Category Archives: Ancient History

8th Grade: What would the ‘Occupy’ Movement think of Solon?

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

After the test early in the week, we spent the next few days looking at the rule of Solon in Athens from 590-570 B.C. The ancient world regarded Solon as a great sage, but as we saw, his head was not in the clouds.  He took a society ready to fly apart at the seams and left it with an established social context in which democracy could take root.  I wanted to highlight a few key lessons.

First, the background:

Before Solon there was Draco, a member of the Athenian aristocracy.  His name itself came to symbolize harsh governmental policy, i.e. a ‘Draconian’ law.  His policies helped cement the divide between rich and poor and threatened to make it wider. This dynamic is not unusual.  When one group in society separates itself from others because of wealth or status, they tend to fear the rest of society and thus, isolate themselves all the more.  This increased distance only requires more force to ensure the divide.  One can think of the ante-bellum South, for example, and various laws enacted that made it criminal to educate slaves.  Society built like this can’t last for long.

Enter Solon.

He recognized a few key things:

1. Society needs the rich.  One can argue that the rich abused their power but they are still Athenian, and their resources can benefit Athens
2. The divide between rich and poor must be healed if we are to survive.  This will require sacrifice from the rich
3. This led to what may have been Solon’s invention, and may not have been — a graduated income tax.

No one likes to pay taxes.  One of the reasons I this is so is that no one really knows where their money goes.  It gets dropped into a vast ocean, never to be heard from again.  Solon, perhaps recognizing this, did things differently.  He did not ask for a direct sum from the wealthy, but offered them opportunity.  The wealthy could fund specific projects.  They could just pay directly for a religious festival, a bridge, or a naval warship.  Of course, they could also get full credit for their funding, i.e., ‘This festival to Athena sponsored by Diodotus.’  So, paying taxes became a way to earn ‘kleos.’  The wealthy could contribute in how much they gave.  Enhancing the well being of Athens was directly connected with enhancing their own status in the community.

Problem solved.

Could this apply today?  We are much too big to do what Solon did on any appreciable scale.  Yet I wonder, with the ‘Occupy’ movement and other kinds of resentment against the elite building, if we couldn’t borrow his ideas. What if we did this for the very rich, and put their faces on front pages with captions like, “Warren Buffet posing with fighter jet paid for with his taxes,” or something like this.  Would this help?

But, we should note that if we had a competition of fame/honor in paying taxes to the government, that would imply a certain relationship and attitude towards our government.  Would that attitude be appropriate?

Solon did not create democracy in Athens, but he established a context for it to exist.   Democracy cannot exist everywhere.  If the majority have an ‘us v. them’ attitude then they will use their power to ‘get revenge’ or exploit the others.  In this environment, society will become cancerous and destroy itself.  Democracy can only really work when the power of the majority does not just represent merely the majority, but in some sense, all the people.

Blessings,

Dave Mathwin

A Word on Methodology and the Purpose of History

by Dave Mathwin

On the first day of school in 8th grade Ancient History (which is the first time I will have taught any of the students in that class), I begin class with the premise that I am wasting their time.

History, after all, (I argue) has no real bearing on your life.  We study some names and dates from the past, a few battles here and there.  Sometimes it might have entertainment value but will never really impact you in any way.  Whatever Cyrus the Great did, be it good or bad, won’t impact on you today.  The past has no present.

Depending on their personality and previous experience students either get very excited or troubled by the prospect that we can blow off the year.  Yes, eventually we get around to reasons why hopefully I will not waste their time, but we should not sweep the arguments against History under the rug too quickly.  Before we bother with History in the first place, we should know what we are doing and why.

Some students respond by stating that history offers us lessons.  When people do bad things, we can learn to avoid them, when they do good we can emulate them.

This is a very common answer, with some truth in it, but I refuse the premise on which it’s based.  Reducing history to didactic lessons runs akin to telling people that Christianity is about adhering to a superior morality.  Whatever truth lies in that statement, Christianity really is not about “morality” at all, or at least, the moral component makes no sense without a much larger context.

In the same way, History does not begin and end with proverbs and moral lessons.  It should be about encounter.  It should be about transformation.

History is often and easily abused.  One common form of abuse is using History as a vehicle for proving a pet theory, something all of us can be guilty of at times. Such an approach is both dangerous and uncharitable.  Uncharitable, because History has no room to speak for itself when we insist it conform to us.  We stop listening and lose the possibility of empathy and understanding.  Dangerous, because manipulating the past puts us in a position of great power.  We erect a wall between ourselves (the “good,” or those with knowledge and understanding) and others, those who “should know better.”  If we do this, we cannot learn, cannot be challenged, and cannot grow.

