Discussions
Map compliments of the Oxford Classical Dictionary. See https://oxfordre.com/classics/page/maps/maps-of-the-ancient-world.
Studies
The Presocratics
The philosophers before Socrates focused on how the world arose and how it works. They wrote speculatively about nature and the cosmos. Some challenged the possibility of science. And some emphasized practical studies about how people can get along or get ahead in the world. Their speculations led to advances in scientific knowledge.
Socrates
Socrates turned away from cosmology, and while he was fascinated with efforts of the Sophists to pursue on practical subjects, he himself insisted that what we should concern ourselves with was not our own success but what is right and wrong, good an evil. He turned philosophy towards ethics and moral theory.
Plato
A follower of Socrates, Plato wished to put the study of ethics on a firm foundation by developing a science of reality, or metaphysics, a science of knowledge, or epistemology, and studies of political science, education, aesthetics, and, eventually, natural science. He saw the world of experience as subject to an ideal realm.
Aristotle
A student of Plato, Aristotle never accepted his mentor's focus on the ideal realities of another world. He saw the ground of reality as concrete physical objects, from which ideal or universal entities were but abstractions. He developed a powerful account of science, and divided knowledge into most of the departmental studies that make up the modern curriculum.
Early Science
Early Greek science was deeply influenced by most of the early thinkers. The Presocratics believed in making and testing hypotheses. They invented concepts such as those of sources, principles, elements, compounds, atoms and empty space. Aristotle formalized logic and also took over the concept of a logic of scientific discovery and proof from Plato.
Recent Discussions
13.1 Sharing Greek Wisdom
Imagine a time when there was no internet; when there were no mass media of any kind; no universities; not even any secondary schools; no libraries; no books; no large cities. There was no mathematical knowledge greater than counting; no natural science; no literacy; no history; no geography; no social studies. How was knowledge passed on? How was wisdom shared? Presumably by word of mouth, usually one-on-one. From parent to child, from master to apprentice, from mentor to learner. The one body of knowledge that existed in ancient Greece
12.4 The Grand Tour
Some time around 387, Plato set sail for Magna Graecia. Presumably his trip was not a sightseeing expedition, but an attempt to meet with the leading minds of the area. Southern Italy had a flourishing intellectual community, steeped in the religious traditions of Pythagoreanism, but open to the philosophical ideas of the Greek world. Plato had mentioned with admiration some of the teachings of the Italian Greeks in his long dialogue Gorgias (featuring the sophist from Leontini in Sicily), including the notion that the world was a cosmos, an ordered
12.3 Dionysius the Emperor
Now in control of most of Sicily, Dionysius turned to southern Italy. There he faced the Italiot League, a confederacy of important Greek city-states in the toe and instep of Italy, including Rhegium and Croton. In 390 BC he began a war with Rhegium; Dionysius had one ally in the area: Locri, which he made his headquarters for the war. His fleet of fifty ships intercepted a Greek fleet of sixty ships from Croton which was sailing to the aid of the Rhegians, and a battle began. A storm arose,
12.2 Dionysius the Liberator
In 397, Dionysius assembled a huge army of 80,000 men and a navy of 200 ships and sailed toward the western apex of Sicily, the stronghold of the Carthaginians. He captured Eryx and then attacked Motya, a strongly fortified city on an island in the large harbor. As the Greek forces approached, the people of Motya destroyed a causeway linking the island to the mainland. Undeterred, Dionysius ordered his men to build a mole, a land bridge, to the island to replace the causeway. They did so, and brought up
12.1 Dionysius the Tyrant
In the dark ages of Greece between the Bronze Age and the birth of the alphabet in the eighth century BC, Greek civilization had spread far and wide in the Mediterranean. Greek colonies, little city-states perched on headlands or nestled in harbors sprouted up wherever Greek traders sailed, as trading posts and bases of operations. The Aegean coast of Anatolia (now Turkey) was covered with Greek colonies, including Smyrna (now Izmir), Miletus, and Ephesus in the northeast. The Black Sea housed Greek colonies in the land of the Golden Fleece.
11.9 Plato on the Afterlife
At the end of this early dialogue, Plato does something unprecedented: he provides a myth of the afterlife.[32] This will become a kind of trademark of Plato’s dialogues of the middle period, which often end with such myths. Whatever else they are meant to do, they offer a glimpse of an extended moral realm in which good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior is punished. However unfair life may be, there will come a reckoning for every soul, ensuring a just outcome at the cosmic level. In the present
11.8 Plato’s Defense of Socrates’ Politics
Socrates had been studiously non-political. He had not embroiled himself in the political issues of the day, as vital as they often were. He had not spoken up in the Assembly, stood on a soapbox in the marketplace, or otherwise engaged in the political debates of his time. Plato seems to have made a point of emphasizing this fact[30]—even if some, including the great statesman Pericles, had condemned political inactivity as a kind of subversion of democracy.[31] How then should Plato defend Socrates for his political stance—or lack of
11.7 Socrates in the Political Arena
We noted that Plato begins this dialogue with a declaration of war. The Gorgias is a dialogue very unlike any other early dialogue Plato wrote. It is longer by far than any other—only the Protagoras is similar in length. And it is full of bile. Whereas the Protagoras also pits Socrates against a famous sophist on a visit to Athens, in that dialogue Socrates treats his antagonist with deference and sometimes flatters him—as is common in Socratic dialogues, where Socrates deals with a self-proclaimed expert—in the Gorgias Socrates challenges his
11.6 The True Statesman
Early in his discussion with Socrates, Callicles makes an ominous warning to Socrates: If someone should arrest you or someone like you and take you off to prison, claiming that you had committed injustice though you had done no such thing, you know that you wouldn’t be able to help yourself, but your head would spin and you would stand there with your mouth open not knowing what to say, and when you came up to the courtroom and faced your good-for-nothing accuser, you would be put to death, if
11.5 Does Might Make Right?
At this point Socrates has effectively silenced Polus, showing, among other things, that committing injustice is more disgraceful and shameful than having injustice done to you. But Callicles, whom we met at the very beginning of the dialogue, is unimpressed. He asks if Socrates is actually serious. “Don’t be shocked,” Socrates replies, “that I say such things, but stop my beloved Philosophy from saying them. For she is the one, my dear friend, who utters the words you now hear coming from me. … Philosophy always says the same things,
11.4 Power and Happiness
As the debate between Socrates and Polus develops, Polus is shocked at Socrates’ contempt for orators and their alleged art. “How can you say they are not respected,” he objects, “when they wield the greatest power in their cities?” “They do not, if by having power you mean something that is good for them.”[10] Now Socrates offers another set of considerations of his own to support his apparently bizarre claim that having great power is no guarantee of success or happiness. He begins by distinguishing three values: good,
11.3 Oratory as a Craft
At this point Polus intervenes. He is offended by Socrates’ refutation and eager to defend his master. He challenges Socrates to say what art or craft (technē) he thinks oratory is. “To be frank, it is no art at all, as it seems to me, Polus,” answers Socrates. “Well, what do you think oratory is?” … “I call it a routine (empeiria).” [5] It is rare that Socrates offers theories of his own in Plato’s Socratic dialogues. Now he offers a well-thought-out taxonomy contrasting a craft with