# Ancient Greece  ## Metadata - Author: [[Thomas R. Martin]] - Full Title: Ancient Greece - Category: #books ## Highlights - Organizing themselves into city-states, they almost universally rejected the rule of royalty as the “default value” for structuring human society and politics. For them, the new normal became widespread participation in decision making by male citizens who earned that privilege by helping to defend the community. Most astonishing of all, some Greeks implemented this principle by establishing democracies, the first the world had ever seen (some scholars see roots of democracy in earlier communities in the eastern Mediterranean, but the evidence is unconvincing because, for one thing, it shows no concept of citizenship). ([Location 167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=167)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The comedies of Menander of Athens reveal that, in the new world that was emerging at the time of Alexander in which the city-states of Greece were losing their political independence, audiences preferred soap-opera situation comedies about mistaken identities and romance in place of the biting political satire that had characterized comic plays in the earlier days of Greece’s freedom from foreign domination. ([Location 270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=270)) - Tags: [[blue]] - the Greeks believed their climate to be the best anywhere. Aristotle, who saw climate as determining political destiny, believed that “Greeks occupy a middle position [between hot and cold climates] and correspondingly enjoy both energy and intelligence. For this reason they retain their freedom and have the best of political institutions. In fact, if they could forge political unity among themselves, they could control the rest of the world” ([Location 329](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=329)) - Tags: [[blue]] - throughout their history the ancient Greeks never constituted a nation in the modern sense because their various independent states never united politically. In fact, they often fought wars with one another. On the other hand, Greeks saw themselves as sharing a cultural identity because they spoke dialects of the same language, had similar customs, worshipped the same gods (with local variations in cults), and came together at international religious festivals, such as the celebration of the mysteries of the goddess Demeter at Athens or the athletic games at Olympia in the Peloponnese. Ancient Greece was thus a set of shared ideas and practices rather than a sharply demarcated territorial or national entity. ([Location 333](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=333)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The remarkable changes of the late Neolithic period took place as innovative human adaptations to what in anthropological terms would be called the feedback between environmental change and population growth. That is, as agriculture developed (perhaps in a period when the climate became wetter), populations increased, thus further raising the need for production of food, thus leading to further population growth, and so on. The process that led to the innovation of humans producing their food through agriculture instead of simply finding it in the wild clearly underlines the importance of demography—the study of the size, growth, density, distribution, and vital statistics of the human population—in understanding historical change. ([Location 412](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=412)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Before the rise of Mycenaean civilization in mainland Greece, Minoan civilization flourished on the large island of Crete. The Minoans, who did not speak Greek, had grown rich through complex agriculture and seaborne trade with the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt. The Minoans passed on this tradition of intercultural contact to the civilization of the Mycenaeans, whom they greatly influenced before losing their power after the middle of the millennium. The centers of Mycenaean civilization were destroyed in the period from about 1200 to 1000 B.C. as part of widespread turmoil throughout the eastern Mediterranean region. The descendants of the Greeks who survived these catastrophes eventually revived Greek civilization after the Dark Age (1000–750). ([Location 499](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=499)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The final phase of Indo-European migration caused devastation across Europe around 2000 B.C., according to the also controversial hypothesis that aggressive peoples at that time moved in large groups across vast distances. The Greeks of the historical period are then seen as the descendants of this group of invaders. ([Location 509](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=509)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Scholars of linguistics think that words in later languages that descended from the original language of the earliest Indo-Europeans can offer hints about important characteristics of that group’s original society. For example, the name of the chief Indo-European divinity, a male god, survives in the similar sounds of Zeus pater and Jupiter, the names given to the chief god in Greek and Latin, respectively. This evidence leads to the conclusion that Indo-European society was patriarchal, with fathers being not just parents but rather the authority figure controlling the household. Other words suggest that Indo-European society was also patrilocal (the wife moving to live with the husband’s family group) and patrilineal (the line of descent of children being reckoned through their father). Indo-European language also included references to kings, a detail suggesting a hierarchical and differentiated society rather than an egalitarian one. Finally, both linguistic and archaeological evidence was taken to mean that Indo-European males were warlike and competitive. Since the language of the Greeks, the fundamental component of their identity, indisputably came from Indo-European origins, they represented one linguistically identifiable group descended from Indo-European ancestors. ([Location 535](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=535)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Modern research agrees with the view of the ancient Greeks that they had learned much from Egypt. The clearest evidence of the deep influence of Egyptian culture on Greek is the store of fundamental religious ideas that flowed from Egypt to Greece, such as the geography of the underworld, the weighing of the souls of the dead in scales, and the life-giving properties of fire, as commemorated in the initiation ceremonies of the international cult of the goddess Demeter of Eleusis (a famous site in Athenian territory). Greek mythology, the stories that Greeks told themselves about their deepest origins and their relations to the gods, was infused with stories and motifs with roots in Egypt and the Near East. But the influence was not limited to religion. For one thing, Greek sculptors in the Archaic Age chiseled their statues according to a set of proportions established by Egyptian artists. ([Location 574](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=574)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Bronze Age society in the Aegean region eventually reached a level of economic interdependence that went far beyond reciprocity and far surpassed in its complexity the economies that had been characteristic of even larger Neolithic villages such as Çatal Hüyük. ([Location 634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=634)) - Tags: [[blue]] - None of the tablets records any exchange rate between different categories of goods, such as, for example, a ratio to state how much grain counted as the equivalent of a sheep. Nor do the tablets reveal any use of bullion as money in exchanges. (The invention of coinage lay a thousand years in the future.) The palace society of Minoan Crete therefore appears to have operated primarily on a redistributive economic system: The central authority told producers how much they had to contribute to the central collection facility and also decided what each member of the society would receive for subsistence and reward. In other words, the palaces did not support a market economy, in which agricultural products and manufactured goods are exchanged through buying and selling. ([Location 661](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=661)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Overseas trade probably operated as a monopoly through the palace system, too, with little role for independent merchants and traders. The Minoan palaces conducted a great deal of commerce by sea, seeking raw materials and luxury goods. Copper could be obtained on Cyprus, but the tin needed to make bronze was only found in a few very distant locations. Therefore, trade for this essential metal connected Crete, if indirectly, to places as far away as Britain and even Afghanistan. ([Location 675](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=675)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: These super long supply chains probably made the Bronze Age world fragile and vulnerable to collapse. When disaster struck, Bronze Age civilizations no longer could access the crucial ingredient to create bronze - and so weapons, tools, buildings, etc fell into disrepair - By the middle of the fourteenth century, the Mycenaeans had displaced the Minoans as the most powerful civilization of the Aegean. ([Location 785](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=785)) - Tags: [[blue]] - One scholarly hypothesis explaining, at least in part, the origin of these catastrophes theorizes that this period saw a reconceptualization of military tactics. Previously, the key to success in battle had been to deploy chariots carrying archers. Bronze Age kings waging war had supplemented their chariot forces with infantrymen, mostly foreign mercenaries. By around 1200 B.C., the argument goes, these hired foot soldiers had realized that they could use their long swords and javelins to defeat the chariot forces on the battlefield by swarming in a mass against their vehicle-mounted overlords. Emboldened by this realization of their power and motivated by a lust for booty, spontaneously formed bands of mercenaries rebelled against their former employers, plundering and looting. They conducted raids on treasure-packed settlements, which were no longer able to defend themselves with their old tactics that depended on chariots. Lacking any firm organization or long-term planning, the rebels fatally weakened the civilizations they betrayed and raided, but they were incapable of or uninterested in putting any new political systems into place to fill the void created by their destruction of the Mycenaean world. ([Location 813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=813)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The most startling indication of the dire state of existence in the early Dark Age is that the Greeks apparently lost their knowledge of writing when Mycenaean civilization ended, although it has been suggested that the loss was not total. In any case, the total or near-total loss of the common use of a technology as vital as writing is explicable because the Linear B script that Mycenaeans used was difficult to master and probably known only by the palace scribes, whose job was to keep the many records required for the palaces’ centralized economies. ([Location 917](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=917)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The use of iron spread because it offered practical advantages over bronze. Iron implements kept their sharp edges longer because properly worked iron was harder than bronze. Also, iron ore was relatively common in Greece (and other regions of Europe), which made iron weapons and tools less expensive than ones of bronze, which required imported metals to make. The popularity of iron was accelerated in particular by difficulties in obtaining the tin needed for alloying with copper to produce bronze. International trading routes, which had once brought tin to Greece and the Near East from this metal’s few and distant