Apartheid
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which encouraged state repression of Black African and Asian South Africans for the benefit of the nation's minority white population; the economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day. Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into petty apartheid, which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, grand apartheid, which dictated housing and employment opportunities by race. Prior to the 1940s, some aspects of apartheid had emerged in the form of minority rule by White South Africans and the enforced separation of Black South Africans from other races, which extended to pass laws and land apportionment. Apartheid was adopted as a formal policy by the South African government after the election of the National Party at the 1948 general election.
A codified system of racial stratification began to take form in South Africa under the Dutch Empire in the late-eighteenth century, although informal segregation was present much earlier due to social cleavages between Dutch colonists and a creolised, ethnically diverse slave population. With the rapid growth and industrialisation of the British Cape Colony in the nineteenth century, racial policies and laws became rigid. Cape legislation that discriminated against Black South Africans began appearing shortly before 1900; the policies of the Boer republics were racially exclusive. The first apartheid law was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949, followed by the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950, which made it illegal for most South African citizens to marry or pursue sexual relationships across racial lines; the Population Registration Act, 1950 classified all South Africans into one of four racial groups based on appearance, known ancestry, socioeconomic status, cultural lifestyle: "Black", "White", "Coloured", "Indian", the last two of which included several sub-classifications.
Places of residence were determined by racial classification. From 1960–1983, 3.5 million Non-White South Africans were removed from their homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods, in one of the largest mass evictions in modern history. Most of these targeted removals were intended to restrict the Black population to ten designated "tribal homelands" known as bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states; the government announced that relocated persons would lose their South African citizenship as they were absorbed into the bantustans. Apartheid sparked significant international and domestic opposition, resulting in some of the most influential global social movements of the twentieth century, it was the target of frequent condemnation in the United Nations and brought about an extensive arms and trade embargo on South Africa. During the 1970s and 1980s, internal resistance to apartheid became militant, prompting brutal crackdowns by the National Party government and protracted sectarian violence that left thousands dead or in detention.
Some reforms of the apartheid system were undertaken, including allowing for Indian and Coloured political representation in parliament, but these measures failed to appease most activist groups. Between 1987 and 1993, the National Party entered into bilateral negotiations with the African National Congress, the leading anti-apartheid political movement, for ending segregation and introducing majority rule. In 1990, prominent ANC figures such as Nelson Mandela were released from prison. Apartheid legislation was repealed on 17 June 1991, pending democratic, multiracial elections set for April 1994. Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness", or "the state of being apart" "apart-hood", its first recorded use was in 1929. Under the 1806 Cape Articles of Capitulation the new British colonial rulers were required to respect previous legislation enacted under Roman Dutch law and this led to a separation of the law in South Africa from English Common Law and a high degree of legislative autonomy.
The governors and assemblies that governed the legal process in the various colonies of South Africa were launched on a different and independent legislative path from the rest of the British Empire. In the days of slavery, slaves required passes to travel away from their masters. In 1797 the Landdrost and Heemraden of Swellendam and Graaff-Reinet extended pass laws beyond slaves and ordained that all Khoikhoi moving about the country for any purpose should carry passes; this was confirmed by the British Colonial government in 1809 by the Hottentot Proclamation, which decreed that if a Khoikhoi were to move they would need a pass from their master or a local official. Ordinance No. 49 of 1828 decreed that prospective black immigrants were to be granted passes for the sole purpose of seeking work. These passes were to be issued for Coloureds and Khoikhoi, but not for other Africans, who were still forced to carry passes; the United Kingdom's Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British Empire and overrode the Cape Articles of Capitulation.
