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904 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1939
I do not consider it as the goal of historical writing to condense the complexity of historical processes into some kind of “digest” or “synthesis”. On the contrary, I see the main purpose of historical studies in the unfolding of the stupendous wealth of phenomena which are connected with any phase of human history and thus to counteract the natural tendency toward over-simplification and philosophical constructions which are the faithful companions of ignorance.
Civilization does not die, it migrates; it changes its habitat and its dress, but it lives on. The decay of one civilization, as of one individual, makes room for the growth of another; life sheds the old skin, and surprises death with fresh youth. Greek civilization is alive; it moves in every breath of mind that we breathe; so much of it remains that none of us in one lifetime could absorb it all. We know its defects—its insane and pitiless wars, its stagnant slavery, its subjection of woman, its lack of moral restraint, its corrupt individualism, its tragic failure to unite liberty with order and peace. But those who cherish freedom, reason, and beauty will not linger over those blemishes. They will hear behind the turmoil of political history the voices of Solon and Socrates, of Plato and Euripides, of Pheidias and Praxiteles, of Epicurus and Archimedes; they will be grateful for the existence of such men, and will seek their company across alien centuries. They will think of Greece as the bright morning of that Western Civilization which, with all its kindred faults, is our nourishment and our life.
There is much that is magnificent in Homer’s gods, and we come to like them for their failings; but scholars have long since detected in the poets who pictured them a rollicking skepticism hardly befitting a national Bible. These deities quarrel like relatives, fornicate like fleas, and share with mankind what seemed to Alexander the stigmata of mortality—the need for love and sleep; they do everything human but hunger and die. Not one of them could bear comparison with Odysseus in intelligence, with Hector in heroism, with Andromache in tenderness, or with Nestor in dignity.
Our state is pregnant, shortly to produce
A rude avenger of prolonged abuse.
The commons hitherto seem sober-minded,
But their superiors are corrupt and blinded.
The rule of noble spirits, brave and high,
Never endangered peace and harmony.
The supercilious, arrogant pretense
Of feeble minds, weakness and insolence;
Justice and truth and law wrested aside
By crafty shifts of avarice and pride;
These are our ruin, ...!—never dream
Of future peace or safety to the state;
Bloodshed and strife will follow soon or late."
Theognis of Megara
All things take place by necessity and by harmony
The wise man will cultivate thought, will free himself from passion, superstition, and fear, and will seek in contemplation and understanding the
modest happiness available to human life.
Idealism offends the senses, materialism offends the soul; the one explains everything but the world, the other everything but life.
The excess of liberty, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into slavery . . . and the most aggravated form of tyranny arises out of the most extreme form of liberty.
Herodas writes: “Alexandria is the house of Aphrodite, and everything is to be found there—wealth, playgrounds, a large army, a serene sky, public displays, philosophers, precious metals, fine young men, a good royal house, an academy of science, exquisite wines, and beautiful women.”
No great nation is ever conquered until it has destroyed itself. Deforestation and the abuse of the soil, the depletion of precious metals, the migration of trade routes, the disturbance of economic life by political disorder, the corruption of democracy and the degeneration of dynasties, the decay of morals and patriotism, the decline or deterioration of the population, the replacement of citizen armies by mercenary troops, the human and physical wastage of fratricidal war, the guillotining of ability by murderous revolutions and counterrevolutions.