How exceptional were the Ancient Greeks?

I don't know too much about the Greeks or Romans, but Qin didn't create the Chinese ideal of unification, and I think it might be going to far to say they created most of the existing traits of Chinese culture.

Well, let me put it this way: after Qin died, nobody in China resurrected the old states, while people kept trying to fine tune the infrastructure of the dynastic system......
 
Well, let me put it this way: after Qin died, nobody in China resurrected the old states, while people kept trying to fine tune the infrastructure of the dynastic system......

That's the thing: the Han Dynasty still kept the old states and created their own kingdoms, but was responsible for finally getting rid of them, after they rebelled. In addition, while I don't know too much about the period, I know that as late as the 10th century, regional rulers were naming their petty kingdoms after the old states that were long gone: Wu, Wuyue, Min, Chu, Former Shu, and Later Shu. Now, I think that by the 10th century the ideal of a unified China was too strong, but it shows that there was some regional attachment for a long time, and the ideals of unification were there, but not fully established, by Qin.
 
the silly answer: Of course the Greeks where exeptional, that's why we give them so much money today!

the controversal answer: If we (in Europe) wouldn't point out the Greeks we would have to point out the Jews as the base of our society, maybe there is more antisemitism in our society than I thought. :mad:

They invented the hexameter, which is really something special.
Illias and Odysee are unique.


I think this discussion would benefit from recognition that "exception" and "absolutely unparallelled unique" are different things.

Also that a civilization can have more than one base. I'd say that the West rests on a tripod of the Classical West (Greeks, Hellenism, Romans); the Jews (via Christianity); and Celto-German practices and culture.
 
That's the thing: the Han Dynasty still kept the old states and created their own kingdoms, but was responsible for finally getting rid of them, after they rebelled. In addition, while I don't know too much about the period, I know that as late as the 10th century, regional rulers were naming their petty kingdoms after the old states that were long gone: Wu, Wuyue, Min, Chu, Former Shu, and Later Shu. Now, I think that by the 10th century the ideal of a unified China was too strong, but it shows that there was some regional attachment for a long time, and the ideals of unification were there, but not fully established, by Qin.

One pattern you see in history sometimes is that after a warring states period you get a ruthless conqueror who tries and usually succeeds at destroying the old system but he is widely hated for it, so he is succeeded by a group that consolidates his gains while going through the motions of respecting the old systems. Augustus and the Han are fairly similar in that way.
 
One pattern you see in history sometimes is that after a warring states period you get a ruthless conqueror who tries and usually succeeds at destroying the old system but he is widely hated for it, so he is succeeded by a group that consolidates his gains while going through the motions of respecting the old systems. Augustus and the Han are fairly similar in that way.

I agree, though I would suggest that initially Han considered putting the old ways back in place, before discarding them for a Qin-like state. I'm saying that it would be wrong to say Qin created this idea of a unified China when none existed before, which has stayed in place till now. I would argue that the idea of a unified China goes further, to at least the Zhou or Shang Dynasties, and even after Qin Shi Huang put it in place, people still tried to recreate the old states.
 
I agree, though I would suggest that initially Han considered putting the old ways back in place, before discarding them for a Qin-like state.

Reasonable. Scholars still debate whether Augusts was actually trying to partially restore the Republic but was frustrated because no one really wanted it anymore.
 
That's the thing: the Han Dynasty still kept the old states and created their own kingdoms, but was responsible for finally getting rid of them, after they rebelled. In addition, while I don't know too much about the period, I know that as late as the 10th century, regional rulers were naming their petty kingdoms after the old states that were long gone: Wu, Wuyue, Min, Chu, Former Shu, and Later Shu. Now, I think that by the 10th century the ideal of a unified China was too strong, but it shows that there was some regional attachment for a long time, and the ideals of unification were there, but not fully established, by Qin.

Liu Bang didn't want a restoration of the Ancien Regime, that would be the other movements the Han Dynasty suppressed to establish itself. They were invariably crushed and the Han replaced Qin Legalism with a version that removed the harsher edges but was otherwise more similar than dissimilar. By the time the regime collapsed 400 years later there were new successor states, but all of them wanted to be the new Son of Heaven's starting point, not the recreation of a divided China with a different framework.

I agree, though I would suggest that initially Han considered putting the old ways back in place, before discarding them for a Qin-like state. I'm saying that it would be wrong to say Qin created this idea of a unified China when none existed before, which has stayed in place till now. I would argue that the idea of a unified China goes further, to at least the Zhou or Shang Dynasties, and even after Qin Shi Huang put it in place, people still tried to recreate the old states.

I would disagree with that, in that the Han defeated the movements that really did want the old order. The triumph of an army founded by a peasant is hardly a reflection that a peasant would want a recreation of the old system.

Reasonable. Scholars still debate whether Augusts was actually trying to partially restore the Republic but was frustrated because no one really wanted it anymore.

I think that Augustus never really wanted the Republic back, he was just smart enough to avoid getting shafted by being too overt about autocratic power. That was his ancestor's mistake and he learned it a bit too well given his failure to resolve the succession issue opened the problem of the civil war as succession, now not to establish but to take over the Empire.
 
Liu Bang didn't want a restoration of the Ancien Regime, that would be the other movements the Han Dynasty suppressed to establish itself. They were invariably crushed and the Han replaced Qin Legalism with a version that removed the harsher edges but was otherwise more similar than dissimilar. By the time the regime collapsed 400 years later there were new successor states, but all of them wanted to be the new Son of Heaven's starting point, not the recreation of a divided China with a different framework.



