Greece Travel Tips and Guide

The immediate response of the state murder of Socrates saw the people of Athens arise in disgust as one. They harassed and hounded those Governing 30 out of Athens: death, rejection, forever out of any inner council of wiser gentler Athens. This was the Athens Alexander arrived in, and took note. Heroic to a fault, he saw his chance for immortality, and it would seem to live great and die in glory may have become "fixed" in his young mind as a scholar with other princes of other city states.

There may be no published thoughts on this motivation behind Alexander deciding with his life to go for it! But my meditation would suggest he came to feel it was his destiny to make Greece all free and great and master rather than defend from Persia, and rule the known world. Alexander had such early inspirations that would affect other people after his death, as with Socrates. He must be good, he might as well be Great. It seems that Alexander, unlike most of us, had all too many examples on how life could end quickly, and unless that dying man had done good or evil in his life made a difference on how he could die, and expect to go to a better life with God.

This truth is just plain horse sense, as Socrates told Aristotle, and as Aristotle told Alexander, and Alexander to his horse, who you may have heard,told me. Socrates died quietly and told Aristotle, who told his pupil Alexander, that he was going to a better life. Alexander almost died in the desert in Egypt seeking a Wise Holy Man : they blessed each other. 350 years before Christ, men Believed.

Socrates was an ugly little man who walked in rags through the streets of Athens in his later years. But in his youth, during the height of the Golden Age of Greece he had performed with great bravery at three great battles against the ever present army and navy of Persia. As he aged, limping and infirm, he was not fit for any further service to Athens and was allowed to ramble and talk to groups of people. And who can refuse an old man his times of rambling and talking to his neighbors, and then to others who hear of his wise series of questions and answers that he brought you conclude about you own needs or actions.

His purity of mind allowed thoughts of good and ways to improve the human condition and how we all must search our own soul and moral code before causing another a harm. This is often heard from an old warrior, but none spoke with such searching clarity into the essence of a question. What was the seeker seeking, really? All citizens of Greece needed to be on their alert. As at Gettysburg two thousand years later, the fate of democracy could some times hang by threads. Socrates made the leaders of ancient Greece jealous and was forced to die. How the death of Socrates was witnessed by his pupil Aristotle, who within years discussed the meaning of free will and a good life and worthy death and entry in an afterlife of joy with his young pupil Alexander, who would become Great. We talk about that next.

Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) began to be known as Great when as a youth he was the only one of the King, his father and others to ride the monster horse brought to trade. While it had bucked and went into a frenzy with his father and the others, Alexander watched and took in what they were all doing wrong. He had to plead with his father for peremission to give it an attempt. First of all Alexander approached the horse from the other side where Bucephalus was being frightened by his own shadow.

The men of King Philips had all approached the beast from the nearest side to them, which had the horses shadow on the ground, causing the horse to occasionally bolt. Approaching him, Alexander kept his hands down, he spoke gently and lovingly, and he was soon stroking the animal and rubbing himself against it. Soon, Alexander was up on the back of Bucephalis and they were trotting around pleasantly. King Philip said that Alexander would need a larger kingdom to hold him, Macedonia was too small for him.

Alexander had as his tutor Plata, and enjoyed his school years at a private school built by King Philip for Alexander and other princes of Greece and nearby a kingdoms. Always, however, Persia menaced across the Aegean Sea, constantly making attempts by land and sea to conquer Greece, which was only a small series of kingdoms in contrast to the vast Empire that Persia had placed together, from Turkey through Asia to India, which Alexander conquered all and more, taking in down to Baghdad to Cairo.

The epic great battle that began the Greece influence coming into Persia was at the great battle in which the ten thousand soldiers under Alexander defeated the one hundred thousand Persians. Alexander wanted to change history and have a Greece influence throughout the lands controlled by Persia, and he succeeded in this greatly. In the end, however, at the death of Alexander one of his generals, the first king Ptomly was created when Alexander willed Egypt to his general as his territory. Cleopatra was of this Greece blood two centuries later.

