"The maintenance of the army and the navy constitutes the chief expenditure of the state."

"The army is identical with the electorate; every citizen must serve, and is subject, until the age of sixty, to conscription in any war. But Athenian life is not militarized; after a period of youthful training there is little of martial drill, no strutting of uniforms, no interference of soldiery with the civilian population. In active service the army consists of light-armed infantry, chiefly the poorer citizens, carrying slings or spears, the heavy-armed infantry, or hoplites, those properous citizens who can afford armor, shield, and javelin, and the cavalry of rich men, clad in armor and helmet, and equipped with lance and sword. The Greeks excel the Asiatics in military discipline, and perhaps owe their achievements to a striking combination of loyal obedience on the battlefield with vigorous independence in civil affairs. Nevertheless there is no science of war among them, no definite principles of tactics on strategy, before Epimondas and Philip. Cities are usually walled, and defense is -- among the Greeks as among ourselves -- more effective than offense, otherwise man might have no civilization to record. Siege armies bring up great beams suspended by chains, and, drawing the beams back, drive them forward against the wall; this is as far as siege machinery develops before Archimedes. As for the navy, it is kept up by choosing, each year, four hundred trierarchs, rich men whose privilege it is to recruit a crew, equip a trireme with materials supplied by the state, pay for its building and launching, and keep it in repair; in this way Athens supports in peacetime a fleet of some sixty ships."

"The Greeks excel the Asiatics in military discipline, and perhaps owe their achievements to a striking combination of loyal obedience on the battlefield with vigorous independence in civil affairs."

Look who's back! It's been a rough week for me without all you folks but I was absolutely positive that you would all continue. I would worry about a discussion group that fell apart because it was all centered about one person. I've said many times and I contine to say it that the forum could continue without its DL (and you all proved it) but a DL would be absolutely nothing without participants. Thank you very very much, Mal, for continuing on with some of Durant's words. His words are what makes this discussion group a living thing plus, of course, the comments of all you folks.

You would never in a month of Sundays guess what what was wrong. I don't know all the technical details but my computer guru tells me that there was a foul-up of the software which is connected to the mouse. He had the tower in his shop almost all week. The mouse would leave "mouse trails" -- you know a series of arrows instead of just one arrow -- and then everything would fall apart, ultimating causing the computer to shut down. I live in a small community where we all know each other and while I was seeing patients at my office, I gave him permission to take the tower back to my house and to enter it without my being there. When I came in the front door about a half hour ago, I heard Dvorak's New World Symphony playing. I came upstairs. He was gone but the computer was on and my CD playing. What a WELCOME!

So now I will get back to my DL chores if you will be patient for a hour or so.

"Every government is imperfect, irksome, and mortal. We have no reason to believe that monarchy or aristocracy would govern Athens better, or longer preserve it, and perhaps only this chaotic democracy can release the energy that will lift Athens to one of the peaks of history.

"Never before or since has political life, within the circle of citizenship, been so intense or so creative. This corrupt and incompetent democracy is at least a school. The voter in the Assembly listens to the cleverest men in Athens. The juror in the courts has his wits sharpened by the taking and sifting of evidence. The holder of office is molded by executive responsibility and experience into a deeper maturity of understanding and judgment.

"Says Simonides, 'The city is the teacher of the man.' For these reasons, it may be, the Athenians can appreciate, and thereby call into existence, Aeschylus and Euripides, Socrates and Plato. The Audience at the theater has been formed in the Assembly and the courts, and is ready to receive the best.

"This aristocratic democracy is no laissez-faire state, no mere watchman of property and order. It finances the Greek drama, and builds the Parthenon. It makes itself responsible for the welfare and development of its peoole, and opens up to them the opportunity ou monon tou zen, all tou eu zen -- 'not only to live, but to live well.'

"History can afford to forgive it all its sins."

"The city is the teacher of the man."

Robby

Note also the new GREEN quotes in the Heading.

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Meals are usually organized from scratch and fresh vegetables from the market used preferably to any from cans or ready cooked. I was stunned in Europe that they sold in shops salads and lettuce already prewashed and cut in bags. Bubble

"The soil is poor. Of 630,000 aces in Attica, a third is unsuitable for cultivation. The rest is impoverished by deforestation, meager rainfall, and rapid erosion by winter floods. The peasants of Attica shirk no toil -- for themselves or their handful of slaves -- to remedy this dry humor of the gods. They gather the surplus flow of headwaters into reservoirs -- dike the channels of the streams to control the floods -- reclaim the precious humus of the swamps -- build thousands of irrigation canals to bring to their thirsty fields the trickle of the rivulets -- patiently transplant vegetables to improve their size and quality -- and let the land lie fallow in alternate years to regain its strength.

"They alkalinize the soil with salts like carbonate of lime, and fertilize it with potassium nitrate, ashes, and human waste. The gardens and groves about Athens are enriched with the sewage of the city, brought by a main sewer to a reservoir outside the Dipylon, and led thence by bricklined canals into the valley of the Cephisus River.

"Different soils are mixed to their mutual benefit, and green crops like beans in flower are plowed in to nourish the earth. Plowing, harrowing, sowing, and planting are crowded into the brief days of the fall. The grain harvest comes at the end of May, and the rainless summer is the season of preparation and rest.

"With all this care Attica produces only 675,000 bushels of grain yearly -- hardly enough to supply a quarter of its population. Without imported food Periclean Athens would starve. Hence the urge to imperialism, and the necessity for a powerful fleet."

The grass is always greener on the other side?

Robby

Robby, can I offer you a fresh pita warm from the taboon, with labane cheese, a sprinkle of Zatar herb on it and drizzle of olive oil? Broken olives on the side.

Robby

Thanks Robby. Bubble

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"The recorded history of the fig industry begins with its introduction into the Mediterranean outside Asia, and particularly into Greece. Some of the earliest Greek reportings of figs are in mythological literature. According to Greek mythology, Zeus was pursuing Ge and her son, Sykeus, In the war of the Titans when, to save him, she metamorphosed into a fig tree. The ancient city of Sykea is named for this myth. Another Greek myth credits the goddess Demeter (Ceres) as introducing the 'fruit of autumn' to humans. Among the Hellenes, figs were sacred to the libidinous and bibulous god, Dionysius. According to myth he placed a phallus of fig wood on the grave of Polyhymnos as a substitute for a promised favor, which he kept for himself. To this day the phallus carried at Dionysian festivals is carved of fig wood and the fig tree is the tree of phallic worshippers. The use of figs among early Greeks paralleled their rise in the literature: when mention of figs was infrequent in the literature, fresh figs were a luxury of the rich. Later, when references were common, figs had become an important dietary staple, particularly dried figs during winter months.



