Jeff Ragan’s Reviews > The Story of Civilization, Volume 2: The Life of Greece > Status Update

"Aristotle described the constitutional history of 158 Greek city-states...In the colonies, rather than on the mainland, were born Greek poetry and prose, mathematics and metaphysics, oratory and history. Without them, and the thousand absorbing tentacles which they stretched out into the old world, Greek civilization, the most precious product in history, might never have been" (174).

"The Greek invaders took possession of this coastal region by the ruthless law of colonial expansion - that natural resources unexploited by the native population will draw in, by a kind of chemical attraction, some other people to exploit them and pour them into the commerce and usage of the world" (159).

"The orbit of empire in east & north had come full turn...Greek enterprise had transformed the islands of the Aegean & the coasts of Asia Minor, the Hellespont, the Black Sea, Macedonia, & Thrace into a busy network of Hellenized cities, throbbing with agriculture, industry, trade, politics...It only remained to conquer another Greece in the West, & build a bridge between ancient Hellas & the modern world" (158).

"Harmony is not an ending of conflict, it is a tension in which neither element definitely wins, but both function indispensably (like the radicalism of youth & the conservatism of old age). The struggle for existence is necessary in order that the better may be separated from the worse...the competition of individuals...& empires constitutes nature's supreme court, from whose verdict there is no appeal" (147).

"The real creators of Greek culture were not the Greeks of what we now call Greece, but those who fled before the conquering Dorians, fought desperately for a foothold on foreign shores, & there, out of their Mycenaean memories & their amazing energy, made the art & science, the philosophy & poetry that, long before Marathon, placed them in the forefront of the Western World" (127).

"When the greatest empire of the age decided to destroy these scattered cities called Greece, or to lay them under tribute to the Great King, it forgot that in Attica it would be opposed by men who owned the soil that they tilled, and who ruled the state that governed them. It was fortunate for Greece, and for Europe, that Cleisthenes completed his work, and Solon's, twelve years before Marathon" (126).

"The barrenness of the soil, the nearness of the coast, the abundance of harbors lured the people of Attica into trade; their courage and inventiveness won for them the markets of the Aegean; and out of that commercial empire came the wealth, the power, and the culture of Athens in the Periclean age" (109).

"Homer was a poet, & knew that one touch of beauty redeems a multitude of sins; Hesiod was a peasant who grudged the cost of a wife, & grumbled at the impudence of women who dared to sit at the same table with their husbands. Hesiod...shows us the ugly basement of early Greek society - the hard poverty of serfs & small farmers upon whose toil rested all the splendor & war sport of the aristocracy & the kings" (103).

"The power and pride of Sparta was above all in its army, for in the courage, discipline, and skill of these troops it found its security and its ideal. Every citizen was trained for war, and was liable to military service from his twentieth to his sixtieth year... 'Return with your shield or on it,' was the Spartan mother's farewell to her soldier son" (81).

"In the course of their development the irrepressible Hellenes spread into every isle of the Aegean, into Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus, into Egypt, Palestine, Syria...In all these regions they built city-states, independent and diverse, and yet Greek; they spoke the Greek tongue, worshiped Greek gods...They did not leave Greece behind them..they carried it with them...they made the Mediterranean a Greek lake" (70-1).