Word: sparta
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History has been marked by great rivalries: Athens and Sparta, Guelf and Ghibelline, Lancaster and York, Harvard and Yale--and PC and Macintosh. But not all of these contests are consigned to the past...
...John Finley's humanities class, we learnedabout ancient Athens and the promise and perils ofdemocracy. We looked at ancient Greece and saw thechoice facing America: Will we be land-locked,walled, authoritarian Sparta, or theoutward-looking, democratic Athens? Can we havethe courage to be an open society, challenged andstrengthened by other cultures? Can we be daringand venture out to meet the future, rather thanlet it come...
Levitin's historical comparisons of contemporary Israel to ancient Sparta and Athens was especially remarkable, simply because they ring so true. Like the ancient Athenian democracy, Israel is an armed citizen-state that must remain continually wary of its neighbors. And while we sitting comfortably here in the West might see an Israel at peace with Egypt and Jordan, our "reality" may well turn out to be an illusion. If either of these countries were to ever fall to the forces of Islamic-fundamentalism, the "situation on the ground" would be dramatically transformed. Israel would most certainly find itself...
...Algeria could fall, so could Egypt, and so could Jordan, and so could Saudi Arabia. The menace of Islamic fundamentalism requires Israel to maintain one foot in "Sparta" and the other in "Athens." DANIEL B. KURZ Rutgers University April...
...contrast, many U.S. sporting events result in divisiveness signified by the "pennant race": two sub-divisions of a country pursuing the same goal. Consider the 1978 Red Sox and Yankees, who, in their struggle for American League East supremacy, embodied Athens and Sparta in their quest for hegemony over the Greek peninsula...