"It is uncertain when figs were first introduced to Europe. They are hardly mentioned in the Homeric songs (ca. 850 B.C.), the oldest existing European literature. There is no reference to them in the Iliad, the description of the Trojan war waged by the Greeks. However, in the Odyssey, the description of Odysseus' wanderings after the war, figs are mentioned three times; during the agonies of Tantulus in the lower world he tried in vain to reach the fruits almost within his grasp: '...pomegranates, pears, apples, sweet figs and dark olives.' As the Homeric songs were probably composed in the ninth century B.C. these references would be among the earliest. However, later investigations st the verses mentioning figs were interpolations of a later date. The earliest mention of undoubted authenticity is by the seventh-century B.C. Archilochus, who tells of figs being cultivated on the isle of Paros. these few references it can be deduced that figs were introduced Greece in the eighth century B.C., probably from the Semitic nations s from Palestine and Asia Minor. Thereafter, in the seventh century, B.C., Attica and Sikyon, the latter named after syke 'fig' in Greek became famous for their figs. Because they were so highly valued, the in ruler Solon, (639-559 B.C..) decreed against their export, reserving Lise solely for the Greeks. Xerxes, the king of Persia, ate Attican figs to remind him of the desirability of conquering a place that could produce such fine fruit.



"Once introduced fig cultivation quickly spread throughout Greece to become an important article of diet for both rich and poor. The term 'sycophant' has its origins in ancient Greece. Athenians were particularly fond of figs and were nicknamed 'sycophants' (syke or fig-eaters). Later, when members of the same population informed authorities of illegally exporting figs from Attica, the word assumed its modern meaning. From this time on the fig is mentioned frequently in Greek literature."

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Robby, your post brought to mind what my husband told me of his childhood in Turkey. There too bread and cake were seldom baked at home.
Housewives prepared the bread themselves in fancy shapes and sent the younger children to the baker to put in his communal oven. His mother used to send also big clay terrines of vegetables, marrow bones and rice with spices and ubiquitous olive oil to be baked there for hours until it became a delicious unidentified amalgam.
This would taste a little like a paella in Spain or a tagine in Morocco. To this day it is done, even in big cities like Izmir and not only in traditional villages. Bubble

"Out of the earth come minerals and fuels as well as food. Lighting is provided by graceful lamps or torches -- burning refined olive oil, or resin -- or by candles. Heat is derived from dry wood, or charcoal, burning in portable braziers.

The cutting of trees for fuel and building denudes the woods and hills near the towns. Already in the fifth century timber for houses, furniture and ships is imported. There is no coal."

It appears that environmental problems already existed 2,500 years ago. Man again ignoring nature.

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"Lavrion is a Greek city of 10,000 inhabitants which is situated about 60 km south of Athens, and 20 km north of Sounion, an important tourist and archaeological site. In the areas around Lavrion, considerable ore deposits of lead and silver exist. These deposits were exploited for their minor silver content from the 14th century BC, and reached a peak during the Golden Age of Athens (5th century BC). It is estimated that the ancient Athenians developed ingenious techniques to process the ore deposits in the area around Lavrion to produce over 3500 tons of silver (worth over $1,000,000,000 at today's value of silver) together with a staggering 1,400,000 tons of lead. It has been estimated that 70% of the silver was produced during the 4th and 5th centuries BC. The silver from the mines of Lavrion served as the 'dollar' of the age and may have been the basis of the 'war chest' for financing the Trojan wars.



"In modern times lead mining was resumed in the late ninetieth century by a French company that marketed the extensive lead deposits created by the Greek mining. This led to the creation of a small city built on the tailings and slags of centuries of mining. The mines were closed permanently around 1980."

More

Robby

"The quarrying and transport of marble and limestone were costly and labor-intensive, and often constituted the primary cost of erecting a temple. For example, the wealth Athens accumulated after the Persian Wars enabled Perikles to embark on his extensive building program, which included the Parthenon (447–432 B.C.) and other monuments on the Athenian Akropolis. Typically, a Greek civic or religious body engaged the architect, who participated in every aspect of construction. He usually chose the stone, oversaw its extraction, and supervised the craftsmen who roughly shaped each piece in the quarry. At the building site, expert carvers gave the blocks their final form, and workmen hoisted each one into place. The tight fit of the stones was enough to hold them in place without the use of mortar; metal clamps embedded in the stone reinforced the structure against earthquakes. A variety of skilled labor collaborated in the raising of a temple. Workmen were hired to construct the wooden scaffolding needed for hoisting stone blocks and sculpture, and to make the ceramic tiles for the roofs. Metalworkers were employed to make the metal fittings used for reinforcing the stone blocks and to fashion the necessary bronze accoutrements for sculpted scenes on the frieze, metopes and pediments. Sculptors from the Greek mainland and abroad carved freestanding and relief sculpture for the eaves of the temple building. Painters were engaged to decorate sculptural and architectural elements with painted details."

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Please note the new GREEN quotes.

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On the tenth day the child is accepted in the family? Sounds much like our ceremony of circumcision on the 8th day and only then is the child given a name.

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"GREEK BABIES: The ancient Greeks considered their children to be 'youths' until they reached the age of 30! When a child was born to ancient Greek family, a naked father carried his child, in a ritual dance, around the household. Friends and relatives sent gifts. The family decorated the doorway of their home with a wreath of olives (for a boy) or a wreath of wool (for a girl).



"GREEK GIRLS: In Athens, as in most Greek city-states, with the exception of Sparta, girls stayed at home until they were married. Like their mother, they could attend certain festivals, funerals, and visit neighbors for brief periods of time. Their job was to help their mother, and to help in the fields, if necessary.



"GREEK BOYS: In most Greek city-states, when young, the boys stayed at home, helping in the fields, sailing, and fishing. At age 6 or 7, they went to school."

MORE HERE

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Mal, I think your grandson would have enjoyed and thrived there. My son too: in the regular school he went to, he was more on the wrong side of the door than in the classroom, only because of the strict rules and competition.
Bubble

My Latin teacher gave me the avidity to know more about ancient cultures and their beliefs. My Lit teacher made me curious about languages, the music of words and the richness of one's expressions. He was huge in the various meanings of the word. He also had a special talent with his voice, he could use it softly and high pitched as a shy maid would, and he could have made the walls of Jericho thumble down. They both were very strict disciplinarians on the first month after the summer vacations. Bubble

"The curriculum has three divisions -- writing, music, and gymnastics. Eager modernists will add, in Aristotle's day, drawing and painting. Writing includes reading and arithmetic, which uses letters for numbers.

"Everyone learns to play the lyre, and much of the material of instruction is put into poetical and musical forms. No time is spent in acquiring any foreign language, much less a dead one, but great care is taken in learning the correct usage of the mother tongue.

"Gymnastics are taught chiefly in the gymnasium and the palaestra, and no one is considred educated who has not learned to wrestle, swim, and use the bow and the sling."

Any comments on how we stand today regarding these items? What is the physical condition of our youth today? How well do our youth speak their mother tongue? Can everyone play a musical instrument? Or are any of these subjects necessary?

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I had the greatest difficulties with my own children in not following that example because i didn't know how to "talk" about serious issues in the family. Strangely enough my daughter and her grand ma did have those hour long soul talks. Bubble

Robby

"Such is the education -- eked out by lessons learned in the home and in the street -- that produces the Athenian citizen. It is an excellent combination of physical and mental, moral and esthetic training, of supervision in youth with freedom in maturity. And in its heyday it turns out young men as fine as any in history.

