OLLI Workshop: Critical Historical Periods in the Middle East

Leader: Theo Pavlidis (t.pavlidis@ieee.org)

Handout No. 1 - February 1, 2010

Main Resource: www.theopavlidis.com/MidEast. It contains the material of the lectures, bibliography, and links to web sources. It is organized in chapters, roughly corresponding to lectures. When there is a reference to a chapter in the handouts, you access that chapter by going to the web site and clicking on the link to that chapter. If you do not have access to the web, please let the workshop leader know.

Topic of the First Meeting: The Persian Empire, its wars with the Greeks, its conquest by Alexander the Great, and the adoption of the Persian political and religious concepts, first by the Greeks, and then by the Romans.

Wedge Attack: The Greek strategy that defeated the Persians who never figured out how to defend against it. (Why?)
	Far Left: Successful wedge attack. The center of the enemy line breaks and the flanks do nothing. Near Left: Successful defense against the wedge. The center retreats in an orderly way and the flanks encircle the attackers. This type of defense against the wedge is shown beautifully in Eisenstein's movie "Alexander Nevsky". (The battle on the ice.)