Mediterranean Hegemon of Ancient Greece

Behind the "Hercules" was a herdsman who drove 20 cows, followed not only by a huge parade of men, elderly, women, and children, but also by pipers, drummers, and trumpeters playing cheerful melodies. The whole team talked and laughed and quarreled and shouted, just like Hercules drove the herds around the Western Mediterranean, and walked around the city of Turiyi, which filled the whole city with a lively atmosphere.

The end of the parade is just the beginning of the celebration, and then there are various competitions.

The most important competition in the celebration is the Hercules competition: the contestants must carry a five-meter long cedar wood with thick thighs and walk a distance of 40 meters to pass the preliminaries.In the next elimination schedule, players need to hold up the increasing weight of the stone pillars, they need to lift five kilograms of shots, and see how long it takes... The most important difficulty is to pull the carriage, and countless audiences are players Cheer, cheer them up, watch them pull a huge carriage with a certain load, tighten their muscles, exhaust all their strength, like a strong horse, pull the carriage forward.

The final winner will be awarded the title of "Hercules of the Kingdom" this year. After accepting the blessings from the priests of the Temple of Hercules, he will wear a flower crown and tour the city, surrounded by enthusiastic people, and will also receive King Daphes's honor of receiving and having dinner together will also be rewarded with great material rewards.

Another important competition during the celebration is wrestling.Everyone knows that Hercules is a wrestling master.Especially his battle with the giant Anteus is well known.After nine years of development, the wrestling competition held at the Hercules celebration in the Kingdom of Dionysia is no less than the traditional four Greek games.Compared with winning in the four major sports games, the main thing is honor; winning the championship in Turriy’s wrestling competition, and can also get a lot of gold and silver rewards, so there are many participants, each game is equivalent Intense tension.

The schedule of the wrestling match lasted nearly a month, which happened to be at the end of the celebration, and its champions also enjoyed the same treatment as the champion of the Hercules.

It is said that in the audience of these two competitions, there are often officers from the military department and the commanders of the army.Because these two competitions not only allow citizens and reserve citizens to participate, but also allow free citizens, gentiles, and even slaves to participate.If they get good results, they will be lobbied by the Ministry of Military Affairs to join the Kingdom of Dionysia or leave slavery, because such excellent players are generally excellent soldiers.

In addition to these two competitions, there are other interesting competitions.For example: bull riding, sheep racing, pig racing... This is also to show respect to the animal protection god Hercules.The fun-filled mountain-climbing competition shows the spirit of Hercules' adventure, and the heart-warming wife-winning running competition pays tribute to this handsome god...

Therefore, unlike other celebrations, the Hercules celebration is always full of laughter.While happy, Plato also found that at least half of the contestants and spectators in all competitions are non-Greek people, and they can fully feel their reverence for the Greek god from their hearts and enjoy them. The joy of the game and the harmonious interaction with Greek citizens.

Plato did not wait until the end of the celebration. In early June, he resigned from King Daphes and the Dionysian Academy, preparing to return to Athens. After all, there are still a lot of affairs waiting for him at the Academia Academy .

Davis held a farewell banquet for him.

At the banquet, Plato said happily: "This time, I am very grateful to Your Majesty Davis for your great help! Let me have enough time to observe the operation of the Kingdom of Dionysia, I found Dioni Asia has many advantages over other Greek city-states.

First of all, Dionia attaches great importance to education and builds schools in various cities funded by the government. The low entrance fees have enabled children above the age of six in the Kingdom to implement universal basic cultural education.This kind of education is comprehensive, not only teaching children mathematics, literature, rhetoric, logic, philosophy... but also teaching sculpture, music, dance to nurture their minds, and physical exercise to strengthen their physical fitness.When they reach adulthood, they are the gold and silver species of Dionysia, and they can easily become excellent citizens of the kingdom.

Second, although Dionysia emphasizes the role of law, it actually puts more emphasis on moral education.Otherwise, you will not believe Hades as the patron saint of your kingdom.Promoting Hades’ fair and strict penalties to guide the people to do more good deeds during their lifetime... The same is true of your respect for Hera, guiding the people to love marriage and family, which has played a very important role in the stability of the kingdom.Dionysia uses gods to guide citizens towards goodness. This is a very novel, yet very effective method, which is totally worth learning by other city-states.

