4th Century Greece

"'When I was a boy being rich was considered so secure and respectable that almost everyone pretended he owned more property than was the case, because he wanted to share in the prestige it gave. Now, on the other hand, one has to defend oneself against being rich as if it were the worst of crimes"

I love how Greek writings sound so modern.
>To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self-defence... and indeed most people are more ready to call villainy cleverness than simple-mindedness honesty. They are proud of the first quality and ashamed of the second.
>Thucydides, Peloponnesian War III, 82

“[The Greeks] have so little trust and so much hostility toward one another that they fear their fellow citizens more than their enemies. Instead of the unity of spirit they had during our rule and prosperity they had from one another, they have become so inhospitable that those who have wealth would rather throw it into the sea than give help to someone in need, while those who are in need would prefer not to find some money by chance but to steal from the rich”

Isocrates was a god among men.

I wonder how much of this is legit and how much of this is "WELL YOUNG WHIPPERSNAPPER, BACK IN MAHHHHH DAY"

>beware the ideas of march
>julius: he is a dreamer
words that fall upon deaf ears might as well not be said.

all of it

Why tax the poor at all?

punishment for their sins

Probably both. Isocrates was a Greek unionist, so when he wasn't pining for the old Athenian empire he was texting Philip II and telling him to conquer all of Greece. He's like a dude who wants all of Europe to unite because they'd be a successor to the Roman empire.

It's quite legit, during the Persian war everyone was united (Except for the Thebens and Argives, fuck them) and did miraculous things, and gave rise to a booming culture. After the clusterfuck of the peloponnesian war and the continual factionalism of Greece, the entire culture did a 180.

Kek

The fuck are you talking about? Post-Peloponessian war is a high point of Hellenic culture.

Definitely not the high point for polis culture at all, mercenaryism and the decline of the hoplite culture were a direct result of the desire for a naval empire, which economically debilitated Athens and the entire Delian League and resulted in stasis and Tyranny.

Maybe if you're a Sparta-boo things weren't going as bad, I haven't studied Sparta from the Peloponnesian war in detail yet.

>your brain is so saturated with unironic reddit memes you cannot even compute history properly

>some people did it as I said 2000 years later so that must have been the case then

He's probably referring to the fact that some of the greatest surviving texts were written during the 4th c. BCE. Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and most of the Attic Orators. Although, if you're more into the plays then the 5th c. BCE is probably your golden age. If you like poetry, then even earlier.

Reddit is such a fucking meme

The Athenians engaging Socrates that Plato writes about sound like strawmen but really they are opinions everyone has short of encountered up until today, the fact that they are opinions so universal and relativistic and simplistically reductive is why Plato makes fun of Sophists so much:

>Never mind, I replied, if he now says that they are, let us accept his statement. Tell me, Thrasymachus, I said, did you mean by justice what the stronger thought to be his interest, whether really so or not?

>Certainly not, he said. Do you suppose that I call him who is mistaken the stronger at the time when he is mistaken?

>Yes, I said, my impression was that you did so, when you admitted that the ruler was not infallible but might be sometimes mistaken.
You argue like an informer, Socrates. Do you mean, for example, that he who is mistaken about the sick is a physician in that he is mistaken? or that he who errs in arithmetic or grammar is an arithmetician or grammarian at the time when he is making the mistake, in respect of the mistake? True, we say that the physician or arithmetician or grammarian has made a mistake, but this is only a way of speaking; for the fact is that neither the grammarian nor any other person of skill ever makes a mistake in so far as he is what his name implies; they none of them err unless their skill fails them, and then they cease to be skilled artists. No artist or sage or ruler errs at the time when he is what his name implies; though he is commonly said to err, and I adopted the common mode of speaking.

>But to be perfectly accurate, since you are such a lover of accuracy, we should say that the ruler, in so far as he is a ruler, is unerring, and, being unerring, always commands that which is for his own interest; and the subject is required to execute his commands; and therefore, as I said at first and now repeat, justice is the interest of the stronger.

From the Republic

I was looking from a socioeconomic perspective, not in terms of philosophy or oration, but that's a good argument nonetheless. It is good to keep in mind though, that many of the huge temples in Greece were built during the 5th century BCE.

"[The poor] should take the view that what is public is public, and should have their fair share of it; but they must understand that each man's private property belongs to its owner"

"The Greeks were so enthusiastic for liberty in the past, but for slavery now. There was something then, there really was, men of Athens, in the spirit of the people, which is now absent, which overcame the wealth of Persia and led Greece to freedom, and was undefeated in battle on sea and land—but now it has been lost, ruing everything and turning Greece upside down"

Demosthenes

Sparta was more dominate earlier than this, like the 6th century. At least going by Donald Kagan.

My personal favorite quote of Demosthenes.

"[Philip] who is not only not Greek and in no way related to the Greeks, nor even a foreigner from a land to which it is honorable to say that one belongs, but a wretched Macedonian, a land from which in the past you could not even have bought a decent slave"

When I first read this I was just like holy shit.

That is true for sure, Athens lagged behind initially, but following the Persian War the Athenians were definitely on top, right?

Pretty much, Athens was head of the Delian league which formed in response to Persia's second invasion. That's when the Athenian Empire began. The Peloponnesian wars were the end of it.