Finitude will always limit our experience, but we need confronted with “the other” to get shaken out of our narrow field of vision.  Historians can often make the mistake of viewing the past in terms of the present, but this robs the power of the past to really do its work.  Seeing through different eyes pushes us beyond ourselves.  In writing about great books, C.S. Lewis said,

. . . in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

This is how History (like all our endeavors) should prepare us for the Beatific Vision.  The “otherness” of different cultures and people can by grace train our hearts for the “otherness” of God’s Kingdom.  Other times and places should also make us humble and charitable.  Hindsight is a great luxury, but we must avoid “finger-wagging.”  We must honor the past by viewing it as they saw it, not as we see it now.  We too act in a fallen context without omniscience.  Those in the past lived under the same constraints.  What kind of decisions would we make in their place?

Bringing it to the present, how do we act morally and justly with the information we have?  How do we make decisions in a fallen world?   We must take responsibility for these decisions, and the difficulties we face should make us rely on God’s grace and wisdom.  Our own sin should make us slow to judge those in the past that struggled with many of the same things as ourselves.  Are we so sure that we would do better?  When we, with proper conviction, call out the past for its mistakes we likely will need the humility to call ourselves and our own society to account.

I am not interested so much in changing the opinion of any student about, say, Napoleon or the Industrial Revolution.  But I am very much interested in 1) Each student coming to a greater understanding of their view of the world, and the extent to which that view can be supported by Christian belief, ethics, etc., and 2) Each student more fully understanding the implications of their decisions in the short and long term for themselves and others.

Mark Twain once said that history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.  As we see connections and patterns, we learn more about humanity.  But humanity does not exist in a vacuum.  As in all disciplines, the study of History involves an attempt to understand Reality, imbued with God’s presence.  As Francis Schaeffer said, “He is there and He is not Silent.”

8th Grade: The First Clash of East and West?

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

This week we had our debate on the forms of government, and wrapped up Persian civilization.  We will have a test on Persia this coming Wednesday before we start to review for our mid-terms.

We looked at Persia’s expansion in Europe this week as they crossed the Hellespont into Greece.  Why did they do this?  I think there are a variety of possibilities.

1. We have talked before about the ‘Burden of Cyrus.’  His extraordinary accomplishments made Persia a world power.  However, this legacy could be a burden as well as a gift.  Both with Cambyses and Darius we see this ‘need’ to do something grand that Cyrus did not do, something that would allow them to leave their own mark on Persia.  For Cambyses, this took the form of the conquest of Egypt.  For Darius one could argue, it took the form of conquering Greece.

2. The answer could be simpler.  Expansion may erase current enemies but it usually creates new ones.  The Aegean Sea may simply have been the ‘next’ enemy for Persia given their previous expansion.

3. Herodotus records a few stories that suggest that Darius may have had personal motivations for conquering Greece.  The stories may or may not be true, but they might have a ring of truth.  It is not unknown for kings or country’s to act with this kind of motivation.

We wanted to realize, however, that expansion across the Aegean would be a different kind of expansion than the Persians were used to.  Almost the entirety of their empire was land based.  Anyone can walk.  Not everyone can sail.  Their expansion overseas would mean the creation of a whole wing of their empire.  Embarking on the sea would put them in a position where they would need a strong presence but have little experience.  In contrast, most Greek city-states grew up on the water.  Persia would still be able to muster an overwhelming advantage in raw manpower.  For most city-states this would be enough.  But as we shall see, not for all.

We looked at the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., and what it revealed about Persia.  Persia’s defeat at Marathon hardly spelled doom for Persia, but it did demonstrate their weaknesses, and perhaps, the fact that they had finally stretched out their imperial arm too far.

Persia was, in general, less oppressive and more tolerant than previous empires.  They provided economic advantage and security.  But being part of Persia did not come with any sort of identity.  One might argue that Persia was all head, but no heart, and on some level people need inspired.  They possessed huge armies, but the majority of those armies had conquered troops that probably felt little reason to fight for Persia.  Thankfully for Persia, most of the time their huge numbers meant that they often did not have to fight at all.  In fact, Persia’s absolute requirement for military service for all eligible males shows them at their least tolerant.  When one father asked King Xerxes to exempt his youngest son to stay on the family farm, Xerxes executed his son, hacked his body in two, and had his departing forces march between the pieces of his son’s body as they left the city.  They allowed for no exception to their ‘No Exceptions’ policy.

At Marathon, the Athenians gained a tactical advantage by focusing their attack on the non-Persian members of Persia’s force.  The Persian force collapsed quickly as large portions of their force beat a hasty retreat.  They may have been willing to follow orders and march where told.  Why would they risk more than that?  What were they fighting for?  On a variety of occasions, Herodotus speaks of the bravery and skill of the purely Persian troops. But the conquered and incorporated troops proved to be a hindrance rather than an asset.  But I also think that the Athenian victory was part psychological.  They ran at the Persians — they actually attacked!  Herodotus hints at the shock the Persians must have felt under such a circumstance.  In Greece, Persia would meet a people who refused to accept their traditional ‘deal.’  The fact that Persia needed to build a navy to deal with this threat put them in an unusual position, like fish out of water.  We will see in a few months how and why the Greeks defeated Persia in a battle of East v. West.

Many thanks

Dave