Adrian Buck’s Reviews > The Greeks > Status Update

"When he was confronted with a proposition, the Greek, being simple-minded, did not as a rule ask whether it was reactionary, or popular, or 'deviationist': he was inclined to ask if it was true" - Socrates wouldn't agree, sophism is a perennial problem.

"In the first place, civilizsation - to use the word for once in its improper sense - has made the physical differences between the sexes of very little political importance" - I think he means 'technology', but it seems absurd to argue the the rights of woman has more to do with technology that it does with the slow working out of The Enlightenment. I suppose to do so would cast the Athenian enlightenment in shade.

"It is orthodox to compare the repression of women in Athens with the freedom and respect they enjoyed in Homeric society - and in historical Sparta" - rather than explore these differences in 'Greek' society he spends the rest of the section exculpating Athens.

"It is not obvious that [the gods] are bound by the laws that govern human behaviour; in fact, it is obvious that some of them are not. That is to say, there is no essential connexion between theology and morality" - but this connexion is there in Plato, Socrates accuses the poets of misrepresenting the gods.

"[Aeschylus'] framework is not the story, but this conception [of justice]. Those bits of the story which does not want...he throws away" - cf Shakespeare

"This Heraclitan philosophy had a profound influence on Plato" - did Plato import, invent the Soul to have something knowable about a person?

"The sharp distinction distinction which the Christian and Oriental world has normally drawn between the body and the soul...was foreign to the Greek at least until the time of Socrates and Plato"

"We have words like this in English...but in Greek this refusal to specialize the meaning is habitual" - I wonder if it is: English has an astonishingly large vocabulary; Hungarian is smaller, but it uses its extensive case system to refine meaning. Where does Greek stand?

"Occidental man, beginning with the Greeks, has never been able to leave things alone. He must inquire, find out, improve, progress: and Progress broke the polis."

"It is a matter of no surprise if many simple Athenians thought the treachery of Alcibiades and the oligarchic fury of Critias and his crew were the direct result of Socrates teaching." - apart from the qualification of 'simple' Kitto is arguing here the Athenians were right to condemn Socrates. From a Conservative perspective, he's right.