We will compare and contrast Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the Funeral Oration of Pericles, and Winston Churchill’s speech honoring those pilots who saved democracy after the Battle of Britain. […]
Why did the Ionian Greeks reject the Spartan leadership under the Pausanius, and why did they plead for Athens to take up the liberation of the Asian Greek colonies from the Persians, leading to the founding of the Delian League? Simply put, the Delian allies were impressed by both the military acumen and integrity of the two Athenian generals Aristides the Just, and Cimon. Also, the Spartans embarrassed Cimon, who sought to reconcile Athens and Sparta, which contributed to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian Wars. […]
This is second video and blog where we examine both history and Plutarch’s moral biographies of the key Athenian leaders before and in the first years of the war. In the first video we reflected on Pericles and his reforms leading to the Radical Democracy of Athens in the years […]
Why study the Peloponnesian Wars? Simple, you cannot understand Greek philosophy and history without studying these wars. Socrates lived through and fought in these wars and was tried and executed after these wars. Many dialogues respond to issues and questions raised by these wars. […]
Since we seek to draw moral lessons from history, we favor the Lives of Great Greeks and Romans by Plutarch. […]
Theseus and Romulus both built mighty cities, Athens and Rome, both are warriors sprung from the gods, “both stand charged with the rape of women, neither could avoid domestic misfortunes nor jealousy at home.” Youtube video for this blog: https://youtu.be/jOgNKSf9IT4 YouTube script with book links: https://www.slideshare.net/BruceStrom1/mighty-deeds-of-theseus-first-king-of-athens-in-plutarchs-lives Plutarch passes down us […]
Homer’s Odyssey depict the deep Greek past where might makes right, where brave soldiers fight for justice, where grievances and murders are settled by blood feuds. As Greek emerged from its Dark Ages in the seventh century, the Greeks in Athens sought to establish a more systematic system of justice with laws governing the state. Draco was appointed by the ruling aristocracy to be a lawmaker to codify new laws to replace justice by feuds, now the Senate of the Areopagus would hear cases of homicide. […]
Slavery in the ancient world was not based solely on race like in the Confederate South. Slavery in the ancient world happened to you when your city was conquered or when you were kidnapped by pirates. When a city was defeated the women and children were often enslaved, the men were often slaughtered, though sometimes they were enslaved to work in the mines. Or if you could not pay your bills you could be sold into slavery. […]
We are tempted to view slavery as something that went away with the Civil War, that with regards to slavery the modern world is so morally superior to the ancient world. The truth is that there were no employees in the ancient world, that slaves in the ancient worlds did the work that employees are hired to do in today’s world.
To understand the role of slaves in the ancient world we have a totally distorted picture when we only focus on the moral wrong of owning another person, treating servants like talking draft animals. The other aspect of slavery is paying someone such low wages that they cannot feed their family with dignity, that they feel like they live forever on the edge of the abyss, where the slightest crisis could force them to live in the streets. Someone who earns starvation wages is very much a modern-day slave. […]
The ancient world is very different from the modern world. We in the modern world view life is sacred, today we expect our children to survive until old age, because modern medicine ensures a long healthy life to most of us. If I had lived in the ancient world, I would have died as a teenager from appendicitis. In the ancient world, parents often did not name their children until they were a few weeks old due to the high infant mortality rate. Only half of children survived to adulthood, some scholars estimate that only one in ten survived to a ripe old age.
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