"After Pericles theory grows and beclouds practice. Philosophers debate the goals and methods of education -- whether the teacher should aim chiefly at intellectual development or at moral character, chiefly at practical ability or the promotion of abstract science.

"When Aristippus is asked in what way the educated are superior to the untutored he answers, 'as broken horses are to the unbroken.' Aristotle to the same question replies, 'as the living are to the dead.' At least, adds Aristippus, 'If the pupil derives no other good, he will not, when he attends the theater, be one stone upon another.'"

And so here we are, except for the electronic advantages we have, debating exactly the same topic that was of interest to Aristotle and others. 2,500 years have passed. Are today's citizens "more educated" than those Athenian citizens so far far away in time?

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"The Cyrenaic School of Philosophy, so called from the city of Cyrene, in which it was founded, flourished from about 400 to about 300 B.C., and had for its most distinctive tenet Hedonism, or the doctrine that pleasure is the chief good. The school is generally said to derive its doctrines from Socrates on the one hand and from the sophist, Protagoras, on the other. From Socrates, by a perversion of the doctrine that happiness is the chief good, it derived the doctrine of the supremacy of pleasure, while from Protagoras it derived its relativistic theory of knowledge.

"Aristippus (flourished c. 400 B.C.) was the founder of the school, and counted among his followers his daughter Arete and his grandson Aristippus the Younger. The Cyrenaics started their philosophical inquiry by agreeing with Protagoras that all knowledge is relative. That is true, they said, which seems to be true; of things in themselves we can know nothing. From this they were led to maintain that we can know only our feelings, or the impression which things produce upon us.

"Transferring this theory of knowledge to the discussion of the problem of conduct, and assuming, as has been said, the Socratic doctrine that the chief aim of conduct is happiness, they concluded that happiness is to be attained by the production of pleasurable feelings and the avoidance of painful ones. Pleasure, therefore, is the chief aim in life. The good man is he who obtains or strives to obtain the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain. Virtue is not good in itself; it is good only as a means to obtain pleasure.

"This last point raises the question: What did the Cyrenaics really mean by pleasure? They were certainly sensists, yet it is not entirely certain that by pleasure they meant mere sensuous pleasure. They speak of a hierarchy of pleasures, in which the pleasures of the body are subordinated to virtue, culture, knowledge, artistic enjoyment, which belong to the higher nature of man. Again, some of the later Cyrenaics reduced pleasure to a mere negative state, painlessness; and others, later still, substituted for pleasure 'cheerfulness and indifference'. The truth seems to be that in this, as in many other instances, sensism was satisfied with a superficial and loosely-jointed system. There was no consistency in the Cyrenaic theory of conduct; probably none was looked for. Indeed, in spite of the example of the founders of the school, the later Cyrenaics fell far below the level of what was expected from philosophers, even in Greece, and their doctrine came to be merely a set of maxims to justify the careless manner of living of men whose chief aim in life was a pleasant time."

MORE HERE

When we completed Our Oriental Heritage, I asked the gang for their wishes and unanimously they wanted to go on to The Life of Greece. So we took a one month breather and then moved on. Now everyone is talking as if our going on to "Caesar and Christ" is a fait accompli. So I guess it is. I am just the poor Discussion Leader who throws in a question or remark now and then. The participants run the show.

For your information, George, we began The Story of Civilization (Our Oriental Heritage) on November 1, 2001 and had over 7000 postings on that topic. So far in The Life of Greece we have had over 3000 postings. Prior to all that most of the participants here took part in deTocqueville's "Democracy in America" where we had over 7000 postings.

Robby

"The citizens of Athens, in the fifth century, are men of medium height, vigorous, bearded, and not all as handsome as Pheidias' horsemen. The ladies of the vases are graceful, and those of the stelae have a dignified loveliness, and those molded by the sculptors are supremely beautiful. But the actual ladies of Athens, limited in their mental development by an almost Oriental seclusion, are at best as pretty as their Near Eastern sisters, but no more.

"Greek women, like others, find their figures a little short of perfection. They lengthen them with high cork soles on their shoes, pad out deficiencies with wadding, compress abundances with lacing, and support the breasts with a cloth brassiere."

Here again is a reminder that Ancient Greece was still under the Oriental influence. As for high heel shoes, corsets, and brassieres, I am out of my depth here and, hopefully being no fool, will not tread where angels do.

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"The progress of the intellect has loosened many of the Athenians from their ethical traditions, and has turned them into almost immoral individuals. They have a high reputation for legal justice, but they are seldom altruistic to any but their children. Conscience rarely troubles them, and they never dream of loving their neighbors as themselves.

"Manners vary from class to class. In the dialogues of Plato life is graced with a charming courtesy, but in the comedies of Aristophanes there are no manners at all, and in public oratory personal abuse is relied upon as the very soul of eloquence. In such matters the Greeks have much to learn from the time-polished 'barbarians' of Egypt or Persia or Babylon.

"Salutation is cordial but simple. There is no bowing, for that seems to the proud citizens a vestige of monarchy. Handshaking is reserved for oaths or solemn farewells. Usually the greeting is merely Chaire -- 'Rejoice' -- followed, as elsewhere, by some brilliant remarks about the weather".

In this discussion we have often noted in prior Oriental civilizations how "religion" caused some sort of "harm" to the populace. Now we note that a "loosening of ethical traditions" cause them to be almost "immoral." We see, furthermore, that the "time polished" Orientals were more cordial and that these "new semi-Europeans" found no need for cordiality.

Putting aside today's thoughts of terrorism, is there more of a cordiality, are there more polished manners in today's Eastern civilizations than in our Western nations?

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"Thucydides begins his history by explaining why he thinks that this (Peloponnesian) War is the greatest in which the Greeks were ever involved, even greater than the Trojan War and the Persian Wars. He then explains the principles upon which he evaluates evidence; his basic perspective is that human nature is the basic cause of historical events (Thucydides attributes no historical event to either the gods or to fate). He declares that his History will not be so entertaining as some others (such as Homer and Herodotus), but instead be a rational analysis that will be useful to those who wish to understand the way things happen, since events similar to those of the past will certainly recur in the future because human nature is unchanging. He analyzes the events of this War, he tells us, in order to enable future generations to understand the causes and progress of future wars, though not necessarily to prevent them.



"Next Thucydides explains the immediate causes of the War and gives an account of embassies and debates just before the War and the events of the first year. Then he inserts the Funeral Oration given by the Athenian leader Pericles over the bodies of those who had died fighting for Athens. Partly to make his audience feel that their sacrifices are worthwhile, Pericles explains the nature of Athens's greatness, her freedom and democracy.



