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RonPrice
September 28th 2004, 06:08 AM
THIS PELOPONNESIAN WAR:wink:

For what set me off on my plan to write A Study of History* was a sudden realization, after the outbreak of the First World War, that our world was just then entering on an experience that the Greek World had been through in the Peloponnesian War.(431-404 BC). -Arnold Toynbee, "What the Book is For: How the Book Took Shape" in Toynbee and History, editor, Ashley Montagu, Extended Horizons, 1956, p.8.



I cannot isolate out the moment, some

static piece of time, even though I often do

in this work of master passion, of fun, of

labour, of slowly crystallising purpose written

at some state of another Peloponnesian War,

another time of troubles for another proletariat,

for an age. How could I idolise this ephemeral

self? No fear here of this nemisis of my own

creativity. I tired of self long ago, before this

poesy began. What I truely idolize, swoon over,

is this new Parthenon, this new garden, before

which all else is but a thorn. For here lies the

beauty of all that I would live and die for and

when I die I will leave behind this emergent

Beauty for a new Golden Age long after this

Peloponnesian War.

Ron Price

30 March 1996



* a 3 million eleven volume study written from 1927 to 1960.