I don't think I had had any idea just how few works had survived! I don't know which is more amazing, that we have any of them at all, or that we have so few.
I love your thumbnail sketch of Athenian society, my previous knowledge of which amounted to little more than a vague sense of democracy, culture, and some kind of feud with Sparta. The part about metic women being prized specifically for qualities deliberately denied respectable Greek women is especially... poignant. We're so creative as a species, really -- both at creating incredibly messed up systems, and at kludging together the weirdest workarounds to try to compensate for at least one or two of the problems they create.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-06-04 09:21 am (UTC)I love your thumbnail sketch of Athenian society, my previous knowledge of which amounted to little more than a vague sense of democracy, culture, and some kind of feud with Sparta. The part about metic women being prized specifically for qualities deliberately denied respectable Greek women is especially... poignant. We're so creative as a species, really -- both at creating incredibly messed up systems, and at kludging together the weirdest workarounds to try to compensate for at least one or two of the problems they create.