In the Athenian democracy the people that could vote were QUITE well educated. Male citizens (landowners) could vote. They were also the ones who would go fight the wars and had to pay for their armor & weapons. So they had money and time (they had slaves to do the actual labor).
They still voted for opportunists & retards which eventually destroyed the Athenian state by losing the Peloponnesian War. Especially the massive imperial overreach of the Sicilian Campaign which basically did them in.
So yea, he lived through that and saw the effect. What he failed to mention, or did not observe, was that Athens had been seriously corrupted by money which was extracted by them being an empire.
Funnily enough, during the Peloponnesian war and the eventual defeat of Athens, Lysander re-introduced GOLD to Sparta. Ever since Lycurgus' original laws, Spartans did not use gold to trade, they used coal or iron, because Lycurgus thought gold would corrupt them.
Lysander reintroduced it so as to pay the Persians to give him a fleet to defeat Athens. Then, 60 years after that Spartans basically became debauched & corrupted by gold so they lost their hegemony to the Thebans.
Fun stuff. In other words, all the 'modern' stuff we observe has happened before.
Remember that the prosperity bright by hard men led to indolent progeny who were easily distracted by hedonism and the other -isms of a pagan world and they grew to be soft men, etc
In the Athenian democracy the people that could vote were QUITE well educated. Male citizens (landowners) could vote. They were also the ones who would go fight the wars and had to pay for their armor & weapons. So they had money and time (they had slaves to do the actual labor).
They still voted for opportunists & retards which eventually destroyed the Athenian state by losing the Peloponnesian War. Especially the massive imperial overreach of the Sicilian Campaign which basically did them in.
So yea, he lived through that and saw the effect. What he failed to mention, or did not observe, was that Athens had been seriously corrupted by money which was extracted by them being an empire.
Funnily enough, during the Peloponnesian war and the eventual defeat of Athens, Lysander re-introduced GOLD to Sparta. Ever since Lycurgus' original laws, Spartans did not use gold to trade, they used coal or iron, because Lycurgus thought gold would corrupt them.
Lysander reintroduced it so as to pay the Persians to give him a fleet to defeat Athens. Then, 60 years after that Spartans basically became debauched & corrupted by gold so they lost their hegemony to the Thebans.
Fun stuff. In other words, all the 'modern' stuff we observe has happened before.
Remember that the prosperity bright by hard men led to indolent progeny who were easily distracted by hedonism and the other -isms of a pagan world and they grew to be soft men, etc
Thank you for these informations. Yes. History repeats itself.