...James N. Truesdale The Spring of Civilization: Periclean Athens . Edited by Robinson Charles Alexander Jr. New York : E. P. Dutton and Company , 1954 . Pp. 464 . $7.50 . Copyright © 1955 by Duke University Press 1955 144 The South Atlantic Quarterly and tenancy. Among other...

...: Periclean Athens. Edited by Charles Alexander Robinson, Jr. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1954- Pp- 464- $7-50. Professor Robinson has selected one period, the greatest in antiquity and one of the greatest of all time, as a means of suggesting to the layman in a single volume the essential meaning...

.... The introduction deals briefly with the geography, the historical posi­ tion, and the political character of Periclean Athens. This background is presented with exceptional vividness and clarity, and it is necessary for a full appreciation of the following sections of drama, philosophy, art, and history. Preceding...

... the forces, historical and contemporary, that went to make up the Greek world concentrated upon Athens in the Periclean Age. As signalized in the fact that Athena, goddess of the citadel, was their chief divinity, the Athenians had maintained an unbroken connection with Mycenaean times and had preserved...

...) became Rector of Yale in 1740. His vigorous administration during the ensuing quarter century, though punctuated 126 The South Atlantic Quarterly by crises, was colonial Yale s most decisively constructive period, . . . its Periclean Age. In 1745 a new charter strengthened the college s corporate...

... and successful ventures in depreciated public securities. All three sons of the Old Judge made their marks, par­ ticularly Francis Cabot Lowell (1775-1817), great merchant and builder of the first complete textile mill in America. In the Periclean Age, as Mr. Greenslet terms the third, fourth, and fifth...

... most decisively constructive period, . . . its Periclean Age. In 1745 a new charter strengthened the college s corporate autonomy and transformed the weak rectorate into the more powerful office of president; the same year new statutes allowed minute supervision of undergraduate life. Clap employed...

... of Periclean Athens and that of Augustan Rome were many; but of these, two appear to be primary. Indeed, to those who find the reason of things in economics (another word the ancients would not have comprehended) the first one is sufficient; for, whereas the Greekling was proverbially esurient, the Roman...

... to criticize, even on the basis of poor information, is a vital part of the democratic process that the great Virginian would have heartily endorsed. Jefferson dreamed of a Periclean state in which the people elected their best men to office rather than followed demagogues. He foresaw the real danger...

... bour­ geois class, and an extraordinary intellectual awakening that to­ gether led to the Hellenism of the Periclean age. Under the pioneer leadership of the Sophists, men conceived an ideal of the education (paideia) of any citizen, developing his capacities into his own unique completeness...

... of causes and motives. It is not his purpose to center on the subject of military strategy and tactics. Instead he emphasizes the aspira­ tion and the philosophical thought of the Periclean age as a background for the general historian s outlook. Particularly he points the methods of the sophists, who...

... treasure and resource. By showing that the ideal of the perfect citizen helped build Periclean Athens or the concept of men living in peace inspired the Roman empire or the dream of human equality lay behind modern democ­ racy the historian might well add a new and exhilarating dimension to modern...

... University. 612 The South Atlantic Quarterly Oswald Spengler. There the good life should be found. So believed the citizens of Periclean Athens, of centuries-old Changan, of Pepys s London, of Voltaire s Paris. Not so we Americans who have crowded into cities, though not to develop an urban civiliza­ tion...