To comply with the act the South African legislation was expanded to include Ordinance 1 in 1835, which changed the status of slaves to indentured labourers. This was followed by Ordinance 3 in 1848, which introduced an indenture system for Xhosa, little different from slave
Greco-Persian Wars
The Greco-Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire and Greek city-states that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered the Greek-inhabited region of Ionia in 547 BC. Struggling to rule the independent-minded cities of Ionia, the Persians appointed tyrants to rule each of them; this would prove to be the source of much trouble for the Persians alike. In 499 BC, the tyrant of Miletus, embarked on an expedition to conquer the island of Naxos, with Persian support; this was the beginning of the Ionian Revolt, which would last until 493 BC, progressively drawing more regions of Asia Minor into the conflict. Aristagoras secured military support from Athens and Eretria, in 498 BC these forces helped to capture and burn the Persian regional capital of Sardis; the Persian king Darius the Great vowed to have revenge on Eretria for this act.
The revolt continued, with the two sides stalemated throughout 497–495 BC. In 494 BC, the Persians regrouped, attacked the epicentre of the revolt in Miletus. At the Battle of Lade, the Ionians suffered a decisive defeat, the rebellion collapsed, with the final members being stamped out the following year. Seeking to secure his empire from further revolts and from the interference of the mainland Greeks, Darius embarked on a scheme to conquer Greece and to punish Athens and Eretria for the burning of Sardis; the first Persian invasion of Greece began in 492 BC, with the Persian general Mardonius re-subjugating Thrace and Macedon before several mishaps forced an early end to the rest of the campaign. In 490 BC a second force was sent to Greece, this time across the Aegean Sea, under the command of Datis and Artaphernes; this expedition subjugated the Cyclades, before besieging and razing Eretria. However, while en route to attack Athens, the Persian force was decisively defeated by the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon, ending Persian efforts for the time being.
Darius began to plan to conquer Greece, but died in 486 BC and responsibility for the conquest passed to his son Xerxes. In 480 BC, Xerxes led the second Persian invasion of Greece with one of the largest ancient armies assembled. Victory over the allied Greek states at the famous Battle of Thermopylae allowed the Persians to torch an evacuated Athens and overrun most of Greece. However, while seeking to destroy the combined Greek fleet, the Persians suffered a severe defeat at the Battle of Salamis; the following year, the confederated Greeks went on the offensive, decisively defeating the Persian army at the Battle of Plataea, ending the invasion of Greece by the Achaemenid Empire. The allied Greeks followed up their success by destroying the rest of the Persian fleet at the Battle of Mycale, before expelling Persian garrisons from Sestos and Byzantium. Following the Persian withdrawal from Europe and the Greek victory at Mycale and the city states of Ionia regained their independence; the actions of the general Pausanias at the siege of Byzantium alienated many of the Greek states from the Spartans, the anti-Persian alliance was therefore reconstituted around Athenian leadership, called the Delian League.
The Delian League continued to campaign against Persia for the next three decades, beginning with the expulsion of the remaining Persian garrisons from Europe. At the Battle of the Eurymedon in 466 BC, the League won a double victory that secured freedom for the cities of Ionia. However, the League's involvement in the Egyptian revolt by Inaros II against Artaxerxes I resulted in a disastrous defeat, further campaigning was suspended. A Greek fleet was sent to Cyprus in 451 BC, but achieved little, when it withdrew, the Greco-Persian Wars drew to a quiet end; some historical sources suggest the end of hostilities was marked by a peace treaty between Athens and Persia, the Peace of Callias. All the primary sources for the Greco-Persian Wars are Greek. By some distance, the main source for the Greco-Persian Wars is the Greek historian Herodotus. Herodotus, called the "Father of History", was born in 484 BC in Halicarnassus, Asia Minor, he wrote his'Enquiries' around 440–430 BC, trying to trace the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars, which would still have been recent history.
