ancient greece

Ancient Warrior Culture - Ancient Greece, Rome, Israel
History

Ancient Warrior Societies, Blog 2, Ancient Greek and Roman Armies and Navies

08/25/2023 Bruce Strom 11

The Greek innovation to ancient warfare was their hoplite warrior phalanx, a formation eight to ten rows of a hundred or more warriors, sometimes extending a quarter of a mile. The shields of the front row would interlock, and the entire formation would press upon the enemy, the soldiers would first throw their spears then jab with their swords from behind their shields, strictly maintaining their position. This required training and practice, the Athenians expected their nobles to drill during the year, the Spartans had a year-round military the practiced year-round. […]

Ancient Warrior Culture, Slavery, Concubines, Ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel
History

Ancient Warrior Culture, Blog 1, War, Slaves, and Concubines in Ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel

08/23/2023 Bruce Strom 13

The Greeks were the most formidable fighting force in the Near East. The mighty Persian empire loaded their army on ships to fight what they thought would be an easy victory, but were decisively defeated by Athens and Sparta and their allies both on land and on sea in two separate wars. This established the reputation of the Greeks, later a Persian prince, Cyrus the Younger, hired a Greek hoplite infantry army to fight for the crown of Persia. The Greeks dominated the battle, but Cyrus was killed in the fighting. Losing their patron, the Greeks were forced to fight their way through the Persian Empire back to the Black Sea and then to Greece. This showed that the mighty Persians were vulnerable, later Alexander the Great of Macedon would conquer all of Persia and some of India also.

The Greeks may have been the founders of Western Civilization, but they were first and foremost a warrior society. If the Greeks weren’t formidable warriors they would have been conquered by the mighty Persian Empire, which means that there would be no Socrates, no Plato, no Xenophon, the Greeks would not have been able to leave us a cultural legacy. […]

Platonic Dialogue Alcibiades 1, On Friendship, :Leadership, and Love
Philosophy

Platonic Dialogue Alcibiades 1, On Friendship, Leadership, and Love

07/14/2023 Bruce Strom 1

In antiquity through the Renaissance, Alcibiades I was a highly regarded Platonic dialogue, and was often the first dialogue serious students of philosophy studied. However, many modern scholars deprecate this dialogue, arguing that it was not written by Plato. We demur, we tend to side with the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance scholars in such judgments, who tend to be inclusive, whereas modern scholars tend to be exclusive, demanding absolute certainty of proof. Our translator agrees with us, he says that the German scholar Schleiermacher first doubted its authenticity based on scholarly taste and a superficial reading. IMHO, although it does appear to differ from his other earlier dialogues, Alcibiades I was likely either written by Plato, or maybe by one of his brightest students, with his input. […]

Lysis, Platonic Dialogue on Love and Friendship, Where Old Men Ogle Boys at the Gymnasium
Philosophy

Lysis, Platonic Dialogue on Love and Friendship, Where Old Men Ogle Boys at the Gymnasium

07/12/2023 Bruce Strom 2

SOCRATES asks whether “only good men can be friends with one another? Can true friendship exist between a bad man and either a good man or another bad man?” (214d) The response of St John of the Cross would likely be that friendship with a bad man will draw you further away from the Love of God, poisoning your soul, leading you away from salvation. Friendship with a good man leads you to love and compassion, friendship with a bad men leads you to hatred and cruelty. […]

Phaedrus Part Two on Divine Love
Philosophy

Plato’s Dialogue of Phaedrus on Divine Love and the Heavenly Chariot, Part 2

03/24/2023 Bruce Strom 5

In his memorable metaphor for the nature of the soul, Socrates describes “a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the charioteers of the gods are all of them noble and of noble descent, but those of other races are mixed; the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is noble and of noble breed, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him.” […]

Phaedrus Platonic Dialogue On Love
Philosophy

Plato’s Dialogue of Phaedrus on Carnal Love and Rhetoric, Part 1

03/22/2023 Bruce Strom 4

Although Socrates does not condemn homosexual love in either dialogue, he is also depicted as being above carnal love, only capable of a philosophical divine love that is only concerned with the goodness of the soul. In the Symposium, the rowdy Alcibiades crashes the dinner party quite drunk, proclaiming how though he and Socrates were the best of friends, even saving his life in the thick of battle, in the end Socrates refused to become his lover. […]

Hesiod Works and Days
Philosophy

Hesiod: Works and Days, Early Greek Moral Philosophy

03/10/2023 Bruce Strom 2

Hesiod is a grouchy old farmer who mistrusts ‘lords’” but does not advocate changing the society. “He believes in justice, honesty, conventional piety, self-reliance, self-denial, foresight, and above all, WORK. He dislikes city folk, the sea, women, gossip and LAZINESS. He delivers a maxim like ‘Don’t urinate where the Sun can see you’ with the same earnest convict that he advises judges not to take bribes, his brother to avoid pride, and the farmer to get two nine-year-old oxen and a forty-year-old hired hand. […]

Greek and Roman History

Summary of the Peloponnesian Wars Between Athens and Sparta

11/25/2022 Bruce Strom 4

Why study the Peloponnesian wars? One main reason is: You cannot understand the Platonic dialogues without first understanding the history of the Peloponnesian Wars, because so many of the leading figures of this period are referenced in the Platonic dialogues, and we can learn many moral lessons from the war, which changed the Greek city-states forever.
The history of the war includes many interesting personalities, including Pericles, the founder of the radical democracy of Athens who died in the first years of the war, and Alcibiades, the ladies’ man and charismatic personality who was a leader of all three sides of the antagonists of the war, and we have the Spartan general Lysander who spared Athens from destruction when she lost the war. […]

Greek and Roman History

Spartan Women, Marriage, Family Life and Sayings, From Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus

11/11/2022 Bruce Strom 1

Seizing women for marriage was part of many ancient cultures. When in war a particularly hated city-state was conquered, it was common practice to slaughter the military age men and enslave the women and children, and many of the women would be enslaved as concubines. Early in the Peloponnesian Wars, Thucydides tells us the dramatic of how first the Athenian Assembly condemned the city-state of Mytilene to this fate, then changed their mind the next day, and how a furiously rowed trireme bearing this good news beat the previous day’s trireme just in the nick of time, saving the city of Mytilene!

Thucydides also tells of the siege of the Melians, whose men were executed, and her women and children sold into slavery at the hands of the Athenians late in the war, and how the Athenians worried they would suffer the same fate when they lost the war to Sparta. […]

Greek and Roman History

Unique Spartan Warrior Culture and History, Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, Lawgiver of Sparta

08/31/2022 Bruce Strom 1

Sparta was the city-state that dominated the Peloponnese, the region that is separated from Athens and the rest of Greece by the narrow Isthmus at Corinth, and without that isthmus it would be an island to itself. Sparta was a traditional and conservative agricultural society that was not welcoming to foreigners, other than aristocratic guest-friends. […]