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00:03Pericles
00:07But Pericles would now risk everything he and the Athenians had built in one great gamble
00:15A war that he hoped would make Athens the undisputed ruler of the Mediterranean
00:21This conflict would indeed transform Athens
00:25But in a way Pericles could never have imagined
00:32It would make this man
00:34A common Athenian named Socrates
00:37Into the ruler of an extraordinary new empire
00:41An empire that remains the Greeks last great legacy
00:46An empire of the mind
01:12A prison cell in the city of Athens
01:16The year 399 BC
01:21Socrates, the world's most famous philosopher, prepares for his execution
01:29Around him lies a city ruined by war
01:37A nation stripped of glory and empire
01:40A people who have lost everything
01:46Socrates is perhaps the one man who could have saved his fellow citizens from the greatest defeat in their history
01:54Instead, they have condemned him to death
02:00How could the Athenians come to execute one of their most brilliant minds?
02:06How could they lose everything that had once made them great?
02:10It is a tale that begins three decades before
02:19In the year 431 BC
02:22The city-state of Athens was the greatest power in the Mediterranean
02:29Under the leadership of the patrician Pericles
02:33This tiny state had built a naval empire that stretched across the Aegean
02:40A mighty fleet of trireme warships was the most powerful of the day
02:49Athens lay at the center of a great trading network that dealt in goods from as far afield as Britain
02:54in the west
02:56And India in the east
02:59Bringing untold wealth into the city
03:08And Pericles had personally devoted himself to making this city the most glorious of the ancient world
03:16He had commissioned the Parthenon
03:19A mighty temple to the goddess Athena
03:24One of the most extravagant monuments in ancient history
03:35But for all his power and sway
03:38Heracles did not rule this city
03:42For Athens was a democracy
03:49This is the assembly area of the Pnyx
03:52Home of Athenian democracy
03:57The system that gave every Athenian citizen a say in the running of their state
04:06Here Pericles had to stand before his fellow citizens
04:09And win the right to lead
04:18One day in the year 431 BC
04:21Pericles took the podium
04:23And presented the Athenians with a bold new plan
04:29A proposal that would offer Athens her final crowning glory
04:36Pericles intended to vanquish Athens' last great rival
04:40The city-state of Sparta
04:45Sparta was the only other Greek state that matched Athens' power
04:50The Spartans ruled all of southern Greece
04:52And they were a fearsome military force
04:56Their citizens were trained from birth in the arts of war
05:05Tension had been building between Athens and Sparta for decades
05:10To Pericles, it was now time to take on this dangerous adversary
05:16To make Athens the undisputed leader of the Mediterranean
05:21If we go to war, as I think we must
05:24Be determined that we are not going to climb down
05:29For it is from the greatest dangers that the greatest glory is to be won
05:37The assembly embraced Pericles' plan
05:41The Athenians were never once to shrink from a fight
05:46The ancient Greeks as a whole were not by any stretch of the imagination
05:50A peace-loving people
05:52Peace was an interruption of war rather than vice versa
05:55And the Athenians were as bellicose as any other Greeks
06:07But Pericles knew that any war with Sparta would not be easy to win
06:12For the Spartan infantry were far superior to Athens' forces
06:16Athens' strength lay in her navy
06:25So Pericles proposed a strategy of astonishing complexity and sophistication
06:33He convinced the Athenians to abandon all the land around Athens
06:38And retreat behind the great long walls that stretched down from the city to its harbour at Piraeus
06:50Pericles would supply the city by sea
06:55Merchantmen would bring in grain, wheat and other essential supplies from Athens
06:59Athens' colonies and allies across the Mediterranean
07:08Protected by the mighty Athenian fleet
07:13And Pericles would use this great navy to attack the Spartans from the coast
07:23It was a strategy based on a set of finely judged assumptions
07:34Pericles' expectation was that after a year or two but no more than three
07:38The Spartans would realize that they could not win the war because the Athenians would never give them the infantry
07:45battle they needed in order to win
07:47And they had no other device available
07:52Athens' fleet had always been key to the city's success
07:58It had won the city's great military victories and it had built her an empire
08:08Pericles was sure that this fleet could now bring Athens her greatest triumph
08:21The Athenians crowded behind the city walls
08:24The Athenians crowded behind the city walls
08:26Confident in their vision of imperial power and glory, they assumed that Pericles' strategy could only bring them victory
08:36But among this teeming multitude could be found one man who refused to assume anything