Herodotus's approach was novel and, at least in Western society, he invented'history' as a discipline. As historian Tom Holland has it, "For the first time, a chronicler set himself to trace the origins of a conflict not to a past so remote so as to be utterly fabulous, nor to the whims and wishes of some god, nor to a people's claim to manifest destiny, but rather explanations he could verify personally."Some ancient historians, starting with Thucydides, criticised Herodotus and his methods. Thucydides chose to begin his history where Herodotus left off and felt Herodotus's history was accurate enough not to need re-writing or correcting. Plutarch criticised Herodotus in his essay "On The Malignity of Herodotus", describing Herodotus as "Philobarbaros" for not being pro-Greek enough, which suggests that Herodotus might have done a reasonable job of being even-handed. A negative view of Herodotus was passed on to Renaissance Europe, though he remained well re
Gore Vidal
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his patrician manner, epigrammatic wit, polished style of writing. Vidal was born to a political family, he was a Democratic Party politician. S. Senate; as a political commentator and essayist, Vidal's principal subject was the history of the United States and its society how the militaristic foreign policy reduced the country to a decadent empire. His political and cultural essays were published in The Nation, the New Statesman, the New York Review of Books, Esquire magazines; as a public intellectual, Gore Vidal's topical debates on sex and religion with other intellectuals and writers turned into quarrels with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr. and Norman Mailer. Vidal thought all men and women are bisexual; as a novelist Vidal explored the nature of corruption in private life. His polished and erudite style of narration evoked the time and place of his stories, perceptively delineated the psychology of his characters.
His third novel, The City and the Pillar, offended the literary and moral sensibilities of conservative book reviewers, with a dispassionately presented male homosexual relationship. In the historical novel genre, Vidal re-created in Julian the imperial world of Julian the Apostate, the Roman emperor who used general religious toleration to re-establish pagan polytheism to counter the political subversion of Christian monotheism. In the genre of social satire, Myra Breckinridge explores the mutability of gender role and sexual orientation as being social constructs established by social mores. In Burr and Lincoln, the protagonist is presented as "A Man of the People" and as "A Man" in a narrative exploration of how the public and private facets of personality affect the national politics of the United States. Eugene Louis Vidal was born in the cadet hospital of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, the only child of Eugene Luther Vidal and Nina S. Gore. Vidal was born there because his first lieutenant father was the first aeronautics instructor of the military academy.
The middle name, was a mistake on the part of his father, "who could not remember, for certain, whether his own name was Eugene Louis or Eugene Luther". In the memoir Palimpsest, Vidal said, "My birth certificate says'Eugene Louis Vidal': this was changed to Eugene Luther Vidal Jr.. The baptismal ceremony was effected so he "could be confirmed " at the Washington Cathedral, in February 1939, as "Eugene Luther Gore Vidal", he said that, although the surname "Gore" was added to his names at the time of the baptism, "I wasn't named for him, although he had a great influence on my life." In 1941, Vidal dropped his two first names, because he "wanted a sharp, distinctive name, appropriate for an aspiring author, or a national political leader... I wasn't going to write as'Gene' since there was one. I didn't want to use the'Jr.'" Eugene Luther Vidal Sr. was director of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Air Commerce during the Roosevelt Administration, was the great love of the aviator Amelia Earhart.
At the U. S. Military Academy, the exceptionally athletic Vidal Sr. had been a quarterback and captain of the football team. Subsequently, he competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics. In the 1920s and the 1930s, Vidal Sr. co-founded a railroad line. Gore's great-grandfather Eugen Fidel Vidal was born in Feldkirch, Austria, of Romansh background, had come to the U. S. with Gore's Swiss great-grandmother, Emma Hartmann. Vidal's mother, Nina Gore, was a socialite who made her Broadway theatre debut as an extra actress in Sign of the Leopard, in 1928. In 1922, Nina married Eugene Luther Vidal, Sr. and thirteen years in 1935, divorced him. Nina Gore Vidal was married two more times, she had "a long off-and-on affair" with the actor Clark Gable. As Nina Gore Auchincloss, Vidal's mother was an alternate delegate to the 1940 Democratic National Convention; the subsequent marriages of his mother and father yielded four half-siblings for Gore Vidal – Vance Vidal, Valerie Vidal, Thomas Gore Auchincloss, Nina Gore Auchincloss – and four step-brothers from his mother's third marriage to Robert Olds, a major general in the United States Army Air Forces, who died in 1943, 10 months after marrying Nina.