During his take over of Persia, however, after such a bloody battle in which his men slaughtered the Persians with their sharpened sixteen foot long poles. Alexander however treated the Persians with civility and dignity. He did bring Greek law and many aspects of daily life that persists, as do architectural relics. He gave support and security to the royal family, the wife and children of King Darius, whose own men turned on him and killed him as the Greeks were winning the battle.

Alexander married Roxanne, the beautiful daughter of Darius. Alexander urged his men to also mix the blood of Greece and Persia with marriages. Some thousands of Greece soldiers obliged. Today in Iran or Afghanistan and elsewhere the name Alexander is part of a male name. All citizens of Greece Persia were to be given all rights of freedom, and the Greek soldiers were to be friendly and helpful. Today in Iran, once Persia, one can see many Greek columns on building relics.

Alexander wanted it to be that this great sea change of fortunes would be permanent and exist for a thousand years. But unfortunately after his death the territories were all parceled out to his various generals, each of whom tended to go his own way in governing. Truly Great, Alexander achieved this in his lifetime, even thought after his death it did not last. In contrast Rome was not built in one lifetime and controlled areas west of Persia for a thousand years.

Our image of heroic Greek antiques and figures grew out of even more ancient histories of western civilizations. They evolved and grew out of the cultures of Asia around Mesopotamia and in north Africa with Egypt and the Black Pharaohs to their south, and first allowed free speech in the times of Greek antiques. Here there was little influence until the times of Marco Polo would any understanding of the Orient, or China come to the west. The ways of India were more known as the mountain ranges below the mighty mountains that very much separates India from China.

English in the British centuries of control of India began to learn that all western languages seemed to come from the Sanskrit of India. This amazing realization that an Indo-European culture that had come out of Africa, had first flowered and evolved in warm India. And this Sanskrit civilization had then somehow poured westward to spread their more Caucasian peoples or at least their language structure through Persia into all of Europe.

In fact, I will add an unproven theory: those Sanskrit speaking Homo Sapiens could have been those who drove into extinction the Neanderthals of Europe some 30,000 years ago. This theory has just occurred to me, so I can not yet verify this portion: the rest is well documented. We do know Sanskrit became the mother base of modern European languages. Except in Hungary and Finland where some of the descendants of the Mighty Khan settled.

The languages of Hungary and Finland share a Mongol base, very distinct from their neighbors who more likely have a base around mama for mother and dada or pappa for father and so many other common base words that 1770 English gentlemen of letters noticed this to their shock. But up to Greece creating a citizen army, a free city state where all were encouraged to speak and the theater made mockery of foolish decisions by the elders in charge. Even Socrates, the father of independent thought, had been badly wounded in three mighty battles to defend Athens from Persia, always on the attack.

It was a reward for wounded older soldiers such as Socrates to receive their pension and discuss matters, and how they won the war. But with Socrates and his pupils Aristotle and Plato the issues took on a deeper quest: what was this all for? The fighting, defending, never ending struggles against forces greater than them and determined to destroy them. Socrates would always turn the question back on them: what if he had not fought and earned his small pension and stopped the evil death they all knew the Persian army intended all of them.

Would they be here alive as free men to discuss this if he had not openly shown his wish to be free enough he would defend that right and those of his family to the death, as he had done until he could not swing a sword any more? They had difficulty to do more than thank him, and all would mutter they certainly would do the same for their own families, if it came to that. When dying, Socrates said to Aristotle, who later said to Alexander the Great, he believed there was a God, and that he as a good man was going to a better place.

In contrast, there have been so many documentaries on about Rome and all the excess and self centered degradation of slaves, the gladiators, lions killing Christians, thumbs down. The Republic gave way to an Emperor at Augustus and all rulers were a Caesar after that. No wonder Thomas Jefferson admired the ideals of Greece over those of Rome. His architecture, and that of justice halls of America may seem like the glory of Rome. They are not. They represent the freedom ideals of ancient Greece, as his serene Monticello shows. He was our Democratic Republican President, more emphasis on the democratic than the republican, I think. I stand with Tom.