08:48A man unique in Athenian society
08:52A man called Socrates
09:00If you were an ancient Athenian citizen, the first thing you'd see is a man who was unbelievably ugly
09:06His head was too big, his eyes were too large, his nose was all the wrong shape
09:15Socrates' appearance breaks every rule of classical Greek aesthetics
09:20Of the idea of proportion and measure
09:28Socrates walked the streets of Athens barefoot, clad only in a dirty robe
09:35He cared nothing for appearance
09:39Or any of the other conventions of his day
09:45Socrates was interested only in the mind
09:51This unlikely figure would become the leader of a revolution
09:55A revolution in thinking
09:58That had been gathering strength across the Greek world
10:11For thousands of years, mankind had assumed that the world around them
10:15The sun, the stars and the moon were gods and spirits
10:21Believing they were recording messages from their gods
10:24In the early years, ancient civilizations such as the Babylonians had gathered great catalogues of astronomical data
10:36This detailed astronomical calendar from Babylon records the rising and falling of the constellations
10:41And the gods they represented
10:50This knowledge and study of the heavens had been slowly spreading across the ancient world
10:57Until it reached Greek colonies on the coast of what is modern day Turkey
11:04There, a shattering change occurred
11:09For the Greeks took this astronomical knowledge and transformed it
11:14They took the gods out of the heavens and replaced them with reason
11:22Gradually the Greeks began to say
11:24These are not persons
11:27These are things
11:31There is an orderly world which the human mind can actually capture
11:37It is subject to our understanding
11:41These Greeks began to calculate and predict the movement of the moon and stars through mathematics and logic
11:48Rather than using gods and spirits to explain everything
11:55It was the birth of science
12:00The first great Greek scientist, a man named Thales, wrote the earliest book on navigation
12:06And how to sail using the stars as a guide
12:13And on a journey to Egypt, Thales was the first man to measure the height of the Great Pyramid
12:21Brilliant idea
12:22He stood next to the pyramid
12:26Until High Noon
12:27When his shadow was exactly the same length as his height
12:32And at that point he measured the shadow of the pyramid
12:35And accordingly knew the height of the pyramid
12:39Which is actually an application of a rather sophisticated geometrical theorem
12:44These Greek scientists would go on to measure the circumference of the world
12:48When most people still thought it was flat
12:52To devise steam engines, water pumps and suspension bridges
13:02But Socrates was not interested in the mechanics of the physical world
13:10He would use this new way of thinking using reason and logic to study people
13:16The great change comes with Socrates
13:19Who turns his back, so to speak, to the world of nature
13:23What he cares about is the individual
13:26You become an object of study and care
13:33Socrates
13:33Socrates spent his days in conversation
13:35Walking the streets of Athens
13:37Talking and debating with anyone he met
13:40With over 150,000 people now packed behind Athens' walls
13:44He was in his element
13:47One of the amazing things about Socrates
13:49Is that he is the first fanatical urban individual
13:54He loves the city
13:58He makes life in the city one of his major concerns
14:04Socrates' life was spent questioning the assumptions
14:07His fellow Athenians held about their lives
14:10What they felt was right and wrong
14:12What was good and bad
14:16And he was happy to turn convention upside down
14:29One of Socrates' followers recorded how
14:32At the end of a drunken dinner party
14:34Socrates proved to a fellow guest
14:36That he was in fact the better looking of the two
14:40My eyes must be more beautiful
14:42Because they bulge out
14:44And therefore I can see better
14:46And by the same account
14:48My nose is more beautiful
14:50Because my nostrils flare out
14:52And so I can therefore gather in more smells
14:58This is typical Socrates
15:00Using reason and logic to examine the world in you
15:07Socrates says
15:09You must make every decision based on your own understanding
15:15Of what is good and what is not good
15:17What is right and what is wrong
15:20For Socrates this freedom of thought was paramount
15:24Even if it meant upsetting the whole notion of a beautiful nose
15:29I tell you
15:31I tell you
15:31Let no day pass without discussing all the things about which you hear me talking
15:36A life without this sort of examination
15:39Is not worth living
15:47But as Socrates spent his days in debate
15:49His city was fighting a war
15:57The Spartans invaded Athenian territory and set about burning all the farmland around the city
16:06The Athenians became increasingly anxious
16:08They could only watch from the city walls as their fields and crops were destroyed
16:15But such was Peritles reputation
