Quotes About Athenian

While war ravaged Rome, Mithradates gloried in the victories of the Greek campaign. Halley's Comet was taken as a good omen by Mithradates' Magi and by his allies. In Athens, the philosopher Aristion succeeded Athenion, elected on a pro-Mithradates platform; Aristion's name appeared with Mithradates' on Athenian coins of 87–86 BC.

T]he best analogy for the Athenian democracy is a ship without a captain. On such a ship, the crew do their duty outstandingly well as long as fear of the open sea or the threat of a storm induces them to cooperate with one another and obey the helmsman. But when there is no cause for alarm, they start to ignore their superiors and to fall out with one another.

Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations.

I'll betide thee, say I, and may the Gods, or at least the Athenians, confound thee for a vile citizen and a vile third-rate actor! Read the evidence.

The first printed Greek Homer had appeared in 1488, in Florence, published by an Athenian, Demetrius Chalcondyles

The Athenian cannot refute the atheists before he has stated their assertions. It appears that they assert that body is prior to soul or mind, or that soul or mind is derivative from body and, consequently, that nothing is by nature just or unjust, or that all right originates in convention. The refutation of them consists in the proof that soul is prior to body, which proof implies that there is natural right.

Plato writes as if the Athenian democracy had not carried out Socrates' execution, and Socrates speaks as if the Athenian democracy had not engaged in an orgy of bloody persecution of guilty and innocent alike when the Hermes statues were mutilated at the beginning of the Sicilian expedition.

W]ithout the chance presence of the Athenian stranger in Crete there would be no prospect of wise legislation for the new city. This makes us understand the stranger's assertion that not human beings but chance legislates: most laws are as it were dictated by calamities.

Their assemblies had taught the Athenians how to discuss all matters openly, with arguments for and against. This was good training in learning how to think.

during the 460s BCE, Athenian democracy had been radically overhauled.

Modern historians regularly use the word empire to describe this extension of Athenian power during the fifth century

Athenian politician Lycurgus pronounced the obituary in 330 BCE

Frequently consider the connection of all things in the Universe. ... Reflect upon the multitude of bodily and mental events taking place in the same brief time, simultaneously in every one of us and so you will not be surprised that many more events, or rather all things that come to pass, exist simultaneously in the one and entire unity, which we call the Universe. ... We should not say 'I am an Athenian' or 'I am a Roman' but 'I am a Citizen of the Universe'.

Leo was a fifty-something Athenian intellectual who had tried to convince Barry that the Greek gods were better, or at least more curious and interesting, than the main Judeo-Christian one, whom he saw as a collector of sorts, never happy with his last acquisition, always too busy to maintain the pieces he already owned.

shit yourself

This is the first of the series of three Comedies—'The Acharnians,' 'Peace' and 'Lysistrata'—produced at intervals of years, the sixth, tenth and twenty-first of the Peloponnesian War, and impressing on the Athenian people the miseries and disasters due to it and to the scoundrels who by their selfish and reckless policy had provoked it, the consequent ruin of industry and, above all, agriculture, and the urgency of asking Peace.

In practice, Athenian democracy was very limited. There were twice as many slaves as citizens, and no woman or foreigner had citizenship rights. But for those who were included, this nascent democracy had extraordinary implications, undercutting the ability of aristocratic families to build and maintain their private power bases.

The Athenian system of thought establishes certain fundamental notions crucial to happiness: the notion of telos, discoverable by us; the importance of reason-led investigation, leading to the birth of science; the recognition that social ties bind us to one another.

One of the striking effects of imperialism upon Athenian democracy was a hardening and increasing ruthlessness of the citizens.

In the eyes of contemporary observers, such as Thucydides, as well as later historians, the advancement of Athenian hegemony depended upon a public-spirited, able elite at the helm and a demos willing to accept leadership. Conversely, the downfall of Athens was attributed to the wiles and vainglory of leaders who managed to whip up popular support for ill-conceived adventures.

By my third try, Lady Aithra had lost her patience and brought me to stand before her son while he was in conference with a group of hard-faced Athenian nobles. I smiled unashamedly when she called me willful, wild, and ungrateful, which provoked her so much that she actually dared to declare, "My son, you must not marry this girl. I don't care how beautiful she is, she'll bring us nothing but grief and leave Athens in flames!

In Socrates' lifetime more than 800 triremes were launched from Athenian-controlled harbours: the largest manned navy the world had ever known.

It will for ever remain one of the greatest triumphs of Athenian democracy that it treated slaves humanely, and that in spite of the inhuman propaganda of philosophers like Plato himself and Aristotle it came, as he witnesses, very close to abolishing slavery.