Reading about Ancient Greeks is fascinating because they were originals, they had no models to follow, they had no one to be influenced by and they had to think it all from the beginning. That they left no descendants is a bad sign.
Friday, July 08, 2011
Plato Too Would Have Condemned Socrates
Reading about Ancient Greeks is fascinating because they were originals, they had no models to follow, they had no one to be influenced by and they had to think it all from the beginning. That they left no descendants is a bad sign.
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If memory serves, Socrates was accused of three crimes, the first two of which he pointed out in his apologia, contradicted each other: atheism, introducing new gods, and corrupting the young. The third crime, I think, was the real issue.
Socrates also could have easily avoided the death sentence, as Athenian elites would have been satisfied if he had just gone into exile (and Socrates's friends had the power to facilitate that). But Socrates took the death penalty instead, in what might have been the first recorded example of civil disobedience.
Aren't today's Greeks descendants of the ancient ones? They may not have approached the accomplishments of ancient Greeks, but then the same could be said of today's Sumerians/Iraqis, Aztecs/Mexicans, etc.
Impiety was the main accusation. And corrupting the youth. Plato may have got the idea that Hesiod and Homer, whose works were Athens's textboooks, were lying, from his teacher Socrates. I dont know what the accusation was. The fact is that Athenians were very angry and irrational at that point.
Are modern Greeks descendants of Athenians? I think with Galton that Athenian average IQ must have been among the highest ever, not like modern Greeks.
Are modern Greeks descendants of Athenians?
Greeks say they are.
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