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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (3962)	4/29/2010 6:07:41 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

"Who preserved the teachings of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle?" Most Greek literature has not been preserved. We have about 10%. After being defeated by Macedonians in 338 BC, Greek culture was somewhat kept alive by the Romans. Only in modern times have we been able to retrieve much of the culture and literature that existed amongst the thirty or forty great writers of Greece and Rome--as I said...about ten%. Unless an author refers to a prior writing it is impossible to know whether they had access to it. But Aristotle (near the end of the Greek golden period) may or may not have read from ten or twenty of his predecessors. Those before him much less or sometimes none. Hesiod, for instance, may have read (or heard) the Homeric verses--perhaps little or nothing else of importance from our perspective. Keep in mind that the Golden days of Greece were about one century. So the shoulders they stood on were midget shoulders. The ones we stand on are about 20 miles high--if that helps you at all.