Posted on 11/15/2002 2:10:24 PM PST by Sparta
Then, almost forty years later, I find this book Gates of Fire in line at the market, and same deal - I can't put it down, it was awesome. So of course I have to get Bagger Vance next, which turns out to be Siddartha in knickers.
Guess I'll have to pick up that Tides of War now - right after I finish Timeline by Crichton (look out! Could be the next Jurassic Park!)
Typically, when a bunch of guys, let's say long distance traders, come into an area and acquire wives (however that might be done), it is the language of the mothers that will be handed down to the children. Abraham, et al, were long distance traders. They came to a Semitic speaking area. They acquired wives. Their descendants speak a Southern Semitic language. Maybe they are from Yemen? That's on the trade route Abraham followed.
We can know none of this with certainty, but you cannot exclude a Kurdish origin for any group in the Middle-East.
Presumably ancient Greek, Lithuanian, Romany and Sanskrit have a common origin among the same people in the same place. More recently they have even demonstrated the way Gaelic derives directly from Greek (which is no surprise to anyone who ever wondered why all the sea-going Celts recorded events and bills in Greek), and how other Indo-European languages in both the centum and satem group derive directly from those two languages.
None of these languages has more than 3,000 years of separation! With trips back home to acquire wives, the blood ties are probably even closer, so don't write off the Semitic speakers just yet - sure, they've picked up some African words, just like Southerners use "tote" rather than "carry", and "carry" rather than "take", but the core grammar is akin to all the other languages once spoken around the much smaller shoreline of the BLACK LAKE.
They are even working out the probable connection with the Uralic-Altaic group as well.
The Medes are not different than the modern Kurds, and the Persians would appear to be nothing more than Medes who learned to live indoors a little earlier than their relatives. Going back up that trail to Bulgaria, the Medes and the proto-Gaelic speakers (from which all the others descend) are not very different at all. I think at present the only question is who discovered steel first. Remember, the most ancient Irish written, but supposedly mythical, records, reflect a life spent in the Eastern Mediterranian and the Black Seas a mere 2700 years ago! There is no doubt they were there earlier, and not at a very different time than were the Medes, Persians, and Sanskrit speakers who relocated to the Indus Valley.
Thanks for the read
Pookie & ME
See, I looked at it from the other direction, I saw Alicibiades as a cross between Clinton and Alexander the Great. He was a soldier of great skill and leadership abilities, ala Alexander. He shared with Clinton his ally-cat morals and egocentric mercenary nature. He had both men's charisma and boundless ambition.
Notice how of the three men, despite all the other characteristics they shared, only one (Alexander for those playing at home) could possibly be attributed with a sense of morality and ethics, slanderous revisionist allegations notwithstanding, and its only that one that is admired by history. Alcibiades is a known villain, and I think we all know historians 100 years from now will be taking a dim view of Clinton.
I can hardly wait til you get to Epaminondas...
If you were to follow the thread of history a bit longer you will see things evolve somewhat...
When the uncouth farmers of what Hanson calls the "San Joaquin Valley" of ancient Greece put their peculiar spin on the subject.
Things do improve, for the purists.
James Carville would be proud.
That is world-class spin and classic revisionism
The fact remains that the longest lasting most powerful force in history, culturally, scientifically, politically and socially, is traceable to the Greeks.
Deal with it.
From my profile page:
"Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by,
That faithful to their precepts here we lie."
The words of Simonides of Ceos (556-468 BC) on the shrine of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans after the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC
We would do well to emulate the Spartan will, honor, courage, dedication, and sense of duty to our comrades, and to the Republic. If tempered with Christian faith, dedication, and love for others, we can move mountains...
Inward-looking and self-sufficient, the Spartans were the most feared hoplites (infantrymen) in all Greece. They lived an austere life, despising any sort of luxury, in a city that contained neither walls, nor grand buildings.
Famous quotes and anecdotes associated with the Spartans:
Herodotus reports that just before the Battle of Thermoplyae, a Spartan warrior named Dienekes was told that the Persian archers could blank out the sun with their arrows. He replied "Good, then we shall have our battle in the shade."
A Sybarite, who ate at a public mess, once remarked: "Now I know why the Spartans do not fear death."
Asked what was the greatest benefit Lycurgus conferred on his countryman, King Agesilaus replied "Contempt of pleasure."
"Come back with your shield - or on it" (Plutarch, Mor.241) was supposed to be the parting cry of mothers to their sons. Mothers whose sons died in battle openly rejoiced, mothers whose sons survived hung their heads in shame.
Asked why it was dishonorable to return without a shield and not without a helmet, the Spartan king, Demaratos (510 - 491) is said to have replied: "Because the latter they put on for their own protection, but the shield for the common good of all." (Plutarch, Mor.220)
An old man wandering around the Olympic Games looking for a seat was jeered at by the crowd until he reached the seats of the Spartans, whereupon every Spartan younger than him, and some that were older, stood up and offered him their seat. The crowd applauded and the old man turned to them with a sigh, saying "All Greeks know what is right, but only the Spartans do it."
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