Status Updates From The Life of Greece (The Sto...

"The Golden Age ended with the death of Socrates. Athens was exhausted in body and soul; only the degradation of character by prolonged war and desperate suffering could explain the ruthless treatment of Melos, the bitter sentence upon Mytilene, the execution of the Arginusae generals, and the sacrifice of Socrates on the alter of a dying faith. All the foundations of Athenian life were disordered..." (455).

"Under [Pericles] Athens had reached her zenith; but because that height had been attained in part through the wealth of an unwilling Confederacy, and through a power that invited almost universal hostility, the Golden Age was unsound in its foundations and was doomed to disaster when Athenian statesmanship failed in the strategy of peace" (442).

"Form & order are the essence of the classic style...the typical Greek writer, like the Greek artist, is never satisfied with mere expression, but longs to give form & beauty to his material. He cuts his matter down to brevity, rearranges it into clarity, transforms it into a complex simplicity...This persistent effort to subordinate fancy to reason is the dominant quality of the Greek mind..." (436).

"If comedy throughout the fifth century was hostile to democracy, it was partly because poets like money and the aristocracy was rich, but chiefly because the function of Greek comedy was to amuse with criticism, and the democratic party was in power" (421).

"...it would be foolish to judge Euripides chiefly as a playwright; his ruling interest is...philosophical inquiry & political reform. He is the son of the Sophists, the poet of the Enlightenment, the representative of the radical younger generation that laughed at the old myths, flirted with socialism, & called for a new social order in which there should be less exploitation of man by man..." (413).