Here's something probably everybody else knew, but just occurred to me. Reading some stuff about Caesar Augustus, it has come home to me how many defining battles in the history of Western Civilization were fought out in and around what we now call Greece.
There was Thermopylae, of course, and Marathon and Salamis, the three battles that defined Greece against Persia, and had a lot to do with shaping our notions of “East” and “West.”
But a little later, there is Actium, where Augustus toppled Marc Antony. To characterize Actium as a battle of East versus West is partly a cynical (and successful) public relations travesty manufactured by Augustus. But it seems likely that Actium extended “Western” control over the “Eastern” empire for hundreds of years beyond what we might otherwise have expected
Actium is critical, but Pharsalus (where Caesar defeated Pompey) and Phillipi (where Antony and others defeated the assassins of Caesar) belong somewhere in the same catalog.
And it doesn’t end there. A millennium and a half later, Lepanto pits “Turks” against Western Christians in the same part of the world.
Although it occurred nearby off the coast of Venice, I don’t suppose I should include Chioggia, because it pitted Venetians against Genoese—an all-Western extravaganza. But by only a little stretch, I can pick up the Battle of Blackbirds Field, Kosovo—Serbs versus Ottomans in a conflict whose history still haunts us today.
Are there more that belong on this list?
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