The Problem with the Ancient Greeks

Bruce Frohnen at Nomocracy in Politics,

"a certain fixation on the Greeks has helped maintain an anachronistic approach to public virtue and constitutional government. I note especially the myth that the ancient Greeks had special access to the essential problems of public life (“man and the city”) to which we must recur if we are to understand the interactions of individual virtue and social structures. This mistaken view diverts our attention from the real lessons we can glean from the Greeks. These lessons have to do with the permanent goods of virtue and order in the soul, as well as the natural origins of public and political life in the family."