Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me, Murray.

Today is the second question that was asked by Simon in this hand-drawn postcard.

Very exciting.

And that is, of course, were there notions of losing well or instances of an exemplary defeat in ancient warfare

thanks Simon thank you Simon indeed I'll put you up there now in front of Aristotle or it's getting glare from the from the lights

oh I ship it so that it's more visible. Lovely. Hopefully that doesn't get blown over.

Now, yes, of course, there are indeed exemplary defeats.

Perhaps the most famous is the Battle of Thermopylae.

And we've got an ancient warfare, a big episode where we interview Mike Cole and Michael Livingston coming for you soon, where we talk about the Battle of the Mopoli

in depth, but there is still much to say about that.

The interesting thing there, of course, is that, and in terms, I don't want to get political

with modern ideologies that somehow, somewhere, the defeat at the Mopoli is turned into

a victory and seems to be that it's forgotten that it is in fact a defeat.

And it's something that can be avenged later.

You know, when Alexander gets to Persia very early, he sends 300 suits of armour back to Delphi from Persia.

And that seems to be directly related to to avenging the

defeated Thumopoli and so that good defeat where the defeat is you know worth more than

what you lose is certainly part of a tradition that grows up there are of course of course, other defeats. And like when you look,

for instance, at the trial of Socrates, he is defeated, but he, you know, stays true to his

code of conduct by remaining in Athens for a month after his trial. That month, he should have

escaped. And I'm pretty sure, you know, when, when a

sentence of death is passed on you to drink hemlock in Athens, you're meant to have done it in a day,

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