16:17He managed to convince the Athenians to stick with his plan
16:22The city could rely on her fleet and shipments from overseas to survive
16:28Little did Peritles know that this fleet now carried an even greater threat
16:43One year into the war
16:45The grain boats that fed the city brought with them an additional cargo
16:50Plague
16:53A disease that would now devastate Athens
16:58Peritles' plan
16:59Couldn't anticipate difficulties that we now would suggest were rather likely
17:05In those circumstances of crowding
17:07And the results were horrendous
17:11With the population crammed behind the city walls
17:14The affliction spread like wildfire
17:18The symptoms were horrific
17:20The Athenian historian Thucydides who lived through these years
17:25Recorded its effects
17:27The body was suddenly seized
17:29First with violent heats around the head and redness and inflammation of the eyes
17:35And then the disease descended into the bowels
17:39Producing violent ulceration and uncontrollable diarrhea
17:44The sufferings of individuals seemed almost beyond the capacity of human nature
17:53The city must have looked terrible, smelled terrible, been awful to be in
17:59And terror must have reigned everywhere
18:03And terror must have reigned everywhere
18:29One upon another
18:30And half-dead creatures reeled about the streets
18:33The catastrophe became so overwhelming
18:36That men cared nothing for any rule of religion or law
18:43The plague's effects on Athens were absolutely devastating
18:46The whole fabric of Athenian society broke down
18:50Morally, people saw no point in being good
18:52Why be good if the good and the evil die just as easily?
19:05The plague would kill over a third of Athens' population
19:12And then it struck the city's figurehead
19:16Peritles
19:22Plutarch, Peritles' biographer, described his symptoms
19:26The plague seized Peritles, not with sharp and violent fits
19:31But with a dull and lingering distemper
19:34Wasting the strength of his body
19:37And undermining his noble soul
19:43By the end, the patrician hero of the city was reduced to relying on potions and magic in an attempt
19:50to cure itself
19:56He showed one of his friends a charm that a woman had hung around his neck
20:00As if to say that he was very sick indeed when he would admit of such foolery as this
20:18He was very sick for the time
20:19Finally, after six months of lingering illness
20:22Peritles died in 429 BC
20:36Peritles had planned to make Athens into the Mediterranean's greatest power, but his carefully
20:44calculated strategy had brought only disease and death.
20:52Like most brilliant men, like most people who have had great success all their lives, Peritles
20:58simply underestimated the degree to which some things are out of the control of the very
21:03best intelligence and the very best knowledge that there are.
21:21Peritles' death would have far-reaching consequences.
21:27It soon became clear that this one man had been the linchpin of the Athenian state.
21:35Plutarch records that the changes were swift and dramatic.
21:40Those who, while he lived, had resented Peritles' great authority, now realized that he had
21:46been the main protector of public safety.
21:48So great a corruption and such a flood of mischief and vice followed.
21:58The flaws in Athenian democracy now became apparent.
22:05Without a single strong leader, countless figures now scrambled for the top position.
22:10And they were prepared to do anything the people wanted if it gave them power.
22:18Peritles' successors, who now wanted to occupy the top position, simply followed the prejudices
22:24and passions of the masses in order to gain support.
22:35Athenian democracy now revealed a new and terrifying potential.
22:40The potential to slide into mob rule, crippling her ability to fight a war.
22:59As the conflict raged on, an Athenian naval force won a skirmish with the Spartans in rough
23:04and storm-tossed seas.
23:05The generals who had commanded the force returned to Athens, expecting a hero's welcome.
23:19Instead, they were thrown into prison.
23:28The storm had forced the Athenian commanders to sail straight back to Athens, without picking
23:35up any of the soldiers who had fallen overboard during the battle.
23:41Rabble-rousing speakers had convinced the assembly that this failure to rescue the men was a crime
23:47so appalling that all the generals should be summarily tried and executed.
23:58We know of only one man who stood up and attempted to calm the fevered assembly.
24:04Socrates.
24:08Socrates.
24:09Socrates alone and against the very, very serious and vocal and aggressive and mad, furious reaction
24:19of the public stood his ground and said it was the wrong thing to do.
24:22He was going to vote against it.
24:26Socrates' principle of questioning the society he lived in now had a real and practical purpose.
24:36He refused to bow to any pressure and thought for himself and do the thing that his conscience
24:46and his reasoning told him was the right thing to do.
