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

"When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near. The rich, afraid that democracy will bleed them, conspire to overthrow it; or some enterprising individual seizes power, promises everything to the poor, surrounds himself with a personal army, kills first his enemies and then his friends 'until he has made a purgation of the state,' and establishes a dictatorship" (520).

"The world of science and philosophy is composed not of individual things, but of Ideas; history, as distinct from biography, is the story of man; biology is the science not of specific organisms, but of life; mathematics is the study not of concrete things but of number, relation, and form independently of things and yet as valid for all things. Philosophy is the science if Ideas" (516).

"Compared with the bold advance of the 5th century, & the revolutionary achievements of the 3rd, science in the 4th marked time, & contented itself...with recording its accumulations...The problems of religion, morals, & politics, appearing to be more vital & pressing than the problems of nature, men turned with Socrates from the objective study of the material world to a consideration of the soul & the state" (500).

"The fifth century had modeled nude men & draped women; the fourth...nude women & clothed men. The fifth century had idealized its types, & had cast...the harassed life of man into an emotionless repose; the fourth century tried to realize in stone something of human individuality & feeling...the head & face took on more importance, the body less; the study of character replaced the idolatry of muscle" (494-5).

"Athens had ruined itself by carrying to excess the principles of liberty & equality, by 'training the citizens in such fashion that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty...& license to do what they pleased as happiness.' All men are not equal, & should not be equally free to hold office. The institution of the lot...had lowered disastrously the level of Athenian statesmanship" (487).

"Macedonia, despite the cultural hospitality of Archelaus, was still for the most part a barbarous country of hardy but letterless mountaineers when Philip came to the throne (359); indeed, to the end of its career, though it used Greek as its official language, it contributed no author, or artist, or scientist, or philosopher, to the life of Greece" (475).

"As politics grew more intense, patriotism waned; the bitterness of faction absorbed public energy and devotion, and left little for the city. The constitution of Cleisthenes and the individualism of commerce and philosophy had weakened the family and liberated the individual; now the free individual, as if to avenge the family, turned around and destroyed the state" (469).

"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).