Quotes About Athenians

In Plato and in many Greek tragedies we learn that the Athenians did not seem to believe in rewards and punishments after death. 'In fact, they do not seem to have expected very much at all. "After death every man is earth and shadow: nothing goes to nothing".' (This is a character in one of Euripides' plays.) In Plato's Phaedo, Simmias betrays his worry that at his death his soul will be scattered 'and this is their end'.52

What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.

We need money, for sure, Athenians, and without money nothing can be done that ought to be done.

I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy.

Those two overarching concerns are these: we Athenians are concerned above all with improvement; the Spartans seek only – stasis. Two opposite objectives. If

SOCRATES: You have? Oh – you said that you honour Athenians for our openness to persuasion. And for our defiance of bullies. But

Correct. Kekrops sounded bitter, like he regretted his decision. My people were the original Athenians--the gemini. Like your zodiac sign? Percy asked. I'm a Leo. No, stupid, Leo said. I'm a Leo. You're a Percy.

Correct. Kekrops sounded bitter, like he regretted his decision. My people were the original Athenians--the gemini. Like your zodiac sign? Percy asked. I'm a Leo. No, stupid. I'm a Leo. You're a Percy.

With the Athenians, as with Darius, one is astonished by how the obsession with honor and reputation can lead a great power toward a bad fate. The image of Darius's army marching into nowhere on an inhospitable steppe, in search of an enemy that never quite appears, is so powerful that it goes beyond mere symbolism.

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.

Die Athener haben die Unschuld des Herzens und das köstlichste Gut der Griechen, die innere Zeitlosigkeit, verloren. »Ihre einzige Weisheit ist, jeden Zustand zu überholen und fortzuschreiten«, beschimpft Aristophanes sie, Griechenlands Bernard Shaw. Damit ist das ominöse Wort gefallen für das Narkotikum, an das sich seitdem alle ziellos und ruhelos gewordenen Völker klammern: Fortschritt.

Imperialism was genuinely popular among Athenians who would expect to share in its profits, even if only indirectly and collectively, and not to have to bear its burdens.

Philip won the day. As many as half the Athenians and Thebans were either killed or taken prisoner.

he asked who, and what manner of men, the Athenians were. And when he had been told, he called for his bow; and, having taken it, and placed an arrow on the string, he let the arrow fly towards heaven; and as he shot it into the air, he said, 'O Supreme God! grant me that I may avenge myself on the Athenians.' And when he had said this, he appointed one of his servants to say to him every day as he sat at meat, 'Sire, remember the Athenians.

Socrates defines his life's mission as awakening the Athenians to the supreme importance of attending to their souls. His timeless plea that we connect to ourselves remains the only way for any of us to truly thrive.

I will not allow the Athenians to commit a second crime against philosophy.

But even in this perilous situation, the popular leader Cleophon managed to persuade the Athenians to reject the chance of a negotiated peace offered by Sparta after Arginusae, so that it is hardly surprising that the Athenians responded so warmly to the parabasis of Frogs, where the Chorus aptly upbraids them for choosing as leaders and fighters not the best men but the worst, just as they have traded their gold and silver coinage for base metal (686-705, 717-37).

In support of this claim they point to the words 'comedy' and 'drama'. Their word for the outlying hamlets, they say, is comae, whereas Athenians call them demes — thus assuming that comedians got the name not from their comoe or revels, but from their strolling from hamlet to hamlet, lack of appreciation keeping them out of the city. Their word also for 'to act', they say, is dran, whereas Athenians use prattein.

The Athenians reasoned that a rapist did not pose a threat to the husband's household property because the woman could be counted on to dislike the rapist. But "he who achieves his end by persuasion," said the legislators, gained access not only to the woman's body but to her husband's storeroom.29

Where the Athenians were tepid with regard to individual purpose in the absence of community, they were religious in their belief in individual capacity. They passionately advocated the notion of an order to the universe, and insisted repeatedly that mankind had not just the capacity but the obligation to uncover that order.

Fighting in the forefront of the Greeks, the Athenians crushed at Marathon the might of the gold-bearing Medes.

Bishop John Wilkins commented in 1638 on these Athenians: "Those zealous idolators [counted] it a great blasphemy to make their God a stone, whereas notwithstanding they were so senseless in their adoration of idols as to make a stone their God.

The Athenians were the first to lay aside their weapons, and to adopt an easier and more luxurious mode of life;

Thus both in the movement along the coast and in the naval engagement which ensued, the Syracusans proved themselves quite a match for the Athenians, and at length made their way into the harbour at Messenè.