When Aristippus was asked in what way the educated are superior to the uneducated he answered, “as broken horses are to the unbroken.” At least, he adds, “if the pupil derives no other good, he will not, when he attends the theater, be one stone upon another.”

In preparing to teach a course on ancient Greece and Rome, I was fortunate to have come across a series of  lectures given by Donald Kagan. Kagan is Yale’s premiere classicist and among the world’s foremost scholars on ancient Greece. I watched every one of the 24 lectures that Kagan offered his undergraduates and I can only hope that they were as riveted as I was.

Kagan shifted my paradigm on studying classical civilizations. You see, as one who has devoted much of his life to understanding modern times, I have relied on a very rich (and increasingly accessible) historical record. When I began studying Greece I was a bit overwhelmed by the wildly contradicting accounts of even the most basic facts. Though I am still overwhelmed, I take much solace in Kagan’s position, as delineated below:

“There is this critical school that says, ‘I won’t believe anything unless it is proven to me.’ At the other extreme, there’s me, the most gullible historian imaginable. My principle is this. I believe anything written in ancient Latin or Greek unless I can’t.

Now, things that prevent me from believing what I read are that they are internally contradictory, or what they say is impossible, or different ones contradict each other and they can’t both be right. So, in those cases I abandon the ancient evidence. Otherwise, you’ve got to convince me that they’re not true.

Now, you might think of this as, indeed, gullible. A former colleague of mine put the thing very, very well. He spoke about, and I like to claim this approach, the position of scholarship to which we call the higher naiveté.
The way this works is, you start out, you don’t know anything, and you’re naïve. You believe everything. Next, you get a college education and you don’t believe anything, and then you reach the level of wisdom, the higher naiveté, and you know what to believe even though you can’t prove it. Okay, be warned; I’m a practitioner of the higher naiveté.

So, I think the way to deal with legends is to regard them as different from essentially sophisticated historical statements, but as possibly deriving from facts, which have obviously been distorted and misunderstood, misused and so on. But it would be reckless, it seems to me, to just put them aside and not ask yourself the question, ‘Can there be something believable at the root of this?'”

A great many myths reflected and shaped classical Athens’s self perception. Athenians claimed to be indigenous to the land, as opposed to being descendents of invaders. Their claim to pure, unadulterated indigenous heritage is supported by the twisted tale of Erichthonius, the first King of Athens.

Erichthonius (name translation: “troubles born from the earth”) was born of Earth when Athena, after narrowly avoiding a rape attempt by a handicapped God of technology/craftsmen/metallurgy named Hephaestus, cleaned his ejaculate from her thigh and dropped the semen soaked rag onto the ground.

Now Athena was a virgin and did not want to seem impure. So she decided to raise Erichthonius secretly. To this end, she put him in a box and gave him to the three daughters of King Crecops, telling them never to open the box. Two of the daughters opened the box to find either a) a half child-half-serpent or b) a snake wrapped around a baby. Either way, they were so freaked out that they jumped off the Acropolis and died.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the mythic origin of Athens. Yeesh.

I’d heard of the Athenian phenomenon of ostracism in high school. I was taught that it was an indication that Athenians were not so civilized after all but, indeed, rather cruel. Turns out, there’s more to this than meets the eye.

Every year Athenians voted on whether or not to ostracize a citizen of the polis. Most years there was no ostracism. There can be only one ostracism per year and only one person can be ostracized at a time. So, in effect, the people had a democratic tool to expel the one person that they deemed most dangerous to the polis.

They would cast their ballot on an ostraka, which is a piece of broken pottery.  If  more than 6,000 Athenians voted, then the votes would be tallied (so, roughly speaking, 1 in 3 citizens would have to vote to stage the ostracism). If the person in question receives a simple majority than he will be expelled from Athens for 10 years.

Unlike the potential outcome of a judicial procedure, the ostracized is not found guilty. He is not deemed criminal, his family is not harmed or disgraced, and his land is not taken.
It seems that there are three main justifications for ostracism. The first is if the person in question is treasonous. A second justification is if the person is deemed to be a genuine threat to the system. If Athens is governed by democratic reformers then hardcore aristocrats might be deemed dangerous and vice versa. Lastly, one could be ostracized if he is promoting factionalism among the politae.

Donald Kagan argues that ostracism was a civil democratic device used to reduce treason and minimize discontent. He suggests that such a “safety valve” promoted unity and minimized the threat of civil war.

On one hand, I’m not sure how civil, let alone humane, this is. On the other hand would it not, for instance, be nice to send Sarah Palin packing for a decade?

So much of Ancient Greek history suggests how far behind we moderns are. Consider the elite fighting force of Thebes. These guys are the functional equivalent of the Navy Seals or the Green Berets. The Sacred Band is composed of 300 of the most well-trained, well-educated Theban soldiers.

They were stoic and fearless beyond imagination. Against all odds, outnumbered 4:1, they routed the Spartans at the Battle of Tegyra in 375. They brought glory to Thebes in 371 BCE with their resounding victory at the Battle of Leuctra, which effectively put an end to Spartan hegemony and ushered in a short but sweet Theban Golden Age. By any account, these guys are timeless heroes who stymied the Spartan menace and changed the course of history.

This band of 300 heroes was composed of 150 male couples. Their bond in love, argues Plutarch, made them Sacred Warriors, “when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?”

More than two centuries later, the leader of “Civilized World” does not even have the “audacity” to allow (let alone encourage) gay men to serve their country.