist yet, reasoning about which is notoriously hard. A highlight here is the kind of stuff people learn from the games: First, all games are competitive and involve teams fighting other teams. There is a big difference between fighting an algorithm...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Wargaming AGI Development, published by ryan b on March 19, 2022 on LessWrong. I think wargames would be a useful tool for exploring AGI development scenarios. More specifically, I mean wargames of the kind used to train military officers in strategy. I think this format would help explore things like timelines and takeoff scenarios, in a way that is both concrete and transparent. The thought cropped up because I have been popping into the AMA/Discussion post for Late 2021 MIRI Conversations over the course of the last week. Over the course of the MIRI conversations, and again in the AMA, I saw a lot of the tactic of offering or requesting concrete situations to test or illustrate some point. Wargaming feels to me like a good way to generate concrete situations. I think we could answer this question from So8res: What's a story, full of implausibly concrete details but nevertheless a member of some largish plausible-to-you cluster of possible outcomes, in which things go well? (Paying particular attention to how early AGI systems are deployed and to what purposes, or how catastrophic deployments are otherwise forestalled.) Over the same period I was reading the MIRI Conversations I was reading/re-reading a series of posts on wargaming at War on the Rocks, which I was linked to from the comments in a book-notes post about military innovation. The oldest article of the lot focuses on the usefulness of wargames for teaching and learning; the original motivation for the author was how poorly they thought teaching a course on Thucydides went. As a highlight, I would like to point out a case where they considered a decision that had historically poor outcomes, but gained awareness of good motivations: Remarkably, four of the five Athenian teams actually attacked Syracuse on Sicily's east coast! As they were all aware that such a course had led to an Athenian disaster 2,500 years before, I queried them about their decision. Their replies were the same: Each had noted that the Persians were stirring, which meant there was a growing threat to Athens' supply of wheat from the Black Sea. As there was an abundance of wheat near Syracuse, each Athenian team decided to secure it as a second food source (and simultaneously deny it to Sparta and its allies) in the event the wheat from the Black Sea was lost to them. Along the way, two of the teams secured Pylos so as to raise helot revolts that would damage the Spartan breadbasket. Two of the teams also ended revolts in Corcyra, which secured that island's fleet for Athenian purposes, and had the practical effect of blockading Corinth. So, it turns out there were a number of good strategic reasons for Athens to attack Syracuse. Who knew? Certainly not any War College graduate over the past few decades. The article also references benefits from playing the game Diplomacy, which has been mentioned around here for similar purposes for a long time. There was also a recent-history overview of wargaming in the US Defense arena, which links to a bunch of examples and extolls wargaming in a competitive format to develop the US Defense talent pool. I included it mostly for the links to real-world examples, which include but are not limited to: games about specific, current strategic problems; games about integrating AI into warfare; some historical cases from the tactical to the strategic level. The part that persuaded me we could directly lift from wargames to explore AGI development is the use of wargames for exploring future wars. The important thing is the inclusion of capabilities which don't exist yet, reasoning about which is notoriously hard. A highlight here is the kind of stuff people learn from the games: First, all games are competitive and involve teams fighting other teams. There is a big difference between fighting an algorithm...

