The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
In the populist democracy of 5th-century BC Athens, heroes fell as quickly as they rose.
After Pericles died, the Peloponnesian War with Sparta (431-404 BC) was carried on by other leaders in the radical democracy of Athens, including his nephew Alcibiades, and Nicias. Fighting a war and pleasing a people that brooked no failure in their heroes was not an easy matter.
The leader of 5th-century BC Athens lavished public money on the city and its adoring citizens, and wherever he led they followed.
The story of Pericles, the 5th-century BC Athenian leader, is one of personal magnetism and a matchless cultural legacy, and also a warning. Democracy should give us the freedom to demand more of ourselves. If we use it merely to demand more from politicians, we corrupt ourselves and them too.
The prospect of facing daunting odds made his cousin quail, but Henry V acted like a true King.
The centrepiece of William Shakespeare’s play Henry V (?1599) is the Battle of Agincourt on October 25th, 1415, when Henry V clashed with the Dauphin (heir to the French crown) in a winner-takes-all struggle for England’s estates in France. That morning, an edgy Duke of Westmoreland regrets not bringing more men from England; but his cousin, King Henry, will have none of such talk.