AI, The Nature of Work, and The Ionian Revolt

The Ionian Revolt

Phokaia (modern Foça, Turkey) was a Greek maritime city on the coast of Ionia. Harpagos, campaigning for Cyrus, conquered the city in about 545 BC. Many citizens abandoned their homes rather than submit to Persian rule, though Herodotos says more than half of them later turned back ( (Herodotos, Histories 1.164-1.165). Those who lived there under a foreign administration paid tribute and military service.

The city was severely depleted of resources and manpower, and in 499 BC, revolted against Persia with other Ionian cities. At the pivotal naval Battle of Lade in 494 BC, the Phokaian contingent consisted of only three ships out of a combined Ionian fleet of 353 vessels. Despite their small numbers, the Phokaian commander Dionysios was chosen by the Ionian council of war to lead the allied fleet.

Herodotos records Dionysios' address to the Ionians:

"Our affairs, men of Ionia, stand on the edge of a razor, whether to be free men or slaves, and runaway slaves at that. If you now consent to endure hardships, you will have toil for the present time, but it will be in your power to overcome your enemies and gain freedom; but if you will be weak and disorderly, I see nothing that can save you from paying the penalty to the king for your rebellion."
-Herodotos, Histories 6.11

Herodotos says the continuous training exhausted the sailors and they refused to practice, though Murray ("The Ionian Revolt") reads that story as an excuse invented for what the Samians did next. When the Persian fleet engaged the Ionians at Lade, forty-nine of sixty Samian ships deserted the battle line and sailed home. The Lesbian contingent followed the Samians. This betrayal collapsed the Ionian position, and the Persian forces defeated the remaining Greek ships.

That wasn't the end of the story. In 490 BC Dareios I sent Datis and Artaphrenes against the mainland Greek cities that had supported the rebels. Athens and Plataia beat that expedition at Marathon, and after Dareios died in 486 BC his son Xerxes led a second invasion, which a Greek alliance under Spartan command defeated in 480 and 479 BC. Those victories preserved the independence of Athens, Sparta and their allies, though Thessaly and most of Boiotia had already gone over to the Persian side and Persian garrisons held on in Thrace until about 463 BC.

AI and the Nature of Work

There's an open question about whether or not AI will make us dumb & lazy or smarter and more creative. My emerging answer to this question is: it's up to each of us to decide.

Use the categories to remove/add coins to the map.

Having all of my data on my coins in a reasonable form let me build this visualization of my full collection. The big light clouds are not surprising (Rome, Roman Republic) and (Alexandria, Egypt, Roman Empire) with many other lesser spots. The interactive version of this lets me drill into an individual coin and read its attribution.

For those who think AI is going to make work go away: the number of hours I spent working on a variety of visualizations, reading and adjusting the content of this article illustrates how much more work having AI tools can create for humans. I am spending my time on different activities, but still have no shortage of human driven creativity, thought and engagement.

Value, or whether anyone would pay me for these new activities has yet to be determined. One observation is that someone who doesn't know these models well and isn't expert in coding will spend a lot of money to generate code compared to someone who knows what they are doing - so there is maybe a nice profit to be made there in human facilitated AI efficiency.

I do think there is a parallel in the amount of effort it takes to make a high production quality movie. All of the automation and animation capabilities of the last 50 years haven't made movie budgets smaller and in the right hands have made some good movies. Admittedly there has been a lot of AI work-slop from Hollywood that hasn't prioritized engagement or storytelling at all. I remain optimistic that the new toolkit will ultimately create as much valuable work for human beings as it makes go away, and has potential to make us more creative and smarter. There also seems to be evidence that this work will be valued, even in the form of AI work-slop.

Here's my personal favorite visualization: the interactive view of coins, empires & timelines. (Try clicking around on the widget here. All the coins from the gallery of this website are shared here and today's coin of interest highlighted.)

A Coin

Wait, what happened to Phokaia!!! I may have drifted far from any topic that those on this forum might find interesting. Maybe this Phokaian trihemiobol gets the right balance of beautiful and devilish to tie into AI fears. The Griffin or Gryphon could easily take me down another rabbit hole of "which of these spellings is more appropriate?". Both trace back to the same etymological root: the ancient Greek word gryps (γρύψ), whose related adjective grypos (γρυπός) means "curved" or "hook-nosed" (referring to the eagle's beak), was adapted into late Latin as gryphus. For me: "griffin" lacks the romantic flair of the alternative, "gryphon", which recalls the Greek root, even if it is not the preferred choice for formal academic writing.

Source: Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. New York: Lovell, Coryell & Company, 1894

This silver trihemiobol (a coin worth one and a half obols) weighs 1.56 grams. The griffin head on the obverse (front) is a common Phokaian type. The city's canting badge is the seal, phoke (φώκη), which puns on its name.

Ionia, Phokaia. AR Trihemiobol (1.56g), 521-478 BC. Obv: head of griffin left. Rev: rough incuse punch. Ref: BMC 82 (Plate XXIII.5); SNG von Aulock 2116. Note: lightly toned, good very fine. Ex Tradart 1998 (8) lot 84. Ex Giessener Münzhandlung Dieter Gorny 1990 (50) lot 344.

I have more research to do on this coin, and hopefully AI can assist me without reducing my writing to  work-slop and my brain to mush . For one more article on the AI slop topic see Forbes.

References

• Herodotos. The Histories, Volume III: Books 5–7. Translated by A. D. Godley. Loeb Classical Library 119. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922.

• Oswyn Murray, "The Ionian Revolt," in The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 4, Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean c. 525 to 479 B.C., 2nd ed., ed. John Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis, and M. Ostwald (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 461-490.

• See also Forum Coins NumisWiki information on Ionia