Great Books Ep 118. Herodotus - The History - Book 9 (Calliope). Belief can win Wars
The Greeks at sea hear a rumor that the Greeks on land have defeated the Persians. The belief that they can defeat the Persians removes fear and they fight with vigor to get an unlikely victory.
“Before the rumour reached them, the Greeks were full of fear, not so much on their own account, as for their countrymen, and for Greece herself, lest she should be worsted in her struggle with Mardonius. But when the voice fell on them, their fear vanished, and they charged more vigorously and at a quicker pace.”
~ ‘The History’ (Book 9) by Herodotus (George Rawlinson transl. GB6 - p. 310)
It feels great to have finished book 9 of The History by Herodotus, almost like catching up on a multi-season TV series, and you feel like you need to go back and read some of your favorite parts. Herodotus started with the reasons for the east-west conflict and went on to give accounts of great empires and rulers, taking occasional detours to talk about geography, history and other contexts. The last book circles back to Cyrus, who was mentioned in the first book, and it ends with a quote from Cyrus. The quote itself made me think - “soft countries gave birth to soft men—there was no region which produced very delightful fruits, and at the same time men of a warlike spirit”. A version of this is circulated on social media even now, and every time I see it, it feels wrong and anachronistic. The resurgence of show of strength by focusing on physical attributes, by being rude to people, calling for war and killing, seems so irrational especially when we need more people to use their brains more effectively - have better reading and writing comprehension, understand the laws of physics, have the ability to focus to spends long stretches of time to solve complex problems, think out of the box and innovate, etc. The toughness has to be mental and not merely physical. This reminds me of an experiment Nir Eyal talks about in his latest book (Beyond Belief), where a scientist named Richter conducts experiments on rats to see whether they would drown. He observed that domesticated rats were better at surviving than wild rats.
We often assume that “tougher” individuals, the ones with more strength or grit, naturally persist longer. Yet Richter’s experiment suggested otherwise. The wild rats went under within minutes. The domesticated ones kept on fighting.
~ Eyal, Nir. Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results (p. 3). Kindle Edition.
So, rather than thinking we should deny people things to make them stronger, you can actually provide them with the things they need to strengthen the attributes we need for modern society. In many places, people are falling behind because they don’t have access to basic necessities. Often, a small group in power keeps these resources from others.
Anyway, the main topic I wanted to write about was “belief” and how believing in something can make us do extraordinary things. This is what went through my mind when I read the part about the Greeks’ victory at Mycale. The above quote is from that section - “But when the voice fell on them, their fear vanished, and they charged more vigorously and at a quicker pace.” Here, the Greeks are scared and almost about to lose the battle. But they hear a rumor that the Greek land forces have defeated the large army of Mardonius at Platea. Herodotus says that this was probably a lie because both battles happened on the same day. The moment they hear the rumor, they are filled with courage, and they fight and win the battle. I recently started listening to “Beyond Belief” during my commute, and I read this section (in The History) around the same time I listened to a story (in Beyond Belief) about how someone was able to go through a surgery without anesthesia, just by focusing their attention on something else through hypnosis. Nir Eyal says that our conscious mind can handle around 50 bits of data per second, but our senses collect 11 million bits of raw data. I’ve heard that even Einstein used only 5% of his brain, but to think of the information input in bits per second was simply astounding. I’m still amazed by this when I think about it.
“Consider those two numbers: fifty bits versus eleven million bits. The gap between those two numbers is why we’re aware of only a tiny fraction of what our brains can actually perceive. In short, we live life through a keyhole.”
Eyal, Nir. Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results (pp. 20). Kindle Edition.
So our beliefs are intensely subjective. Two people can look at or even experience the same thing and yet believe different things. Nir Eyal says, “Your brain isn’t seeing reality—it’s seeing your beliefs about reality.” This is so important to remember when there is so much hatred and xenophobia in the world. When someone thinks that another group is “evil” and needs to be obliterated or “blasted off with bombs to stone age,” they need to examine why they believe those things. Rather than seeing people and families on the other side, they are seeing their beliefs about an abstracted group. One cannot think logically when there is intense hatred. Our beliefs can make us do extraordinary things - both harmful and positive. But anger is probably the worst. It is the fire that could consume the world and burn everything down. From small interpersonal conflicts to global ones, anger pulls humanity back, not forward. There is a common cultural myth that “venting” anger is a healthy, cathartic release, but the science says otherwise. Eyal writes -
Expressing anger doesn’t reduce it; it amplifies it. Venting our negative beliefs about others only reinforces them, locking us into poisonous relationship dynamics that make us feel worse instead of better.
~ Nir Eyal. Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results (p. 39). Kindle Edition.
When you’re intensely angry against someone or have strong beliefs about something, that is the time to check the assumptions. But having the wisdom to stop and check itself needs some level of self-awareness that the average person does not possess. It was always assumed that education could help elevate people into thinking better, but it is not always the case. People have to consciously develop the skill. While comparing GMs vs amateurs in Chess, Nabeel Qureshi says - “there’s a direct correlation between how skilled you are as a chess player, and how much time you spend falsifying your ideas.” He says the falsifying ratio for GMs is 4:1. 1 minute finding the right move, and another 4 minutes trying to falsify it. For amateurs, the ratio is 0.5:1. 1 minute finding the move, 30 seconds to casually try to falsify it(source: Nabeel Qureshi - Notes on Puzzles).
It feels surreal to be reading history about the burning of cities and killing people 2500 years ago, and the same thing is happening in the world right now in the same region, and people are still talking about the East-West conflict. Everyone is praying that the situation doesn’t get worse, but that’s what everyone thought at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war. The world is in a worse place than then. Amidst all this, the Artemis launch was such hopeful, positive news. Hope more such events happen in the future.
Other instances of belief in the book
The Greeks believe so strongly in their view of freedom that they don’t want to surrender to the Persians even if it means total annihilation. When Alexander suggests (Mardonius’ first offer), they say no. When a councilman (Lycidas) suggests surrender (Mardonius’ second offer), they stone Lycidas to death.
Mardonius believes so strongly in the strength of his army that he refuses counsel regarding staying at fortified Thebes (Artabazus’ advice). When the army has a feast, one of the soldiers remarks about the futility of having knowledge that they will get defeated, but still having to fight because their leader believes that they should.
The Spartans believe that having Tisamenus in their army will help them win because the Oracle tells Tisamenus that he will win 5 contests. They grant him and his brother citizenship (something unheard of as per Herodotus) to get him on board.
The Greeks decide to retreat to an island, the Athenians have already left, and there is a group of Spartans led by Amompharetus who refuse to leave because of his strong belief that they should stand and fight. He doesn’t heed the words of Pausanias, the Spartan Commander. When the Persian faction reaches and attacks them, Pausanias and the rest of the Spartans are left to fight without support from others.
After the victory, Pausanias asks the Persian cooks to prepare a banquet like the one they served for Mardonius. The lavish feast is set on tables of gold and silver. He also asks Spartan cooks to prepare a Spartan supper. Then he compares the two and tells his army that it makes no sense for the Medes, who are so rich, to attack Sparta, which is so poor! So, in many cases, a rich nation attacks a poor one by having inflated beliefs about its enemy. The enormity of the enemy’s power is sometimes a fiction of imagination.
Useful References
Book 9 Slides (by NotebookLM)
Book 9 - Interactive HTML (by Gemini)