En Lin Wei wrote:

  How many Greek rulers
> were depositing their excess funds in Persian or Phoenician banks--- a la
> Mobutu Sese Seko?  :


Oh come on Wei. Grabbing the gold and running off to join the Persians was
common practice at that time. Amongst those inarguably argumentative Greeks.
Take another look at your beloved Alcibiades. As for that wonderful democracy
that was ruled by 500 of its leading citizens, let's talk about how they put
20,000 people, the inhabitants of Delos--men, women and children to the sword
on a single day for refusing to join in an alliance with them. Let us talk
about their disastrous attempts at trying to bring Sicily under their control.

Plutarch: you are of course talking about a Romanized Greek living under the
benefices of an empire at the peak of its power and enlightenment. Since he
lived over half a millennium after the fact, his analogues on the nature of
Classical Greek personalities with more recent Roman figures is based largely
on secondary sources.

Your tyrannicide, Marcus Junius Brutus, was, after the death of Crassus, the
leading loan shark in Rome. For a good idea of how he dealt with defaulters
check out Cicero's account of his treatment of Scaptius and the Salaminians.
He was a corporate entity, a leading member of an elitist power-hungry
oligarchy who looked upon Rome as their private fiefdom. The civil wars they
created in their constant quest for maintaining exclusivity created in its
turn, the need for a Caesar.

And amid all this, with talk of Aristotle, I note that you give short shrift
to Plato--whose idea of a republic makes anything Kung-tzu supposedly said
look positively anarchic in comparison. But I also note that you blindly
romanticize your pantheon--Buddhism, Taoism, Classical Greece (and whatever
else-- I'm sure it will come to the fore inevitably)--much with the same
behavior for which you have no end of criticism regarding Pound. Time to
re-tool Wei. You are stretching the supply lines a bit thin.

P.S. I believe the term you seek is *philhellenism*.

GAVIN