"Thucydides sees how impressive human nature and life can be at their best, but also how rapidly both can degenerate under stress. The Melian Controversy gives the Athenian reasons for attacking the small island of Melos in 416, making them say bluntly that those who are powerful need have no regard for justice, human rights, or the gods. Compare this with the principles expressed in the Funeral Oration. Thucydides follows this with an account of the disastrous Athenian attempt to conquer the huge and resilient island of Sicily, a loss which, according to Thucydides, spelled the end of Athenian power."



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"ORDINARILY there is no comparison between the crimes of the great who are always ambitious, and the crimes of the people who always want, and can want only liberty and equality. These two sentiments, Liberty and Equality, do not lead direct to calumny, rapine, assassination, poisoning, the devastation of one's neighbours' lands, etc.; but ambitious might and the mania for power plunge into all these crimes whatever be the time, whatever be the place.



"Popular government is in itself, therefore, less iniquitous, less abominable than despotic power.



"The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty: there have been mountain-dwelling republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is not the republican spirit that made them so, it is nature.



"The real vice of a civilized republic is in the Turkish fable of the dragon with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads hurt each other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to devour everything.



"Democracy seems suitable only to a very little country, and further it must be happily situated. Small though it be, it will make many mistakes, because it will be composed of men."

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"The educated Athenian is in love with reason, and seldom doubts its ability to chart the universe."

Robby

"The physical basis of love is accepted frankly by both sexes. The love philters that anxious ladies brew for negligent men have no merely Platonic aim. Premarital chastity is required of respectable women, but among unmarried men after the ephebic period there are few moral restraints upon desire.

"The great festivals, though religious in origin, are used as safety valves for the natural promiscuity of humanity. Sexual license on such occasions is condoned in the belief that monogamy may be more easily achieved during the balance of the year. No stigma is attached in Athens to the occasional intercourse of young men with courtesans. Even married men may patronize them without any greater moral penalty than a scolding at home and a slightly tarnished reputation in the city.

"Athens officially recognizes prostitution, and levies a tax upon its practitioners."

I was wondering -- any connection between sexual license and civilization or lack thereof?

Robby

I find completely barbaric certain customs to keep the sexes as totally separated as different species until the wedding night. Bubble

"The ancient Greeks were among the first to take advantage of oregano's medicinal qualities. The Greeks termed the spice origanos, meaning "delight of the mountains." Those who have visited Greece, where oregano covers the hillsides and scents the summer air, would probably agree with this name. The sweet, spicy scent of Oregano was reputedly created by the Goddess Aphrodite as a symbol of happiness. Bridal couples were crowned with garlands of oregano, and the plants were placed on the tombs to give peace to departed spirits. It was also used to prevent and treat venereal diseases."

"The 2,500 species of bay tree (lauraceae) include cinnamon and avocado pears. It also offers some lovely anecdotes: the branches of vitex, a Mediterranean native known as the chaste tree in ancient Greece, were used in festivals to affirm women's chastity, while its seeds were hustled off by early herbalists to treat their menfolk's venereal diseases."

Leda and the Swan

Youths and Hetairai

"As in the Symposium of Plato and Xenophon, where the drinking party is the setting for philosophical discussion, so Athenaeus (fl. AD 200) uses the framework of the symposium for literary and antiquarian exposition. In Book XIII of the Deipnosophists (Sophists at Dinner), he relates the collected witty sayings (chreia) of famous hetairai and anecdotes about them. Once, for example, when Phrynê was asked for her favors, she demanded a mina in payment. 'Too much' was the reply. 'Didn't you, the other day, stay with a stranger after you had received only two gold pieces?' 'Well then, said she, 'you too wait until I feel like indulging myself, and I will accept that amount.'"

More about hetairai

Robby

I wonder if there are many today as outspoken as this Evelyn?
Anyone here, or of your aquaintances who would admit to being or keeping a coutesan? It is not like the modern arrangement of living together either. Bubble

Robby

This quote is from the Malaspina Great Books site.

"There is a tradition that Aspasia of Melitus was the teacher of Sophocles. She was a contemporary of his and the companion of the Greek general Pericles. The notion that she influenced is drawn in part from the tone of a conversation between her character in a fragment of the lost dialogue Aspasia written by Aeschines. The fragment is preserved in Inventione Rhetorica. The conversation is between Aspasia [A] and the wife of Xenophon[X]:



"[A] Tell me, please, wife of Xenophon, if your neighbour had a better piece of gold jewelry than you, would you prefer hers or your own?



"[X] Hers, said the wife.



"[A] So--if she should have a dress or other feminine ornament more expensive than you have, would you prefer hers or yours?



"[X]Hers, naturally, said the wife.



"[A] So now: what if that woman had a better husband than you? Would you prefer hers or your own?



"Here the woman blushed. Aspasia, however, began to interrogate Xenophon himself.




Click here to access an article about Hetairai

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Have an enjoyable time at the conference. Bubble

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"They knew about reproduction. They knew about lust and love. They knew about the intensity of sexual desire between men and men, women and women, but for them, Lesbos was just an island off the coast of Asia Minor while Sappho was your average Pulitzer Prize winning poet."


Gore Vidal

"Ganymede, the son of the Trojan king, had won great fame, but not in battle, nor in the contests of strength. His shape alone had made him famous, for he was most handsome of all men on this earth. Whenever he and his friends took to the streets of Troy, Ganymede turned the heads of all the townsfolk; men and women, all fell for his stunning, god-like beauty. To keep him safe, the king set his guards to watch over the boy.



"One day, Ganymede shed his clothes to bathe in the warm waters of the Mediterranean. Looking down from the heavens the eye of father Zeus lighted upon the prince, and the sight of the young Trojan's thighs instantly set the god on fire with love. Hera, his wife, fumed in silence, her only relief the thought that at least the youth was far away. But Zeus, heedless of her jealousy, devised a plan to bring the boy to Olympus.









"First the god took the shape of an eagle. Then he unleashed a fierce thunderstorm, plunging all Troy into darkness. Winging down into the black clouds coiling about the city, the eagle sent shafts of lightning stabbing every which way. Ganymede's friends and guardians raced for shelter, falling over each other in their haste. Amid the turmoil, the eagle swooped out of the clouds and pounced upon the awestruck boy. It set him astride its back and launched itself once more upon the wind. The guardians raced back to save the prince, but the eagle beat the air with powerful wings once, twice, and the storm swallowed them up.



"They flew beyond the clouds, lost themselves into the deep blue sky, and the boy clung in wonder to his plumes. At last the eagle set down, folded its wings, and Ganymede found himself amidst the crystal halls of Olympus. A god once more, Zeus wrapped a friendly arm around his shoulder, looked him in the eye, and let him know that from now on he would walk among the immortals.



"In vain Hera protested that Ganymede gave nothing she could not offer, that her beauty behind fully equaled her beauty in front. Zeus tumbled again and again in bed with the curly blond prince, and Ganymede paraded around with a perpetual grin on his face. Before long, he and Eros, the youngest of the gods, became fast friends. Every chance they got, the boys went off by themselves, casting dice for hours on end. But greedy Eros was way too sly a player – he beat Ganymede every time, left him penniless and in tears.