sources, had been disrupted by the widespread turmoil that had affected the eastern Mediterranean region beginning around 1200 B.C. However, iron ore could be mined and smelted by Greeks in their own territory, ensuring a reliable supply. ([Location 992](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=992)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Much more secure supply lines using iron ore. Prevents shocks that unravel civilization like in the case of bronze - Members of the Greek social elite in this period merited their status based on a combination of interrelated factors, including above all conduct and wealth. Of course, being born into a family that already enjoyed wealth and prestige obviously represented the fundamental basis for membership in the social elite, but by itself one’s lineage did not guarantee general acknowledgment as a member of the “best” in the society. It was essential to meet, and to be seen to meet, the demanding standards of the competitive code of behavior expected of this group, and to remain wealthy. Furthermore, it was crucial to employ one’s wealth appropriately in public contexts: to compete with other members of the elite in making displays of status by acquiring fine goods and financing celebrations; to cement relationships with social equals by exchanging gifts and with inferiors by doing them favors; to pay public honor to the gods by providing expensive sacrifices, especially of large animals; and to benefit the community by paying for public celebrations and construction projects. Therefore, to gain recognition from others as a dutiful and therefore admirable member of the elite of the society, one had to behave in certain ways. Losing one’s wealth or failing to observe the code of behavior expected of the elite could catapult one into social disgrace and oblivion, regardless of the past glory of one’s family. ([Location 1033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1033)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Despite the ancient origins of Homeric poetry, the behavioral code portrayed in its verses primarily reflected values established in the society of Greece of the Dark Age before the rise of the political systems of the city-state based on citizenship. ([Location 1058](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1058)) - Tags: [[blue]] - In The Iliad’s representation of the Trojan War, which the Greeks believed occurred about four hundred years before Homer’s time, Achilles is “the best of the Greeks” (for instance, Iliad 1, line 244) because he is a “doer of deeds and speaker of words” without equal (Iliad 9, line 443). Achilles’ overriding concern in word and action is with the glorious reputation (kleos) that he can win with his “excellence” (the best available translation for Greek aretē, a word with a range of meanings, sometimes translated as “virtue”). ([Location 1064](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1064)) - Tags: [[blue]] - the notion of excellence could serve both as a competitive social value and as a cooperative one. That is, in the context of warfare among people with no obligations toward one another, excellence demanded that warriors compete to defeat their enemies and to outshine their friends and allies in their ability to win battles. In the context of relationships such as guest-host friendship, however, excellence required that even enemies put aside martial competitiveness to cooperate in respecting moral obligation established among individuals from their families. ([Location 1079](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1079)) - Tags: [[blue]] - For Greeks, acting justly in keeping with the concept of excellence required what today might be called retributive justice. As depicted in The Iliad (18, lines 478–608) in the scenes carved on the new, divinely made shield of Achilles, retribution even for a crime as serious as a homicide can be satisfied with the payment of money, rather than violent punishment, if the family of the victim agrees. It is therefore important to remember that Greek ideas of what constituted justice stemmed from a focus on reestablishing and maintaining appropriate and agreed-upon social relations among people in the community. ([Location 1102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1102)) - Tags: [[blue]] - it must also be remembered that the code of excellence had high standards for women as well as for men, and that women who met those standards earned high status in return, and that those who fell short risked disgrace for their social failures. Penelope clearly counts as an exceptional figure of literature, but nevertheless it is significant that The Odyssey, in praising her, employs a description also fitting for a man. Indeed, her praise suits a ruler, one of surpassing virtue and achievement. In real life, women of the social elite, like men of the same status, regarded their proper role in life as a duty to develop an exceptional excellence to set themselves apart in the competition with others, whether members of the elite or those of more ordinary character and status. Under this code, any life—for a woman as for a man—was contemptible unless its goal was the competitive pursuit of excellence and the fame that it brought. ([Location 1107](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1107)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: The goal of life was to contrast oneself from “mere life” and to embrace vigorous life, passion, competition - The Olympic Games centered on contests among individuals, who prided themselves on their demonstrated distinctiveness from ordinary people, as the fifth-century B.C. lyric poet Pindar made clear in praising a family of victors: “Hiding the nature you are born with is impossible. The seasons rich in their flowers have many times bestowed on you, sons of Alatas [of Corinth], the brightness that victory brings, when you achieved the heights of excellence in the sacred games” (Olympian Ode 13). ([Location 1136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1136)) - Tags: [[blue]] - At the same time, a chief had only limited power to coerce recalcitrant or rebellious members of his band to respect his decisions and commands. When choices affecting the entire group had to be made, his leadership depended on being capable of forging a consensus by persuading members of the band about what to do. Hesiod describes how an effective chief exercised leadership: “When wise leaders see their people in the assembly get on the wrong track, they gently set matters right, persuading them with soft words” (Theogony, lines 88–90). In short, a chief could only lead his followers where they were willing to go, and only by the use of persuasion, not compulsion. The followers expected to gather in an assembly of them all to settle important matters by implementing what they regarded as just retribution. These expectations of persuasion and justice lived on after the Dark Age as fundamental principles contributing to the creation of the political structures undergirding the organization of Greek city-states composed of free citizens, not subjects. ([Location 1183](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1183)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Reminds me very much of the discussion in The Dawn of Everything. These sort of “play chieftains” in the Greek case did not become the real thing. Instead, the relative indifference to authority of the underlings is what became the real thing (at least in the case of Athens) - The Greek citystate was thus a complex community made up of people of very different legal and social statuses. Certainly one of its most remarkable characteristics was the extension of citizenship and a certain share of political rights to even the poorest freeborn local members of the community. Explaining how this remarkable development happened remains a central challenge for historians. ([Location 1226](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1226)) - Tags: [[blue]] - A polis had political unity among its urban and rural settlements of citizens and was independent as a state. Scholars disagree about the deepest origins of the Greek polis as a community whose members self-consciously assumed a common and shared political identity. Since by the Archaic Age the peoples of Greece had absorbed many innovations in technology, religious thought, and literature from other peoples throughout the eastern Mediterranean region and the Near East, it has been suggested that Greeks might have been influenced also by earlier political developments elsewhere, for example, as in the city-kingdoms on Cyprus or the cities of Phoenicia. It is difficult to imagine, however, how political, as opposed to cultural, precedents might have been transmitted to Greece from the East. The stream of Near Eastern traders, crafts specialists, and travelers to Greece in the Dark Age could more easily bring technological, religious, and artistic ideas with them than political systems. ([Location 1256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1256)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: It’s possible that traders brought the idea of a city-state to Greece and what enabled its growth was that Greece had the necessary preconditions to foster this type of government (lack of imperial states, long history of agriculture and settlement, semi-egalitarian bands that had formed during the Dark Ages, etc) - The most famous ancient analyst of Greek politics and society, the fourth-century B.C. philosopher Aristotle, insisted that the emergence of the polis had been the inevitable result of the forces of nature at work. “Humans,” he said, “are beings who by nature live in a polis” (Politics 1253a2–3). Anyone who existed self-sufficiently outside the community of a polis, Aristotle only half-jokingly maintained, must be either a beast or a god (Politics 1253a29). In referring to nature, Aristotle meant the combined effect of social and economic forces. ([Location 1278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1278)) - Tags: [[blue]] - greater numbers of Greeks began to move abroad permanently beginning in the mid-eighth century B.C. By this date, the population explosion in the late Dark Age had caused a scarcity of land available for farming, the most desirable form of wealth in Greek culture. The disruptions and depopulation of the Dark Age originally had left much good land unoccupied, and families could send their offspring out to take possession of unclaimed fields. Eventually, however, this supply of free land was exhausted, producing tensions in some city-states through competition for land to farm. Emigration helped solve this problem by sending men without land to foreign regions, where they could acquire their own fields in the territory of colonies founded as new city-states. ([Location 1306](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1306)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Economic growth and technological change now provides the metaphorical “unclaimed fields” for new men to make their claim to. Once growth stagnates or reverses, emigration (or conflict) must ensure - Identifying the reasons for the changes in Greek politics that led to the gradual emergence of the city-state in the Archaic Age remains a challenge. The surviving evidence mainly concerns Athens, which was not a typical city-state in significant aspects, particularly in the large size of its population. Much of what we can say about the structuring of the early Greek city-state as a kind of social, political, and religious organization therefore applies solely to Athens. ([Location 1406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1406)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Theognis of Megara, a sixth-century B.C. poet whose verses also reflect earlier conditions, gave voice to the distress of members of the elite who felt threatened by the ability of members of the non-elite to use their newly made riches to force their way into the highest level of society: “Men today honor possessions, and elite men marry into ‘bad’ [that is, non-elite] families and ‘bad’ men into elite families. Riches have mixed up lines of breeding . . . and the good breeding of the citizens is becoming obscured” (Theognidea, lines 189–190). ([Location 