Sunday, April 01, 2018
Talk
M.I. Finley (1912-1986), "Thucydides the Moralist," Aspects of Antiquity: Discoveries and Controversies, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), pp. 48-59 (at 57):
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No people have elevated talk and debate into a way of life as did the ancient Greeks. They talked all the time, in public and in private, and they talked with enthusiasm and persuasiveness. Their literature was filled with talk, from the long speeches and monologues of the Iliad and the Odyssey to the equally long speeches and debates in Herodotus. And in the very years of the Peloponnesian War there was Socrates, who did nothing but talk — a philosopher without parallel, for he never wrote a line in all his long life.