"To make room in Olympus for his boyfriend, Zeus turned on Hebe, Hera's daughter, who had always served the gods at table. He claimed she stumbled, mocked her for being clumsy and sent her packing. At feast times it was Ganymede now who mulled the red nectar and filled each god's cup to the brim. And on coming round to Zeus, he would first plant a kiss on the rim of the chalice before handing it back to his loving lord.



"Hera was livid with rage. She turned on Zeus, berating him for bringing that horrid long-haired mortal to Olympus. Her husband threw in her face that he liked the boy's kisses best, and bestowed immortality on his beloved. Now Ganymede was like a god, forever young.



"Seething with jealousy, Hera hungered for revenge. Unable to harm Ganymede she went after his people instead. She fanned the flames of war and, in the end, all Greece rose up and massacred the Trojans. But Ganymede himself was beyond her reach. Zeus had set the boy among the stars—as Aquarius, the water bearer, shielding him forever under the wings of the Eagle."

"SOCRATES to ALCIBIADES: I dare say that you may be surprised to find, O son of Cleinias, that I, who am your first lover, not having spoken to you for many years, when the rest of the world were wearying you with their attentions, am the last of your lovers who still speaks to you."

You‘ll find more in:



The First Alcibiades by Plato

To give you a more contemporary example of how it was done: In French literature in highschool we were studying George Sand. The nun teacher was telling us how this writer was in touch with many artists and prominent people of her time. About G. Sand's interest in Chopin, she explained that it was a keen literary friendship! We were innocent enough to accept it at face value.
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Robby's post made me wonder who are the most puritanical these days. England is certainly more liberal than sixty years ago, for example. Would America be more strict these days?

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"We find little of romantic love in Homer, where Agamemnon and Achilles frankly think of Chryseis and Briseis, even of the discouraging Cassandra, in terms of physical desire. Nausicaa, however, is a warning against too broad a generalization, and legends as old as Homer tell of Heracles and Iola, of Orpheus and Eurydice.

"The lyric poets, again, talk abundantly of love, commonly in the sense of amorous appetite. Stories like that which Stesichorus tells of a maiden dying for love are exceptional. As refinement grows, and superimposes poetry upon heat, the tender sentiment becomes more frequent. The increasing delay that civilization places between desire and fulfillment gives imagination leisure to embellish the object of hope. The later dramatists often describe a youth desperately enamored of a girl.

"Such affairs in classic Greece lead rather to premarital relations than to matrimony. The Greeks would smile at anyone who should propose it as a fit guide in the choice of a marriage mate.

"Normally marriage is arranged by the parents as in always classic France, or by professional matchmakers, with an eye not to love but to dowries. The father is expected to provide for his daughter a marriage portion of money, clothing, jewelry, and perhaps slaves. This remains to its end the property of the wife, and reverts to her in case of a separation from her husband -- a consideration that discourages divorce by the male. Without a dowry a girl has little chance of marriage. Where the father cannot give it to her the relatives combine to provide it. Marriage by purchase, so frequent in Homeric days, has by this means been inverted in Periclean Greece. In effect, the woman has to buy her master.

"The Greek, then, marries not for love, nor because he enjoys matrimony (for he prates endlessly about its tribulations), but to continue himself and the state through a wife suitably dowered, and children who will ward off the evil fate of an untended soul. Even with these inducements he avoids wedlock as long as he can. The letter of the law forbids him to remain single, but the law is not always enforced in Periclean days. After him the number of bachelors mounts until it becomes one of the basic problems of Athens.

"There are so many ways of being amused in Greece. Those men who yield marry late, usually near thirty, and then insist upon brides not much older than fifteen."

Your comments, please?

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I think that marriages with the groom a few years older than the bride have better chances to be more stable. Somehow men keep their looks longer too.

Arranged marriages are still frequent in Israel, through matchmakers who search families's pedigrees back a few generations. This especially true in the very religious circle. As for the sabras born, there is a very serious trend at living together without matrimony, for various reasons, one being not wanting to go through a religious ceremony. Up to now civil marriage was not recognized and involved a trip abroad to register it. Even then it is not binding and the offsprings are considered bastards.
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At least nowadays the bride's mother does not parade anymore with a bloodied sheet!~ I never heard of the pots and pans music? Is that to keep the evil spirits away?

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"Athenian Marriage Rites.--However, thus runs public custom. At about fifteen the girl must leave her mother's fostering care and enter the house of the stranger. The wedding is, of course, a great ceremony; and here, if nowhere else, Athenian women can surely prepare, flutter, and ordain to their heart's content. After the somewhat stiff and formal betrothal before witnesses (necessary to give legal effect to the marriage), the actual wedding will probably take place,--perhaps in a few days, perhaps with a longer wait till the favorite marriage month Gamelion [January].

“Then on a lucky night of the full moon the bride, having, no doubt tearfully, dedicated to Artemis her childish toys, will be decked in her finest and will come down, all veiled, into her father's torchlit aula, swarming now with guests. Here will be at last that strange master of her fate, the bridegroom and his best man (paranymphos).

"Her father will offer sacrifice (probably a lamb), and after the sacrifice everybody will feast on the flesh of the victim; and also share a large flat cake of pounded sesame seeds roasted and mixed with honey. As the evening advances the wedding car will be outside the door. The mother hands the bride over to the groom, who leads her to the chariot, and he and the groomsman sit down, one on either side, while with torches and song the friends to with the car in jovial procession to the house of the young husband.

"This winter month was sacred to Hera, the marriage guardian. 'Ho, Hymen! Ho, Hymen! Hymenæous! Io!'

"So rings the refrain of the marriage song; and all the doorways and street corners are crowded with onlookers to shout fair wishes and good-natured raillery.

"At the groom's house there is a volley of confetti to greet the happy pair. The bride stops before the threshold to eat a quince (a fertility fruit).There is another feast,--possibly riotous fun and hard drinking. At last the bride is led, still veiled, to the perfumed and flower-hung marriage chamber. The doors close behind the married pair. Their friends sing a merry rollicking catch outside, the Epithalamium. The great day has ended. The Athenian girl has experienced the chief transition of her life."

