Thursday, March 19, 2020

Breakfast with Thucydides



Found this morning while sipping espresso and eating an English muffin with a light spread of smooth peanut butter:

"For instance, it is evident that the country now called Hellas had in ancient times no settled population: on the contrary, migrations were of frequent occurrence, the several tribes readily abandoning their homes under the pressure of superior numbers. Without commerce, without freedom of communication either by land or sea, cultivating no more of their territory than the exigences of life required, destitute of capital, never planting their land (for they could not tell when an invader might not come and take it all away, and when he did come they had no walls to stop him), thinking that the necessities of daily sustenance could be supplied at one place as well as another, they cared little for shifting their habitation, and consequently neither built large cities nor attained to any other form of greatness."

- From The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides


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