Episode 10 -  The Peloponnesian WarsHi, my name is Clayton Mills.  Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History' - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world. This is Episode 10 -  The Peloponnesian Wars.  The Golden Age of Greece, which we focused on last episode, lasted from around 528 BC to 323 BC, and it was a time of great prosperity in Greece.  And that very prosperity brought about some inter-city rivalries, as the city-states of Greece competed for their share, or more than their share, of the riches.  When I say rivalry, what I actually mean is some fairly long brutal, bloody, battles.  This wasn't just a political or economic rivalry, it was armies in the field, destroying each other's cities and territory.  The two main cities in this war, were of course Athens and Sparta.  But the other cities of Greece were basically forced to choose sides.  Fighting took place all over Greece, hence the name of the war:  The Peloponnesian Wars.  The Peloponnese is the name of the lower part of the Greek peninsula - the part that Sparta was on.  Athens is on a different peninsula, the Attic peninsula, located across a narrow isthmus, just to the north-east of the Peloponnese.  The city of Corinth sits right at the isthmus.  Just look it up on a map, for goodness sake.  Anyway, Athens and Sparta are only about 150 miles apart by land, so it's not that surprising that they were rivals.  It's interesting that during what is considered the Golden Age of Greece, there was this really intense set of battles between the two leading cities.  It's still the Golden Age, and there's still great art, philosophy, historical writing and literature being created, but there's also a lot of fighting.  Part of that is because even though there was fighting, for most of the war, Athens was not really threatened.  The armies were off fighting somewhere else.  I say most of the war, because in the end, it does go pretty poorly for Athens, and yes, that was a major interruption in the plays and philosophy and art while the Spartans were assaulting the walls of Athens.  Oh, and there was a plague, too.  But hey, it's still the Golden Age, so it's all good.  Ok, we need to ask the question, why are the Peloponnesian wars important enough to spend a whole episode on them?  Well, for one, there's the fact that Athens was basically destroyed.  That's kind of big.  For another, the Peloponnesian wars basically mark the beginning of the end of the era of Greek city-states, because after the wars are over, a weakened Greece is conquered by Macedonia, and rolled up into the kingdom of Philip of Macedon.  Another reason it's worth talking about is that Thucydides wrote an excellent history of the wars, and his historical work is even better than Herodotus' work on the Persian wars.  Thucydides was a participant in the wars, and so his work is even more timely and accurate.  Speaking of the Persian wars, Greece's victory over Persia is what sowed the seeds of the Peloponnesian wars.  During the war, the independent Greek cities had joined together in what was called the Hellenic League, which was kind of a loose treaty in which all the cities that joined agreed to send soldiers, in exchange for which, that city would be protected by the Hellenic army.  You didn't have to join, but if not, it was just your little city against Xerxes and a million Persians.  Hmm, what should we do?  After the Persian wars, Persia never again threatened the Greek mainland, but Persia still was in control of all of Ionia, also called Asia Minor, or modern-day Turkey.  The Persians had captured Byzantium, a Greek city, and some of the Hellenic League, including Athens, wanted to take it back.  The Spartans, however, proposed that they just leave Asia Minor in the hands of the Persians, and that they all go home.  Athens strongly objected to this, because many of the cities on the coast of Asia Minor were Athenian colonies.  Also, Athens itself had been abandoned to the Persians by the Greek land forces, and the Persians had destroyed much of Athens.  The Athenians managed to convince most of the Hellenic league to join them in liberating Byzantium and the other Greek colonies.  Sparta was now kind of over a barrel.  If they just packed up and left, that would leave Athens as clearly in charge of the Hellenic League, which Sparta definitely did not want to happen.  Also, the lead general of the Hellenic land forces was a Spartan, so if they left, they would also leave the army in Athenian hands.  So Sparta stayed, and helped the Hellenic league liberate Byzantium.  But that was the last time Athens and Sparta would work together.  So while the army was off fighting in Byzantium, back in Athens, the city was being rebuilt.  And on of the things that Athens decided to do was to not just rebuild the city wall, but to extend the city walls all the way down to their port city of Piraeus.  These walls were called the Long Walls, and they were about 8 miles long, and the Spartans were not at all happy about it.  The Spartans were also not happy with what was going on in the Hellenic army.  Their commander, Pausanias, had been accused of carrying on secret negotiations with Xerxes.  Now this was probably just a political play, but it was a serious enough accusation that Pausanias was removed as the lead general, and replaced by Xanthippus, an Athenian.  The Spartans sent a replacement general, but Xanthippus refused to give up command, so the Spartan army went home.  That was the end of the Hellenic League.  Now we're about to get into a whole series of other leagues, with shifting alliances and cities moving from one league to the other.  It's a bit like the old NFL - AFL days, with a bit of the WFL and USFL thrown in as well.   Sorry, millennials, if you don't understand that reference. Anyway, Athens responded to the Spartans leaving the league by simply creating a new league, which became known as the Delian League.  