Status Updates From The Story of Civilization, ...

"Athens had ruined itself by carrying to excess the principles of liberty & equality, by 'training the citizens in such fashion that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty...& license to do what they pleased as happiness.' All men are not equal, & should not be equally free to hold office. The institution of the lot...had lowered disastrously the level of Athenian statesmanship" (487).

"Macedonia, despite the cultural hospitality of Archelaus, was still for the most part a barbarous country of hardy but letterless mountaineers when Philip came to the throne (359); indeed, to the end of its career, though it used Greek as its official language, it contributed no author, or artist, or scientist, or philosopher, to the life of Greece" (475).

"As politics grew more intense, patriotism waned; the bitterness of faction absorbed public energy and devotion, and left little for the city. The constitution of Cleisthenes and the individualism of commerce and philosophy had weakened the family and liberated the individual; now the free individual, as if to avenge the family, turned around and destroyed the state" (469).

"The Golden Age ended with the death of Socrates. Athens was exhausted in body and soul; only the degradation of character by prolonged war and desperate suffering could explain the ruthless treatment of Melos, the bitter sentence upon Mytilene, the execution of the Arginusae generals, and the sacrifice of Socrates on the alter of a dying faith. All the foundations of Athenian life were disordered..." (455).

"Under [Pericles] Athens had reached her zenith; but because that height had been attained in part through the wealth of an unwilling Confederacy, and through a power that invited almost universal hostility, the Golden Age was unsound in its foundations and was doomed to disaster when Athenian statesmanship failed in the strategy of peace" (442).

"Form & order are the essence of the classic style...the typical Greek writer, like the Greek artist, is never satisfied with mere expression, but longs to give form & beauty to his material. He cuts his matter down to brevity, rearranges it into clarity, transforms it into a complex simplicity...This persistent effort to subordinate fancy to reason is the dominant quality of the Greek mind..." (436).

"If comedy throughout the fifth century was hostile to democracy, it was partly because poets like money and the aristocracy was rich, but chiefly because the function of Greek comedy was to amuse with criticism, and the democratic party was in power" (421).