24:56But in the end, Socrates was only one voice amongst the multitude and he could not sway the assembly.
25:07The generals were condemned to death by drinking poisonous hemlock.
25:21It would be a terrible loss to Athens' war effort.
25:39With the assembly in the hands of self-interested despots, once mighty Athens began to lose her way.
25:49After the death of Pericles, Athens never again had a political leader with a well thought out general picture or
25:59a set of goals that he could pursue with reasonable hope of bringing them to fruition.
26:08The war against Sparta degenerated into a bitter, dragging conflict that spread over a decade.
26:18The Spartans ravaged the land around Athens.
26:23And the Athens' war against Athens.
26:24And the Athenian fleet kept the city supplied.
26:31Neither side was able to defeat the other.
26:39Deprived of victory, the Athenians grew increasingly frustrated.
26:45Were they not the greatest state in all of Greece?
26:49Surely the time must come for Athens to prove her power once and for all.
27:09Then in the year 416 BC, a daring proposal was put before the assembly.
27:18A proposal which, even if it did not defeat the Spartans, would at least satisfy Athens' hunger for glory.
27:28A small Greek colony on the island of Sicily had asked for protection.
27:33Protection from a neighbour allied with Sparta.
27:37Why should the Athenians not come to their aid, humiliate their Spartan adversary, and perhaps conquer all of Sicily at
27:45the same time?
27:46As one Athenian addressed the assembly,
27:49This is the way we won our empire.
27:52And this is the way all empires have been won.
27:54Let us set out on this expedition.
27:56For it will destroy the arrogance of the Spartans.
27:59And at the same time, we shall become rulers of all Greece.
28:10It was a bold plan to be executed on a vast scale.
28:17Requiring a great fleet of warships and a landing force of over 10,000 men.
28:23The Athenians threw themselves into the project with fervour.
28:31Armourers beat out new weapons.
28:34Soldiers tested out their equipment.
28:38Stores were loaded onto a fleet of Athenian triremes.
28:44And the shipwrights prepared their vessels for the sea.
28:52Then, to great fanfare, the mighty invasion force set out for Sicily.
29:16Six months later, word came back.
29:21The campaign was not going as quickly as hoped.
29:24They needed reinforcements.
29:31And then, nothing.
29:33No news at all.
29:46Then, in the autumn of 413 BC, a sailor arrived in the city.
29:55A man who needed a haircut.
30:01And as he talked to his barber, he told an appalling tale.
30:06Of a vast and terrible slaughter.
30:13It was the story of an invading army that had been pinned down where it landed.
30:19Of how its leaders had argued with each other about strategy.
30:24Of how their food and water had run out.
30:27Of how they'd attempted to ford a great river in a desperate attempt to escape.
30:38They rushed into it.
30:40All discipline lost.
30:42And every man wanting to cross first.
30:44They fell over each other and trod each other underfoot.
30:48And they drank thirstily.
30:49The water was foul.
30:50But still they went on drinking.
30:52Mud, blood and all.
30:54The dead lying thick in the river bed.
31:18This was how the Athenians discovered that they had been the victims of one of the greatest defeats in ancient
31:23history.
31:27Over 50,000 men had been killed or taken prisoner.
31:34Two entire fleets of Athens' prized triremes had been destroyed.
31:39The Sicilian campaign is a mess for a variety of reasons.
31:43First of all, it's a long way away.
31:45It's over six or seven hundred miles.
31:48Once they arrive, they squabble and fight about what to do.
31:53But perhaps the biggest problem is there's not a tactical reason to do it.
31:58There's not a strategic reason to do it.
32:00The motivation is highly self-interested.
32:06The Athenians, entranced by a vision of imperial glory, had in fact engaged in a pointless and vain campaign.
32:15They believed it wrongly that they could go quickly in, raise the countryside and win a quick victory and a
32:22rich tributary subject state.
32:30This was the most notorious action that we know of in Greek history, for they were absolutely, calamitously defeated.
32:40The losses were total.
32:43Army, navy, everything was destroyed.
33:02With Athens' military power now crippled, her enemies began to close in.
33:12The Persians, whom the Athenians had humiliated 50 years before, now saw the ideal opportunity for revenge.
33:23They approached the Spartans with the offer of help.
33:27The Persians have been watching this carefully, and they decide to intervene and subsidize the Spartans.
33:34And that subsidy is in the form of manpower for rowing and fleet construction.