1418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1418)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Aristocracy as primarily concerned with breeding. Family lineages were prized and seen to be “diluted” by newcomers - The great increase in population in this era probably came mostly in the ranks of the non-elite, especially the relatively poor. Their families raised more children, who could help to farm more land, so long as it was available for the taking in the aftermath of the depopulation of the early Dark Age. Like the Zeus in Hesiod’s Theogony, who acted in response to the injustice of his ruthless father Kronos in swallowing his own children, the growing number of people now owning some property apparently reacted against what they saw as unacceptable inequity in the leadership of the elite, whose members evidently tended to behave as if they were petty kings in their local territory. In Hesiod’s words, they were “swallowing bribes” to inflict what seemed like “crooked” justice on oppressed people with less wealth and power (Works and Days, lines 38–39, 220–221). This concern for equity and fairness on the part of those hoping to improve their lot in life gave a direction to the social and political pressures created by the growth of the population and the general improvement in economic conditions. ([Location 1425](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1425)) - Tags: [[blue]] - even poor citizens had a distinction setting themselves apart from these groups not endowed with citizenship, a status in which they could take pride despite their poverty. ([Location 1442](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1442)) - Tags: [[blue]] - the popular cult of the goddess Demeter at Eleusis near Athens. This internationally renowned cult, about which more will be said later, served in some sense as a safety valve for the pressures created by the remaining inequalities of life in Greek city-states, because it offered to all regardless of class its promised benefits of protection from evil and a better fate in the afterworld. ([Location 1456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1456)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Served a similar role (albeit smaller) to Christianity at this point. Assure the poor that they will win in the afterlife and it gives a release valve for their tensions - until the eighth century, only leaders and a relatively small number of their followers could afford to buy metal weapons, which the use of iron was now making more affordable; militiamen provided their own arms and armor. Presumably these new hoplites, since they paid for their own equipment and trained hard to learn phalanx tactics to defend their community, felt they—and not just the members of the elite—were entitled to political rights in return for their contribution to “national defense.” According to the theory of a hoplite revolution, these new hoplite-level men forced the elite to share political power by threatening to refuse to fight and thereby cripple the community’s military defense. ([Location 1475](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1475)) - Tags: [[blue]] - If it is true that poor, lightly armed men were a significant factor in Dark Age warfare, this importance could have persisted until well into the Archaic Age and the time of the development of the city-state, as it took a long time for hoplite armor and weapons to become common. And even after more men had become sufficiently prosperous to afford hoplite equipment, they still would have been well outnumbered by those poorer than they. Early hoplite forces, therefore, may have been only the “fighters in the front” (promachoi), spearheading larger forces of less heavily armed troops assembled from poorer men. In this way, the contribution of the poor to the defense of the city-state as part of its only military force at this date—a citizen militia—would have been essential and worthy of citizenship. ([Location 1516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1516)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Another significant boost to extending political rights to the poor sometimes came from the sole rulers, called tyrants, who seized power for a time in some city-states and whose history will be discussed in the next chapter. Tyrants could have used grants of citizenship to poor or disenfranchised men as a means of increasing popular support for their regimes. ([Location 1522](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1522)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Freedom from control by others was a necessary precondition to becoming a citizen with full political rights, which in the city-states meant above all being a freeborn adult male. The strongest contrast citizenship produced, therefore, was that between free (eleutheros) and unfree or slave (doulos). ([Location 1553](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1553)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Barbarians, the Greeks thought, were not all alike; they could be brave or cowardly, intelligent or dim-witted. But they were not, by Greek standards, civilized. ([Location 1572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1572)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Other city-states experienced periods of domination by the kind of sole ruler who seized power in some irregular, even violent way and whom the Greeks called a tyrant (from the Greek tyrannos). Tyranny, passed down from father to son, existed at various times across the breadth of the Greek world, from city-states on the island of Sicily in the west, to Samos off the coast of Ionia in the east, though most of these regimes failed to stay in control for more than a couple of generations. ([Location 1672](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1672)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The Spartans made oligarchy the political base for a society devoted to military readiness. The Spartan way of life became internationally famous for its discipline, which showed most prominently in the Spartan infantry, the most powerful military force in Greece during the Archaic Age. ([Location 1708](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1708)) - Tags: [[blue]] - One apparent result of the compromises required to forge Spartan unity was that the Spartans retained not one but two hereditary military leaders of high prestige, whom they called kings. These kings, who had perhaps originally been the chiefs of the two dominant villages, served as the religious heads of Sparta and commanders of its army. The kings did not hold unrestricted power to make decisions or set policy, however, because they operated not as pure monarchs but rather as leaders of the oligarchic institutions governing the Spartan city-state. Rivalry between the two royal families periodically led to fierce disputes, and the initial custom of having two supreme military commanders also paralyzed the Spartan army when the kings disagreed on strategy in the middle of a military campaign. The Spartans therefore eventually decided that only one king at a time would command the army when the troops marched out to war. ([Location 1725](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1725)) - Tags: [[blue]] - A board of five annually elected “overseers” (ephors) counterbalanced the influence of the kings and the gerousia. Chosen from the adult male citizens at large, the ephors convened the gerousia and the assembly; they exercised considerable judicial powers of judgment and punishment. They could even bring charges against a king and imprison him until his trial. The creation of the board of ephors diluted the political power of the oligarchic gerousia and the kings because the job of the ephors was to ensure the supremacy of law. ([Location 1739](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1739)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The distinctiveness of the Spartan way of life was fundamentally a reaction to their living surrounded by people whom they had conquered in war and enslaved to exploit economically but who outnumbered them greatly. To maintain their superiority over their conquered and hostile neighbors, from whom they extracted food and labor, Spartan men had to turn themselves into a society of soldiers constantly on guard. They accomplished this transformation by a radical restructuring of traditional family life enforced by strict adherence to the laws and customs governing practically all aspects of behavior. ([Location 1755](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1755)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Helots had a semblance of family life because they were expected to produce children to maintain the size of their population, which was compelled to labor as farmers and household slaves as a way of freeing Spartan citizens from any need to do such work. Spartan men in fact wore their hair very long to show they were warriors of high status rather than laborers, for whom long hair was an inconvenience. ([Location 1774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1774)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Most helots, however, had no hope of freedom, and their hatred of their masters induced them to revolt whenever they saw a chance for freedom by driving the Spartans out of their land. The historian Xenophon, who knew Sparta well, recorded the feelings of rebellious helots toward the Spartans: “They said they would be glad to eat them raw” (Hellenica 3.3.6). ([Location 1798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1798)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Contrasting the freedom of Spartan citizens from ordinary work to the awful life of the helots, the Athenian Critias commented, “In Laconia [the territory of Sparta] are the freest of the Greeks, and the most enslaved” (Libanius, Orations 25.63 = D.-K. 88B37; cf. Plutarch, Lycurgus 28). ([Location 1807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1807)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The entire Spartan way of life was strictly regimented to keep the Spartan army at tip-top strength; individual choice in how to live was not an option. Boys lived at home until only their seventh year, when they were taken away to live in communal barracks with other males until they were thirty. They spent most of their time exercising, hunting, training with weapons, and being acculturated to Spartan values by listening to tales of bravery and heroism at common meals presided over by older men. The standard of discipline was harsh, with physical and verbal punishment for failure to obey the trainers. The unrelenting pressure to perform and to obey prepared young males for the hard life of a soldier in war. ([Location 1810](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1810)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Tyrtaeus enshrined the Spartan male ideal in his poetry: “Know that it is good for the polis and the whole people when a man takes his place in the front row of warriors and stands his ground without flinching” (Fragment 12). ([Location 1847](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1847)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Spartan women were renowned throughout the Greek world for their relative freedom. Other Greeks regarded it as scandalous that Spartan girls exercised with boys and did so wearing minimal clothing. Women at Sparta were supposed to use the freedom from labor provided by the helot system to keep themselves physically fit to bear healthy children and raise them to be strict upholders of Spartan values. Their fitness was their beauty, so they wore no makeup. ([Location 1849](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1849)) - Tags: [[blue]] - By the Classical Age, the ongoing problem had become acute of producing enough children to prevent a precipitous decline in the size of the Spartan citizen body. In the end, however, sex at Sparta was not a success. When a giant earthquake in 465 B.C. and then the helot revolt that followed killed an enormous number of Spartans, the population was never able to return to its previous level, because the birth rate remained too low to repair the loss to the city-state’s most precious resource, its supply of human beings. Eventually, Spartans