Summary of Humphrey Davy Findley Kitto's The Greeks

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview:#1 The Greeks, who were the first to make this distinction, felt that they were different from any other people. They felt that they were not barbarians, but they were foreigners who did not speak Greek.

#2 The Greeks were the first civilization to create a written law, and they were also the first to develop a sense of freedom. They were ruled by Law, which respected justice. The other civilizations of the East were ruled by absolute rulers who did not respect the rights of their subjects.

#3 The Greeks developed a form of polity that satisfied the higher instincts and capabilities of man. Other forms of political society have been static, while the city-state was the means by which the Greek strove to make the life of the community and the individual more excellent.

#4 I have tried to write about the Greeks as I know them, not as I imagine them to be. I have allowed myself the luxury of writing on points that interest me, instead of covering the whole field in a systematic and probably hurried manner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Feb 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669352839

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Insights on Humphrey Davy Findley Kitto's The Greeks

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Greeks, who were the first to make this distinction, felt that they were different from any other people. They felt that they were not barbarians, but they were foreigners who did not speak Greek.

#2

The Greeks were the first civilization to create a written law, and they were also the first to develop a sense of freedom. They were ruled by Law, which respected justice. The other civilizations of the East were ruled by absolute rulers who did not respect the rights of their subjects.

#3

The Greeks developed a form of polity that satisfied the higher instincts and capabilities of man. Other forms of political society have been static, while the city-state was the means by which the Greek strove to make the life of the community and the individual more excellent.

#4

I have tried to write about the Greeks as I know them, not as I imagine them to be. I have allowed myself the luxury of writing on points that interest me, instead of covering the whole field in a systematic and probably hurried manner.

#5

The story of the Ten Thousand is an example of how the Greeks were able to overcome their many differences and march together as an army. They elected a general, Xenophon, an Athenian country-gentleman, and he was as much chairman as he was general.

#6

The word Athens is not a Greek name, and the goddess Athena is non-Greek. The interpretation of legends like these is not a matter of certainty, but it is tempting to see in this one the memory of the collision, in Attica, of an incoming Hellenic people with the indigenous worshippers of Athena.

#7

The Greeks believed that they were the leaders and the metropolis of the Ionian Greeks, and that they were indigenous. But archaeologists have found no evidence that there was an indigenous non-Hellenic population in Attica and the Peloponnese.

#8

The reliability of tradition is demonstrated in the Greek world. The legend of the Minotaur and King Minos’s island-empire of Crete is an example. The name Minotauros, the first half of which is obviously Minos, and the second half tauros, which is the Greek for a bull, was used as a symbol of divinity or authority by the Cretans.

#9

The genealogies of the Greek heroes are a good example of how not to trust historical traditions. They peter out two generations after the Trojan War, which