33:40Where previously the Spartans had never been a naval nation.
33:44Now they had a fleet, paid for with Persian gold.
33:54With Athens' navy decimated by the defeat in Sicily, the Spartans could now blockade the Athenian harbors.
34:03The great grain convoys from Egypt and the colonies could no longer get through.
34:10And finally the Athenians began to starve in the streets.
34:23The people turned to their patron goddess, Athena.
34:31At the height of Athens' glory only 30 years before,
34:35Peritles had honoured her with the most glorious temple ever seen.
34:43But the goddess could offer no help now.
34:51Athens, one so sure of her pre-eminence in the Greek world, was now home to a population ravaged by
34:58plague and war.
35:01Besieged and starving.
35:05With her treasuries empty and her once proud fleet crippled.
35:11In 404 BC, Athens finally surrendered to the Spartan commander, Lysander.
35:32The Spartans' tomes were heavy.
35:37The great walls which had defended the city were to be torn down.
35:43Her fleet was to be destroyed.
35:51We have this wonderful scene of Lysander sailing into the Piraeus and dismantling the Athenian fleet.
35:58That's important because the destruction is symbolically a destruction of the Athenian Empire.
36:08What remained of Athens' mighty navy was put to the torch, with only 12 ships allowed to remain.
36:19No longer would she rule the Mediterranean.
36:28The Athenians became convinced that they could do, finally, in the end, more than they really could.
36:37And I think this is really the point in which the potential that Athenian democracy brought about could turn to
36:47tragedy.
36:50They could achieve great things, they could not achieve all great things.
36:56But it would still take one more act of vanity and violence before the Athenians could redeem themselves.
37:06And their city could be reborn.
37:25Humiliated, their empire lost.
37:27The Athenians looked for someone to take the blame for their defeat.
37:34They searched for an enemy within their city walls.
37:37Someone who had dared to question their dreams of supremacy.
37:45They searched for Socrates.
37:49Socrates was a critic.
37:52He was critical of the thinking and the thought processes of his fellow citizens.
37:58And he was critical about the public affairs of Athens.
38:06For over 50 years, Socrates had been publicly questioning and attacking the traditions of Athenian life.
38:13And around him, he had gathered a group of youthful followers.
38:17Surely this must have weakened the city's moral character, undermined her hunger for victory.
38:25On the command of the assembly, Socrates was arrested.
38:30On charges of questioning the state religion and corrupting the youth of the city.
38:38I am quite sure that, especially in a relatively small society like Athens,
38:44someone who is constantly questioning the principles by which the society has traditionally governed itself,
38:51who he perceived as a very major danger by at least some people in society.
38:57You can easily see that a few hundred people might want him out.
39:00And they did.
39:03The Athenians were now put to trial the one man who dared to question the way they lived their lives.
39:27Socrates' trial would be held in Athens' central marketplace,
39:32under a canopy to shade the fierce heat of the Greek sun.
39:37He would be tried by a jury of his fellow citizens, chosen at random.
39:47But this would not be a trial we would recognize.
39:51The Athenian legal system was remarkably different from a modern system.
39:54There are no lawyers involved with this.
39:57There is no trained judge involved with this.
40:01It is in some ways a very frightening system from a modern point of view.
40:06The law did not have the same stature in Athens that it has in a modern society.
40:15Socrates would be judged by the same kind of group he had watched condemn six generals to summary execution seven
40:21years before.
40:27He would be given only a limited time to defend himself.
40:30All speeches in the Athenian courts were timed by a water clock.
40:37One jar of water steadily running into another.
40:45But Socrates shows no fear in the face of his accusers.
40:49In fact, he is positively stubborn.
40:53He explains that far from corrupting Athens, his life of questioning has done nothing but improve the city.
41:01To put it bluntly, I have been assigned to this city as if to a large horse which is inclined
41:07to be lazy and is in need of some great stinging fly.
41:11And all day long, I will never cease to settle here, there, everywhere, rousing and reproving every one of you.
41:23It is not an approach designed to win sympathy.
41:26Socrates is setting himself and his life against the entire Athenian state.
41:34He is doing what he thinks is the right thing to do.
41:38He thinks the life he has chosen, this life of thinking for yourself, is the best life.
41:44As he says in his speech, the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
41:56If Socrates had simply apologised to the court, he might well have been acquitted.
42:02But instead, he demands free dinners for life, for all the work he has done.