failed to bear enough children to keep their once supremely powerful state from shrinking to such a small population that by the later fourth century B.C. their city-state had become inconsequential in international affairs. This change—Sparta falling from its position as the most powerful state in Archaic Age Greece to a bit player in international affairs by the time of Alexander the Great—is perhaps the clearest evidence from antiquity of the crucial importance of demography to history. ([Location 1868](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1868)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Despite their role in promoting Corinth’s prosperity, the Bacchiads made themselves unpopular because they ruled violently. Cypselus, a member of the social elite whose mother was a Bacchiad, built up support to seize power by becoming popular with the masses: “He became one of the most admired of Corinth’s citizens because he was courageous, prudent, and helpful to the people, unlike the oligarchs in power, who were insolent and violent,” according to the later historian Nicolaus of Damascus (Excerpta de insidiis, p. 20.6 = FGrH 90 F57.4–5). Cypselus engineered the overthrow of Bacchiad rule by rallying support among the non-elite at Corinth and securing an oracle from Delphi favoring his rebellion. After seizing power, he ruthlessly suppressed rivals, but his popularity with the people remained so high that he could govern without the protection of a bodyguard. ([Location 1888](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1888)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Another example where a member OF the aristocracy breaks from the rest of the aristocracy and lifts himself above it by appealing to the “lower elements” of society. Same as Caesar, Pompey, etc - the men who became tyrants were usually members of the social elite, or at least nearly so, who nevertheless rallied support from ordinary citizens for their coups. In places where men with no property may have lacked citizenship or at least felt substantially disenfranchised in the political life of the city-state, tyrants perhaps won adherents by extending citizenship and other privileges to these poorer parts of the population. ([Location 1907](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1907)) - Tags: [[blue]] - most tyrannies needed to cultivate support among the masses of their city-states to remain in power because those were the men making up the majority of their armies. ([Location 1911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1911)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Since Attica had several good ports along its coast, the Athenians were much more oriented to seafaring and communication with other peoples than were the almost landlocked Spartans. ([Location 1935](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1935)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Theseus’s “labors,” as they are called in imitation of the deeds performed by the most famous Greek hero, Heracles (Hercules to the Romans), were mainly successful fights against monsters and criminals threatening civilized life. They therefore elevated him to the status of a culture hero laboring to promote the social and moral institutions of the city-state. Heracles, by contrast, the hero of Dorian Greeks, was renowned for overcoming monsters and criminals as a demonstration of his supreme physical strength and ability. The legend of Theseus made him a particularly appropriate choice as the founder of a city like Athens that prided itself on its claim to have taught the most important aspects of civilized life, agriculture and the initiation ceremonies of Demeter, to the rest of the Greek world. The choice of Theseus as the legendary founder of the city-state thus expressed an Athenian feeling of superiority through its claim of having successfully conducted a “civilizing mission” for the early Greek world. ([Location 1939](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1939)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Two factors perhaps encouraging the emergence of the Athenian polis as an incipient democracy were rapid population growth and a rough sense of egalitarianism among male citizens surviving from the frontierlike conditions of the early Dark Age, when most people had shared the same meager existence. These same factors, however, do not necessarily differentiate Athens from other city-states that did not evolve into democracies, because the same conditions generally pertained across the Greek world in the late Dark Age and early Archaic Age. Perhaps population growth was so rapid among Athenian peasants that they had greater opportunity than at other places to demand a share in governing. ([Location 1969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1969)) - Tags: [[blue]] - One cause of the trouble may have been that the precariousness of agriculture in this period led to the gradual accumulation of the available farmland in the hands of fewer and fewer people. In subsistence agriculture, the level at which many Athenian farmers operated, a lean year could mean starvation. Moreover, farmers lacked any easy method to convert the surplus of a good year into imperishable capital, such as coined money, which then could be stored up to offset bad years in the future, because coinage was not yet in common use; Athens had yet to mint any currency. Failed farmers had to borrow food and seed from the rich to survive. When they could borrow no more, they had to leave their land to find a job to support their families, most likely by laboring for successful farmers. Under these conditions, farmers who became more effective, or simply more fortunate, than others could acquire the use and even the ownership of the land of failed farmers. Whatever the reasons may have been, many poor Athenians had apparently lost control of their land to wealthier proprietors by around 600 B.C. The crisis became so desperate that impoverished peasants became slaves when they could not pay their debts; economic failure had brought politics to the breaking point. ([Location 1992](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=1992)) - Tags: [[blue]] - As Solon explains in his autobiographical poetry, he tried to steer a middle course between the demands of the rich to preserve their financial advantages, and the call of the poor for a redistribution of land to themselves from fields that would be seized from the holdings of the large landowners. ([Location 2005](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2005)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Despite the restriction on officeholding by the lowest income class that he imposed, Solon’s classification scheme supported further development of conditions leading to democracy because it allowed for upward social mobility, and the absence of direct taxes on income made it easier for entrepreneurial citizens to better their lot. If a man managed to increase his income, he could move up the scale of eligibility for office. ([Location 2023](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2023)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Sort of similar to our current system. Though wealth is not a formal prerequisite for office, success and wealth can help spur on a strong political career. This allows for an aristocracy that “turns over” or “churns”. Instead of being ordained at birth, the aristocracy is made up of the most ambitious and successful citizens - The outcome of this protracted unrest was a tyranny, when a prominent Athenian named Pisistratus began a long and violent effort to make himself sole ruler with the help of wealthy friends and also the poor, whose interests he championed. On his third try in 546 B.C., he finally established himself as tyrant at Athens, protected by a bodyguard. Pisistratus courted poor supporters by providing funds to help peasants acquire needed farm equipment and by offering employment for poorer men on public-works projects, such as road improvements, a huge temple to Zeus, and fountains to increase the supply of drinking water in the city. The tax that he imposed on agricultural production, one of the rare instances of direct taxation in Athenian history, financed the loans to farmers and the construction projects. ([Location 2051](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2051)) - Tags: [[blue]] - as a member of the social elite looking for popular support, Cleisthenes had good reason to invent the kind of system he thought ordinary people wanted. That he based his system on the demes, the great majority of which were country villages, suggests that some conditions favoring democracy may have stemmed from the traditions of village life. ([Location 2098](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2098)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Working from knowledge such as the observed fact that celestial bodies moved in a regular pattern, scientific thinkers like Thales and Anaximander (c. 610–540 B.C.), also from Miletus, drew the revolutionary conclusion that the physical world was regulated by a set of laws of nature rather than by the arbitrary intervention of divine beings. Pythagoras, who emigrated from Samos to south Italy about 530, taught that the entire world was explicable through numbers. His doctrines inspired systematic study of mathematics and the numerical aspects of musical harmony, as well as devotion to the idea of transmigration of the human soul as a form of immortality. ([Location 2162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2162)) - Tags: [[blue]] - These thinkers were proposing a dramatic new way of understanding reality: They were arguing that human beings could investigate and explain the ways in which the universe works because the phenomena of nature were neither random nor arbitrary. This insistence that natural laws governed how reality operated was a crucially significant development for later philosophical and scientific thought. The universe, the totality of things, they named cosmos because this word meant an orderly arrangement that is beautiful (hence our word cosmetic). The order postulated as characteristic of the cosmos was perceived as lovely because it was not random. The universe’s regularity encompassed not only the motions of the heavenly bodies but also everything else: the weather, the growth of plants and animals, human health and psychology, and so on. Since the universe was ordered, it was intelligible; since it was intelligible, human beings could achieve explanations of events by thought and research. ([Location 2166](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2166)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The rulebased view of the causes of events and physical phenomena developed by these thinkers contrasted sharply with the traditional mythological view of causation. Naturally, many people had difficulty accepting such a startling change in their understanding of the world, and the older tradition of explaining events as the work of gods lived on alongside the new ideas. ([Location 2176](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2176)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Developing the view that people must give reasons to explain what they believe to be true and persuade others of the validity of their conclusions, rather than simply make assertions that they expect others to believe without evidence, was the most important achievement of the early Ionian thinkers. This insistence on rationality, coupled with the belief that the world could be understood as something other than the plaything of a largely hidden and incomprehensible divine will, gave human beings who accepted this view the hope that they could improve their lives through their own efforts. As Xenophanes put it, “The gods have not revealed all things from the beginning to mortals, but, by seeking, human beings discover, in time, what is better” ([Location 2199](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2199)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Despite their autocratic rule, the ancient Persian kings usually did not interfere with the religious worship or everyday customs of their subjects; they realized that this sort of interference with people’s traditional beliefs