The nephews of Gore Vidal include Burr Steers, a writer and film director, Hugh Auchincloss Steers, a figurative painter. Raised in Washington, D. C. Vidal attended the St. Albans School. Given the blindness of his maternal grandfather, Senator Thomas Pryor Gore, of Oklahoma, Vidal read aloud to him, was his Senate page, his seeing-eye
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. One of the world's oldest film studios, MGM's headquarters are located at 245 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, California. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, Louis B. Mayer Pictures. In 1971, it was announced that MGM was to merge with 20th Century Fox, but the plan never came to fruition. Over the next 39 years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3, 2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM emerged from bankruptcy on December 20, 2010, at which time the executives of Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, became co-chairmen and co-CEOs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; as of 2017, MGM co-produces, co-finances, co-distributes a majority of its films with Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.
MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "MGM", was created in 1973 as a division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company was spun out in 1979, with the studio's owner Kirk Kerkorian maintaining a large share, but it ended all affiliation with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1986. MGM was the last studio to convert to sound pictures, but in spite of this fact, from the end of the silent film era through the late 1950s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood. Always slow to respond to the changing legal and demographic nature of the motion picture industry during the 1950s and 1960s, although at times its films did well at the box office, the studio lost significant amounts of money throughout the 1960s. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would buy Universal Studios. Three years an unprofitable MGM was bought by Kirk Kerkorian, who slashed staff and production costs, forced the studio to produce low-budget fare, shut down theatrical distribution in 1973.
The studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios United Artists. Kerkorian did, commit to increased production and an expanded film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up internal production, as well as keeping production going at UA, which included the lucrative James Bond film franchise, it incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production. The studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few months sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt, while keeping the library assets for himself; the series of deals left MGM more in debt. MGM was bought by Pathé Communications in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio; the French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the studio's major creditor took control of MGM. More in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, Australia's Seven Network in 1996.
The debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGM's ability to survive as a separate motion picture studio. After a bidding war which included Time Warner and General Electric, MGM was acquired on September 23, 2004, by a partnership consisting of Sony Corporation of America, Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, other investors. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem, he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loew's Theatres chain. With Loew's lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality. However, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Approached by Louis B. Mayer, Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17, 1924. Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production.
MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years. In 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year. In 1925, MGM, Paramount Pictures and UFA formed a joint German distributor, Parufamet; when Samuel Goldwyn left he sued over the use of his name. Marcus Loew died in 1927, control of Loew's passed to Nicholas Schenck. In 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew family's holdings with Schenck's assent. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision. Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds. During this time, in the summer of 1929, Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. By the time he recovered, the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 had nearly wiped Fox out and ended any chance of the Loew's merger going through. Schenck and Mayer had never gotten along, the abortive Fox merger increased the animosity between the two men.
From the outset, MGM tapped into the audience's need for sophistication. Having inherited few big names from their predecessor companies and Thalberg began at once
Classics
Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. It encompasses the study of the Greco-Roman world of its languages and literature but of Greco-Roman philosophy and archaeology. Traditionally in the West, the study of the Greek and Roman classics was considered one of the cornerstones of the humanities and a fundamental element of a rounded education; the study of classics has therefore traditionally been a cornerstone of a typical elite education. Study encompasses a time-period of history from the mid-2nd millennium BC to the 6th century AD; the word classics is derived from the Latin adjective classicus, meaning "belonging to the highest class of citizens". The word was used to describe the members of the highest class in ancient Rome. By the 2nd century AD the word was used in literary criticism to describe writers of the highest quality. For example, Aulus Gellius, in his Attic Nights, contrasts "classicus" and "proletarius" writers. By the 6th century AD, the word had acquired a second meaning.