It was named this because the Greek Island of Delos served as the treasury for the entire league.  From the beginning, the league was dominated by its largest and wealthiest member, Athens.  Back in Sparta, not to be outdone, the Spartans formed a league of their own - The Peloponneisan league, made up of basically all the cities on the Peloponnesian peninsula, and also Corinth, which was on the isthmus that connects the peninsula to the rest of Greece.  And of course this league was dominated by the Spartans.  The Delian league set about re-capturing islands that had been captured by the Persians, and of course all those ‘liberated' islands became part of the Delian league too.  Not everyone in the Delian league always wanted to do what Athens wanted to do, so at times, Athens was quite forceful and threatening to its own allies.  In 460 BC, the Aegean island of Naxos, not to be confused with the tex-mix island of Nachos, decided it had had enough, and declared itself out of the league, and no longer subject to the league rules and payments.  According to Thucydides, they were forced to re-join the league after a siege.  Athens also used force on several other Greek cities to keep them in the league.  Thucydides said, ‘The Athenians were not the old popular rulers that they had been at first.' The beginning of the active fighting between Athens and Sparta was in 457 BC.  Sparta sent an army into the area of Boetia, which was part of the Delian league.  Their pretext was that they were just passing through, on their way to the town of Doris, which was farther to the north, but the Athenians didn't want them to visit Doris, so they sent out their own army.  The Spartans won the battle (no surprise there, ‘Don't fight the Spartans in a ground battle' should be one of the two classic blunders).  The two armies skirmished in the area for several years, and though the Spartans often won, they usually just left aftewards, and Athen reclaimed the territory.  In 446 BC, so about 11 years later, Athens proposed a peace with Sparta.  The treaty was supposed to be for 30 years, so it was called the 30 years peace.  Even though it only lasted 14 years.  In 433, a city named Corcyra, which was a Corinthian colony, decided to leave the league, and asked Athens for help. They weren't technically part of the Peloponnesian league, but still, when Athens sent ships to help them, it was a treat to the peace.  Athenian ships ended up fighting with Corinthian ships, and the war was on.  The Spartan army marched into Athenian territory.  Many people of the Attic peninsula retreated to Athens, hoping for safety behind the long walls.  But there, they ended up finding something worse.  In 430 BC, a terrible plague struck Athens.  Crowded with refugees, the city was ripe for an epidemic.  The plague, plus continued defeats from the Spartans and their allies, severely weakened Athens.  The plague even killed the Athenian leader Pericles.  Thucydides, the historian, was in Athens at the time, but he survived, and it is his record of the plague that is our best account of what happened.  In his own words, it sounds pretty horrible:  …violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes; the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath.  …. Sneezing and horseness, after which the pain soon reached the chest, and produced a hard cough.  The body was reddish, livid, and breaking out into small pustules and ulcers.  If they passed this stage, the disease descended further into the bowels, inducing a violent ulceration there accompanied by severe diarrhea.  This brought on a weakness that was generally fatal.'No mention of ‘loss of sense of smell,' though.  But still, yuck.  It doesn't sound like Athens was the place to be in 430.  Meanwhile, the Spartans had been building their own navy, and they put it under the command of an admiral named Lysander.  Lysander defeated the Athenian navy several times, and in August of 405, the Spartan navy destroyed 171 Athenian ships in a single battle.  Lysander set sail for Athens, and when he got there, the Athenians surrendered.  Lysander had the Long Walls destroyed, and he set up a puppet government of 30 Athenian aristocrats, who have gone down in history as simply ‘the 30.'  They were supported by a garrison of Spartan troops.  They presided over a bloody purge of anyone who had't gotten their vaccination, oh, sorry, over anyone who had even the slightest leanings towards democracy.  They reportedly had thousands of leading Athenians killed.  Eventually, the Athenians were helped by a force from the Greek city of Thrace, and the Spartans and the 30 all left Athens.  But they left Athens in ruins.  The Athenians re-instituted their democracy, but they were never again the political or military force they had been in the previous years.  Sparta also was damaged by the wars.  They had also lost many men, and many of their harvests had been ruined by the soldiers being away from home at harvest time.  So supplies were low, and so were the treasuries of the cities.  As a result, many of the Spartan and other Peloponnesian league soldiers left to find work outside of Greece.  In fact, right at this time a new king named Cyrus  -  not Cyrus the Great, he was earlier - was rising in Persia, and he sent out a call for soldiers from the Peloponnese, and many answered his call, because he could pay them.  The combined effect of the weakness of Athens and the exodus of Spartan soldiers left all of the southern part of Greece very vulnerable.  That vulnerability will be exploited by Philip of Macedon, but before we get to that story, we need to talk about one of the biggest impacts of the Golden Age of Greece.  One of the people who survived the plague, and all the fighting, was a rambling old teacher named Socrates.  Next episode, we will look at him, his student Plato, and Plato's student Aristotle, who together are easily the most important teacher-student teacher -student trio in all of history. 