I would disagree with that, in that the Han defeated the movements that really did want the old order. The triumph of an army founded by a peasant is hardly a reflection that a peasant would want a recreation of the old system.

With Liu Bang, there is some debate whether he wanted the status quo back initially. I don't agree with that though, so you're probably right. I'm trying to say that China wasn't unified completely by the Qin, and that regional identities remained, though very weakly. All of the later states did work within Qin's framework, yes, but in a sense they were also worked out of a sense of Chinese unity that dated back to the Zhou (even if such unity didn't actually exist).

And you're contradicting yourself: you just said nobody recreated the old states (which is mostly true), and then you turn around and said the Han Dynasty crushed the movements which did try to bring back the old states. So, in that sense, it was the Han, not the Qin, that stopped people from bringing back the old states.
 
With Liu Bang, there is some debate whether he wanted the status quo back initially. I don't agree with that though, so you're probably right. I'm trying to say that China wasn't unified completely by the Qin, and that regional identities remained, though very weakly. All of the later states did work within Qin's framework, yes, but in a sense they were also worked out of a sense of Chinese unity that dated back to the Zhou (even if such unity didn't actually exist).

And you're contradicting yourself: you just said nobody recreated the old states (which is mostly true), and then you turn around and said the Han Dynasty crushed the movements which did try to bring back the old states. So, in that sense, it was the Han, not the Qin, that stopped people from bringing back the old states.

What I said is not contradictory: Qin destroyed them, which is why after 2,000 years of their growing and developing as entities in their own right the Han so easily and simply crushed the attempts to restore them. If the Qin had been less efficient at destroying them, the attempts would have been more successful and more enduring, and instead of attempts would have seen actual restorations.
 
What I said is not contradictory: Qin destroyed them, which is why after 2,000 years of their growing and developing as entities in their own right the Han so easily and simply crushed the attempts to restore them. If the Qin had been less efficient at destroying them, the attempts would have been more successful and more enduring, and instead of attempts would have seen actual restorations.

I apologize because my thoughts have been disorganized. So I'll try to re-state them. After Qin's fall, Xiang Yu and Liu Bang were both theoretically working for King Huai of Chu, as Chu had been reconstituted. This was an actual, if short-lived, restoration. In addition, Liu Bang also set in place subordinate kingdoms and marquisates in the Zhou style of feudal kinship as opposed to Qin's straight-up commanderies and prefectures. For a short period after the fall of the Qin Empire, there were maybe five years (approximately) when the kingdoms conquered by Qin became temporarily reformed. Liu Bang initially stuck with Zhou-style feudalism, but eventually the autonomy of these subordinates was whittled down. This was a 30-year process. I'm not disagreeing that Qin's unification of China is significant, because only a fool would disagree with that idea, but I'm saying Qin didn't finish the job of unifying China, and even after Qin, old ideas continued even if the old system didn't.

Now, back to your initial points: As to the idea that Qin laid down the ideal of unification, I disagree because the ideal of a unified China dates back to the Zhou or Shang, which were the first (non-imperial) dynasties, and was implemented after the Qin under the Han. Second, I wouldn't say that the Qin created "most" of the existing traits of Chinese culture, though it certainly was very significant.
 
- Where you also taught at school that Ancient Greeks were somehow "special"? Or where they, for you, just another Ancient people? Where you not taught about them at all? (Please state what's your home country)
(1) I went to secondary school in the late nineties, not sure if it's the same now. I wouldn't think so.
As for me I went to school in the late eighties in the USSR.
I was also taught at school that Ancient Greeks were somehow "special".
I was taught that there emerged individualism, free will, democracy and things like that.

But what was most important (I was tought) - Ancient Greece was the place where the "real art" appeared. As opposed to the "somehow underdeveloped and a bit primitive" arts of all other cultures.
Sculpture, painting, architecture and the like.
I guess it was somehow connected with "socialist realism" culture of the Soviet Union which was strictly based on the classic arts of ancient Greece/Rome (something like it was in the Nazi Hitler's Germany).
Actually all history of the Soviet Union was surprisingly europocentric.


As for my personal opinion I am very close to the following things said in this thread:
Well, the Greeks are overrated because their culture ultimately produced deriatives/intellectual descendants that became the first civilization in the world to achieve an Industrial Revolution. And whichever Civilization of sufficient size achieve an Industrial Revolution first, odds are, they'd impose and influence their terminology, aspects of their culture, much of their language, units and measurement, philosophy and thought on most of the world.

I'm sure if the West somehow was prevented from achieving an Enlightenment/Scientific/ Industrial Revolution by two or three centuries, in all probability, the Greeks would just be an obscure backwater culture that laid the foundations of a not so important (but highly temperate) Peninsular sticking out of the western end of the Eurasian Landmass.....

All of humanity is just something stolen from East Africa ;)

The Greeks did have put their own, original spin on everything that went through Greece. They even made some new things. Paradigms shifted in Greece, just as they had shifted in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India. Greece was just a new 'generation' in a belt of more or less continuous civilization that stretched from the Ganges to the Mediterranean. Just like each new generation of people takes what their predecessors did, changes it, and adds to it, the same applies to civilizations.
 
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