Word: athenians
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...Iowa Episcopalians, Pusey, now 82, says he always guided his actions with the same clear principles. He had written his Harvard thesis on the laws of ancient Athenian democracy, and believed deeply that "force or violence" should not be tolerated...
...great paradox tormented Stone as he confronted the Greeks. Athens was the glory of Hellas, "the earliest society where freedom of thought and its expression flourished on a scale never known before, and rarely equaled since." Yet Athenian democracy also put Socrates on trial for speaking his mind and voted to execute him for his "crimes." This horrified Stone, and, he writes, "shook my Jeffersonian faith in the common man." The Trial of Socrates is the result of his effort to understand, if not excuse, how Athens could have besmirched its good name and that of democracy by killing Socrates...
Despite all this, and Socrates' repeated attempts to antagonize the jury, the vote against him was close, 280 to 220. Under the rules of the Athenian assembly, a second vote was needed to determine the punishment Socrates would receive. By Stone's account, Socrates gave the jury no choice but to give him the death penalty. He refused to appeal to democratic ideals of free speech, for that would be an unacceptable concession to democracy...
...Athenian criminal proceedings, ordinary citizens presented the charges, and the 500-man juries voted twice: first on guilt or innocence, and then (if the verdict was guilty) on the penalty. Socrates' speeches at his trial, as recorded in Plato's Apology, still have the magic to move readers, but they clearly failed to persuade his contemporaries. Stone calculates that the votes were 280 to 220 for the guilty verdict, 360 to 140 for the death penalty...
...come back to life as the ungainly wooden ship glided across the harbor. Her prow bore a threatening ram, her stern a boastful curve and her sides bristled with 170 oars. The launching two weeks ago of the trireme,* a replica of the fabled warship that helped the Athenian navy dominate the Mediterranean during the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., was the culmination of a five-year project. As the ship's oars plunged into the wine- dark waters off the island of Poros, John Morrison, the retired Cambridge classics don who helped lead the effort, sat on deck...