and practices could only lead to instability, the dread of imperial rulers. ([Location 2307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2307)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Subsequent campaigns by the Persian king’s commanders crushed the Ionian revolt entirely by 494. King Darius then sent his general Mardonius to reorganize Ionia, where he now surprised the locals by installing democratic governments to replace the unpopular tyrannies. Since the Persian king was only interested in loyalty from his subjects, he was willing to learn from his mistakes and let the Ionians be governed locally as they pleased if they would then remain loyal and stop rebelling against overall Persian control. ([Location 2329](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2329)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Xerxes went home, but he left behind an enormous land army under his best general, Mardonius, as well as a startling (to the Greeks) strategic move: Early in 479 he extended an offer to the Athenians to make peace with them (and only them). If they came to terms, he would leave them in freedom (meaning no tyrant ruling as a Persian stooge), pay to rebuild the Athenian sanctuaries that his troops had burned, and give the Athenians another land to rule in addition to their own. The Greeks should not have been surprised; after all, the Persian king had reversed his policy in Ionia after having crushed the rebels, replacing the puppet tyrants there with democracies to ensure more peaceful conditions in his dealings with the Ionian city-states. Xerxes made this offer because he recognized that, with the Athenian fleet on his side, the rest of the Greeks would have no chance except to submit to Persian control. ([Location 2431](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2431)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The Greek fighters’ superior weapons and armor and their commanders’ insightful use of topography to counterbalance their enemy’s greater numbers help to explain their victories on the military level. What is truly memorable about the Persian Wars, however, is the decision of the citizen militias of the thirty-one Greek city-states to fight in the first place—and their determination never to quit in the face of doubts and temptations. They could easily have surrendered and agreed to become Persian subjects to save themselves. Instead, these Greek warriors chose to strive together against apparently overwhelming odds. ([Location 2473](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2473)) - Tags: [[blue]] - What does seem true is that Spartan men’s long years of harshly regimented training often left them poorly prepared to operate humanely and effectively once they had been freed from the constraints imposed by their way of life at home, where they were always under the scrutiny of the entire Spartan community. In short, there seems to have been a real danger that Spartan men would put aside their respect for their society’s traditional restraint and self-control once they left behind the borders of their city-state and were operating on their own. ([Location 2496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2496)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The numerous Athenian men of lesser means who rowed the Delian League’s ships came to depend on the income they earned on league expeditions. Since these men represented the numerically largest group in the male population eligible to vote in the assembly of Athens, where decisions were rendered by majority vote, they could make certain that assembly votes were in their interest. If the interests of the allies did not coincide with theirs, the allies were given no choice but to acquiesce to official Athenian opinion concerning league policy. In this way, alliance was transformed into empire, despite Athenian support of democratic governments in some allied city-states previously ruled by oligarchies. From the Athenian point of view, this transformation was justified because it kept the alliance strong enough to continue to carry out the overall mission of the Delian League: protecting Greece from the Persians. ([Location 2553](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2553)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The most significant of Ephialtes’ reforms was the establishment of a judicial system of courts manned by juries of male citizens over thirty years old, chosen by lottery to serve in trials for a one-year term. Previously, judicial power had belonged primarily to the archons and the Areopagus council of ex-archons, but now that power was largely transferred to the jurors, a randomly chosen cross section of the male citizen body, six thousand men in all, who were distributed into individual juries as needed to handle the case load. ([Location 2593](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2593)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Ostracism existed because it helped protect the Athenian system from real or perceived threats. At one level, it provided a way of removing a citizen who seemed extremely dangerous to democracy because he was totally dominating the political scene, whether because he was simply too popular and thus a potential tyrant by popular demand, or whether he was genuinely subversive. ([Location 2627](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2627)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Ostracism is significant for understanding Athenian democracy because it symbolizes the principle that the interest of the group must prevail over that of the individual citizen when the freedom of the group and the freedom of the individual come into conflict in desperate and dangerous cases. ([Location 2641](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2641)) - Tags: [[blue]] - the most influential public officials—the annual board of ten generals who had responsibility both for military and civil affairs, especially public finances—received no stipends. They were elected by the assembly rather than chosen by lottery, because their posts required expertise and experience; they were not paid because mainly rich men like Pericles, who had received the education required to handle this top job and enjoyed the free time to fill it, were expected to win election as generals. Generals were compensated only by the status and prestige that their office brought them. ([Location 2658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2658)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The social values of Athenian democracy called for leaders like Cimon and his brother-in-law to provide such gifts for public use to show their goodwill toward the city-state and thereby earn increased social eminence as their reward. Wealthy citizens were also expected to fulfill costly liturgies (public services), such as providing theatrical entertainment at city festivals or fitting out a fully equipped warship and then serving on it as a commander. This liturgical system for wealthy men compensated to a certain extent for the lack of any regular income or property taxes in peacetime after the reign of the tyrant Pisistratus. (The Assembly could vote to institute a temporary levy on property, the eisphora, to pay war costs.) ([Location 2747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2747)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The Parthenon frieze made a unique statement about the relationship between Athens and the gods by showing its citizens in the company of the gods, even if the assembled deities carved in the frieze were understood to be separated from and perhaps invisible to the humans in the procession. A temple adorned with pictures of citizens, even if idealized citizens of perfect physique and beauty, amounted to a claim of special intimacy between the citystate and the gods and a statement of confidence that these honored deities favored the Athenians. Presumably, this claim reflected the Athenian interpretation of their success in helping to turn back the Persians and thus playing their role as the defenders of Greek civilized life, in achieving leadership of a powerful naval alliance, and in controlling a public income from their commercial taxes, silver mines, and the allies’ dues, which made Athens richer than all its neighbors in mainland Greece. ([Location 2809](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2809)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The message these statues conveyed to their ancient audience was one of energy, motion, and asymmetry in delicate balance. Archaic Age statues impressed viewers with their appearance of stability; not even a hard shove looked likely to budge them. Statues of the Classical Age, by contrast, showed greater range with a variety of poses and impressions. The spirited movement of some of these statues suggests the energy of the times but also the possibility of change and instability that underlies even a Golden Age. ([Location 2859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2859)) - Tags: [[blue]] - This idea of reciprocity between gods and humans defined the Greek understanding of the divine. Gods did not love human beings, except sometimes literally in mythological stories of gods choosing particular favorites or taking earthly lovers and producing half-divine children. Rather, they supported humans who paid them honor and avoided offending them. If human beings angered the gods, the deities could punish the offenders by sending such calamities as famines, earthquake, epidemic disease, or defeat in war. Disaster and vengeance could also be inflicted on people from the action of the natural order of the universe, of which the gods were a part but not necessarily the guarantors. For example, death, including murder, created a state of pollution (miasma). Corpses had to receive purification and proper burial to remove the pollution before life around it could return to normal; murderers had to receive just punishment for their crimes, or the entire community—not just the criminal—would experience dire consequences, such as infertility or the births of monstrous offspring, starvation from bad harvests, and illness and death from epidemic disease. ([Location 2896](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2896)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The gods were regarded as especially concerned with certain human transgressions that disrespected their divine majesty, such as people breaking agreements that they had sworn to others while invoking the gods as witnesses that they would keep their word. ([Location 2911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2911)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The Greeks believed their gods lived easy lives, exposed to pain sometimes in their dealings with one another or sometimes sad at the misfortunes of favored humans, but essentially carefree in their immense power and immortality. ([Location 2913](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2913)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: This seems based on the life of the aristocracy. Freed from “mere life” they lived carefree lives compared to the subsistence farmers and slaves that formed the majority of the population in many parts of Greece. They rather spent their time on pursuits and struggles that pushed them towards their definition of excellence - war, physical competition, politics, etc. The gods were made in this image - not performing mere labor but instead living lives filled with great deeds, intrigues, and romance - Like the prickly warriors of the stories of Homer, who became enraged at any acts or words of disrespect to their status, the gods were always alert for insults to their honor. ([Location 2921](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2921)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The strongman Heracles (Hercules) was the only Greek hero to whom cults were established internationally, all over the Mediterranean world. His superhuman feats in overcoming monsters and generally doing the impossible gave him an appeal as a protector in many city-states. ([Location 2979](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=2979)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The problematic relationship between