Episode 9 - Athenian Democracy and the Golden Age of Greece

<p>Episode 9 -  Athenian Democracy, and the Golden Age of Greece</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>Hi, 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. </p><p><br></p><p>This is Episode 9 - Athenian Democracy, and the Golden Age of Greece.</p><p><br></p><p>We have talked about the famous battles of the Greek - Persian wars, and how after the huge naval battle at Salamis, the Persians never threatened Greece again.  The Battle of Salamis happened on September 27th, 480 BC.  There were still a few important land battles in 479 BC, but the Greeks won those as well, and destroyed what was left of the Persian army in Greece.  This sets the stage for an era of peace and prosperity in Greece that would be incredibly influential.</p><p><br></p><p>As points of reference, just to tie this all in with other things that were happening around this time in other parts of the world, I thought I would mention some other important world events.  So 80 years or so before Salamis, off in India, around 563 BC, Buddha was born.  Buddhism begins to form as a religion in the years following the Buddha’s death.  Buddhism will eventually become one of the world’s largest religions, but it had a small start, as did Christianity.  We’ll come back to that in upcoming episodes.  </p><p><br></p><p>Also about this time, the Jews who had returned from exile in Babylon were re-building their temple, under the guidance of Nehemiah and Ezra.  </p><p><br></p><p>And also around this time, in 509 BC the Roman Republic was founded.  We’ll also come back to the Romans.  Lots of important stuff going on in the 5th century BC.  By the way, I don’t really like calling these time periods, ‘the 5th century,’ because it just doesn’t match up in a way that I like.  Because the 5th century is the 400’s.  It’s the time period from 499 BC to 400 BC.  And then we have that problem again in the AD’s.  It’s because the first c