The Oresteia

From Goodreads

The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
Aeschylus

I think I enjoyed this more than the Oedipus cycle. However, just like Oedipus, the third part just leaves me wanting. I don't know if it is my lack of understanding but the endings just aren't satisfying. It's like it wraps up too neatly for such messy affairs.

Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides & Proverbs

(Originally Written February 11, 2014 on scrap paper now lost)

History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Book I - Ancient Philosophy
Chapter 4 - Heraclitus

Xenophanes taught that gods were made up through anthropomorphic tendencies. He believed in only one God, but that God was not like man in either thought or form.

He also believed knowledge of God and gods to be impossible, "even if a man should chance to say something utterly right, still himself knows it not. There is nowhere anything but guessing (Russell, 40).

Xenophanes was a rationalist who disliked the mystical elements of Pythagorean thought.

Heraclitus lived around 511 BC in Ephesus. He was a mystic, believing the fundamental substance to be fire. He believed that everything was born by something else's death.

Heraclitus had a very negative view of mankind. He believed it was only force that compelled man to be good.

He believed war was not only a fact of life, but necessary to maintain existence. War brings death. Death brings life to the better things.

He was ascetic and proud of his asceticism.

The soul was made of fire and water. The better the soul, the more fire it had. The "dryer" the soul, the better it was.

He believed the world to be uncreated and eternal.

He believed that everything was in flux.

The constant flux produced strife. Strife produced conflict and that conflict proved to create the balance that exists in life. The flux had the effect of creating the cosmic justice that kept everything in its place and from one thing or one man from attaining too much power.

"The way of man has no wisdom, but that of God has. The wisest man is an ape to God, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man" (Russell, 44).

Heraclitus' metaphysical notion of the endless flux is the stated by Plato to be: nothing ever is, everything is becoming. Aristotle described it as 'nothing steadfastly is'.

The doctrine of perpetual flux is a horrifying thing to men who seek something permanent. Science and philosophy have been trying to escape Heraclitus for thousands of years.

Chapter V - Parmenides

Parmenides countered Heraclitus' notion that everything is always changing by stating nothing ever changes.

Parmenides lived around 450 BC in southern Italy.

Parmenides taught that both thought and language require objects outside of themselves. You can't think of an object if that object doesn't exist.

Parmenides believed that in order for words to have meaning they must be attached to an object. If that object existed in the past it maintains some existence, otherwise we could not use the word meaningfully.

Chapter VI - Empedocles

Empedocles lived around 440 BC in Sicily. He claimed to be a god.

Empedocles was an old combination of science, religion and philosophy. His science and religion were often times at odds with one another.

Empedocles discovered properties of air and centrifugal force by experiment. He had a scientific belief in an odd version of survival of the fittest type of evolutionary theory.

Empedocles believed not in one primordial substance, but four: earth, fire, wind and water. However, love and strife were on equal footing with the aforementioned substances. Love brought about the combination of the elements. Strife brought about the dissolution of the elements.

Love and strife fought one another. There were periods of time when one mastered the other. Chance and necessity brought about the changes in the universe, not some overarching purpose.

Chapter VII - Athens in relation to culture

The greatness of Athens began when they defeated the Persians at Marathon (490 BC) and defeated Xerxes (480 BC).

Athens grew rich and prosperous after this under the guidance of Pericles until about 430 BC.

During this time Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides flourished.

Proverbs 8

8:9 - "To the discerning all of them are right. They are faultless to those who have knowledge".

The wisdom of the Lord is known to the discerning. It is faultless to those who have knowledge. THen do the unbelieving have no knowledge, no discernment?

Help me to seek you that I may find your wisdom. Help me to seek you God.

Proverbs 9

9:10 - "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding"

Proverbs 10

"The way of the Lord is a refuge for the righteouss"

Lord, may you be my refuge. Put in me a desire to seek you always. Light my heart on fire so that it burns for you. Help me to turn from folly and wickedness. Keep my paths straight. Bless this request my God, my King.

The Peloponnesian War & its sons

(Originally written September 6, 2006 in Book 10)

The Peloponnesian War

• Athens' strength grew after Greece defeated the Persian Empire, in which Athens played a pivotal role.
• Athens was beginning to rival and even surpass Sparta in power, 
• Athens dominated the trade of Greece.
• Sparta and Corinth convinced many other states to fight against "the tyrant city".
• The Peloponnesian war began in 431 B.C.
• Pericles, tyrant of Athens opted to concede territories to the Spartans and her allies. He moved all Athenians within the city walls and executed Naval raids on the Spartans. He opted for a war of attrition. Unfortunately, the overcrowded city was decimated by a plague. Then Pericles died. Athens fell into the hands of ill-equipped demagogues
• In 415 B.C. Athens made the mistake of attacking Sicily and wasted troops and money. Within two years of the attack the mighty Athenian navy had been decimated.
• The war continued for ten years simply out of bitterness on the Athenian side.

The Old Oligarch

The Old Oligarch was an unknown author who criticized the Athenian democracy. He concluded that a state has to make a choice between freedom an good governance.

Aristophanes

• Criticized the Athenian democracy for being inefficient, indecisive and irresponsible
• Aristophanes was not as mild mannered in his criticisms as the Old Oligarch was
• Aristophanes preferred the country gentleman to the urban aristocrat. He hated ignorance wherever one lived, but despised the urban leaders of the Assembly for being disloyal and without piety, hell bent on destroying tradition
• Aristophanes attack on democracy: He hates the jury system of paying poor people to serve jury duty. While the jurors claim to be powerful, Aristophanes calls them slaves of the demagogues. 
• Aristophanes' solution: He offers a communism, very similar to Plato's Utopia, with common houses, women and meals.

What War does to Man

Spartan idealism and Athenian idealism split cities in two. The aristocrats sided with sparta as the common man sided with Athens.

"War which takes away the comfortable provision of daily life is a hard master, and tends to assimilate men's characters to their conditions" (Jones, 54).

Intelligence is no longer a virtue.

Importance of political unity

Thucydides was shocked by the brutality and savagery of the war and even more so that it was a civil war in Hellas. 

The unity of a city-state was a difficult achievement as men still held family and clan loyalties, which had held over since a more primitive time.

Class warfare between rich and poor also prevented city-state unity.

The polis played an integral part in every Greek's life and unity was a huge aspiration for every individual polis.

The "New" Man

The old man was a conservative like Aristophanes and held virtue as esteemed, loved a simple life, had respect for law, religion, customs and was deeply patriotic.

The New man, born of civil war was a tyrannical cynic. He was self-serving.

Euripides 

Horrors of War: The Trojan Women

Early on, Euripides had been pro-Athens and anti-Sparta. He was patriotic and optimistic. The Trojan Women was a stark difference. He was no longer hopeful.

He believed in a moral order and that the moral order was a natural order. He held that the Greeks were violating that natural order.

He believed war to be futile.

He mentions a dichotomy between reason and passions. Passions lead to destruction.

The war shook his belief in the moral order and the existence of the gods. He doubts because of the war.

Euripides must have been a deeply religious man and his loss of faith must have been excruciating to him.

Euripides contrasted with Sophocles

Aeschylus (b. 525 B.C.) fought in the Persian War and believed religion to be benign and enlightening.

Sophocles (b. 495 B.C.) represents a belief in Athenian greatness. He believed in a transcendent divine law.

While Sophocles was only fifteen years older than Euripides, he was vastly different in his outlook on life.

The Dissolution of the Old Ideal

Egoism had destroyed the Greek unity of the polis and patriotism. 

The passions here destroyed the Greek reliance on reason.

The orderliness of Greece decayed as the Civil War ground ever on.