"Custom and religion among the Greeks exercise a very modest restraint upon the victor in war. It is a regular matter, even in civil wars, to sack the conquered city, to finish off the wounded, to slaughter or enslave all unransomed prisoners and all captured noncombatants, to burn down the houses, the fruit trees, and the crops, to exterminate the live stock, and to destroy the seed for future sowings... War of some kind—of city against city or of class against class—is a normal condition in Hellas. In this way the Greece that defeated the King of Kings turns upon itself, Greek meets Greek in a thousand battles, and in the course of a century after Marathon the most brilliant civilization in history consumes itself in a prolonged national suicide."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. XIII The Morals and Manners of the Greeks, Sec IV Morals, P.376
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Civilization
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
The Story of Civilization
288 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by The Story of Civilization →
Related Quotes
"The Argives ascribed the foundation of their city to Pelasgic Argus, the hero with a hundred eyes; and its first flou…"
"Apparently the legislators felt that to alter certain customs, or to establish new ones, the safest procedure would b…"
"When an advanced thinker asked Lycurgus to establish a democracy Lycurgus replied, “Begin, my friend, by setting it u…"
"He [Solon] laid it down that those who remained neutral in seditions should lose their citizenship, for he felt that …"
"I wish to tell as much as I can, in as little space as I can, of the contributions that genius and labor have made to…"
"Man is not willingly a political animal. The human male associates with his fellows less by desire than by habit, imi…"
"If the average man had had his way there would probably never have been any state. Even today he resents it, classes …"
""For barbarism is always around civilization, amid it and beneath it, ready to engulf it by arms, or mass migration, …"
"The civilization of Babylonia was not as fruitful for humanity as Egypt’s, not as varied and profound as India’s, not…"
"He [Solon] made it a crime to speak evil of the dead, or to speak evil of the living in temples, courts, or public of…"