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Wow–I am sure glad I found your forum. As I awoke this morning I found your delightful commentaryto my post awaiting me. I felt the same way i did when I was a young lad and somebody had challengedme in front of the whole sophomore class--what joy! I shall attempt to answer with the same degreeof detached professionalism that you displayed and will attempt to eschew irony and sarcasm.Sensitive spot--disagree with you-too much emphasis perhaps, but still a sensitive spotReading beyond the minimal--disagree here too. Some societies, mostly modern, are quite similar toour own while others are wildly different--your statement was too general and I suspect made in haste.Greatest heroes--at that time in Athens--the time of the Symposium--the greatest heroes of the daywere the gentlemen to whom I referred--check it out. The fact that they are now all but forgotten isjust another example of the fleeting penumbra of fame.Man to man love--yes--I agree with you in that is merely an opinion expressed by Plato. Now you are faced with the question of does the validity or excellence of one's opinion depend on just who he is/was?An example was Henry Ford--a seminal figure in the world of American business and a rabid anti-semite.Being drunk--key point--for sure. We have all done things when drunk that in retrospect were foolish,stupid or just plain dangerous. As a youth we used to drive drunk all the time. The cops would actuallyhelp you get home--no citations, no problem--strange, but true.About me--I know you do not care--I just wanted to set the record straight that I was not a spokesmanfor any group advocating homosexuality. Catholic boys were really sensitive about this and I have not yet lost the fear of being called out as a sissy-boy. Too much emphasis--your opinion.Penetration--yes--true--although to spare you I did not even begin to discuss intercrural sex. The loverpenetrates the beloved was the way it was described--but would you want your friends to know that allyou could procure was an ugly lad. No-- beauty is a rare commodity and attracts attention. It seems tobe a constant that beauty, power and lucre and intertwined. Quarterbacks get the cheerleaders.The prison comment--when I said "How Greek was that" I should have used a question mark--I did not. I was being ironic--sorryAlso: If you know about prison life then you know that younger weaker prisoners often seek out olderprotectors so as to live out their sentence protected from sexual assault. In many cases bonds are formed which are in some warped way similar to the lover-beloved phenomenon of Ancient Greece.Greek Society was very different from ours, but human nature trumps time and place--we aredescended from killer apes and recognize the benefit of hierarchy, bow to power and seek security.
I should interject here that the mores of the philosophers and the aristocratic statesmen do not always parallel or corroborate with the laymen and lower middling classes of ancient Greece. The wealthy and educated had more time to engage in frivolous luxuries and social experimentation, and yes intimate mentor-ships too. It's odd social networking to us, but social networking nevertheless. The under classes might not have engaged in the same activities, for no other reason than for lack of things to offer one another, and the lack of time itself. Peasants and lower tier craftsmen had to work long hours for meager wages, and therefore, had no time to write memoirs, treatises, or dialogues commemorating personal exploits and the latest social trends. We must keep this in mind when viewing the whole of Greek society instead of focusing in on one microcosm of it.
Well said. Few historians chronicle the life the proles which throughout much of history tended to be nasty, brutish and short. (apologies to Tom Hobbes) Why bother to read of the dull life of a French peasantstanding proudly beside his dung heap filled with pride when we could be reading of the machinations of Richelieu and Mazarin who not only led exciting lives, but more importantly left records?Perhaps an even better example are the nobles of 18th Century Russia whose contact with the hugeserf population was minimal and who in many cases spoke little or no Russian at all. Writers of books of most ages wrote for those who could read and their subjects tended to be about things of interest to theupper and/or ruling classes. It is a rare treasure when we run across documentation of the lives of the ordinary people going about their quotidian tasks such as described in Hesiod's Work and Days. He was not alone in his effort--there are rare exceptions to the rule of the silent grey proletariat.One of these is Rebecca West's classic travel book on pre war Yugoslavia--Black Lamb Gray Falcon--is that she did just that. We get a picture of the whole of a society--all the classes, all the religions andall the nationalities. A majestic accomplishment, but a daunting read.
We need more histories dedicated to the unheralded folks of life. The Great Man perspective of history only gives us nice stories, but not the bare bones reality of the everyday man and woman. I enjoy reading about outstanding figures, but I also care about the “nobodies” and how they lived too. The well trained historian will find the time in his busy schedule to tell us about average Joe, mundane Mary, and simple Steve along the way. At least enough about them to tell us how they contributed to the big picture.
I totally agree–but who would read them? Who would write them. Anyway it is moot. Perhaps in the future we should get tattoos like “Donald Baker: reader and thinker–beware–cogitation in progress. Reading and books are on the way out, a fact that have finally accepted with great sadness. I am a film buff and I have young people in the family who will not watch a black and white film--it apparentlydoes not assault their senses sufficiently. I do not mention books to them as they are disinterested.