Again, Your Majesty Dapheus said to me before,'You will not strictly divide the kingdom's citizens', but Dionysia has strictly divided the kingdom's public officials through a method called "assessment" .Let the law-savvy act as the judge, the producer who is good at the job as the supervisor, the person who is good at earning money to manage the trade, and the person who is good at the statistic to control the money... Even your generals are promoted by soldiers and team officers. Yes, most of your city chief executives also have extensive experience in city management.This is not at all like most Greek city-states, including Athens. Most city-state officials elected by the public through the civic assembly are mostly hypocrites who cater to the people. They do not know how to manage a city-state, let alone how to manage it. Lead the troops to win.The blind ignorance of the people allows these people to control the power of the city-state, and how can it be possible for the city-state to become strong!

Also, Your Majesty, you let girls and boys receive the same education and training as boys, giving them more freedom of property and life in adulthood, although women have not been able to hold some public office in the kingdom. , But compared to other Greek city-states, you have done very well on the issue of equality between men and women.

In addition, Dionia also achieved fairness in the distribution of property.Each citizen of the kingdom can be divided into five acres of land, and then based on the contributions made by the citizens in the kingdom, they can also be distributed to land and other financial rewards, rather than letting the kingdom’s public property be mostly earned by nobles and rich people. take……"

Hearing these words, Daphes was in a good mood, and said half-jokingly and half-seriously to the other elders who came to the banquet: "Have you heard, we have so many advantages of Dionysia, you should have more confidence in the kingdom, Just work harder!"

Others responded with a smile.

Plato didn't smile, he looked at Davos and said seriously: "I found that Dionys has one of the biggest advantages, is your Majesty Daphos!"

"I?"

"Yes." Plato's emotions began to exclaim loudly: "As a king of a country, you do not override the law, but act in accordance with the law. You do not lavish and pursue a luxurious life, but a low-regulation system. As far as I know, the regime of the Kingdom of Dionysia and these amazing bills mostly come from your suggestions. Without profound knowledge, deep observation and good judgment are difficult to do. And this can be done. Everything can only be a philosopher! A philosopher does not necessarily have to write a treatise and be widely known. My teacher Socrates has always said nothing but wrote. And your majesty, Davis, you just do nothing, you are a real King of philosophy!"

Speaking of which, Plato's expression was excited, and his eyes were shining: "My previous judgment was wrong. My ideal country does not exist in reality, but it is being realized, just in Dionia!"

In his previous life, Plato had traveled to Tarantum. When Tarantum was in a period of prosperity, Plato first met with Archita, who had been a long-time governor, because he was an important figure in the Pythagorean school. Achita is exactly the typical image of "King of Philosophy" that Plato expected in his mind, so he greatly respected Achita in his writings.But in this life, Archita died early, and Tarantum also became a free city in the Kingdom of Dionia, but Plato turned his attention to Daphes, which created more glory than Archita.

Of course, Plato, who was proud at the farewell banquet, did not admit that he had an obvious flaw in the book "Ideland" compared to Dionysia’s status quo. In the past, his eyes were somewhat narrow, focusing only on one city. He even thought that the population of the city-state population should be 5040, and Dionia has a huge population and vast land, which can also be managed well, which made him very touched.

With reluctance and longing for the future, Plato left Turri and returned to Athens.While focusing on teaching, he also devoted most of his energy to deeper thinking about the city-state political system, and wrote the "Daveus" a few years later, claiming that this article is far more valuable than he had previously. Written articles such as "Luxis", "Gorgia", "Hippias", etc., and it is no less than "Ideal Country", this is the last word.

Note: I finally finished writing this volume!I have never dared to write Plato, write philosophy, write academic arguments before, because I am not good at this, and some book friends advised me to avoid it, but I later thought that since it was written in ancient Greece, how could there be no culture of the classical era The scene of a hundred schools of contention, so I dared to write it. For this reason, I read several books. Although the writing is relatively superficial, it is better than myself.

The next volume is even more exciting, because there are things you want to see: Rome, Carthage, Etruria, Egypt, Celtic, Iberia...

So the name of the next volume is "Western Mediterranean"!