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Mary Renault Book Discussion

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injest:

--- Quote from: Kerry on April 01, 2009, 03:06:41 am ---Gasp! The perils of political correctness. Very forward thinking, our Mary (in an ancient Greek kinda way)!  ;)   :D

--- End quote ---

indeed! this book (to me) speaks so much to where we are right now here in the US. I love the blurb on the cover:

"Alexias, a young Athenian of good family, reaches manhood during the last phases of the Peloponnesian War, a time not unlike our own, when people born to a heritage of security and power felt the structure of their lives being undermined by forces they but dimly understood."

and as you know, things did NOT turn out well for them. :-\ :-\

injest:
the beautiful young Alexias has attracted a suitor that is persistant and rude....he discusses this man with Sokrates:

"He tried first to buy me with gifts; not flowers or a hare, but the kind of thing we can't afford at home. Then he sent word that he was dying, to make me take him out of pity; and now, what is surely as low as a man can go, he is willing I should do it simply to keep him quiet. If I were to lose my father and mother and all I have, if I were disgraced even before the City so that people turned from me in the street, he would be glad of it, if it put me within his reach. And this he calls love." I had spoken too vehemently, but Sokrates still looked at me kindly; so coming at last to what had been behind the rest, I said, "I shall always think worse of myself for having been his choice."

He shook his head, "You are wrong, my boy, if you think he is seeking a kindred spirit. He is looking for what he lacks, being limp of soul, and not wishing to know that the good must first be wrought with toil out of a man's own self, like the statue from the block."

injest:
Phaedon speaking of Kritias:

"When a man is freed from the bonds of dogma and custom, where will he run? to what he hates, or what he loves? (snip) For a long time now I have watched Kritias getting loose, from the soul, if you like the word,or from whatever keeps a man on two legs instead of four. I have gone step by step with him, for his reasons are a mirror held up to mine, till I stood at the very edge of his conclusions. It is the true teacher's gift, they say, to discover a man to himself....At Gorgus's once I lay awake considering how to kill him. But already it was too late."

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