42:09I can just imagine what that jury and the audience of that trial must have thought at the time.
42:16There must have been absolute speeches.
42:19When the final vote came, the verdict could hardly have been a surprise.
42:28The court found Socrates guilty with the penalty of death.
42:37But Socrates reacted with calm and serenity.
42:45Well now, it is time to be off, I to die and you to live.
42:52But which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but heaven.
43:06Socrates was taken from the court to Athen's prison.
43:15The site of this prison still exists.
43:18We can still trace the layout of the cell in which Socrates was probably held.
43:28And we still have accounts of Socrates' last days from friends who visited him in his cell.
43:38They are among the most famous Greek writings.
43:44For with his death, Socrates would transform Athens.
43:52He would show his fellow citizens that the principles of reason, of questioning the world, were something worth dying for.
44:04Socrates would be executed in the traditional Athenian manner, by drinking hemlock.
44:13Some of the hemlock cups used for the poison are still preserved.
44:20Death by hemlock is excruciatingly painful, causing gradual paralysis of the central nervous system.
44:32But as the moment of his execution drew near, Socrates turned to his friends, treating the whole affair as if
44:38it were nothing at all.
44:41For me, the fated hour calls.
44:44For me, the fated hour calls.
44:45In other words, I think it's about time I took my bath.
44:48I prefer to wash before drinking the poison, rather than give the women the bother of washing me when I
44:56am dead.
44:59But as the hemlock was poured, his friends broke down.
45:05We have the account of one named Fido.
45:10In spite of myself, the tears came pouring down, so that I covered my face and wept broken heartedly.
45:18And then everyone in the room broke down, except Socrates himself, who said,
45:24Really, my friends, what a way to behave.
45:27I am told that one should make one's end in a reverent silence.
45:31Calm yourselves and be brave.
45:41As Socrates lay back on his bed and let the poison take effect, his friends watched in silence.
45:48Here was a man who was dying not for glory, not for fame and honor,
45:53but for the sake of his principles, because he believed that man should question the world around him.
46:00It was a sight they would never forget.
46:08Socrates, in his life and in his death, becomes a completely new Greek hero.
46:19From now on, the hero is a person of conviction, a person who will follow nothing but the dictates of
46:28his intellectual conscience.
46:29And that is a new conception of what a human being is like and what a good human being must
46:36be like.
46:50For centuries, the Athenians had believed in one ideal.
46:56The vision of a martial warrior hero.
47:03It had driven them to conquer great foes, to build a mighty empire.
47:09But now, in the depths of defeat, they discovered a new figure to venerate.
47:17Effigies of Socrates have been found amongst the ruins of the Athenian prison.
47:24Perhaps offerings to the dead philosopher.
47:27Perhaps the most important lesson that Socrates left is the need to be critical and the need to be self
47:35-critical.
47:38The interesting thing that I see in Athens, in the years after the execution of Socrates, is this same capacity
47:46to look at themselves and recognize that they have perhaps gone too far in the past and indeed to embrace
47:57a certain kind of maturity.
48:01Athens was never again a great imperial power.
48:07But neither did her democracy lapse again into mob rule.
48:16Instead, she became a city of intellectual inquiry.
48:23A haven of study and discussion.
48:28Where Socrates' students and his students' students slowly began to build a world based on reason.
48:39Plato tried to formulate the ideal society.
48:45Aristotle studied nature, establishing biology and zoology.
48:52And slowly the ideas and work of these Greek thinkers began to spread across the known world.
49:01One could say that a major part of the energy of the Athenians turns into building what one might call
49:11empires of thought.
49:14So where before you had Athens sending its ships to the various islands in order to collect taxes, here you
49:21have reason extending its dominion over all areas in which our lives are actually lived.
49:33Socrates' principles of reason, of questioning assumptions and the world around you, still endure.
49:47In the space of less than 200 years, the ancient Greeks transformed their world.
49:56For amongst these ruins, a few great figures carved a mighty empire.
50:04They invented democracy and politics.
50:09Science and philosophy.
50:13They gave us literature and drama.
50:17Art and monuments which still take our breath away.
50:24And ultimately, these Greeks taught us how to reason and think.
50:32Two and a half thousand years later, their astonishing achievements continue to shape our world.
50:38They started to series, and the modern Olympics.
50:40One hundred years later, theirчески went on.
50:49Two hundred years later, their
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