United States or Jamaica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Meanwhile Gylippus, after taking Ietae, a fort of the Sicels, on his way, formed his army in order of battle, and so arrived at Epipolae, and ascending by Euryelus, as the Athenians had done at first, now advanced with the Syracusans against the Athenian lines. His arrival chanced at a critical moment.
She believed in the good old idea of one despotic king, and a people cowed into submission by his authority. Two parties were thus created in the Greek states, and in a dispute which occurred about 420 B.C., the friends of the Spartans or Aristocratic ideal ranged themselves on the one side, and those of the Athenian or Democratic on the other.
My answer commenced uncompromisingly: "Monsieur," I said, "je veux l'impossible, des choses inouies;" and thinking it best not to mince matters, but to administer the "douche" with decision, in a low but quick voice, I delivered the Athenian message, floridly exaggerating its urgency. Of course, he would not hear a word of it.
It was generally believed that the survivors were inferior in valour to those who had fallen; and some time afterwards one of the captives was asked this insulting question by one of the Athenian allies: "Your brave comrades were buried on the field, I suppose?" His meaning was that the stones and arrows had dealt out death among his comrades without distinction.
In Greece, likewise, and in the city of Athens, that most grave and prudent statesman, Nicias, could not convince the people that the proposal to go and attack Sicily was disadvantageous; and the expedition being resolved on, contrary to his advice and to the wishes of the wiser among the citizens, resulted in the overthrow of the Athenian power.
They introduced and carried a blasphemy law, to the effect that unbelievers and those who taught theories about the celestial world might be impeached. It was easy to prove that Anaxagoras was a blasphemer who taught that the gods were abstractions and that the sun, to which the ordinary Athenian said prayers morning and evening, was a mass of flaming matter.
He advised his countrymen to dismiss the Spartan ambassadors, and to promise that Athenian envoys should be sent to Sparta to treat with them there respecting the fortifications.
The echo of that lamentation seems to ring behind most of the literature of the fourth century, and not the Athenian literature alone. Defeat can on occasion leave men their self-respect or even their pride; as it did after Chaeronea in 338 and after the Chremonidean War in 262, not to speak of Thermopylae. But the defeat of 404 not only left Athens at the mercy of her enemies.
THE sharp-witted Athenian saw clearly how matters lay in this sad story; nor did it escape him that malice had had a hand in the affair. How could Bartja's dagger have come into the hanging-gardens except through treachery? While he was telling the king his suspicions, Oropastes was led into the hall. The king looked angrily at him and without one preliminary word, asked: "Have you a brother?"
They simply espoused his interests in Athenian politics; and any other Athenian who took the same side was their friend. As for Hyperides, Demosthenes, and Lycurgus, supposed to be bolder spirits, and always raising scenes in the assembly with their abuse of Philip, how did they ever show their prowess in the war?
Word Of The Day