William Scott Ferguson

“ Hence no pains or expenses were spared by them to build and maintain—at their own cost—public palæstræ and gymnasia in which poor and rich alike could obtain a suppleness and grace of body that added charm and vigor to their movements; and to institute so-called musical contests in which the people generally had to participate, and the preparation for which incited all classes to study literature and art—above all to learn the words and the music of lyric and dramatic choruses. The aristocracy died down in Athens, but the Athenians became the aristocracy of all Greece. ”

“ No man in high place ever took more seriously the doctrine that all citizens were equally capacitated for public service, yet no more ardent imperialist than he ever lived. The truth is that Athenian democracy with all that it implies was impossible without the Athenian maritime empire. The subject allies were as indispensable to the Athenians as the slaves, mechanics, and traders are to the citizens of Plato's ideal republic.
This empire Sparta sought to destroy, and to this end waged fruitless war on Athens for ten years (431–421 B. C.) . ”

“ Under his far-sighted guidance Athens built an invincible fleet at great financial sacrifice, cooperated with Sparta with singular devotion and unparalleled heroism in beating off the Persians, and established her maritime empire. Aristides [2] was at first his unsuccessful rival and later his faithful collaborator, and Pericles, [3] whose interest in science, philosophy, jurisprudence, art, and literature makes him the best exponent of the culminating epoch of Greek development, profited sagaciously by their work. ”

“ There were revolters in politics as there were revolters in religion and in art: the tyrants are the kinsmen of the personal poets, Archilochus, Sappho, Alcæus, and of scientists like Thales of Miletus and the Ionian physicists. ”

“ This is not wholly the result of their origin in a community of philosophic biographers. It is in large part the result of Plutarch's own architectonic powers. He was far from being a colorless and characterless compiler. His "Lives" seldom seem "lumpy." They reveal, throughout, the quaint personality of the author. His philosophic standpoint is betrayed in almost every line of criticism they contain. His mastery of literary technique is never wanting. The quiet humor, unobtrusive and delicate, is unmistakably his. Piquancy is a Greek trait, and Plutarch was a Greek. ”

“ In this, the time of their expansion from an Ægean into a Mediterranean people, they shook off the bonds which had shackled the Oriental spirit, and, trusting to their own intellects, faced without flinching the grave problems of human life. ”

“ To the hot, strenuous youth of his age, to zealots for preserving the old, and to harsh innovators alike he seemed probably a trifler and perhaps a bore. They must have turned with impatience from his universal charity; for he was a widely loyal man, loyal to his petty civic duties, his family obligations, his friends, his reputation, his race. ”

“ Yet, when everything has been said in praise of his fine qualities, it is still true that his mind, like that of the philosophic biographers who preceded him, was an unfortunate medium for the great men of affairs of antiquity to have to pass through on their way to us. They were all sicklied over by the pale cast of ethical interpretation. Men of flesh and blood, actuated by all the reasons and passions of which human beings of diverse but distinguished endowments were capable, tend to appear as puppets exemplifying laudable virtues and deterrent vices. ”

“ Man whose natures are truly revealed only in the work which they accomplished are isolated from their societies, and characterized by what they did or said at insignificant moments. Trivialities serve Plutarch's purpose of ethical portraiture as well as or better than the historic triumphs and failures of his heroes. ”

“ Sculptors and painters, long since accustomed to work in the spirit of a school, and to elaborate more and more scrupulously certain types of art, now became conscious that so much of their work was of their own creation that they began laying claim to it by adding their signatures. ”

“ The Asiatic Greeks were in general the leaders at this time, and Miletus was the greatest city in the entire Greek world.
SPARTA—ATHENS—THEBES
The sixth century which followed was an age of reaction. Men shrank from the violent outbreaks of the preceding generations. It was the time of the "seven wise men," of the precept "nothing in excess," of the curbing of aristocracies with their claim to be a law unto themselves. During this epoch of repression a rich and diversified culture which had developed in Sparta was narrowed down to one single imperious interest—war and preparation for war. ”

“ During the principate the prince or emperor seemed to be the source of all actions, good and bad. Upon the will and character of a single individual hung suspended, apparently, the life and weal of every human being. ”

“ Political connection between them there was none, and slender indeed were the ties of sentiment, language, and religion which bound to one another the Hellenes of Miletus, Corinth, Syracuse, Marseilles, and the hundreds of other Greek city-states then in existence. The complexity of the map may be appreciated by observing that Crete alone had twenty-three distinct states. In Greece, as elsewhere, cities in which life was at once national and municipal proved the most favorable soil for the growth of free institutions. ”

“ There, too, the nobles were ousted from their monopoly of political rights, but on the other hand, the serfs were admitted to citizenship. The men who molded Athens in its period of democratic growth were themselves aristocrats who never doubted for a moment that the culture of their order would ennoble the life of the masses. ”

“ After his murder a quarrel arose between rival candidates for the command of the troops—Cæsar's troops, as the assassins found to their sorrow. Antony, [11] his master of horse, finally took one half of them with him to the East, to finish Cæsar's projected campaign against the Parthians, to live in Alexandria at the feet of Cleopatra, Cæsar's royal mistress—who was not only an able and unscrupulous woman, but also the heir of a bad political tradition—to bring Egypt into the Roman Empire by annexing the Roman Empire to the Egyptian crown. ”

“ Men who had earlier been obscured by their respective families, clans, and brotherhoods, now severed themselves for all public purposes from these associations, recognizing only the authority of a state which threw open its privileges to all alike. ”

“ In fact, they had many of the qualities of Iroquois, and when they took by storm a hostile city, their soldiers uncultured peasants, once the iron bonds of discipline were relaxed often slew every living thing which came in their way: men, women, children, and even animals. ”

“ They forced themselves directly upon the attention of every thinking individual. One man remained orthodox, another took refuge in the emotional cults of Dionysos and Demeter, another revolted and sought to explain the world as a product of natural laws and not of divine creation. ”