Thus the two modern meanings of the word, referring both to literature considered to be of the highest quality, to the standard texts used as part of a curriculum, both derive from Roman use. In the Middle Ages and education were intertwined. Medieval education taught students to imitate earlier classical models, Latin continued to be the language of scholarship and culture, despite the increasing difference between literary Latin and the vernacular languages of Europe during the period. While Latin was hugely influential, Greek was studied, Greek literature survived solely in Latin translation; the works of major Greek authors such as Hesiod, whose names continued to be known by educated Europeans, were unavailable in the Middle Ages. In the thirteenth century, the English philosopher Roger Bacon wrote that "there are not four men in Latin Christendom who are acquainted with the Greek and Arabic grammars."Along with the unavailability of Greek authors, there were other differences between the classical canon known today and the works valued in the Middle Ages.
Catullus, for instance, was entirely unknown in the medieval period. The popularity of different authors waxed and waned throughout the period: Lucretius, popular during the Carolingian period, was read in the twelfth century, while for Quintilian the reverse is true; the Renaissance led to the increasing study of both ancient literature and ancient history, as well as a revival of classical styles of Latin. From the 14th century, first in Italy and increasingly across Europe, Renaissance Humanism, an intellectual movement that "advocated the study and imitation of classical antiquity", developed. Humanism saw a reform in education in Europe, introducing a wider range of Latin authors as well as bringing back the study of Greek language and literature to Western Europe; this reintroduction was initiated by Petrarch and Boccaccio who commissioned a Calabrian scholar to translate the Homeric poems. This humanist educational reform spread from Italy, in Catholic countries as it was adopted by the Jesuits, in countries that became Protestant such as England and the Low Countries, in order to ensure that future clerics were able to study the New Testament in the original language.
The late 17th and 18th centuries are the period in Western European literary history, most associated with the classical tradition, as writers consciously adapted classical models. Classical models were so prized that the plays of William Shakespeare were rewritten along neoclassical lines, these "improved" versions were performed throughout the 18th century. From the beginning of the 18th century, the study of Greek became important relative to that of Latin. In this period Johann Winckelmann's claims for the superiority of the Greek visual arts influenced a shift in aesthetic judgements, while in the literary sphere, G. E. Lessing "returned Homer to the centre of artistic achievement". In the United Kingdom, the study of Greek in schools began in the late 18th century; the poet Walter Savage Landor claimed to have been one of the first English schoolboys to write in Greek during his time at Rugby School. The 19th century saw the influence of the classical world, the value of a classical education, decline in the US, where the subject was criticised for its elitism.
By the 19th century, little new literature was still being written in Latin – a practice which had continued as late as the 18th century – and a command of Latin declined in importance. Correspondingly, classical education from the 19th century onwards began to de-emphasise the importance of the ability to write and speak Latin. In the United Kingdom this process took longer than elsewhere. Composition continued to be the dominant classical skill in England until the 1870s, when new areas within the discipline began to increase in popularity. In the same decade came the first challenges to the requirement of Greek at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, though it would not be abolished for another 50 years. Though the influence of classics as the dominant mode of education in Europe and North America was in decline in the 19th century, the discipline was evolving in the same period. Classical scholarship was becoming more systematic and scientific with the "new philology" created at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century.
Its scope was broadening: it was during the 19th century that ancient history and classical archaeology began to be s
Symposium (Plato)
The Symposium is a philosophical text by Plato dated c. 385–370 BC. It depicts a friendly contest of extemporaneous speeches given by a group of notable men attending a banquet; the men include the philosopher Socrates, the general and political figure Alcibiades, the comic playwright Aristophanes. The speeches are to be given in praise of Eros, the god of love and desire, the son of Aphrodite. In the Symposium, Eros is recognized both as erotic love and as a phenomenon capable of inspiring courage, great deeds and works, vanquishing man's natural fear of death, it is seen as transcending its earthly origins, attaining spiritual heights. This extraordinary elevation of the concept of love raises a question of whether some of the most extreme extents of meaning might be intended as humor or farce. Eros is always translated as “love”, the English word has its own varieties and ambiguities that provide additional challenges to the effort to understand the Eros of ancient Athens; the event depicted in the Symposium is a banquet attended by a group of men, who have come to the symposium, which was, in ancient Greece, a traditional part of the same banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, recitals, or conversation.
