For adventurous souls: the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Great Pyramid of Giza, as photographed by Gordon Converse, tops the list of the greatest ancient wonders.

By Jim O’Neal

It is difficult, and bordering on impossible, to construct a list of the “Seven Wonders of the World” since they seem to be moving targets, subject to frequent revisions and disagreements between people who claim to have a personal degree of expertise. However, it is feasible to build a reasonable consensus on the “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World” … if one starts with the list compiled by Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium in 225 B.C.

It seems mildly comforting that at one time in the distant past, humans created structures that were worthy as works of gods, and ancient travelers could make a “bucket list” if they were inclined to participate in this more modern concept. Here is the list for any intrepid adventurous souls.

  1. The Great Pyramid of Giza: Constructed about 4,600 years ago for the Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu (known as Cheops to the Greeks). Just outside of modern Cairo, it was the tallest manmade structure on Earth for roughly 4,000 years. It is the only one still standing and I can personally verify it’s still there. Despite centuries of erosion, it’s still about 450 feet high and consists of 2 million blocks weighing 2½ tons each. Somehow, its builders were able to align it in a perfect square with the four cardinal points on the compass. If you ever decide to hunt for signs of extraterrestrial activity, this would be a good place to start!
  2. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon: Assuming this ancient wonder actually existed, King Nebuchadnezzar II built it nearly 3,000 years ago near the Euphrates River (when Babylon was the capital of a great empire) to appease his wife Amytis, who was homesick for the hills of Persia. Besides the Gardens, Neb II is notorious for capturing and destroying Jerusalem circa 597 B.C.
  3. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia: Zeus was the mightiest Greek god (adopted by the Romans as Jupiter) and this 40-foot statue was carved with Zeus on a cedar throne with ivory and gold skin. Roman Emperor Theodosius had it relocated to Constantinople, where it was destroyed by fire in 475 A.D.
  4. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: Built to honor the daughter of Zeus and sister of the sun god Apollo. By reputation, the most beautiful of the ancient wonders since it was funded by King Croesus of Lydia (modern Turkey). With 127 marble columns, historians have said it “surpassed every structure ever raised by mortal men.” Ephesus is a very delightful ancient port city and on everyone’s itinerary for this area.
  5. The Tomb of King Mausolus at Halicarnassus: Queen Artemisia built this to honor her husband or brother or both (accounts vary). Obviously, the source of the word “mausoleum.” I thought I had been to all the major cities in Turkey, but Bodrum is new to me.
  6. The Colossus of Rhodes: My kind of wonder. The Colossus represents Apollo … towering over the harbor of Rhodes after the war between Rhodes and Macedon (Greek). Some myths compare it to the Statue of Liberty in the New York harbor. The great Roman historian Pliny wrote about pieces still there in the first century A.D.
  7. Lighthouse of Alexandria: Also known as the Pharos off the coast of Egypt; for centuries it was one of the tallest manmade structures in the world. It’s long gone (its last stones were apparently used for other projects in the 1400s), but very plausible, since Alexandria was the world’s cultural capital after being founded by Alexander the Great.

Obviously, the Greek writers and historians who recorded these events and wonders could only include what was in their part of the world, thus pre-Christian wonders were excluded. The most prominent, in my view, not included was the Great Wall of China, the longest fortification and possibly the greatest project ever undertaken. Much of the present wall dates from 1420 A.D. when the Ming Dynasty enlarged it. Its origins date back 1,600 years to earlier dynasties to protect the northern frontier; this was a 1,400-mile effort utilizing 300,000 laborers.

Also ignored was the entire city of Persepolis, the capital of Persia, probably intentionally because of their intense dislike by the Greeks. In 1971, the Shah of Iran staged an enormous celebration in the ruins of Persepolis to commemorate its 2,500th anniversary (yes, the same shah who was overthrown in 1979).

We live on a terribly small planet, but we have a marvelous historic record to pore over … facts, myths and fables that tend to become blurred over time. This is one problem our generation won’t have. I suspect 100 percent of the entire world’s sounds and activities will soon be on either a smartphone, bodycam or other device for permanent transfer and storage on YouTube.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Armies Have Been Planning Wars for Centuries

This 19-inch-high bronze of Alexander the Great, inscribed M Amodio Napoli, sold for $5,500 at a September 2017 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The New York Times recently wrote about Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, referring to a “secret plan” to deal with the growing North Korean nuclear threat to the world.

