----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Bartlett <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sunday, December 31, 2000 1:44 pm

Huh?! Rome, maybe, but as anyone who knows anything about Athenian
history could tell you, the exact opposite is true of ancient Athens.
It was at the height of power, commanding an alliance (read: empire)
far richer and more powerful than any before in Greek history, when it
went to war with the second-greatest Greek alliance, headed by Sparta.
It took a quarter century of the most devastating war Greece had ever
seen before Sparta won in 404 BCE, putting an end for all time to
Athens' power. Hardly a case where "very little outside force" was
needed to topple it!

Read Thukydides.

-Jay Dobkin


> It's always the way with empires. Even as they reach the apex of
> their power, they sow the seeds of their own destruction. So it was
> with ancient Athens, on which the US is symbolically based. The glory
> of the Athenians was based on conquest abroad and of course slavery
> at home.
>
> But in effect the defeat of the Athenian and the later Roman empires
> came about from within. They simply became so rotten and degenerate
> inside that very little outside force was needed to topple them. The
> whole economy became based on military conquest, plunder and tribute.
> Undermining the healthy and progressive economic forces on which they
> gained power and glory.
>