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Greek civilization's major thinkers, including Plato, Thucydides, and Aeschylus, are derivative of Homer because they operate within Homer's universe while applying it differently.
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Greek civilization's major thinkers, including Plato, Thucydides, and Aeschylus, are derivative of Homer because they operate within Homer's universe while applying it differently.
Thucydides writes in a Homeric way because his characters give speeches, but unlike Homer he applies that mode to real people and real events.
He rejects the familiar Thucydides-trap frame by saying Athens, not Sparta, was the hegemonic empire and its allies dragged Sparta into a war Athens made unavoidable.
He argues that Homer, Plato, and Thucydides remain alive as practical forces because modern readers, students, and military leaders still use them to transform thought and action.
Greece inverted that hierarchy by placing Homer at the top, so Plato and Thucydides tried to become Homer-like teachers, inspirers, and begetters of civilization.
"...if you look at Greek culture, whether it's Plato, whether it's Thucydides, whether it's Aeschylus. Okay? This is the greatest thinkers, greatest intellectuals of..."
"why Athens went to war with Sparta okay and what he says is what's because Sparta is the hegemon and Athens is the rising..."
"a weakness the helots if the Athenians ever choose to land forces on its coast the helots would all rise up together and overwhelm..."
"Okay, so today we start Greek civilization, and it is incredible what Greek civilization is. It is the greatest, most creative, most significant civilization..."
"...about the world. Then you have, in history, a man named Thucydides. If you are a military leader today, you read Thucydides, okay? There..."
"...A begotter of civilization. That's what Plato wanted. But guess what? Thucydides, when he wrote the Peloponnesian War, he was trying to do the..."
"...civilization in human history, the most creative. It gave us Plato, Thucydides, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles. Greek civilization is essentially the foundation for Western..."
"...you lazy arrogant and stupid okay all right so this is Thucydides and he wrote um the Peloponnesian war um and he discusses"
"...a superior culture. They have Homer. They have Plato. They have Thucydides. They have Aeschylus. Okay, so all Romans acknowledge the fact that Greek..."
"...year is 415 BCE, okay? In Athens. Remember that we studied Thucydides, the Peloponnesian War, last semester. Okay? So, we will now discuss the..."
A source-grounded reading of the Iliad as self-recognition: Achilles becomes a mirror for humiliation and pride, Homeric speech tries to control reality, and the ancient poet becomes prophet and teacher because truth is beautiful,...
A source-grounded reading of Jiang's Hellenistic World lecture: empire stabilizes itself into stagnation, borderlands beat it with energy and openness, Greece wins as a borderland, then becomes the empire whose universities, cities, and translations...
Greek civilization begins as a reversal: chaos, illiteracy, and poverty force the polis, the alphabet, and Homer, until poetry teaches a new human being how to see, feel, and think.
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