Donald Kagan > Quotes

“These georgoi in turn shaped the ideals, institutions, and culture that gave rise to the polis. Unlike any prior civilization, the culture of the Greek polis combined citizen militias with the rule of law. That involved having a broad middle class of independent small landowners that met in assemblies where the votes of these nonelite determined laws, and foreign and domestic policy. These smallholders gained in status as population growth in the ninth and eighth centuries forced an agricultural revolution. Labor-intensive farming of marginal lands came to replace the Dark Age pastoral economy. This required a growth in private landownership, which motivated georgoi to assume the risks involved in cultivating land that was unproductive using traditional farming techniques. These farmers created the ritual of hoplite warfare to decide disputes in a manner that did not contradict their agrarian agenda. The georgoi and their agrarian ideology became the driving force behind the hoplite revolution during the early seventh century.”
― Donald Kagan, Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece

“Philolaus of Corinth (about 730 B.C.?) had supposedly enacted regulations ensuring that the farms at Thebes might remain the same number in perpetuity. The Corinthian Pheidon, “one of the most ancient of the lawgivers,” purportedly argued that the population and the number of plots ought always to remain roughly equal. An even more shadowy figure, Phaleas the Chalcedonian, advanced the concept that all citizens of the polis ought to hold equal amounts of property.148”
― Donald Kagan, Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece

“The hoplites drove the tyrants from power and created broad oligarchies in their place.”
― Donald Kagan, Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece

“Fair and good [kalòn … agathòn] the man who falls fighting in the front rank, dying for the fatherland.”
― Donald Kagan, Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece

“Once again the historian who wishes to understand this difficult period must try to read between the lines. It”
― Donald Kagan, New History of the Peloponnesian War

“The Spartan attitude reflected an important fact about the condition of the Greek world from 479 to 461: Its stability was apparent only and not real. The alliance between Sparta and Athens was not an alliance of states but of factions. The faction of Cimon and the faction that would be headed by King Archidamus were prepared to accept limits to the hegemonal claims of their states, but in each state there were significant elements of the population who were not.”
― Donald Kagan, New History of the Peloponnesian War

“The development of hoplite warfare took place in this context of novel agrarianism, which promoted a particular type of moral excellence.”
― Donald Kagan, Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece

“This is aretē; this is the best human prize and the fairest for a young man to win.” The man who fights without pause among the promachoi “is a common good (xynon esthlon) for the polis and all the people (demos).” … “If he falls among the promachoi and loses his dear life, he brings honor to his town (asty) and his people (laoi) and his father.” Young and old alike lament him / and his entire polis mourns with painful regret. / His tomb and his children are notable among men, / and his children’s children, and his genos hereafter … / but if he escapes the doom of death … having prevailed [in battle], … / all men give place to him alike, the youth and the elders…. / Growing old he is distinguished among his citizens. Never does his name or his excellent glory (kleos) perish, but even though he is beneath the earth he is immortal.”
― Donald Kagan, Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece

“a vulgar form of Nihilism, I claim, has a remarkable influence in our educational system today, a system rotting from the head down, so chiefly in universities, but all the way down to elementary schools. The consequences of the victory of such ideas, I believe, would be enormous. If both religion and reason are removed, all that remains is will and power, where the only law is the law of tooth and claw.”-Donald Kagan, “Introduction to Ancient Greek History” Yale University CLCV 205 - - Lecture 1 - Introduction”
― Donald Kagan