Plato was a traitor

[Clive]

Cyrus

Cyrus II of Persia (Old Persian: KUURUUSHA[4] Kūruš; New Persian: کوروش بزرگ ; c. 600 or 576 – 530 BC[5]), commonly known as Cyrus the Great [6] and also known as Cyrus the Elder, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire.[7] Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East,[7] expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much of Central Asia and the Caucasus. From the Mediterranean Sea and Hellespont in the west to the Indus River in the east, Cyrus the Great created the largest empire the world had yet seen.[8] Under his successors, the empire eventually stretched from parts of the Balkans (Bulgaria-Pannonia) and Thrace-Macedonia in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east. His regal titles in full were The Great King, King of Persia, King of Anshan, King of Media, King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Akkad, and King of the Four Corners of the World

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great

Darius

Darius I (Old Persian: Dārayava(h)uš; New Persian: داریوش یکم هخامنشی c. 550–486 BCE) was the third king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Also called Darius the Great, he ruled the empire at its peak, when it included much of West Asia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, parts of the Balkans (Bulgaria-Pannonia), portions of north and northeast Africa including Egypt (Mudrâya),[1] eastern Libya, coastal Sudan, Eritrea, as well as most of Pakistan, the Aegean Islands and northern Greece / Thrace-Macedonia.

Darius is mentioned in the Biblical books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, Haggai, and Zechariah.

Darius ascended the throne by overthrowing Gaumata, the alleged magus usurper of Bardiya with the assistance of six other Persian noble families; Darius was crowned the following morning. The new king met with rebellions throughout his kingdom and quelled them each time. A major event in Darius's life was his expedition to punish Athens and Eretria for their aid in the Ionian Revolt, and subjugate Greece. Although ultimately ending in failure, Darius succeeded at the re-subjugation of Thrace, expansion of the empire via the conquering of Macedon, Cyclades, and the island of Naxos, and the sacking and enslavement of the city of Eretria.

Darius organized the empire by dividing it into provinces and placing satraps to govern it. He organized a new uniform monetary system, along with making Aramaic the official language of the empire. Darius also worked on construction projects throughout the empire, focusing on Susa, Pasargadae, Persepolis, Babylon and Egypt. Darius devised a codification of laws for Egypt. He also had the cliff-face Behistun Inscription carved, an autobiography of great modern linguistic significance. Darius also started many massive architectural projects, including magnificent palaces in Persepolis and Susa.

While there is no absolute consensus on the kings before Darius, such as Cyrus and Cambyses, it is well established that Darius was an adherent of Zoroastrianism[34] or at least a firm believer in Ahura Mazda. As can be seen at the Behistun Inscription, Darius believed that Ahura Mazda had appointed him to rule the Achaemenid Empire. Darius had dualistic convictions and believed that each rebellion in his kingdom was the work of druj, the enemy of Asha. Darius believed that because he lived righteously by Asha, Ahura Mazda supported him.[35] In many cuneiform inscriptions denoting his achievements, he presents himself as a devout believer, perhaps even convinced that he had a divine right to rule over the world.[36]

In the lands that were conquered by his empire, Darius followed the same Achaemenid tolerance that Cyrus had shown and later Achaemenid emperors would show. He supported faiths and religions that were "alien" as long as the adherents were submissive and peaceable, sometimes giving them grants from his treasury for their purposes.[37] He had funded the restoration of the Israelite temple which had originally been decreed by Cyrus the Great, presented favour towards Greek cults which can be seen in his letter to Gadatas, and supported Elamite priests. He had also observed Egyptian religious rites related to kingship and had built the temple for the Egyptian god, Amun.[38]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_I#Religion

The Battle of Marathon (Greek: Μάχη τοῦ Μαραθῶνος, Machē tou Marathōnos) took place in 490 BC, during the first Persian invasion of Greece. It was fought between the citizens of Athens, aided by Plataea, and a Persian force commanded by Datis and Artaphernes. The battle was the culmination of the first attempt by Persia, under King Darius I, to subjugate Greece. The Greek army decisively defeated the more numerous Persians, marking a turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marathon

