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