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I paused reading this history to read The Odyssey by Homer to give me a better insight to that classic’s role in Greek history.
My mind seems most interested in philosophy these days, so my notes and highlights below tend to center on that area of the book vs. historical events, of which there were many.
Commerce as the melting pot of ideas: “The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget confict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins.” (Page 135)
Pythagoras defined Philosophy as the love of wisdom.
Aristotle on the good life:
The secret of Happiness is action, the exercise of energy in a way suited to a man’s nature and circumstances.
“The most fortunate of men is he who combines a measure of prosperity with scholarship, research, or contemplation; such a man comes closest to the life of the gods.
“Those who wish for an independent pleasure should seek it in philosophy, for all other pleasures need the assistance of men.” (Page 534)
Highlights
Equality is unnatural; and where ability and subtlety are free, inequality must grow until it destroys itself in the indiscriminate poverty of social war; liberty and equality are not associates but enemies. The concentration of wealth begins by being inevitable, and ends by being fatal. (Page 112)
You seem to think that happiness consists in luxury and extravagance; but I think that to want nothing is to resemble the gods, and that to want as little as possible is to make the nearest approach to the gods. —Socrates (Page 369)
Our knowledge of things is uncertain; all that we know directly and surely is our feelings; wisdom, then, lies in the pursuit not of abstract truth but of pleasurable sensations. The keenest pleasures are not intellectual or moral, they are physical or sensual; therefore the wise man will seek physical delights above all. Nor will he sacrifice a present good to a conjectural future good; only the present exists, and the present is probably as good as the future, if not better; the art of life lies in plucking pleasures as they pass, and making the most of what the moment gives. — Aristippus. (Page 504)
Epicurean Philosophy: “The gods are not to be feared; death cannot be felt; the good can be won; all that we dread can be conquered.” (Page 649)
The Stoic, therefore, will shun luxury and complexity, economic or political strife; he will content himself with little, and will accept without complaint the difficulties and disappointments of life. He will be indifferent to everything but virtue and vice–to sickness and pain, good or ill repute, freedom or slavery, life or death. He will suppress all feelings that obstruct the course or question the wisdom of Nature: if his son dies he will not grieve, but will accept Fate’s decree as in some hidden best. He will seek so complete an apatheia, or absence of feeling, that his way the of mind will be secure against all the attacks and vicissitudes of fortune, pity, or love. (Page 655)
Thales believed that every particle of the world is alive, that matter and life are inseparable and one, that there is an immortal “soul” in plants and metals as well as in animals and men; the vital power changes form, but never dies; that there is no essential difference between living and dead. (Page 137)
The basic principle of democracy is Freedom inviting chaos; the basic principle of monarchy is power inviting tyranny, revolution, and war. (Page 558)