Plato (/ˈpleɪtoʊ/;[1] Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, "broad";[2] 428/427 or 424/423 BCE[a] – 348/347 BCE) was a philosopher, as well as mathematician, in Classical Greece, and an influential figure in philosophy, central in Western philosophy. He was Socrates' student, and founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with Socrates and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.[3] Alfred North Whitehead once noted: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."[4]

Socrates's idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of the cave, and more explicitly in his description of the divided line. The allegory of the cave (begins Republic 7.514a) is a paradoxical analogy wherein Socrates argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible ("noeton") and that the visible world ("(h)oraton") is the least knowable, and the most obscure.

Socrates says in the Republic that people who take the sun-lit world of the senses to be good and real are living pitifully in a den of evil and ignorance. Socrates admits that few climb out of the den, or cave of ignorance, and those who do, not only have a terrible struggle to attain the heights, but when they go back down for a visit or to help other people up, they find themselves objects of scorn and ridicule.

According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of their ideal or perfect forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves. Just as shadows are temporary, inconsequential epiphenomena produced by physical objects, physical objects are themselves fleeting phenomena caused by more substantial causes, the ideals of which they are mere instances. For example, Socrates thinks that perfect justice exists (although it is not clear where) and his own trial would be a cheap copy of it.

The allegory of the cave (often said by scholars to represent Plato's own epistemology and metaphysics) is intimately connected to his political ideology (often said to also be Plato's own), that only people who have climbed out of the cave and cast their eyes on a vision of goodness are fit to rule. Socrates claims that the enlightened men of society must be forced from their divine contemplations and be compelled to run the city according to their lofty insights. Thus is born the idea of the "philosopher-king", the wise person who accepts the power thrust upon him by the people who are wise enough to choose a good master. This is the main thesis of Socrates in the Republic, that the most wisdom the masses can muster is the wise choice of a ruler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato#Recurrent_themes

I had not realised how pro Persia Plato is, and actually his description of Socrates reads as pure Persian propaganda. I would argue he got Socrates killed.

His demiurge cave stuff is directly from Persia.

[Clive]

Several of Plato's dialogues refer to Socrates' military service. Socrates says he served in the Athenian army during three campaigns: at Potidaea, Amphipolis, and Delium. In the Symposium Alcibiades describes Socrates' valour in the battles of Potidaea and Delium, recounting how Socrates saved his life in the former battle (219e-221b). Socrates' exceptional service at Delium is also mentioned in the Laches by the General after whom the dialogue is named (181b). In the Apology, Socrates compares his military service to his courtroom troubles, and says anyone on the jury who thinks he ought to retreat from philosophy must also think soldiers should retreat when it seems likely that they will be killed in b

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates

I cannot see how Socrates could possibly have held Persian ideas.

[Clive]

The Greek cities grew in trade and importance, and the quality of their civilization rose steadily in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. Their social life differed in many interesting points from the social life of the Ægean and river valley civilizations. They had splendid temples but the priesthood was not the great traditional body it was in the cities of the older world, the-repository of all knowledge, the storehouse of ideas. They had leaders and noble families, but no quasi- divine monarch surrounded by an elaborately organized court. Rather their organization was aristocratic, with leading families which kept each other in order. Even their so- called “democracies” were aristocratic; every citizen had a share in public affairs and came to the assembly in a democracy, but everybody was not a citizen. The Greek democracies were not like our modern “democracies” in which everyone has a vote. Many of the Greek democracies had a few hundred or a few thousand citizens and then many thousands of slaves, freedmen and so forth, with no share in public affairs. Generally in Greece affairs were in the hands of a community of substantial men. Their kings and their tyrants alike were just men set in front of other men or usurping a leadership; they were not quasi-divine overmen like Pharaoh or Minos or the monarchs of Mesopotamia. Both thought and government therefore had a freedom under Greek conditions such as they had known in none of the older civilizations. The Greeks had brought down into cities the individualism, the personal initiative of the wandering life of the northern parklands. They were the first republicans of importance in history.