Military historians know that armies make plans. Alexander the Great had a plan for invading the Persian Empire to kill or capture Emperor Darius. Hannibal had a plan in the Second Punic War to elude the Roman navy by using war elephants to cross the Alps into Spain. King Phillip II had a plan in 1588 to defeat England using his impressive armada.

Napoleon is occasionally derided for having a “plan of the year” to guide his activities to defeat his European enemies, which included Egypt, Austria, Italy, Prussia and even Russia. But by 1870, Napoleon II had ushered in a new era of military planning, requiring meticulous details that covered every contingency. Earlier in 1810, Prussia had founded a war academy to train officers in staff duties to expand their basic skills.

After the remarkable Prussian victories over Austria (1806) and France (1870), institutions in other countries were hastily modified to conform, most notably the French École de Guerre in 1880. There would be no equivalent in the diplomatic world. As late as 1914, the British Foreign Office was still choosing entrants on the basis of relationships with ambassadors and other cronies. Diplomacy remained an art taught in embassies and despite being dedicated to national interests, there was not a shared belief that their roles were to avoid war with skillful negotiations.

The Balkan Wars of 1912-13 had been settled chiefly by diplomacy because the crisis had been isolated to national interests, as opposed to the far trickier national honor or prestige. However, in 1914, the weakest of the European powers, Austria-Hungary, was rocked by the assassination of the heir to the throne by a subversive from Serbia. Franz Ferdinand, nephew to Emperor Franz Joseph, had traveled to Bosnia to observe routine military maneuvers. The next day, he and his wife drove to the principal capital, Sarajevo.

This was an era when heads of state were often in grave danger … a Russian Tsar, an Austrian princess and an American president all felled by fanatics or lunatics. In the case of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, it was a group of assassins lying in wait with bombs and a pistol. Someone threw a bomb that bounced off the car, exploding and only wounding an officer. Forty-five minutes later, en route to visit the wounded, the driver made a wrong turn and stopped in front of an assassin with the pistol. Gavrilo Princip stepped forward and killed both Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie.

What followed was an astonishing series of interlocking alliances and mutual pacts that fell like a row of dominos and created a world war … France to go to war on Russia’s side and vice versa if either were attacked by Germany; Britain to lend assistance to France if needed; Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy (the Triple Alliance) versus the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary).

It was a conflict of unprecedented ferocity that ended the peace and prosperity of the Victorian Era, unleashing demons of mechanized warfare and mass death. An unanswered mystery is how a civilization at the height of its achievements could propel itself into such a ruinous conflict. The answer lays hidden in the negotiations among Europe’s crowned heads (all related by blood) and their doomed efforts to diffuse the crisis. By the end of the senseless war, three great empires – the Austrian-Hungarian, the Russian, and the Ottoman – had collapsed. An unthinkable outcome.

Perhaps it is as simple as the often-overused quote by Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a plan … until they get punched in the mouth.”

Can you hear us Rex?

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

How Can Catastrophe Fall From a Cloudless Sky?

British economist Norman Angell’s 1910 book The Great Illusion, which argued that war between industrial countries was futile, inspired the 1937 French film La Grande Illusion. A theater poster for the movie sold for $8,625 at a July 2006 auction.

“Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face.” – Mike Tyson

By Jim O’Neal

Throughout history, armies have always made plans. Alexander the Great had one to invade the Persian Empire to capture or kill Emperor Darius III. Phillip II of Spain had a plan to defeat England in 1588 by sailing an armada up the Channel, load his troops and land in Kent. The Duke of Marlborough planned to save Holland in 1704 by luring the French army down the Rhine and defeat it away from their home base.

Another famous plan by Hannibal in the Second Punic War was evading Rome’s navy, crossing the Alps and confronting the Legions in their homeland. Even the United States had a plan in 1861 to strangle the South by blockading the Mississippi River and all southern ports (the Anaconda Plan).