The setting means that the participants will be drinking wine, meaning that the men might be induced to say things they wouldn't say elsewhere or when sober. They might speak more frankly, or take more risks, or else be prone to hubris — they might be inspired to make speeches that are heartfelt and noble; the host has challenged the men to deliver, each in an encomium -- a speech in praise of Love. Though other participants comply with this challenge, Socrates notably refuses to participate in such an act of praise, instead takes a different approach to the topic; the party takes place at the house of the tragedian Agathon in Athens. This dialogue is one of Plato's major works, is appreciated for both its philosophical content and its literary qualities; the Symposium is considered a dialogue – a form used by Plato in more than thirty works – but in fact it is predominantly a series of essay-like speeches from differing points of view. So dialogue plays a smaller role in the Symposium. Socrates is renowned for his dialectic approach to knowledge, which involves posing questions that encourage others to think about what they care about, articulate their ideas.
In the Symposium, the dialectic exists among the speeches: in seeing how the ideas conflict from speech-to-speech, in the effort to resolve the contradictions and see the philosophy that underlies them all. It is important to understand; the characters and the settings are to some degree based on history, but they are not reports of events that occurred or words that were spoken. There is no reason to think they were not composed by Plato; the reader, understanding that Plato was not governed by the historical record, can read the Symposium, ask why the author, arranged the story the way he did, what he meant by including the various aspects of setting, composition and theme, etc. For a long time it was believed that Socrates was presented in the dialogues by his admiring disciple, Plato, as an ideal philosopher and ideal human being, it was approved of. In the late 20th Century another interpretation began to challenge that idea; this new idea considers that the Symposium is intended to criticize Socrates, his philosophy, to reject certain aspects of his behavior.
It considers that Socratic philosophy may have lost touch with the actual individual as it devoted itself to abstract principles. The above view, attributed to Martha Nussbaum, can however be challenged in favor of the traditional one; the portrayal of Socrates in the Symposium is consistent with the account of Socrates put forward by Xenophon and the theories that Socrates defends throughout the platonic corpus. Plato shows off his master as a man of high moral standards, unwavered by baser urges and committed to the study and practice of proper self-government in both individuals and communities; the dialogue's ending contrasts Socrates’ intellectual and emotional self-mastery with Alcibiades’ debauchery and lack of moderation to explain the latter's reckless political career, disastrous military campaigns and eventual demise. Alcibiades is corrupted by the advantages thereof. One critic, James Arieti, considers that the Symposium resembles a drama, with emotional and dramatic events occurring when Alcibiades crashes the banquet.
Arieti suggests that it should be studied more as a drama, with a focus on character and actions, less as an exploration of philosophical ideas. This suggests that the characters speak, as in a play, not as themselves; this theory, Arieti has found, reveals how much each of the speakers of the Symposium resembles the god, that they each are describing. It may be Plato's point to suggest that when humankind talks about god, they are drawn towards creating that god in their own image. Andrew Dalby considers the opening pages of the Symposium the best depiction in any ancient Greek source of the way texts are transmitted by oral tradition without writing, it shows how an oral text may have no simple origin, ho
Bristol
Bristol is a city and county in South West England with a population of 459,300. The wider district has the 10th-largest population in England; the urban area population of 724,000 is the 8th-largest in the UK. The city borders North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, with the cities of Bath and Gloucester to the south-east and north-east, respectively. South Wales lies across the Severn estuary. Iron Age hill forts and Roman villas were built near the confluence of the rivers Frome and Avon, around the beginning of the 11th century the settlement was known as Brycgstow. Bristol received a royal charter in 1155 and was divided between Gloucestershire and Somerset until 1373, when it became a county of itself. From the 13th to the 18th century, Bristol was among the top three English cities after London in tax receipts. Bristol was surpassed by the rapid rise of Birmingham and Liverpool in the Industrial Revolution. Bristol was a starting place for early voyages of exploration to the New World.