{132}
THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE (POSEIDON), PÆSTUM, SICILY
THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE (POSEIDON), PÆSTUM, SICILY
Photo: Alinari

And we find that as they emerge from a condition of barbaric warfare a new thing becomes apparent in their intellectual life. We find men who are not priests seeking and recording knowledge and enquiring into the mysteries of life and being, in a way that has hitherto been the sublime privilege of priesthood or the presumptuous amusement of kings. We find already in the sixth century B.C.—perhaps while Isaiah was still prophesying in Babylon—such men as Thales and Anaximander of Miletus and Heraclitus of Ephesus, who were what we should now call independent gentlemen, giving their minds to shrewd questionings of the world in which we live, asking what its real nature was, whence it came and what its destiny might be, and refusing all ready-made or evasive answers. Of these questionings of the universe by the Greek mind, we shall have more to say a little later in this history. These Greek enquirers {133} who begin to be remarkable in the sixth century B.C. are the first philosophers, the first “wisdom-lovers,” in the world.

And it may be noted here how important a century this sixth century B.C. was in the history of humanity. For not only were these Greek philosophers beginning the research for clear ideas about this universe and man’s place in it and Isaiah carrying Jewish prophecy to its sublimest levels, but as we shall tell later Gautama Buddha was then teaching in India and Confucius and Lao Tse in China. From Athens to the Pacific the human mind was astir.


{134}

XXIV

THE WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS

WHILE the Greeks in the cities in Greece, South Italy and Asia Minor were embarking upon free intellectual enquiry and while in Babylon and Jerusalem the last of the Hebrew prophets were creating a free conscience for mankind, two adventurous Aryan peoples, the Medes and the Persians, were in possession of the civilization of the ancient world and were making a great empire, the Persian empire, which was far larger in extent than any empire the world had seen hitherto. Under Cyrus, Babylon and the rich and ancient civilization of Lydia had been added to the Persian rule; the Phœnician cities of the Levant and all the Greek cities in Asia Minor had been made tributary, Cambyses had subjected Egypt, and Darius I, the Mede, the third of the Persian rulers (521 B.C.), found himself monarch as it seemed of all the world. His couriers rode with his decrees from the Dardanelles to the Indus and from Upper Egypt to Central Asia.

The Greeks in Europe, it is true, Italy, Carthage, Sicily and the Spanish Phœnician settlements, were not under the Persian Peace; but they treated it with respect and the only people who gave any serious trouble were the old parent hordes of Nordic people in South Russia and Central Asia, the Scythians, who raided the northern and north-eastern borders.

Of course the population of this great Persian empire was not a population of Persians, The Persians were only the small conquering minority of this enormous realm. The rest of the population was what it had been before the Persians came from time immemorial, only that Persian was the administrative language. Trade and finance were still largely Semitic, Tyre and Sidon as of old were the great Mediterranean ports and Semitic shipping plied upon the seas. But many of these Semitic merchants and business people as {135}they went from place to place already found a sympathetic and convenient common history in the Hebrew tradition and the Hebrew scriptures. A new element which was increasing rapidly in this empire was the Greek element. The Greeks were becoming serious rivals to the Semites upon the sea, and their detached and vigorous intelligence made them useful and, unprejudiced officials.

FINE PIECE OF ATHENIAN POTTERY
FINE PIECE OF ATHENIAN POTTERY
Showing Greek merchant vesselswith sails and oars statue on left
Brit. Mus.

