Greece
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Greece’
On the annual Remembrance Day of ancient Athens, Pericles rose to remind the people of the City that grief alone was not the best way to honour the fallen.
In the winter of 431 BC, their annual Remembrance Day had a special resonance for Athenians: war had broken out with Sparta, a city felt to stand for crushing State control, even as Corinth stood for licentious ruin. Rising to deliver the keynote address, Pericles asked Athenians not just to grieve for the dead, but to cherish a City founded on liberty and self-control as a living monument to heroes.
Classical Greece has been an inspiration to every generation because she stands for the triumph of liberty and reason over prejudice and power.
In 1808, William Mitford (1744-1827) published a History of Greece, of which Thomas Macaulay was far from uncritical; but it prompted him to reflect on the hold that classical Greece continues to exercise over us all. We speak of it mostly in terms of fine buildings and grand oratory, of places of learning or gatherings at Court, but the real glory of Athens, said Macaulay, does not lie there.
The supreme arts and literature of ancient Athens all sprang from the State’s refusal to interfere in the life of the citizen.
In 1808, William Mitford (1744-1827) published a History of Greece to the death of Alexander in 327 BC. A recurrent theme of his narrative was a horror of the kind of popular politics for which Athens is famous, and his conviction that stability comes from a close-knit group of elder statesmen keeping the country on a tight rein. Macaulay completely disagreed.
When Alexander the Great threatened the people of Scythia, their ambassadors reminded him that a conqueror has many more burdens to carry than an ally has.
In 329 BC, during his Persian Campaign, Alexander the Great defeated the Scythians at the Battle of Jaxartes near Cyropolis, now Khujand in Tajikistan. Prior to the battle, the Scythians (a people of the steppes) warned him that allies were better then enemies, and customers better than slaves, and that those who thought themselves exceptional should not behave like everyday tinpot tyrants.
When Archimedes discovered the principle of displacement, he was hot on the trail of a clever fraud.
Hiero II (?308 BC – 215 BC), ruler of Syracuse in Sicily (an ancient Greek colony), made a present of a golden crown to a temple in honour of the gods. The crown was commissioned and duly delivered, but Hiero suspected that the craftsman had kept some of the gold and mixed in some lesser metal. So he turned to a relative of his, the mathematican Archimedes, and asked him to do some detective work.
Demosthenes was about sixteen when he decided he wanted to be a lawyer, but he was the most unpromising advocate imaginable.
Demosthenes (384-322 BC), the Athenian, is a household name for his eloquence, but brilliance came by labour. When he began his legal career, his weak and stuttering voice, poor breath control, gawky gestures and muddled sentences caused much amusement among seasoned advocates. Then one day he bumped into an actor named Satyrus, who had him repeat a few lines from Euripides.