On a ship out of Bristol in 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian, became the first European since the Vikings to land on mainland North America. In 1499 William Weston, a Bristol merchant, was the first Englishman to lead an exploration to North America. At the height of the Bristol slave trade, from 1700 to 1807, more than 2,000 slave ships carried an estimated 500,000 people from Africa to slavery in the Americas; the Port of Bristol has since moved from Bristol Harbour in the city centre to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Dock. Bristol's modern economy is built on the creative media and aerospace industries, the city-centre docks have been redeveloped as centres of heritage and culture; the city has the largest circulating community currency in the UK—the Bristol pound, pegged to the Pound sterling. The city has two universities, the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England, a variety of artistic and sporting organisations and venues including the Royal West of England Academy, the Arnolfini, Spike Island, Ashton Gate and the Memorial Stadium.
It is connected to London and other major UK cities by road and rail, to the world by sea and air: road, by the M5 and M4. One of the UK's most popular tourist destinations, Bristol was selected in 2009 as one of the world's top ten cities by international travel publishers Dorling Kindersley in their Eyewitness series of travel guides; the Sunday Times named it as the best city in Britain in which to live in 2014 and 2017, Bristol won the EU's European Green Capital Award in 2015. The most ancient recorded name for Bristol is the archaic Welsh Caer Odor, consistent with modern understanding that early Bristol developed between the River Frome and Avon Gorge, it is most stated that the Saxon name Bricstow was a simple calque of the existing Celtic name, with Bric a literal translation of Odor, the common Saxon suffix Stow replacing Caer. Alternative etymologies are supported by numerous orthographic variations in medieval documents, with Samuel Seyer enumerating 47 alternative forms; the Old English form Brycgstow is used to derive the meaning place at the bridge.
Utilizing another form, Rev. Dr. Shaw derived the name from the Celtic words bras, or braos and tuile; the poet Thomas Chatterton popularised a derivation from Brictricstow linking the town to Brictric, a leading landholder in the area. It appears that the form Bricstow prevailed until 1204, the Bristolian'L' is what changed the name to Bristol. Archaeological finds, including flint tools believed to be between 300,000 and 126,000 years old made with the Levallois technique, indicate the presence of Neanderthals in the Shirehampton and St Annes areas of Bristol during the Middle Palaeolithic. Iron Age hill forts near the city are at Leigh Woods and Clifton Down, on the side of the Avon Gorge, on Kings Weston Hill near Henbury. A Roman settlement, existed at what is now Sea Mills. Isolated Roman villas and small forts and settlements were scattered throughout the area. Bristol was founded by 1000. By 1067 Brycgstow was a well-fortified burh, that year the townsmen beat off a raiding party from Ireland led by three of Harold Godwinson's sons.
Under Norman rule, the town had one of the strongest castles in southern England. Bristol was the place of exile for Diarmait Mac Murchada, the Irish king of Leinster, after being overthrown; the Bristol merchants subsequently played a prominent role in funding Richard Strongbow de Clare and the Norman invasion of Ireland. The port developed in the 11th century around the confluence of the Rivers Frome and Avon, adjacent to Bristol Bridge just outside the town walls. By the 12th century Bristol was an important port, handling much of England's trade with Ireland, including slaves. There was an important Jewish community in Bristol from the late 12th century through to the late 13th century when all Jews were expelled from England; the stone bridge built in 1247 was replaced by the current bridge during the 1760s. The town incorporated neighbouring suburbs and became a county in 1373, the first town in England to be given this status. During this period, Bristol became manufacturing centre. By the 14th centur
