Sparks Commentary

“In the most pure democracies of Greece , many of the executive functions were performed, not by the people themselves, but by officers elec...

“The best writings of antiquity upon government those I mean of Aristotle , Zeno and Cicero are lost. We have human nature, society, and un...

“The gods deliberate in council concerning the Trojan war : they agree upon the continuation of it, and Jupiter sends down Minerva to break ...

“Whilst the Amphictyonic confederacy remained, that of the Achaeans, which comprehended the less important cities only, made little figure o...

Note: This blog post quotes from some historical documents, which contain words that would now be considered offensive. These words are only...

The difficulties of learning about Greek and Roman art from textbooks For many years now, I’ve been interested in Ancient Greece and Rome . ...

“You know also that the beginning is the most important part of any work , especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is t...

“[Chaerephon] went to Delphi and boldly asked the oracle to tell him … whether anyone was wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess ans...

“Athens became the seat of politeness and taste, the country of orators and philosophers. The elegance of its buildings equalled that of i...

“Sparta, Athens , Rome, and Carthage were all republics; two of them, Athens and Carthage, of the commercial kind. Yet were they as often...

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates at his trial, as recorded by Plato's “Apology” Before beginning this project...

You might try the Loeb Classical Library , described at Wikipedia here and found at this website here . (The rest of this post is about h...

"Had the Greeks, says the Abbe Milot, been as wise as they were courageous, they would have been admonished by experience of the nece...

"The history of the ancient Greeks is one of the most improbable success stories in world history. A small people inhabiting a count...