gods and humans formed the basis of Classical Athens’s most enduring cultural innovation: the tragic dramas performed over three days at the major festival of the god Dionysus held in the late spring every year. These plays, still read and produced on stage today, were presented in ancient Athens as part of a contest for the authors of plays, in keeping with the deeply competitive spirit characteristic of Greek society. ([Location 3012](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3012)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The author of a slate of tragedies in the festival of Dionysus also served as director, producer, musical composer, choreographer, and sometimes even one of the actors. Only men with private wealth could afford the endless amounts of time such work demanded, because the prizes in the tragedy competition were probably modest and intense rehearsals lasted for months before the festival. ([Location 3046](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3046)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Aeschylus’s pride in his military service to his homeland points to a fundamental characteristic of Athenian tragedy: It was a public art form, an expression of the polis that explored the ethical dilemmas of human beings caught in conflict with the gods and with one another in a polis-like community. The plots of most tragedies were based on stories set in ancient times, before the creation of the polis, when myth said that kings ruled in Greece; tales from the era of the Trojan War were very popular subjects. Nevertheless, the moral issues embedded in the playwrights’ reinterpretations of these old legends always pertained to the society and obligations of citizens in the contemporary polis. ([Location 3055](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3055)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Of the three best-known authors of Athenian tragedies, Euripides depicts the most sensational heroines. His heroine Medea, the main character in the play Medea produced in 431 B.C., reacts with a shattering violence when Jason, her husband, proposes to divorce her in order to marry a richer, more-prominent woman. Jason’s plans flout the social code governing marriage: A husband had no moral right to divorce a wife who had fulfilled her primary duty by bearing legitimate children, especially sons. ([Location 3098](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3098)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Physical fitness was considered so important for men, who could be called on for military service in the militia from the age of eighteen until sixty, that the city-state provided open-air exercise facilities for daily workouts. These gymnasia were also favorite places for political conversations and the exchange of news. ([Location 3237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3237)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Young men from prosperous families traditionally acquired the advanced skills required for successful participation in the public life of Athenian democracy by observing their fathers, uncles, and other older men as they participated in the assembly, served on the council or as magistrates, and made speeches in court cases. The most important skill to acquire was the ability to speak persuasively in public. In many cases, an older man would choose an adolescent boy as his special favorite to educate. The boy would learn about public life by spending his time in the company of the older man and his adult friends. During the day, the boy would observe his mentor talking politics in the agora or giving speeches in the assembly or courts, help him perform his duties in public office, and work out with him in a gymnasium. Their evenings would be spent at a symposium, a drinking party for men and companions, which could encompass a range of behavior from serious political and philosophical discussion to riotous partying. ([Location 3251](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3251)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The values that men need who want to live lives of excellence lifelong are better instilled by love than by their relatives or offices or wealth or anything else. . . . I mean the values that produce feelings of shame for disgraceful actions and ambition for excellence. Without these values neither a city-state nor a private person can accomplish great and excellent things. . . . Even a small army of such men, fighting side by side, could defeat, so to speak, the entire world because a lover could more easily endure everyone else rather than his beloved seeing him desert his post or throw down his weapons. He would die many times over before allowing that to happen” (Symposium 178c–179a). ([Location 3271](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3271)) - Tags: [[blue]] - In the second half of the fifth century, a new brand of self-proclaimed teachers appeared, offering more organized instruction to young men seeking to develop the skills in public speaking and argumentation needed to excel in democratic politics. These instructors were called sophists (“wise men”), a label that acquired a pejorative sense (preserved in the English word sophistry) because they were so clever at public speaking and philosophic debates. Sophists were detested and even feared by many traditionally minded men, whose political opinions and influence they threatened. The earliest sophists arose in parts of the Greek world other than Athens, but from about 450 B.C. on they began to travel to Athens, which was then at the height of its material prosperity and cultural reputation, to search for pupils who could pay the hefty prices the sophists charged for their instruction. Wealthy young men flocked to the dazzling demonstrations that these itinerant teachers put on to showcase their ability to speak persuasively, an ability that they claimed to be able to impart to students. The sophists were offering just what every ambitious young man wanted to learn, because the greatest single skill that a man in democratic Athens could possess was to be able to persuade his fellow citizens in the debates of the assembly and the council or in lawsuits before large juries. For those unwilling or unable to master the new rhetorical skills of sophistry, the sophists (for stiff fees) would compose speeches to be delivered by the purchaser as his own composition. The overwhelming importance of persuasive speech in an oral culture like that of ancient Greece made the sophists frightening figures to many, for the new teachers offered an escalation of the power of speech that seemed potentially destabilizing to political and social traditions. ([Location 3276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3276)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The ideas and techniques of argumentation that sophists such as Protagoras taught made many Athenians nervous or even outraged, especially because leading citizens such as Pericles flocked to hear this new kind of teacher. Two related views taught by sophists aroused special controversy: (1) that human institutions and values were not products of nature (physis) but rather only the artifacts of custom, convention, or law (nomos), and (2) that, since truth was relative, speakers should be able to argue either side of a question with equal persuasiveness. The first idea implied that traditional human institutions were arbitrary rather than grounded in immutable nature, and the second idea made rhetoric into an amoral technique for persuasion. The combination of the two ideas seemed exceptionally dangerous to a society so devoted to the spoken word, because it threatened the shared public values of the polis with unpredictable changes. ([Location 3306](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3306)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The Corinthians were by this time already angry with the Athenians for supporting the city-state of Corcyra in its earlier quarrel with Corinth and for making an alliance with Corcyra and its formidable navy. The Spartans issued their ultimatums in order to placate the Megarians and, more importantly, the Corinthians with their powerful naval force. The Corinthians had bluntly informed the Spartans that they would withdraw from the Peloponnesian League and add their ships to the Athenian alliance if the Spartans delayed any longer in backing them in their dispute with the Athenians over Potidaea; this threat forced the Spartans to draw a line in the sand with Athens. ([Location 3457](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3457)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Two powers jostling for hegemony over Greece pushed to war by conflicts with minor players in each others’ spheres of influence. The more hostility exists between two powers and the greater their webs of entanglement with other minor players, the likelier a flashpoint occurs and causes all out war. As China extends its power across East Asia, Central Asia, and Africa, likelihood of conflict with the US increases. The minor player of great strategic importance, Taiwan, will likely fill the role of Corinth here. - In the end, then, the actions of lesser powers pushed the two great powers, Athens and Sparta, over the brink to open conflict in 431. ([Location 3467](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3467)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Thucydides portrays Pericles as making the following arguments in a speech to his fellow male citizens: “If we do go to war, harbor no thought that you went to war over a trivial affair. For you this trifling matter is the assurance and the proof of your determination. If you yield to the enemy’s demands, they will immediately confront you with some larger demand, since they will think that you only gave way on the first point out of fear. But if you stand firm, you will show them that they have to deal with you as equals. . . . When our equals, without agreeing to arbitration of the matter under dispute, make claims on us as neighbors and state those claims as commands, it would be no better than slavery to give in to them, no matter how large or how small the claim may be” (The Peloponnesian War 1.141). ([Location 3472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3472)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The technology of military siege machines in the fifth century B.C. was not advanced enough to break through fortifications of stone with the thickness of Athens’s Long Walls. Consequently, no matter what level of damage Spartan invasions inflicted on the agricultural production of Attica in the farm fields outside the walls around the city center, the Athenians could feed themselves by importing food on cargo ships through their fortified port; they could guard the shipping lanes with their incomparable fleet. They could pay for the food and its transportation with the huge financial reserves they had accumulated from the dues of the Delian League and the revenue from their silver mines at Laurion; they minted that silver into coins that were highly desired as an internationally accepted currency (fig. 8.1). The Athenians could also retreat safely behind their walls when the Spartan infantry attacked their own less-powerful land army. From their unassailable position, they could launch surprise attacks against Spartan territory by sending warships from the fortified harbor to land troops behind enemy lines. Like aircraft in modern warfare before the invention of radar warning systems, Athenian warships could swoop down unexpectedly on their enemies before they could prepare to defend themselves. Pericles therefore devised a two-pronged war strategy for Athens: Avoid set battles on land with the Spartans’ infantry, even when they ravaged Athenian territory, but use the fleet to attack the Spartans’ countryside and that of their allies. In the end, he predicted, the superior resources of Athens in money and men would enable it to win a war of attrition. What was required was consistent guidance from Athens’s leaders and firm dedication from its people. They would all suffer, but they would survive to prevail in the end—if they had the will to stay the course. ([Location 