So I started reading the entirety of the western canon a few months ago, and things just seem to come together in a way that they didn't previously. Currently, I'm finishing up ancient Greece and working my way to Rome. I think, more now than ever, that an understanding of an important work requires an understanding of the surrounding circumstances and issues. Without it, you'd be convinced that Plato and Socrates were saintly.
Example: In roughly 800 BC, Homer wrote the ageless epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, which were revered as the essential treatment of heroism to the Athenians of old. Some three to four centuries later, Cleisthenes (a member of the Alcmaeonidae noble family) freed Athens from the tyranny of Peisistratos, and established Athenian democracy. Not long afterward, Athens found itself in a brutal war with the Persians. After allying with other city-states, such as Sparta, and developing a naval fleet that owned the seas, the new confederation developed the strength to resist the power of King Xerxes. After the Persians fled from Greece, the classical era flourished under a strengthened Athenian democracy. Two parties were now forming in Athens, an aristocratic faction led by Aristides (praised by Socrates in Plato's Gorgias), and a populist faction led by Themistocles (the general who led the creation of the Athenian naval fleet). Meanwhile, Greek theater reached its maturity, and interpretations of Greek legend, Homer, and contemporary events became popular fodder for plays. The dramatist Aeschylus utilized a tone that, though resulting in rigidity, upheld the honor of the Greek heroic age. Sophocles ably followed Aeschylus with his own celebrated interpretations of the legends. It wasn't until Euripides, though, that there was a full maturation of Greek drama. The downside of this maturation to Aristophanes, a popular author of comedies, was that Euripides attributed human character to divine heroes, thus leading to the common accusation that Euripides was practicing heresy and attacking the gods. Aristophanes, a conservative and traditionalist, commended the work of Aeschylus and Sophocles instead. Perhaps what follows, though, is Aristophanes' greatest effect on the modern world: he wrote and staged an unflattering depiction of Socrates as an unscrupulous sophist, one that matched the charges eventually levied on the philosopher, of disrespect toward the gods and corruption of the youth. Plato later claimed that this depiction was what led to Socrates' trial and death sentence. During this, Athens had been steadily building up its naval superiority, causing its allies (notably Sparta and Corinth) to consider forming another confederation to match the power of the Athenians. Due to Spartan intrigue over Themistocles' support for building a wall to protect Athens, Themistocles of the populist faction was sent to Persia in hiding. The preeminent statesman of the time, Pericles (of the same Alcmaeonidae family as Cleisthenes, and also a populist) led the Athenians against the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War. Long story short, Sparta won and instituted tyranny in Athens, led by guys like Alcibiades (a member of the, guess what, Alcmaeonidae family and the young lover of Socrates), Charmides, and Critias, all members of Socrates' social circle- close enough with Socrates to be the namesakes of Plato's early dialogues. Plato's/ Socrates' ideal government in The Republic uncomfortably matched the social and political structure of the Spartan state. Socrates was later charged on two counts. The first count, impiety, philosophers and historians would later distort to make it appear as if Socrates supported monotheism over paganism, which led to Plato being viewed by Christianity as a virtuous pagan. The important count, though, was a corruption of the young. Socrates suffered a political death, on a crime of taking a member of the revered Alcmaeonidae family as his lover, corrupting that particular youth, developing a social circle of future tyrants, and then supporting a turn from Athenian democracy to Spartan hegemony. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
