A War Like No Other

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:25 -0500

Summary

Victor Davis Hanson tells the story of the Peloponnesian war which is the war where Sparta and Athens fought for close to 30 years. This war starts shortly after Sparta and Athens had united to repel a Persian invasion, partially depicted in the movie 300. Ironically, this war was ultimately decided by Persia backing Sparta which broke the Athenians. For many, this war marks the end of the Greek Golden age. Taking place shortly before Alexander the Great’s campaigns, it included many Western superstars like Socrates, who participated in the early part of the war, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, and some of the eminent Greek tragedians like Sophocles and Euripides. Hanson recasts the Peloponnesian War as a Greek Civil War, because much like the American Civil War both sides shared language, culture, and many other inherited traditions, but they differed on governmental strategies. The Spartans are portrayed as being conservative oligarchs, while the Athenians were depicted as radical proponents of democracy. This difference in governing styles is often emphasized by Hanson, who uses it to explain the distinctive reactions of the two nation states to the challenges each in turn faced.

The Symposium

Sun, 25 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I put this on the list because I had heard that in this book there was a conversation between Socrates and Diotima about love. The book is set where a group of friends get together and throw a party for a friend that had won an award for a play that he had written. At this party they all decide that they should go around in a circle and give a speech praising the god Eros (God of love). So, they go around in a circle and each character gives their speeches. On the whole speeches were mostly unenlightening although they raised very interesting realizations about homosexual relationships between older men and younger “boys” (re: modern authors believe that they were all over the age of 18 of course crossed fingers). This side of the story I did not expect. Yet another time when history sneaks up on you from “behind”. One of the speeches contained a story about how in the beginning hermaphrodites were running around doing crazy stuff and the gods got mad and split them in half to make male and female. As a result, men and women roam the earth in search of their “other half”. Socrates’ speech was pretty interesting. i.e., Plato) makes the argument that love happens in stages. One first learns to love details about a specific person. Then realizes that these details exist in many people. They then begin to love many people. Then they begin to love the details in and of themselves abstracted from people. In this final stage if they are lucky, they will get a glimpse of beauty (the thing which they have desired all along) un-encumbered by humanity’s “fleshiness”. This fits in with Plato’s idea of a world of “Forms” pretty well. Where basically everything we see and interact with is an imperfect clone of something perfect that exists only in this world of forms. I.E the world in which a perfect triangle exists, which for now can only be accessed by thought.

Ancient_greece on George's Blog

A War Like No Other

The Symposium