In this episode, we discuss the years 427 and 426 BC of the Peloponnesian War, including the destruction of Plataea, stasis in both Megara and Corcyra, and Athenian campaigns in Sicily, central Greece, and northwestern Greece Show Notes: http://www.thehistoryofancientgreece.com/2019/05/094-new-leaders-and-new-strategies.html   Intro by Trevor Culley of the History of Persia Podcast Website: https://historyofpersiapodcast.wordpress.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HistoryofPersiaPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/HistoryofPersia

Recorded on December 14th, 2017   This session begins with a couple of newer additions in our audio arsenal. A mbira that was recently purchased from the Goodwill and one of our handmade wooden tongue drums. Relax, breathe, enjoy. Two people making music on the fly… Bugs In The Basement creates improvised musical journeys from an array of vintage and handmade instruments to modern technologies. Recorded live from our basement studio in the Pacific Northwest, each week we experiment in the process of making exploratory music and soundscapes. Unmixed, unedited and unapologetic. www.bugsinthebasement.com

In Episode 6 of Naval History Podcast, we continue our multi-part examination of the Peloponnesian War with Athens's ill-fated Sicilian Expedition of 415-13 BC, in which the Athenians send a massive expeditionary force to attack and possibly conquer the island of Sicily. During this epic struggle between the Athenians, the Syracusans, and their respective allies. We also meet such characters as the overly cautious and indecisive Athenian general Nicias; his fellow general Alcibiades, one of the first psychopaths known to history; and the daring Spartan commander Gylippus. The disaster that befell the Sicilian Expedition was perhaps the beginning of the downfall of the Athenian empire and set the stage for the final horrific phase of the Peloponnesian War.

So for the RUNE’s 5th Birthday celebration, Corcyra and I decided to do a tag set on NSB Radio on the Rule of Rune show. HAPPY BIRTHDAY RUNE!         MP3 – 2:04:31 Direct Download: Rule Of Rune 053 … Continue reading → The post Rule Of Rune 053 – Clandestine & Corcyra – RUNE B-Day Mix (07.09.2015) appeared first on Clandestine / Parasomnia / Rule of Rune.

Episode #070 | Revive 070 with music from A-Mase, Robosapiens, Grove, Mechanical Pressure, Line Of Sight, Left/Right, Dj D-Xtreme, Stromlinie, Chris Voro, Sean Tyas and Karl Sav. In the second hour can listen to Corcyra's guest mix! PART 1 - RETROID 01.Lunarbeam feat. Marija Trapkevichz - Panic (A-Mase Remix) [Incepto Music] 02.A-Mase - The First Step (Breaks Mix) [Azima] 03.Robosapiens - Forever Evil (Original Mix) [Dead Famous] 04.Grove - Out of the Spiral (Original Mix) [iBreaks] 05.Mechanical Pressure - Operation Chariot (Original Mix) [Rune] 06.Line Of Sight - Science of Rhymes feat. CMonts (Instrumental Mix) [Kiosek] 07.Left/Right - Broken (Original Mix) [Punks] 08.DJ D-Xtreme & Devine Noise - Come On Music (Bass Ballers Remix) [Cognitive] 09.Stromlinie - Null85zehn (Original Mix) [Break Wind] 10.John Dopping - The Truth (Chris Voro Remix) [Research & Development] 11.Sean Tyas - Swarm (Original Mix) [Black Hole] 12.Llupa - Breach (Karl Sav Remix) [Rune] PART 2 - CORCYRA 01. Line of Sight - Voyager [Kiosek] 02. ID - ID [Rune] 03. Albea - From Norway to Iceland (Sergei Orange remix) [Rune] 04. Grove - Spawner (Macho remix) [VIM] 05. Llupa - Breach [Rune] 06. Llupa - Breach (Karl Sav remix) [Rune] 07. Aeon Flex - Predictions (Burufunk remix) [Tech D] 08. Arksun - One Day pt1 (A-Mase Breaks Mix 2014) 09. Nelver - Faith In Us [Rune] 10. Airwave - Pain Is My Relief [JOOF] 11. In Progress, Runa - Saam [Expand]

Dr. Arnn and Hugh Hewitt introduce the causes of the Peloponnesian War with an analysis of the debate between Corcyra and Corinth before the Athenians.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr. Arnn and Hugh Hewitt introduce the causes of the Peloponnesian War with an analysis of the debate between Corcyra and Corinth before the Athenians.

In this lecture, Professor Kagan describes the aftermath of the Thirty Years Peace. He argues that the Peace had the potential to keep peace between Athens and Sparta due to the arbitration clause. In addition, he argues that during this time, Athens sends various diplomatic messages to the wider Greek world stating their intentions for peace, such as the Panhellenic venture to establish Thurii. However, this peace is seriously challenged when Corinth and Corcyra come into conflict over Epidamnus. At this point, Athens could make an alliance with Corcyra and run the risk of angering Sparta or allow Corinth to potentially take over Corcyra's navy and change the naval balance of power. Athens decides on a defensive alliance.

In this lecture, Professor Kagan describes the aftermath of the Thirty Years Peace. He argues that the Peace had the potential to keep peace between Athens and Sparta due to the arbitration clause. In addition, he argues that during this time, Athens sends various diplomatic messages to the wider Greek world stating their intentions for peace, such as the Panhellenic venture to establish Thurii. However, this peace is seriously challenged when Corinth and Corcyra come into conflict over Epidamnus. At this point, Athens could make an alliance with Corcyra and run the risk of angering Sparta or allow Corinth to potentially take over Corcyra's navy and change the naval balance of power. Athens decides on a defensive alliance.