Greek Prime Minister Alexander XVII On His Nation
Part I – The Empire – From Founding Until 3474 After Founding
Six thousand years ago, a great man rose up on the banks of the River Athena. Emperor Alexander I led the Greek people out of a nomadic lifestyle and it is in his honor that all subsequent leaders of the nation of Athens bear his name.
The founders had realized that man could bend the landscape to his will. Half of our early tribe formed a settlement and the other half continued its travels, to find a place for another. Yet first they laid paths on the north bank of the River Athena. Railroad tracks lay there today instead of crude dirt trails, but our ancestors' choice of location had proved sound.
After building that road, they returned to Athens and floated west on rafts on the River Athena. It turns out the great river did end – it seems silly to believe it did not, but for those early Greeks, those few hundred miles really had been the whole world. Athens had raised a band of Warriors, and they headed east on the river while the Settlers went west. Even then, they were weak combatants, best suited for keeping order over civilians – and exploring. In the west, the River Athena ended in a trickle. In the east, it ended in a massive lake – what we now know as the Greco-Persian Ocean, but then as now, the only realistic way to explain new things is in terms of what one already knows.
The northeast had more rich grasslands. That was going to be a fine place for another settlement once Athens produced more restless travelers to establish it. The east had another river. Legend has it that it was discovered four centuries after the founding of Athens, that finding a place much like home, the man leading the settlers stood up and bellowed "This is Sparta!"
For centuries, those cities simply grew in place. The people of that era's Athens and Sparta must've found their towns gigantic at three myriads of people each. Now the glorious city has a population of ninety-one myriads, its first brother two hundred and seventy six, in a world full of many settlements that size. Athens began organizing an army of more than ragtag warriors. Our people had known how to fuse copper and tin into bronze since the beginning. We finally started using the alloy for more than trinkets. Explorers near Sparta found a unit of archers that pledged itself to our cause; bows were the guns of their era.
Settlers from Athens intended to head to the northeast lands instead went northwest, and so Thermopylae became the third town in the empire, two millennia into its existence. Yet the land now known as the Corinth Peninsula was soon to know Greek civilization.
The gods were worshipped by this time, although the great temples had not yet been built. I wasn't sure whether it was bunk or not, but I was sure it kept the people calm when naked force of soldiers or police wouldn't suffice. Even in the old days, there were limits to that. And even back then, local productivity was shot to hell when diverting lots of people to entertainment in an attempt to pacify the others.
Towards the end of the Imperial Period, there were roads all the way between Sparta and Thermopylae, between Athens and Corinth, but not between the two sets. Then as now, Greece seemed known for its paths. Then as now, not only did it facilitate movement of major units, it was a boon to trade from helping laborers and merchants move goods around. From that stemmed the gold and new ideas that both built our civilization.
Following the River Spartacus north, it ended in a trickle as did the west side of the River Athena. However, that was near the southern coast of another massive lake and in the middle of yet more fertile grasslands. Between the river and the lake was perfect territory for the settlement that became known as Delphi.
The land had many plots of trees and the coasts had some collections of mighty sea beasts, so the empire could build things instead of simply eat. One of the forests to the southwest of Athens had worms that produced a fabric that was sturdy, yet smooth and beautiful. That would be one of the many trade items on which our empire was built.
The first legal inscriptions appeared around this time – a haphazard set of early Greek letters, but the closest thing the empire had yet had to writing. Greek coinage was also new during this era, and bore some of the same letters. A single drachma was a copper-plated zinc trinket now, but back then, it was a reasonably substantial silver piece about the size of the modern copper five drachmae. A few of those early stamped lumps are some of the most prized property of the governmental historical museum. Though now our coinage is precisely machined with more detailed inscriptions, we still use much the same design with the goddess Athena's head on one side and an owl on the other side.
The Greeks of that time could see much unsettled land to the north and south of the empire, and some to the west. Even those early leaders had dreams of expanding our territory to fill what we now know as the Greek Continent, but they hadn't thought of lands beyond it. It was harrowing enough for the Greek men of the time to travel a short distance from the shore in search of fish.
The Emperor's power had been absolute; our wise men had been developing a system that still had a single powerful leader, but with more control granted to the local aristocrats. This seems backwards now, for even the Greeks were not always the most civilized of men, but what would be known as Monarchy would be the next step in the development of our people. Acting in their own self-interest, those local lords would ensure that better use was made of the great resources of our land.