3502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3502)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Athens had an essentially impenetrable defensive position with its stone walls, fortified harbor, and the ability to import grain freely even if it lost access to its farmland. It also had the ability to move quickly and discretely, leveraging its navy to surprise raids and outmaneuver the enemy. This combination is powerful - the strong defensive positioning allowed Athens to be more aggressive offensively, knowing that their losses won’t be catastrophic. Very similar to Taleb’s barbell strategy of minimizing exposure to negative shocks and increasing exposure to positive shocks. The strong fortifications made it nearly impossible for Athens to fall to Sparta completely (ie eliminated the chance of ruin) while the ambitious naval raids on Sparta and its allies gave Athens the opportunity for the attacks to go unexpectedly well - perhaps toppling an ally or even Sparta itself - The innate unpredictability of war soon undermined Pericles’ strategy for Athenian victory when an epidemic began to ravage Athens’s population in 430 B.C. and raged on for several years with disastrous consequences. ([Location 3534](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3534)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Pericles himself died of the disease in 429. He apparently had not anticipated the damage to Athens’s conduct of the war that the loss of his firm leadership would mean. ([Location 3541](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3541)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The manpower losses caused by the great epidemic prevented Athens from launching as many naval expeditions as would have been needed to make Periclean strategy effective, and the annual campaigns of the war in the early 420s B.C. brought additional losses to both sides without any significant opportunity for one side to overcome the other decisively. ([Location 3580](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3580)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The arrogant flamboyance of Alcibiades’ private life and his blatant political ambitions had made him many enemies in Athens, and the hostility to him reached a crisis point at the very moment of the expedition’s dispatch, when Alcibiades was suddenly accused of having participated in sacrilegious events on the eve of the sailing. ([Location 3649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3649)) - Tags: [[blue]] - When Alcibiades was accused of having been part of the vandalism, his enemies immediately upped the ante by reporting that he had earlier staged a mockery of the Eleusinian Mysteries. This was an extremely serious charge of sacrilege and caused an additional uproar. Alcibiades pushed for an immediate trial while his popularity was at a peak and the soldiers who supported him were still in Athens, but his enemies cunningly got the trial postponed on the excuse that the expedition must not be delayed. Alcibiades therefore set off with the rest of the fleet, but it was not long before a messenger was dispatched telling him to return alone to Athens for trial. Alcibiades’ reaction to this order was dramatic and immediate: He defected to Sparta. ([Location 3655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3655)) - Tags: [[blue]] - So immense was the distress caused by the crisis that an extraordinary change was made in Athenian government: A board of ten officials was appointed to manage the affairs of the city. The stresses of a seemingly endless war had convinced the citizens that the normal procedures of their democracy had proved sadly inadequate to the task of keeping them safe. They had lost confidence in their founding principles. As Thucydides observed, “War is a violent teacher” (The Peloponnesian War 3.82). ([Location 3684](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3684)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Despite this military recovery, the bitter turmoil in Athenian politics and the steep decline in revenues caused by the Sicilian disaster opened the way for a group of men from the social elite, who had long harbored contempt for the broad-based direct democracy of their city-state, to stage what amounted to an oligarchic coup d’état. They insisted that a small group of elite leaders was now needed to manage Athenian policy in response to the obvious failures of the democratic assembly. ([Location 3701](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3701)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The end for this revolutionary government came when the crews of the Athenian war fleet, which was stationed in the harbor of the friendly island city-state of Samos in the eastern Aegean, threatened to sail home to restore democracy by force unless the oligarchs stepped aside. In response, a mixed democracy and oligarchy, called the Constitution of the Five Thousand, was created, which Thucydides praised as “the best form of government that the Athenians had known, at least in my time” (The Peloponnesian War 8.97). ([Location 3716](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3716)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Fortunately for the Athenians, the Spartan leaders resisted the demand made by their allies the Corinthians, the bitterest enemy of Athens, that the defeated city be totally destroyed. The Spartans feared that Corinth, with its large fleet and strategic location on the isthmus, potentially blocking access to and from the Peloponnese, might grow too strong if Athens were no longer in existence to serve as a counterweight. Instead of ruining Athens, Sparta installed a regime of anti-democratic Athenian collaborators to rule the conquered city. This group became known as the Thirty Tyrants. These Athenians came from the wealthy elite, which had always included a faction admiring oligarchy and despising democracy. Brutally suppressing the opposition from their fellow Athenians and stealing shamelessly from people whose only crime was to possess valuable property, these oligarchs embarked on an eight-month-long period of terror in their homeland during 404–403 B.C. ([Location 3740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3740)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Socrates’ questions had the unsettling aim of provoking those with whom he spoke to examine the basic assumptions of their way of life. Employing what has come to be called the Socratic method, Socrates never directly instructed his conversational partners; instead, he led them to draw conclusions in response to his probing questions and refutations of their cherished but unexamined assumptions. ([Location 3923](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3923)) - Tags: [[blue]] - This indirect but pitiless method of searching for the truth often left Socrates’ conversational partners in a state of puzzlement and unhappiness because they were forced to admit that they were ignorant of what at the start of the conversation they had assumed they knew perfectly well. They were forced to the uncomfortable admission that the principles by which they said they lived could not withstand close examination. ([Location 3934](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3934)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Socrates’ refutation of his fellow conversationalists’ most treasured beliefs made some of them extremely upset. Unhappiest of all were the fathers whose sons, after listening to Socrates reduce someone to utter bewilderment, came home to try the same technique on their parents. Men who experienced this reversal of the traditional hierarchy of education between parent and child—the father was supposed to educate the son, not the other way round—had cause to feel that Socrates’ effect, even if it was not his intention, was to undermine the stability of society by questioning Athenian traditions and inspiring young men to do the same with the hot-blooded enthusiasm of their youth. ([Location 3954](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3954)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Athenians anxious about Socrates’ effect on people found confirmation of their fears in the careers of the outrageous Alcibiades and, especially, Critias, one of the Thirty Tyrants. Socrates’ critics blamed him for Alcibiades’ contempt for social conventions because Alcibiades had been one of Socrates’ most devoted followers; Critias, another prominent follower, had played a leading role in the murder and plunder perpetrated by the Thirty Tyrants in 404–403 B.C. Critias was also notorious for having argued that the gods and moral codes linked to religion were just cynical inventions by lawmakers to keep people in line and make them obey laws by teaching them that deities knew what human beings were doing even when no one else was watching and would punish wrongdoers. ([Location 3969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=3969)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Xenophon, in a memoir on Socrates perhaps written decades after the philosopher’s execution, summed up the feelings of his admirers: “All those who knew what sort of person Socrates was and who aim at excellence in their lives continue even now to long for him most of all because he was the most helpful of all in learning about excellence” (Memorabilia 4.8.11). ([Location 4024](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4024)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The demonstration of the Greek hoplites’ skill and courage in surviving reminded the Persian king, if a reminder was needed, that Greeks could form a fearsome threat to his army if they ever found a way to unite their forces. He took away the lesson that it was in his interest to do what he could to keep the Greeks fractured and fighting one another so that they could never focus their ambitions on his empire and riches. ([Location 4089](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4089)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Xenophon bleakly summed up the situation in Greece as it developed in the aftermath of the battle of Mantinea: “Everyone had supposed that the winners of this battle would become Greece’s rulers and its losers would become their subjects . . . but there was only more confusion and disturbance in Greece after it than before” (Hellenica 7.5.26–27). ([Location 4134](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4134)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Although his status as a member of the social elite propelled him into politics as a young man, he withdrew from Athenian public life after 399. The trial and execution of Socrates had apparently convinced Plato that citizens in a democracy were incapable of rising above narrow self-interest to cultivate knowledge of universal truth, the goal of a worthwhile life in his view. In his works theorizing about the best way to organize human society, Plato bitterly rejected democracy as a justifiable system of government, calling it the “worst form of rule under law” (Statesman 303a). ([Location 4144](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4144)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The plots, so to speak, of the dialogues and their often indirect and inconclusive treatments of their philosophical subjects were intended to provoke readers into thoughtful reflection rather than to spoon-feed them a circumscribed set of doctrines. ([Location 4164](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4164)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Plato’s school, referred to as the Academy, was not a college or research institute in the modern sense but rather an informal association where adults interested in studying philosophy, mathematics, and theoretical astronomy could gather, exercise, and spend time talking, with Plato as their guide. The Academy became so famous as a gathering place for intellectuals that it continued to operate for nine hundred years after Plato’s death, with periods in which it was directed by distinguished philosophers and others during which it lapsed into mediocrity under lackluster leaders. ([Location 4171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4171)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Plato’s idea that humans possess immortal souls