It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast

we are looking at the Athenian Empire that thrived in the 5th century BC. We're going

to be looking at how the Empire rose in the aftermath of the Persian Wars. We're going

to be looking at how the Empire was run. We're going to be looking at its allies and we're

going to be looking at the Empire through the lens of one of the most significant ancient

historians that survives to us today. The contemporary Athenian Thucydides. Now join me to talk

through what we know about the Athenian Empire. I was delighted to be joined by Professor

Polly Lowe from the University of Durham. Polly specialises in ancient classical history,

particularly classical Greece and it was great to get her on the show to talk through all things

Athenian Empire, particularly on how this empire was run. Here's Polly.

Polly, thank you for joining me today. It's a pleasure to be here. Now Thucydides and the Athenian

Empire. This is a story of a man who appears to have had quite a negative view of his home cities.

Can we say imperial addiction? Yes, I think so. I mean trying to pin down Thucydides' views is always

quite a hard task and there's one reason why we keep reading and arguing about him because

there's endless debate on exactly what he thought about anything but my reading of the text is

that he's very critical of his home city and how his home city behaves to other Greeks.

And if we go into the background first of all, what sort of world is Thucydides born into?

This is the 5th century BC. Yep, so he is a wealthy Athenian. His family,

a part of the Athenian elite, they made their money from gold mining up in northern Greece and

they have connections with non-thenian cities which is a hallmark of being in the upper echelons

of society. And Thucydides must have been active in politics. He was elected as a general during

the Peloponnesian War. He's pretty reticent about himself apart from telling us that but we can

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