Athens

I come very close to conceiving a permanent hatred for popular rule, although it does seem to me the most natural and fair, when I remember the inhuman injustice of the people of Athens who put to death, with no remission or will to hear their defense, the brave officers who had just won a battle at sea against the Lacedaemonians near the Arginusae islands, the fiercest and toughest navy battle ever won by the Greeks, because they had chosen to pursue the advantages afforded to them by the laws of war after their victory rather than to stop to collect and bury their dead.

While he was consul in Asia, Publius Crassus, whom the Romans deemed five times blessed, sent a Greek engineer to fetch the tallest of two ship masts he had seen in Athens in order to turn it into a kind of battering ram.

The Duke of Athens did a great many foolish things in the establishment of his new tyranny over Florence:

at Athens they learned to speak well:

One asking Socrates of what country he was, he did not make answer, of Athens, but of the world;

In those where the vulgar or the ignorant, or both together, have been all-powerful and able to give the law, as in those of Athens, Rhodes, and Rome, and where the public affairs have been in a continual tempest of commotion, to such places have the orators always repaired.

We read of Socrates, that though he never departed from Athens during the frequent plagues that infested the city, he only was never infected.

Another dog being to guard a temple at Athens, having spied a sacrilegious thief carrying away the finest jewels, fell to barking at him with all his force, but the warders not awaking at the noise, he followed him, and day being broke, kept off at a little distance, without losing sight of him;

The news of this dog being come to the warders of the temple they put themselves upon the pursuit, inquiring of the color of the dog, and at last found him in the city of Cromyon, and the thief also, whom they brought back to Athens, where he got his reward;

Paul found in repute at Athens, that which they had dedicated “to the unknown God” seemed to him the most to be excused.

As if it had not been sufficient that Plato was originally descended from the gods by a double line, and that he had Neptune for the common father of his race, it was certainly believed at Athens, that Aristo, having a mind to enjoy the fair Perictione, could not, and was warned by the god Apollo, in a dream, to leave her unpolluted and untouched, till she should first be brought to bed.

and that the city of Athens was built a thousand years before the said city of Sais;

and that the goddess who founded the city of Athens chose to situate it in a temperature of air fit to make men prudent, as the Egyptian priests told Solon, Athenis tenue cælum, ex quo etiam acutiores putantur Attici;

and that the goddess who founded the city of Athens chose to situate it in a temperature of air fit to make men prudent, as the Egyptian priests told Solon, Athenis tenue cælum, ex quo etiam acutiores putantur Attici;

for the god indicated the time of the advantage, that by favor and injustice he obtained at Athens over the tragic poets, better than himself, having caused his own play called the Leneians to be acted in emulation;

They conjectured of old at Athens, an aptitude for the mathematics in him they saw ingeniously bavin up a burthen of brushwood.

Poris, startled at this protestation, promised her to steal them away, and to transport them to Athens, and there commit them to the custody of some faithful friends of his.

Socrates was wont to say, that the city of Athenspleased, as ladies do whom men court for love;

An orator bought me, when a child, and finding me a pretty and hopeful boy, bred me up, and when he died left me all his estate, which I have transported into this city of Athens, and here settled myself to the study of philosophy.

and says withal, that when he appoints his philosopher the head of a government, he does not mean a corrupt one like that of Athens, and much less such a one as this of ours, wherein wisdom itself would be to seek.

’Tis said, that Cranaus, king of Athens, was the inventor of this custom of dashing wine with water;

and who, among all the people of Athens, enraged as he was at so unworthy a spectacle, first presented himself to rescue Theramenes, whom the thirty tyrants were hauling to execution by their satellites, and desisted not from his bold enterprise but at the remonstrance of Theramenes himself, though he was only followed by two more in all.