It was on account of the Scythians that Darius I invaded Europe. He wanted to reach South Russia, the homeland of the Scythian horsemen. He crossed the Bosphorus with a great army and marched through Bulgaria to the Danube, crossed this by a bridge of boats and pushed far northward. His army suffered terribly. It was largely an infantry force and the mounted Scythians rode all round it, cut off its supplies, destroyed any stragglers and never came to a pitched battle. Darius was forced into an inglorious retreat.

He returned himself to Susa but he left an army in Thrace and Macedonia, and Macedonia submitted to Darius. Insurrections of the Greek cities in Asia followed this failure, and the European Greeks were drawn into the contest. Darius resolved upon the subjugation of the Greeks in Europe. With the Phœnician fleet at his disposal he was able to subdue one island after another, and finally in 490 B.C. he made his main attack upon Athens. A considerable Armada sailed from the ports of Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean, and the expedition landed its troops at Marathon to the north of Athens. There they were met and signally defeated by the Athenians.

{136}An extraordinary thing happened at this time. The bitterest rival of Athens in Greece was Sparta, but now Athens appealed to Sparta, sending a herald, a swift runner, imploring the Spartans not to let Greeks become slaves to barbarians. This runner (the prototype of all “Marathon” runners) did over a hundred miles of broken country in less than two days. The Spartans responded promptly and generously; but when, in three days, the Spartan force reached Athens, there was nothing for it to do but to view the battlefield and the bodies of the defeated Persian soldiers. The Persian fleet had returned to Asia. So ended the first Persian attack on Greece.

The next was much more impressive. Darius died soon after the news of his defeat at Marathon reached him, and for four years his son and successor, Xerxes, prepared a host to crush the Greeks. For a time terror united all the Greeks. The army of Xerxes was certainly the greatest that had hitherto been assembled in the world. It was a huge assembly of discordant elements. It crossed the Dardanelles, 480 B.C., by a bridge of boats; and along the coast as it advanced moved an equally miscellaneous fleet carrying supplies. At the narrow pass of Thermopylæ a small force of 1400 men under the Spartan Leonidas resisted this multitude, and after a fight of unsurpassed heroism was completely destroyed. Every man was killed. But the losses they inflicted upon the Persians were enormous, and the army of Xerxes pushed on to Thebes and Athens in a chastened mood. Thebes surrendered and made terms. The Athenians abandoned their city and it was burnt.

Greece seemed in the hands of the conqueror, but again came victory against the odds and all expectations. The Greek fleet, though not a third the size of the Persian, assailed it in the bay of Salamis and destroyed it. Xerxes found himself and his immense army cut off from supplies and his heart failed him. He retreated to Asia with one half of his army, leaving the rest to be defeated at Platea (479 B.C.) what time the remnants of the Persian fleet were hunted down by the Greeks and destroyed at Mycalæ in Asia Minor.

{137}
ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF CORINTH
ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF CORINTH
Photo: Fred Boissonnas

The Persian danger was at an end. Most of the Greek cities in Asia became free. All this is told in great detail and with much picturesqueness in the first of written histories, the History of {138}Herodotus. This Herodotus was born about 484 B.C. in the Ionian city of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, and he visited Babylon and Egypt in his search for exact particulars. From Mycalæ onward Persia sank into a confusion of dynastic troubles. Xerxes was murdered in 465 B.C. and rebellions in Egypt, Syria and Media broke up the brief order of that mighty realm. The history of Herodotus lays stress on the weakness of Persia. This history is indeed what we should now call propaganda—propaganda for Greece to unite and conquer Persia. Herodotus makes one character, Aristagoras, go to the Spartans with a map of the known world and say to them: “These Barbarians are not valiant in fight. You on the other hand have now attained the utmost skill in war .... No other nations in the world have what they possess: gold, silver, bronze, embroidered garments, beasts and slaves. All this you might have for yourselves, if you so desired.”

http://www.hellenicaworld.com/UK/Litera ... tml#chapXX

[Leucius Charinus]

Of course the population of this great Persian empire was not a population of Persians, The Persians were only the small conquering minority of this enormous realm. The rest of the population was what it had been before the Persians came from time immemorial, only that Persian was the administrative language.

