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

"The Greco-Persian War was the most momentous conflict in European history, for it made Europe possible. It won for Western civilization the opportunity to develop its own economic life - unburdened with alien tribute or taxation - and its own political institutions, free from the dictation of Oriental kings. It won for Greece a clear road for the first great experiment in liberty..." (242).

Second year second volume. I decided to read through all 11 by reading one volume a year. These are big books, lots of pages but the information/history provided is great at least in my opinion.

"The realization of self-government was something new in the world; life without kings had not yet been dared by any great society. Out of this proud sense of independence, individual and collective, came a powerful stimulus to every enterprise of the Greeks; it was their liberty that inspired them to incredible accomplishments in arts and letters, in science and philosophy" (233).

Religion and patriotism were bound together in a thousand impressive rites; the god most revered in public ceremony represented the apotheosis of the city; every law, every meeting of the assembly, every major enterprise of government, was surrounded by religious ceremony. In these ways Greek religion was used as a defense by the community and the race against the natural egoism of the individual man.