I was shocked when, in my thirties, I discovered that my whole glorious image of ancient Greece was based on a snapshot, a single city over the span of little more than a single life: Athens during the Age of Pericles. Pretty much all the ancient philosophers, playwrights, statesmen and artists I’d ever heard of: Socrates, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes and the like. All come and gone in little more than a blink of history’s eye.

It is instructive to turn to Thucydides to read how it ended.

After the defeat of the Persians, Athenian hubris as the “defender of the free world” led it to strong-arm its former allies to toe the line. Then led it to barbarism when they balked (see the Melian Dialogue for a master class in the twisted logic of an unchecked, unhinged world power). The resulting war tanked the economy. Plague swept through the city and, having alienated their former friends, the Athenians turned against each other. At that point, as Thucydides tells us:

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence.

The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries. In fine, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest the idea of a crime where it was wanting, was equally commended until even blood became a weaker tie than party, from the superior readiness of those united by the latter to dare everything without reserve; for such associations had not in view the blessings derivable from established institutions but were formed by ambition for their overthrow; and the confidence of their members in each other rested less on any religious sanction than upon complicity in crime.

-Thucydides, Book 3, Ch 10, Landmark Edition, translation by Richard Crawley

When the western world’s former beacon of liberty, learning and reason, now a friendless, broken city, finally capitulated to its former ally, the Spartans didn’t even bother burning it.

If it is true that those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it, those who do are doomed to shake their heads in disbelief while others repeat it.