Same old story. The warlord and his chieftains and all their tribes arrive out of nowhere and take down the previous rulers.

Time passes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy

• Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía); from ὀλίγος (olígos), meaning "few", and ἄρχω (arkho), meaning "to rule or to command")[1][2][3] is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, education, corporate, religious or military control.

http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/L ... Greece.htm
The Legacy of Greece - Oxford University Press (1921)
RELIGION
by W. R. Inge, Dean of St.Pauls

• p.29
  
  It is quite unnecessary to look for Asiatic influences in a school
  which clung close to the Attic tradition.
  
  It should not be necessary to remind Hellenists that "Know Thyself"
  passed for the supreme word of wisdom in the classical period,
  or that Heraclitus revealed his method in the words "I searched myself".
  
  "The teachings of Plato", says Justin, "are not alien to those of Christ;
  and the same is true of the Stoics." "Heraclitus and Socrates lived in'
  accordance to the divine Logos" and should be recognised as Christians.
  Clement says that Plato wrote "by the inspiration of God".
  
  Augustine, much later, finds that "only a few words and phrases" need
  to be changed to bring Platonism into complete accord with Christianity.

Clement says that Plato wrote "by the inspiration of God"?
Augustine, much later, finds that "only a few words and phrases" need to be changed to bring Platonism into complete accord with Christianity?

What's happening?

[Clive]

Christianity is Persian but translated into Greek! Freke and Gandy, and gnosticism are far more important than realised. This is an "oriental cult".

[Clive]

Just reading Francis Pryor Home about middle and late stone age. A major issue is assuming tasks were done by men or women. This is false - everyone mixed in, skills developed on an individual basis. People were and are pragmatic when they don't have roles enforced on them.

This dividing the world game was strongly reinforced by ideas of opposites like good and evil, true and shadow. Religion loves this

[lpetrich]

I've seen Socrates and Plato called pro-Spartan, and with good reason. But pro-Persian? That's news to me.

Being pro-Spartan would have made them traitors during the Peloponnesian War, which Athens fought with Sparta. Athens lost, and the Spartans imposed the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. Those 30 gentlemen were later overthrown, but with an amnesty for their supporters. I've seen the theory that the trial of Socrates was an attempt to get back at a notable Sparta-lover, by putting him on trial for what Isaac Asimov called "un-Athenian activities".

[Clive]

But is not the idea of the cave obviously from Ahura Mazda? Why this is not realised is because much of the Zoroastrian libraries were destroyed by Muslim forces. I think this has meant there are very large jagged wounds in our understanding. Plato's one god is a Persian idea.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=937

Qutayba tore down the main Zoroastrian temple at Samarkand and melted down its treasure, repeating the process in other cities.
[...]
Of more lasting consequence was Qutayba's systematic destruction of books and religious literature. In Bukhara he destroyed an important library, but in Kath, the capital of Khwarazm (near the Aral Sea in present-day Uzbekistan), he succeeded in wiping out an entire literature in the Khwarazmian language, including works on astronomy, history, mathematics, genealogy, and literature. Writing in the eleventh century, the great scientist Biruni rued this destruction as a crime against an ancient culture. Qutayba's special animus was directed against Zoroastrianism. Besides killing various writers from this faith, he obliterated much of the corpus of Zoroastrian theology and letters, a tragic loss to civililisation

[MrMacSon]

Plato's one god is a Persian idea.

I saw a documentary on ancient Egypt recently - specifically on using modern technology (such as satellites) to identify potential archaeological sites - and they talked about monotheism starting in ancient Egypt ~1500-2000 yrs before Plato.

[Clive]

No problem, but Persia - Darius - is where it got politically powerful - I understand Judaism as not being that powerful.