A Personal Essay on Ancient Greece

I remember as a child how I used to read and read as my family and I traveled. I wasn't big on traveling but I was happy if I had a book. I clearly remember reading Homer's ILIAD one hot and sunny day. It not only kept my mind off the heat but it also got me interested in anything to do with Ancient Greece. Just because they didn't get about in airplanes or know the use of calculators and computers, didn't make them a savage or barbarian mind. Recently that got me thinking about what makes a civilization great and forever remembered. Here's the conclusion I came to.

There were men who have left a lasting legacy for the western civilization. Pythagoras came up with the Pythagorean theorem that "A squared plus B squared equals C squared". This formula works with all right-angled (or ninety degree) triangles. What would trigonometry and geometry be like without this type of thinking? In fact, Pythagoras is known as the founder of the science of math.

I look back at my own studies in mathematics (being one of those rare fortunates who enjoy tinkering with math problems) and think what would geometry have been like without Pythagoras sitting down and thinking his way through a problem such as that? Today we take that kind of formula for granted but then it was a great revelation.

I'm often reminded that men and women of ancient times did not experiment to test their theories. Rather they thought them out. Without benefit of experimentation, he discovered the relationship between abstract numbers and material objects. Along with Euclid, he worked out the rules of geometry.

Then there was Thucydides, a brilliant military general and strategist. He came up with the idea of writing history from an objective point of view. Much of the history one sees from before that point in time, comes from an ethnocentric point of view. Being objective means telling history the way it is without favoring one nationality or one army above another. It's not easy to do this. The historian has to put aside his personal and ethnic biases to relate the exact events as they took place. As a matter of fact, there were several famous Greek historians - Herodotus was one and Xenophon was another.

I asked in a Suite 101 poll, who was the most famous military strategist of all time. Close to ninety percent of the vote was cast for the Alexander the Great. What made him so great? It was the fact that he conquered much of the known ancient world. He was a man with a vision to be great, to conquer more than his father, Philip II, king of Macedon, had done. He had charisma and vitality. It cost him an early grave. But was it an early grave taking into consideration that ancient peoples didn't live much beyond thirty years of age? In an age when even the water could kill a man, along with poison, it's difficult to say what he died of. He may have been poisoned but from this distance in time, it is hard to prove. More than likely, he died of pneumonia at the age of thirty-three years old.

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