More from A Day in Old Athens by William Stearns Davis (1910) HERE

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"GREEK WOMEN: With the exception of ancient Sparta, Greek women had very limited freedom outside the home. They could attend weddings, funerals, some religious festivals, and could visit female neighbors for brief periods of time. In their home, Greek women were in charge! Their job was to run the house and to bear children. Most Greek women did not do housework themselves. Most Greek households had slaves. Female slaves cooked, cleaned, and worked in the fields. Male slaves watched the door, to make sure no one came in when the man of the house was away, except for female neighbors, and acted as tutors to the young male children. Wives and daughters were not allowed to watch the Olympic Games as the participants in the games did not wear clothes. Chariot racing was the only game women could win, and only then if they owned the horse. If that horse won, they received the prize." MORE

Clothing of Ancient Greek Women

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"Classical Greeks were definitely patriarchal with women subserviant to men. Only native male Greeks could be citizens. Women obtained power only when they became the wife of an influential citizen or could obtain some influence by their relation to a man. They were restricted in their activities to mainly within the realm of a family or in the context of the activity of a courtesan. Within the family they might weave, grind grain, direct servants, and mind children. Even so, women were not without their influence, as is stated in a play by Euripides: 'Women run households and protect within their homes what has been carried across the sea, and without a woman no home is clean or prosperous. Consider their role in religion, for that, in my opinion, comes first. We women play the most important part, because women prophesy the will of Loxias in the oracles of Phoibos. And at the holy site of Dodona near the Sacred Oak, females convey the will of Zeus to inquirers from Greece. As for the sacred rituals for the fates and the Nameless goddesses [i.e. the Furies], all these would not be holy if performed by men, but prosper in women's hands. In this way women have a rightful share (dike) in the service of the Gods.' " (Neils, Worshipping Athena, p 78)

More of The Role of Women in Ancient Greek Art

"Sophocles (in the 'Tereus') makes them lament,



" 'We women are nothing;--happy indeed is our childhood, for THEN we are thoughtless; but when we attain maidenhood, lo! we are driven away from our homes, sold as merchandise, and compelled to marry and say 'All's well.' "



"Euripides is even more bitter in his 'Medea':--



" 'Surely of creatures that have life and wit,
We women are of all things wretchedest,
Who first must needs, as buys the highest bidder,
Thus buy a husband, and our body's master.[*]' "



[*]Way's translation.

"In the home she is honored and obeyed in everything that does not contravene the patriarchal authority of her mate. She keeps the house, or superintends its management; she cooks the meals, cards and spins the wool, makes the clothing and bedding for the family. Her education is almost confined to household arts, for the Athenian believes with Euripides that a woman is handicapped by intellect. The result is that the respectable women of Athens are more modest, more "charming" to men, than their like in Sparta, but less interesting and mature, incapable of being comrades to husbands whose minds have been filled and sharpened by a free and varied life. The women of sixth century Greece contributed significantly to Greek literature; the women of Periclean Athens contribute nothing."

"Toward the end of the period a movement arises for the emancipation of woman. Euripides defends the sex with brave speeches and timid innuendoes; Aristophanes makes fun of them with boisterous indecency. The women go to the heart of the matter and begin to compete with the hetairai in making themselves as attractive as the progress of chemistry will permit. 'What sensible thing are we women capable of doing?' asks Cleonia in Aristophanes' Lysistrata. 'We do nothing but sit around with our paint and lipstick and transparent gowns, and all the rest of it.' From 411 onward female roles become more prominent in Athenian drama, and reveal the growing escape of women from the solitude to which they have been confined."

"Claudine Leduc...Her basic assumption is that, from the time of Homer to the classical period, Greek marriage was organized as gift-giving: the gift included not only the bride but certain items of property."

"Through it all the real influence of woman over man continues, making her subjection largely unreal. The greater eagerness of the male gives woman an advantage in Greece as elsewhere. 'Sir,' says Samuel Johnson, 'nature has given woman so much power that the law cannot afford to give her more.' Sometimes this natural sovereignty is enhanced by a substantial dowry, or an industrious tongue, or uxorious affection; more often it is the result of beauty, or the bearing and rearing of children, or the slow fusion of souls in the crucible of a common experience and task. An age that can portray such gentle characters as Antigone, Alcestis, Medea, could not be unaware of the highest and deepest in woman. The average Athenian loves his wife, and will not try to conceal it; the funeral stelae reveal surprisingly the tenderness of mate for mate, and of parents for children, in the intimacy of the home. The Greek Anthology is vivid with erotic verse, but it contains also many a touching epigram to a beloved comrade. 'In this stone,' says one epitaph, 'Marathonis laid Nicopolis, and bedewed the marble chest with tears. But it was of no avail. What profit hath a man whose wife is gone, and who is left solitary on earth?' "

I suppose it is also written in the rules of conducts somewhere in the Bibble. I cannot check now: visitors at home and all my ref. books are out of bound for the duration.

Even Hell was a place to visit in Greeks time: remember Orpheus and Eurydices

Surely for the Greeks, Heaven and Hell were for Gods and Heroes and not a place for the common of mortals? Did Socrates expect to end there after dead?

Do you gather that after all the dancing and food tasting Robby will find a welcomed relax in sitting and reading about women in Greece and elsewhere?

Welcome back Robby!

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Of course hospitality means sharing your table too. Any visitor still there around meal time MUST stay and partake with the people of the house. It would be impolite not to do so.

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"Billing itself as seeking to extend the horizons of sophant pleasure. The society has become mainly a meeting place for the sensually adventurous. The orgies are notorious, as are the banquets. Membership is open to all, but expensive. Frequently the subject of religious picketing. Motto- everything to excess. All services within the club are free, including rooms held by the club at the Ambassador. $100,000 cr to join, $10,000 cr/year dues."

More HERE

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I see that indifference to elderly as a byproduct of civilisation. I never saw it with the "primitive" natives.

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Cremation would be the ideal. After all, death IMO is only the passing through, without any danger, to another ... unknown yet parallel world and the enveloppe left behind matters not. Bubble

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	Finally out of reach– 
	No bondage, no dependency. 
	How calm the ocean, 
	Towering the void. 
		tessho 

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Yes Justin, life as we know it here is over IMO too .
I still think the soul endures somehow probably as a different energy. Is that ego you think? I doubt it is.
For me it is just another circle of growth in Nature, not good or bad and with different stages, that would go on and on. We are not privy to what lays (lies?) in the future. Bubble

"'It is beautiful,' says a character in Xenophon's Economias, 'to see the footgear ranged in a row according to its kind, -- beautiful to see garments sorted according to their use and coverlets -- beautiful to see glass vases and tableware so sorted -- and beautiful, too, despite the jeers of the witless and flippant, to see cooking-pots arranged with sense and symmetry.

"'Yes, all things without exception, becaue of symmetry, will appear more beautiful when placed in order. All these utensils will then seem to form a choir. The center which they unite to form will create a beauty that will be enhanced by the distance of the other objects in the group.'

"This passage from a general reveals the scope, simplicity, and strength of the esthetic sense in Greece."

I understand this concept from an intellectual point of view but I am afraid that there are very few "choirs" in my bachelor home. The items in my home are placed from a functional point of view.

How does your home look? Tell us your artistic approach and how it affects your home and your living.

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"In the Greek's view art was first of all an adornment of the ways and means of life. He wanted his pots and pans, his lamps and chests and tables and beds and chairs to be at once serviceable and beautiful, and never too elegant to be strong. Having a vivid 'sense of the state,' he identified himself with the power and glory of his city, and employed a thousand artists to embellish its public places, ennoble its festivals, and commemorate its history.

"Above all, he wished to honor or propitiate the gods, to express his gratitude to them for life or victory. He offered votive images, lavished his resources upon his temples, and engaged statuaries to give to his gods or his dead an enduring similitude in stone.

