Adrian Buck’s Reviews > A History of Greece > Status Update

"Such was the little exclusive community which Aristotle designed, while his [Alexander] was setting in motion schemes for world wide commerce, shattering the barriers which sundered nation from nation, building an empire which should include millions, founding cities composed of men of divers races, hewing his way through a maze of new political problems which were beyond Aristotle's horizon."

Re: Introduction of a property restriction for enfranchisement in Athens. I assumed that the distinction between 'citizen' and 'slave' was a de facto property restriction. There is not enough discussion of these topics in this history.

"...there was nothing offensive or outlandish to Greek ear in predicating godhood of revered sovereign or master" - so Augustus was just introducing a Greek custom to the Roman world, when he deified Caesar?

"And in the meantime Greece was experiencing a relief which she had needed for two generations. A field had been opened to her superfluous children, who were pouring by thousands, or rather tens of thousands, into Asia, to find careers, if not permanent homes." - demographics drive military expansion, cf the Vikings.

"The advance to the Indus was no mere wanton aggression, but was necessary to establish secure routes for Indian trade" - what a shame we don't have a context for this insight, the history has focused on 'wanton acts of aggression" rather the development of commerce in the Greek world.

"The host with which he now to descend upon India must have been at least twice as numerous as the army with which he had crossed the Hellespont seven years before" - no lines of supply problem then, why did Napoleon, Hitler have them - because they were dependent on national armies.

"All the Greeks and Macedonians who followed regarded the east as a world to be plundered and rifled by their higher intelligence and courage..." - so much Greek behaviour reminds me of Nazism, that I have to wonder how much Nazism itself was a precipitated from the 19th century surge of German interest in Greece (I think particulary of Nietzsche).

"One general principle [Alexander] did adopt - the division of power...Under the Persian kingdom the satrap was usually sole govenor...Alexander in most cases committed only the internal administration to the govenor, and appointed beside him, and independent of his authority, a financial officer and a military commander" - obviously he had read Dictator's Handbook

"The men of mighty words were as children in the hands of the man of mighty deeds." - Churchill?

"It was the calamity of Athens, as it has been the calamity of Holland, that she was solidly attached to the continent" - cf Britain, Venice, Spain