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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics
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To: gamesmistress who wrote (21327)7/30/2012 6:46:58 PM
From: koan  Read Replies (1) of 85487
 
<<So what is the real difference between the reactions of the Catholic Church and the government of Athens in that respect?>>

The difference was the degree of intimidation (and the volume of work the society produced. The church tortured people for heresy for centuries and brought civilization pretty much to a standstill during that period.

The ancient Greeks produced so much more knowledge than was produced in the middle ages. And remember they were the first ones.

Every society was primitive until modern day societies. I once did a paper comparing Greeks thinkers to thinkers after the Greeks for a thousand years. I could not find one great thinker to compare with any one of a hundred/thousand ancient Greeks like Plato and Aristotle, Hericlitus and thracymacus, etc.

As mentioned, Will Durant and his wife spent their entire lives writng the definitive history of civilization. And they had this to say about the ancient Greeks:

"The persistent effort to subordinate fancy to reason is the dominate quality of the Greek mind

Ergo, Greek literature is modern, or rather contemporary, we find it hard to understand Dante or Milton, but Euripides and Thuscydides are kin to us mentally and belong to our age.

This is because though myths may differ, reason remains the same, and the life of reason, makes brothers of its lovers, in all times, and everywhere."
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