All these plans were made in the midst of war or when war was imminent. By 1870, war planning evolved to abstract contingencies for use only if a war became a reality. It was a futile effort of the paranoid, since war can become a reality if an overwhelming force becomes available for use by some ambitious leader (O’Neal’s Rule).

The Second World War – when it inevitably started in 1939 – was simply a continuation of the First World War. It was tragic and unnecessary conflict. Unnecessary because the train of events could have been interrupted at any point during the five weeks that preceded the first clash of arms. Tragic because the war ended the lives of 16 million people, tortured the lives of millions more, and destroyed the benevolent and optimistic culture of the European continent.

The puzzlement, of course, was how such a catastrophe came out of a cloudless sky in 1914 to a population raised to believe that war could never trouble their continent again. In the summer of that year, Europe enjoyed peaceful economic prosperity, so dependent on international exchange and cooperation that the prevailing wisdom considered war an impossibility.

A bestseller in 1910, The Great Illusion was an analysis of economic interdependence. It confirmed that war would be deterred by any threat to the disruption of international credit, and both industrial and commercial society were unambiguous in agreement. Industrial output was strong. New categories of manufactured goods, chemical dyes and internal-combustion vehicles flourished as new sources of cheaply extracted materials became more widely available. Rising populations everywhere and the enormous expansion of overseas empires were followed by a second revolution in transportation – steamships overtook sailing-ship tonnage.

Banks recovered their confidence. Gold-backed capital was circulating freely and fueled Russian railways, South African gold and diamonds, South American cattle, Australian sheep, Malaysian rubber and Canadian wheat. Every sector of the United States’ enormous economy devoured European capital as fast as it became available.

Naturally, everyone had strategic alliances (just in case), armies built up to offset naval imbalances (just in case), and contingency plans. However, diplomatic communications had not kept pace, as their need was a quaint relic of the past. There was no need since there was no trouble. Everybody was too busy getting rich.

War? Not a chance (plus, everyone had a “plan”). Maybe boxer Mike Tyson is smarter than we give him credit for.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Clash of Democracy and Oligarchy Dates to Ancient Times

persia-under-alexander-mazaeus-as-satrap-of-babylon
This double-daric gold coin, provisionally dated to the years Alexander the Great was King of Persia, sold for $70,500 at a September 2013 Heritage auction.

“Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.” – Plato

By Jim O’Neal

During the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.), Athens was ultimately defeated by the Spartans. Athenian democracy was twice suspended. In 411 and 404 B.C., Athenian oligarchs claimed that Athens’ weak position was due to democracy and led a counter-revolution to replace democratic rule with an extreme oligarchy. In both cases, democratic rule was restored within one year.

Democracy flourished for the next eight decades. However, after the Macedonian conquest of Athens under Phillip II and his son Alexander (later Alexander the Great) in 332 B.C., Athenian democracy was abolished. It was intermittently restored in the Hellenistic age in the 1st and 2nd centuries B.C., but the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 B.C. effectively killed it off.

Although democratic rule had been quashed, Athenian science and philosophy lived on. The renown and influence of Plato and Aristotle endured through the ages that followed and much of their work continues to influence Western thought to this day.

It is ironic that Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great at age 16 since throughout antiquity, Alexander was widely viewed as the most remarkable man who ever lived. When his father was assassinated in 336 B.C., he secured the Macedonian throne by destroying his rivals, forcing the Greek city/states to accept his authority in 334 B.C. and then marching into Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) at the head of an army of 43,000 foot soldiers and a cavalry of 5,500. At its heart lay the Macedonian phalanx, a well-drilled corps of 15,000 men armed with the sarissa, a double-pointed 23-foot pike. They were simply invincible.

He then defeated the Persian emperors, subdued Greece, drove his troops across mountains, deserts and rivers into Afghanistan, Central Asia and on to the Indian Punjab, ruthlessly crushing all resistance. Alexander was now king of a vast and ethnically diverse empire that included 70 newly founded cities. It is said that he sat down and cried when he ran out of new places to conquer. He died in 323 B.C., having been history’s most successful military commander.

Not bad for a 32-year-old.

Jim O'NielIntelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].