Ancient Greek Society Quotes

“The Greeks of historical times were physically a mixed people, and advocates of ‘purity’ of breed will find in them no support for their views. If their sculpture and painting present recognizably standard type, that is probably because climatic conditions exert their own control and not only give preference in survival to a type which has long been adapted to them but make acclimatization slow and difficult. The Greeks were not the blond giants of Teutonic fancy. The majority of them seem to have been, as they are today, dark-haired and olive-skinned, but among them, then as now, there were a few whose fair hair marked them out for admiring comment, like Homer’s Menelaus, who is called xanthos and looks as if he had brown hair.”
― Cecil Maurice Bowra, The Greek Experience

“Pythagoras divided men into three classes: the seekers of knowledge, the seekers of honour, and the seekers of gain, and in comparing life to the Olympic Games, matches the first class with the onlookers, the second with the competing athletes, and the third with the hucksters.”
― Cecil Maurice Bowra, The Greek Experience