distinct from their bodies established the concept of dualism, positing a separation between spiritual and physical being. This notion of the separateness of soul and body would play an influential role in later philosophical and religious thought. In a dialogue written late in his life, the Timaeus, Plato says the preexisting knowledge possessed by the immortal human soul is in truth the knowledge known to the supreme deity. Plato calls this god the Demiurge (“craftsman”) because the deity used knowledge of the Forms to craft the world of living beings from raw matter. According to this doctrine of Plato, a knowing, rational god created the world, and the world therefore has order. Furthermore, its beings have goals, as evidenced by animals adapting to their environments in order to flourish. The Demiurge wanted to reproduce in the material world the perfect order of the Forms, but the world as crafted turned out not to be perfect because matter is necessarily imperfect. Plato suggested that human beings should seek perfect order and purity in their own souls by making rational desires control their irrational desires. ([Location 4198](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4198)) - Tags: [[blue]] - His method also differed from that of modern scientists because it did not include controlled experimentation. Aristotle believed that investigators had a better chance of understanding objects and beings by observing them in their natural setting than under the artificial conditions of a laboratory. His coupling of detailed investigation with perceptive reasoning served especially well in such physical sciences as biology, botany, and zoology. ([Location 4268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4268)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Aristotle believed that human happiness, which was not to be equated with the simpleminded pursuit of pleasure, stems from fulfilling human potentialities. These potentialities can be identified by rational choice, practical judgment, habituation to excellence, and recognition of the value of choosing the mean instead of extremes. ([Location 4316](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4316)) - Tags: [[blue]] - the king could govern effectively only as long as he maintained the support of the most powerful families in Macedonia, whose leaders ranked as his social equals and controlled large bands of followers. Fighting, hunting, and heavy drinking were the favorite pastimes of these men. The king was expected to demonstrate his prowess in these activities to show that he was a man’s man capable of heading the state. ([Location 4381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4381)) - Tags: [[blue]] - the members of the elite that dominated Macedonian society routinely learned to speak Greek because they thought of themselves, and indeed all Macedonians, as Greek by descent. At the same time, Macedonians looked down on the Greeks to the south as a soft bunch unequal to the adversities of life in Macedonia. ([Location 4387](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4387)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Never again would the states of Greece make foreign policy for themselves without considering, and usually following, the wishes of outside powers. This change marked the end of the Greek city-states as independent actors in international politics, although they unquestionably retained their significance as the basic economic and social units of the Greek world. They had to fulfill a subordinate role now, however, either as subjects or allies of the kingdom of Macedonia or, after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C., of the kingdoms subsequently created by Alexander’s former generals. ([Location 4437](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4437)) - Tags: [[blue]] - To demonstrate the price of disloyalty, Alexander destroyed Thebes in 335 as punishment for its rebellion. This lesson in terror made it clear that Alexander might claim to lead the Greek city-states by their consent (the kind of leader called a hegemon in Greek) but that the reality of his power rested on his superior force and his unwavering willingness to employ it. Alexander would always reward those who acknowledged his power, even if they had previously been his enemies, but he ruthlessly punished anyone who betrayed his trust or defied his ambitions. ([Location 4458](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4458)) - Tags: [[blue]] - He had further alarmed his principal advisor, an experienced older man, by giving away almost all his land and property in order to strengthen the army, thereby creating new landowners who would furnish troops. “What,” the advisor asked, “do you have left for yourself?” “My hopes,” Alexander replied (Plutarch, Alexander 15). Those hopes centered on constructing a heroic image of himself as a warrior as glorious as the incomparable Achilles of Homer’s Iliad. Alexander always kept a copy of The Iliad under his pillow, along with a dagger. Alexander’s aspirations and his behavior represented the ultimate expression of the Homeric vision of the glorious conquering warrior striving “always to be the best” and to win the immortal reputation that only such achievements could convey. ([Location 4472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4472)) - Tags: [[blue]] - For all practical purposes, Alexander became pharaoh, an early sign that he was going to adopt whatever foreign customs and institutions he found useful for controlling his conquests and proclaiming his superior status. ([Location 4500](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4500)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Each hoplite in Greek armies customarily had a personal servant to carry his armor and pack. Alexander, imitating Philip, trained his men to carry their own equipment, thereby creating a leaner force by cutting the number of army servants dramatically. ([Location 4516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4516)) - Tags: [[blue]] - In the spring of 326 B.C., they mutinied on the banks of the Hyphasis River (the modern Beas) in northwestern India. Alexander was forced to agree to lead them in the direction of home. When his men had balked before, Alexander had always been able to shame them back into action by sulking in his tent like Achilles in The Iliad. This time the soldiers were beyond shame. ([Location 4535](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4535)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Along the way he took out his frustration at being stopped in his push to the east by conquering the Indian tribes who resisted him and by risking his life more flamboyantly than ever before. As a climax to his frustrated rage, he flung himself over the wall of an Indian town to face the enemy alone like a Homeric hero. ([Location 4538](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4538)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Alexander, as always, shared his men’s hardships. In one legendary episode from this horrible ordeal, a patrol was said to have brought him a helmet containing some water that had been found on their scouting expedition. Alexander spilled the water out onto the sand rather than drink when his men could not. They loved him for this gesture more than anything else, it is reported. ([Location 4546](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4546)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Alexander’s political and military goals can best be explained as interlinked goals: the conquest and administration of the known world, and the exploration and possible colonization of new territory beyond. ([Location 4567](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4567)) - Tags: [[blue]] - After Alexander’s death, his mother, Olympias, fought for several years to establish her infant grandson, Alexander’s son by Roxane, as the Macedonian king under her protection. Her plan failed because Alexander’s former commanders were willing to do whatever it took to seize power for themselves, and within twenty years three of the most powerful of them had established new kingdoms carved from parts of Alexander’s empire: Antigonus (c. 382–301 B.C.) and his son Demetrius (c. 336–283 B.C.) took over in Macedonia and Greece, Seleucus (c. 358–281 B.C.) in Syria and the old Persian Empire (extending to Afghanistan and western India), and Ptolemy (c. 367–282 B.C.) in Egypt. Since these men took over the largest sections of Alexander’s conquests as if they had been his heirs (though they had no blood relationship to him), they were referred to as the “successor kings.” ([Location 4631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4631)) - Tags: [[blue]] - In sum, Hellenistic kingship had its origins in the personal attributes of the king instead of inherited privileges and perquisites. For this reason, it is often described as “personal monarchy.” ([Location 4646](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4646)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Although these cities often also possessed such traditional political institutions of the city-state as councils and assemblies for citizen men, the limits of their independence depended strictly on the king’s will. When writing to the city’s council, the king might express himself in the form of a polite request, but he expected his wishes to be fulfilled as if they were commands. In addition, the cities often had to pay taxes directly to the king. ([Location 4715](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4715)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Similar to Augustus after establishing an empire in Rome. Keep the illusion of citizens control, but make it a monarchy in reality - The kings needed the goodwill of the wealthiest and most influential city dwellers—the Greek and Macedonian urban elites—to keep order in the cities and ensure a steady flow of tax revenues. These wealthy people had the crucial responsibility of collecting the kingdom’s taxes from the surrounding countryside as well as their cities, and then sending the money safely to the royal treasury. The kings in return honored and flattered these members of the cities’ upper class to secure their goodwill and cooperation. Favored cities would receive financial grants from the king to pay for expensive public works such as theaters and temples, or rebuilding projects after earthquakes. The wealthy men and women of the urban upper classes did their loyal service by helping to keep the general population content; these rich members of the social elite provided donations and loans to ensure a reliable supply of grain to feed the urban populations, subsidized the pay of teachers and doctors in the cities, and paid for the construction of public works. The Greek tradition that the wealthy elite of a city-state should make benefactions for the common good was therefore continued in a new way, through the social interaction of the kings and the urban upper classes in their kingdoms. ([Location 4719](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4719)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Urban life acquired special vitality because the Greek and Macedonian residents of these cities, surrounded by the non-Greek countryside, tended to remain in the urban centers more than had their predecessors in the Classical city-state, whose habit it was to go back and forth frequently between city and countryside to attend to their rural property, participate in local festivals, and worship in local shrines. Now the activities of city dwellers were more and more centered on and in the city. ([Location 4806](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4806)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Stoics believed that human beings should make their goal the pursuit of excellence. This, they said, consisted of putting oneself in harmony with universal Nature, the rational force of divine providence that directed all existence under the guise of Fate. Reason as well as experience should be used to discover the way to that harmony, which required the “perfect” excellences of good sense, justice, courage, and temperance. ([Location 4937](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CE7NZCC&location=4937)) - Tags: [[blue]]