I find his lack of regard for the Greeks disturbing. However, rather than turn out a polemical defence, I will supply these quotations:
“That people have this feeling about their laws may be seen by very many proofs: among others, by the following. Darius, after he had got the kingdom, called into his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked- “What he should pay them to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died?” To which they answered, that there was no sum that would tempt them to do such a thing. He then sent for certain Indians, of the race called Callatians, men who eat their fathers, and asked them, while the Greeks stood by, and knew by the help of an interpreter all that was said – “What he should give them to burn the bodies of their fathers at their decease?” The Indians exclaimed aloud, and bade him forbear such language. Such is men’s wont herein; and Pindar was right, in my judgment, when he said, “Custom is King.”” Herodotus, Book III
“When it is said that Mycenae was but a small place, or that any other city which existed in those days is inconsiderable in our own, this argument will hardly prove that the [Trojan] expedition was not as great as the poets relate and as is commonly imagined. Suppose the city of Sparta to be deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe that the power of the Spartans was at all equal to their fame. And yet they own two-fifths of the Peloponnesus, and are acknowledged leaders of the whole, as well as of numerous allies in the rest of Greece. But their city is not built continuously, and has no splendid temples or other edifices; it rather resembles a group of villages like the ancient towns of Greece, and would therefore make a poor show. Whereas, if the same fate befell the Athenians, the ruins of Athens would strike the eye, and we should infer their power to have been twice as great as it really is. We ought not then to be unduly sceptical. The greatness of cities should be estimated by their real power and not by appearances.” Thucydides, Book I
“Darius the King says: There was not a man, neither a Persian nor a Mede nor anyone of our family, who might make that Gaumata the Magian deprived of the kingdom. The people feared him greatly, (thinking that) he would slay in numbers the people who previously had known Smerdis; for this reason he would slay the people, “lest they know me, that I am not Smerdis the son of Cyrus.” Nobody dared say anything about Gaumata the Magian, until I came. After that I sought help of Ahuramazda; Ahuramazda bore me aid; of the month Bagayadi 10 days were past, then I with a few men slew that Gaumata the Magian, and those who were his foremost followers. A fortress named Sikayauvati, a district named Nisaya, in Media — here I slew him. I took the kingdom from him. By the favor of Ahuramazda I became king; Ahuramazda bestowed the kingdom upon me.” Triumphal Inscription of Darius the Great
“If in a triangle the square on one of the sides equals the sum of the squares on the remaining two sides of the triangle, then the angle contained by the remaining two sides of the triangle is right. In the triangle ABC let the square on one side BC equal the sum of the squares on the sides BA and AC. I say that the angle BAC is right. Draw AD from the point A at right angles to the straight line AC. Make AD equal to BA, and join DC. Since DA equals AB, therefore the square on DA also equals the square on AB. Add the square on AC to each. Then the sum of the squares on DA and AC equals the sum of the squares on BA and AC. But the square on DC equals the sum of the squares on DA and AC, for the angle DAC is right, and the square on BC equals the sum of the squares on BA and AC, for this is the hypothesis, therefore the square on DC equals the square on BC, so that the side DC also equals BC. Since DA equals AB, and AC is common, the two sides DA and AC equal the two sides BA and AC, and the base DC equals the base BC, therefore the angle DAC equals the angle BAC. But the angle DAC is right, therefore the angle BAC is also right. Therefore if in a triangle the square on one of the sides equals the sum of the squares on the remaining two sides of the triangle, then the angle contained by the remaining two sides of the triangle is right.” Euclid, Proposition 48
“And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.” 1 Kings, 7:23 (pi=3)
All considered, which of these writers would you rather have dinner with?
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I am going to have to haul out my copy of Euclid (admittedly translated into the modern English of around 1940) and see if that’s REALLY what he said.
Meanwhile, the bill presented to the Indiana State Legislature in 1897 to declare pi=3.2 by statute law has failed. Very unfortunate, as computations with pi=3.2 (but pi=3 would be even better) are so much easier than they are using the present value 3.14159… out to some really luridly large number of decimal places (more than 10^100, and maybe far more than that; I’ve lost track). The only downside would be that your answers to arithmetic problems involving pi would be wrong. Unless you had two pies that cancelled each other out.
Make mine custard.
As the late Antony Flew said of the first quotation (in his Introduction to Philosophy) it does not prove the moral relativism – far from it, as the two groups of people believed different things about the EFFECT of their actions.
Both believed that one’s parents should be honoured – but the first group believed that the best way to send ones father to the afterlife was to eat his corpse. and the second group (the Greeks) believed the best way was to burn the corpse with the correct rituals and so on.
The morality of the two groups was actually the same – it was a dispute over methods, not aims.
Still I get the point the – Ancient Greeks has a way of thinking that could seek to free itself from cultural context (which strangled the thought of everyone else at the time – and has have often done so since). Dr Sean Gabb (or whoever the writer is) has a good point – unless thought can free itself from cultural context (from a particular religion and so on) it can never hope to have importance for humanity in general – this the Greeks (to a great extent) managed to do, and it is an astonishing achievement.
Ah Julie – if only pi was three (not 3 and then a mess) and we used base 12 – like the ancient Babylonians.
Thinking of the Babylonians – how come neither the Persians or the Greeks seem to have used the arch (or the dome), at least not for centuries?
It was not discovered by the Romans (as is often thought) – it is there in Babylonia (and so on) before the coming of the (semi nomad) Persians.
Yet it does not seem to have been carried on by the Persians (who had pillars everywhere) or the Greeks (ditto).
Why not?
And Methodists and Islamists both believe in following God’s will, so also have the same morality, it’s just a little difference over methods.
Good grief.