Here is a quickie on Athens, to compliment the quickie on Sparta – I think we’re having fun, right? Even if Gyros are almost five dollars now?Athens was a mirror opposite of Sparta. I would say they were character foils, but Athens was given to a frequency of warring with her neighbors, often times playing the role of aggressor… and because I like the guys from Sparta better, well, I will just say Athens was a mirror opposite
During the “Classical Era” (500BC to 325BC), Athens was a fertile ground for public life, public culture, and an emerging group of thinkers who would forever change Western History. Just take a look at these guys and you will sense what I mean when I say that this Era was a seed-bomb for future centuries. Oh yeah. You reap what you sew.
You’ve got Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Aristophenes.
You’ve got Herodotus and Thucydides.
You’ve got Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
You know these guys. If the Spartans were rock-stars in leather, these guys were the rockin’ thinkers in sandals and white-draped togas.
Sophocles is famous for his Greek Tragedy – he was writing the “Oedipus” plays around 430 BC, and by this time, already, a tradition of dramatic plays was being performed for audiences of thousands. Aristophanes, a contemporary, was writing political plays that, disguised as comedy, satirized well-known men inside the city of Athens.
Herodotus wrote about the History of the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, and his contemporary, Thucydides, wrote a detailed account of the Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta. He is one of my personal favorites.
Socrates is well-known, if not from Bill & Ted, then at least from his own trial, where he was found guilty of corrupting Athens’ youth. Before he calmly swallowed hemlock he gave us his famous ideal, “Knowledge is virtue.” He is also known for constantly professing his ignorance when saying “I know… that I do not know.”
His student was Plato, and Plato was one of the most important philosophers we have ever known. Plato gave us a Theory of Forms, and he is famous for his “Apology” and “Dialogues.” Unlike his mentor, Plato was fond of censorship and believed only a small group of people might benefit from his teachings.
His own student, Aristotle, is THE most important philosopher… that’s my opinion, of course, but I’m a student of History, you see, so I’m not supposed to make judgements like that. Just trust me that Aristotle was the most important and it will be fine. Aristotle was also a teacher, and he wrote many hundreds of “Treaties” dealing with things like politics, ethics, poetry, botany, physics, metaphysics, astronomy, rhetoric, logic, and philosophy.
I think it’s amazing that we find these great thinkers together in the same time and place.
Athens was gold when compared to its mirror-mate, Sparta. It was a gold mine for thoughts and ideals and was also the very heart of what we understand a “democracy” to be. Life in the “Polis” inside Athens was a remarkably free and dynamic one. And Athens gives us our first glimpses of what a popular form of government might look like. Compared to militaristic Sparta, yeah, I’m giving Athens some gold stars. You remember this when you discover “Oedipus” or “Antigone” sometime. Or when you watch Bill & Ted.