"Hence Greek art belonged not to a museum, where man might go to contemplate it in a rare moment of esthetic conscience, but to the actual interests and enterprises of the people. Its 'Apollos' were not dead marbles in a gallery, but the likenesses of beloved deities. Its temples no mere curiosities for tourists, but the homes of living gods.

"The artist, in this society, was not an insolvent recluse in a studio, working in a language alien to the common citizen. He was an artisan toiling with laborers of all degrees in a public and intelligible task. Athens brought together, from all the Greek world, a greater concourse of artists, as well as of philosophers and poets, than any other city except Renaissance Rome.

"These men, competing in fervent rivalry and cooperating under enlightened statesmanship, realized in fair measure the vision of Pericles."

"The artist, in this society, was not an insolvent recluse in a studio, working in a language alien to the common citizen."

In my estimation art, in much of our Western World, IS a language alien to the common citizen."

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When painting or making a flower arrangement, I much enjoy an asymmetrical display. There too I wonder if it is a question of individual taste? But I know I wouldn't buy a totally asymmetrical carpet...

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Indian and North African communities here practice henna tattoes on hands and feet in the henna ceremony preceding a wedding. It brings luck and wards off evil eye apparently. The designs cover the hands and fingers and are as intricate as delicate lace. The henna wears off in time of course.

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The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

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"In the sixth century, it is chiefly ceramic, devoted to the adornment of vases.

"In the fifth it is chiefly architectural, giving color to public buildings and statues.

"In the fourth it hovers between the domestic and the individual, decorating dwelling and making portraits.

"In the Hellenistic Age it is chiefly individual, producing easel pictures for private purchasers.

"Greek painting begins as an offshoot of drawing, and remains to the end a matter essentially of drawing and design. In its development it uses three methods --

1 - fresco, or painting upon wet plaster
2 - tempera, or painting upon wet cloth or boards with colors mixed with the white of eggs, and
3 - encaustic, which mixed the colors with melted wax. This is as near as antiquity comes to paianting in oils.

"Pliny, whose will to believe somtimes rivals that of Herodotus, assures us that the art of painting was already so advanced in the eighth century that Candaules, King of Lydia, paid its weight in gold for a picture by Bularchus. However, all beginngs are mysteries. We may judge the high repute of painting in Greece from the fact that Pliny gives it more space than to sculpture.

"Apparently the great paintings of the classic and Hellenistic periods were as much discussed by the critics, and as highly regarded by the people, as the most distingished specimens of architecture or statuary."

Following along with Durant has helped me to back up and take the long perspective, i.e. centuries, not years. As I view the disputes going on in the present-day artistic world, I wonder if, some day in the future, historians will speak of artistic stages in terms of 19th century, 20th, 21st, etc.

As for the various types of artistic media described above, again I am still that poor little country boy hoping to understand them in words I learned at my mother's knee.

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"One of the earliest pictures recorded by Pliny (xxxv. represented a battle of the Magnesians (c. 716 B.C.); it was painted by Bularchus, a Lydian artist, and bought at a high price by King Candaules. Many other important Greek historical paintings are mentioned by Pausanias and earlier writers. The Pompeian mosaic of the defeat of the Persians by Alexander is probably a Romanized copy from some celebrated Greek painting; it obviously was not designed for mosaic work.

"Landscape painting appears to have been unknown among the Greeks, even as a background to figure-subjects. The poems especially of Homer and Sophocles show that this was not through want of appreciation of the beauties of nature, but partly, probably, because the main object of Greek painting was to tell some definite story, and also from their just sense of artistic fitness, which prevented them from attempting in their mural decorations to disguise the flat solidity of the walls by delusive effects of aerial perspective and distance."

Quoted from HERE

When I see 'Portretow' I see it probably means 'Portrait' and such clues and connections are vital for my mind to achieve understanding.

If I do not understand what I am saying then I will surely be speaking nonsense. When learning another language, I must first know the english words, and then translate them into the second language.

After much practice and sufficient time, I will I hope learn Polish well enough to think in Polish, and not translate to and from English first.. I do not see any other way of grasping a second language.-- Trevor

Speaking Spanish, and for example wanting to say you were embarassed to ask something, Never never use the term 'sono embarassado'!
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In chat, it always make me laugh when I am asked "are you a lady?" I feel more like an impish commoner.

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Dali was really a character, down to his moustache.

Have you ever heard the grandeur of spoken classical Greek? or the soft tenderness of Greek love songs?

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To add to Geaorge's note. What is beauty in nature? it is so relative... we call it that because it pleases our eye, but by itself it is just a way to exist.
Not all find the same things to be beautiful. I feel very uncomfortable in mountainous country and would never find it beautiful I think. My eye can find splendor in a raging sea.

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"Each sculptor had his place in a long lineage of masters and pupils carrying on the skills of their art -- checking the extravagances of independent individualities -- encouraging their specific abilities -- disciplining them with a sturdy grounding in the technology and achievements of the past -- and forming them, through this interplay of talent and law, into a greater art than often comes to genius isolated and unruled. Though rebels are the necessary variants in the natural history of art, it is only when their new line has been steadied with heredity and chastened with time that it generates supreme personalities.

"Five schools performed this function -- those of Rhegium, Sicyon, Argos, Aegina, and Attica. About 496 another Pythagoras of Samos settled at Rhegium, cast a Philoctetes that won him Mediterranean fame, and put into the faces of his statues such signs of passion, pain, and age as shocked all Greek sculptors until those of the Hellenistic period decided to imitate him. At Sicyon Canachus and his brother Aristocles carried on the work begun a century earlier by Dipoenus and Scyllis of Crete. Callon and Onatas brought distinction to Aegina by their skill with bronze. Perhaps it was they who made the Aegina pediments.

"At Argos Ageladas organized th3e transmission of sculptural technique in a school that reached its apex in Polycleitus."

I am wondering if we have today anything equivalent to the schools of sculpture of that era?

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SPIKEY SOLES

In ancient Greece, courtesans wore sandals with nails studded into the sole so that their footprints would leave the message "Follow me".

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"The Ancient Financial World"

"The most important lesson learned from the emergence of finance in ancient Mesopotamia and Greece is that financial instruments from their very inception could be tools of both enterprise and control. At their best they expanded the realm of Mesopotamian contacts and trade to distant shores of Dilmun, and undoubtedly to Africa and India. They allowed Greek shipping to flourish throughout the Mediterranean. At its worst finance became an institutional tool used by the government to extract taxes and rents from its citizenry, and a way for a group of entrepreneurs to exploit the working class mired in debt. We saw that, at times, the techniques of finance could be turned on the government itself. The power of financial technology worried kings and irritated philosophers. Individuals like Dumuzi-gamil, Ea-nasir, Sogdanus, Pasion or even the roguesh philosopher Thales who had a plan or vision for the future could use financial contracts to profit from that plan. Borrowing multiplied the temporary financial power of the individual, and allowed him or her great feats of economic strength. This strength at times challenged the power of the state itself, the power of human compassion, and even the power of moral reason.



