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

"War of some kind - of city against city or of class against class - is a normal condition in Hellas. In this way the Greece that defeated the King of Kings turns upon itself, Greek meets Greek in a thousand battles, and in the course of a century after Marathon the most brilliant civilization in history consumes itself in a prolonged national suicide" (296).

"Demagogues arise who point out to the poor the inequality of human possessions, and conceal from them the inequality of human economic ability; the poor man, face to face with wealth becomes conscious of his poverty, broods over his unrewarded merits, and dreams of perfect states. Bitterer than the war of Greece with Persia, or of Athens with Sparta, is, in all the Greek states the war of class with class" (281).

"The merchants who accompany their goods to all quarters of the Mediterranean come back with changed perspective, & alert & open minds; they bring new ideas & ways, break down ancient taboos & sloth, & replace the familial conservatism of a rural aristocracy with the individualistic & progressive spirit of a mercantile civilization. Here in Athens East & West meet, & jar each other from their ruts" (276).

"This corrupt and incompetent democracy is at least a school: the voter in the Assembly listens to the cleverest men in Athens, the juror in the courts has his wits sharpened by the taking and sifting of evidence, the holder of office is molded by executive responsibility and experience into a deeper maturity of understanding and judgment; 'the city,' says Simonides, 'is the teacher of the man'" (266-7).

"The good government & cultural patronage that had adorned Athens in the age of Peisistratus were continued now with equal unity & decisiveness ...but also with the full...consent of a free citizenship. History through [Pericles] illustrated again the principle that liberal reforms are most ably executed & most permanently secured by the cautious & moderate leadership of an aristocrat enjoying popular support" (249).

"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).

"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 failed to unify Greece but athletics - periodically - succeeded. Men went to Olympia, Delhi, Corinth, and Nemea not so much to honor the gods - for these could be honored anywhere - as to witness the heroic contests of chosen athletes...Here under the rubric of athletics we find the real religion of the Greeks - the worship of health, beauty, and strength" (211).

"All the world knows that this political atomism brought to Hellas many a tragedy of fraternal strife. Because Ionia was unable to unite for defense it fell subject to Persia; because Greece, despite confederacies and leagues, was unable to stand together, the freedom which it idolized was in the end destroyed. And yet Greece would have been impossible without the city-state" (204).

""By the time of the Periclean Enlightenment the most vigorous element in Greek religion was the mystery. In the Greek sense a mystery was a secret ceremony in which sacred symbols were revealed, symbolic rites were performed, and only initiates were the worshipers. Usually the rites represented or commemorated, in semidramatic form, the suffering, death, and resurrection of a god..." (188).