Thursday, August 20, 2026
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
Edward Kennard Rand (1871-1945), The Building of Eternal Rome (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1943),p. 6:
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Some will look back with amusement from our age of boundless terrestrial spaces and teeming populations at these operations of Lilliput, these miniature battles, like those of Virgil's bees. But if we focus our microscopes more sharply or, better, if we do not blur our mental vision by always seeing big, we shall find in the story of this tiny Achaean League principles that govern, or ought to govern, our own democracies. These principles are stated by Polybius.3 Freedom of speech is one; equality and humanity, the love of one's fellow beings, are the others. And what are these — παρρησία, ἰσότης, φιλανθρωπία — but the only temporarily abandoned motto of liberté, égalité, fraternité?
3 The Histories, with an English translation by W.R. Paton (Loeb Classical Library, 1922), II 38. 6-9.