"Finance is not like other technologies. It is not something that, once discovered, becomes a permanent cultural fixture. From the very beginning, governments saw it as both good and evil, and alternately supported and suppressed it. Finance may thrive on stability, but it is threatened by situations in flux. Throughout human history, financial instruments have frequently been re-invented as a way to solve certain human problems. In the centuries since the era of the Mesopotamian and Greek financiers, the financial world has become increasingly complex, but the fundamental principles and tools they discovered several millennia ago have remained the root of all investment contracts. In all likelihood, we must thank an ancient Uruk accountant for the discovery of the time value of money -- and we must also not forget to thank the generations of financiers that followed in his wake for the ingenious means to exploit it."

"The Empire"

"Before the peace with Sparta, Athens benefitted from the taxes paid into the League and began growing quite wealty; after the peace, the Athenians moved the treasury to Athens and began keeping one sixtieth of all the revenue. The Athenians began to grew especially wealthy. The League, after all, was no longer at war with Persia, but the tribute money kept rolling in. At this stage, when the League had lost its military justification and when the tribute money was no longer really going for defense, the League in reality had become an Athenian empire. Reaction among the tribute states was mixed; some city-states eagerly participated in the empire, but most fumed under the onerousness of Athenian control and taxation. As Athens grew more and more powerful and the city more opulent, discontent grew among the tribute states. However, the Spartans, in particular, grew increasingly distrustfull of Athenian power and wealth. They had agreed to recognize the Athenian Empire in exchange for Athens giving up claims to continental territories; however, it was becoming apparent that even without the continental territory, the Athenians were a major threat to Sparta and its influence."

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"In the western end of the Parthenon Ictinus placed a room for her maiden priestesses, and called it the room 'of the virgins' -- ton parthenon. In the course of careless time this name of a part, by a kind of architectural metaphor, was applied to the whole.

"Ictinus chose as his material the white marble of Mt. Pentelicus, veined with iron grains. No mortar was used. The blocks were so accurately squared and so finely finished that each stone grasped the next as if the two were one. The column drums were bored to let a small cylinder of olivewood connect them, and permit each drum to be turned around and around upon the one below it until the meeting surfaces were ground, so smooth that the division between drums was almost invisible.

"The design was rectangular, for the Greeks did not care for circular or conical forms. Hence there were no arches in Greek architecture, though Greek architects must have been familiar with them.

"The dimensions were modest -- 228 x 101 x 65 feet. Probably a system of proportion, like the Polycleitan canon, prevailed in every part of the building, all measurements bearing a given relation to the diameter of the column.

"At Poseidonia the height of the column was four times its diameter. Here it was five. The new form mediated successfully between Spartan sturdiness and Attic elegance. Each column swelled slightly (three quarters of an inch in diameter) from base to middle, tapered toward the top, and leaned toward the center of its colonnade. Each corner column was a trifle thicker than the rest.

"Every horizontal line of stylobate and entablature was curved upward towards its center, so that the eye placed at one end of any supposedly level line could not see the farther half of the line.

"The metopes were not quite square, but were designed to appear square from below. All these curvatures were subtle corrections for optical illusions that would otherwise have made stylobate lines seem to sink in the center, columns to diminish upward the base, and corner columns to be thinner and outwardly inclined.

"Such adjustments required considerable knowledge of mathematics and optics, and constituted but one of those mechanical features that made the temple a perfect union of science and art. In the Parthenon, as in current physics, every straight line was a curve, and, as in a painting, every part was drawn toward the center in subtle composition.

"The result was a certain flexibility and grace that seemed to give life and freedom to the stones."

And some of us thought it was merely a case of building a foundation, erecting a number of straight columns, and placing a roof on top!

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“Geometry is the right foundation of all painting.”

- Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Course in the Art of Measurement

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"That mental discourse that originates in first principles is termed science. Nothing can be found in nature that is not part of science, like continuous quantity, that is to say, geometry, which, commencing with the surfaces of bodies, is found to have its origins in lines, the boundary of these surfaces. Yet we do not remain satisfied with this, in that we know that line has its conclusion in a point, and nothing can be smaller than that which is a point. Therefore the point is the first principle of geometry, and no other thing can be found either in nature or in the human mind that can give rise to the point.... No human investigation may claim to be a true science if it has not passed through mathematical demonstrations... The principle of the science of painting is the point; second is the line; third is the surface; fourth is the body which is enclosed by these surfaces. And that is just what is to be represented...since in truth the scope of painting does not extend beyond the representation of the solid body or the shape of all the things that are visible."


- Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519), in M. Kemp, ed., Leonardo on Painting, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989

In '93 the pollution in Athens was such that cars were allowed to drive in town only on alternate days. But since families usually owns more than one car, it did not stop anyone and did not improve the situation. The purity of light was only a memory and the result can be seen with the erosion of the stone work.

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"The cultural activity of Periclean Greece takes chiefly three forms -- art, drama, and philosophy. In the first, religion is the inspiration. In the second religion is the battle ground. In the third religion is the victim.

"Since the organization of a religious group presumes a common and stable creed, every religion sooner or later comes into opposition with that fluent and changeful current of secular thought that we confidently call the progress of knowledge. In Athens the conflict was not always visible on the surface, and did not directly affect the masses of the people.

"The scientists and the philosophers carried on their work without explicitly attacking the popular faith, and often mitigated the strife by using the old religious terms as symbols or allegories for their new beliefs. Only now and then, as in the indictments of Anaxagoras, Aspasia, Diagoras of Melos, Euripides, and Socrates, did the struggle come out into the open, and become a matter life and death.

"But it was there. It ran through the Periclean age like a major theme, played in many keys and elaborated in many variations and forms. It was heard most distinctly in the skeptical discourses of the Sophists and in the materialism of Democritus. It sounded obscurely in the piety of Aeschylus, in the heresies of Euripides, even in the irreverent banter of the conservative Aristophanes. It was violently recapitulated in the trial and death of Socrates.

"Around this theme the Athens of Pericles lived its mental life."

Now let me see if I get this straight. Religion, per se, began to die. It began to die because some of the thinkers of that day looked within theirselves and began to doubt the religious beliefs of that day. However, those "thinkers" lived in a different world, so to speak, from the "average" person and as the average person who followed the popular and stable creed would have been horrified to know of this heresy, those thinkers (philosphers?) continued to use the common religious terms to cover up their new found thought.

Even today "religion comes into opposition with secular thought." Unndoubtedly this will be discussed here although, for the usual reasons, we will abstain from giving the names of current names in the news.

Durant says that "conflict was not always visible on the surface." Is today's conflict "hidden" from the "average man on the street?" Do we hear religious terms used to represent secular thought? -- or perhaps vice versa? Do the scientists and philosophers of today "carry on their work without explicitly attacking the popular faith?" Just how does learning "advance" in our current Western civilization?

What is happening in the halls of academia? What is happening in the churches, synagogues, and mosques? Is there a conflict? Is it hidden?

Robby