This relates to something I’ve wondered about—why did ancient Greece leave a tremendous legacy while the slave-holding southern states and the Confederacy didn’t?
If you mean a scientific legacy, it is not clear to me that this is true—Thomas Jefferson was Virginian, and though he was a ‘lesser’ scientist than Franklin just over the Mason/Dixon line, he was quite significant.
But supposing it is so, there are so many reasons it seems to me difficult to find out which were most critical.
The Greeks were largely surrounded by less erudite regions (at least, immediately so surrounded). Not so with the southern states, which were competing with the north and Europe at least.
When the Greeks were taken over by the Romans, the Romans spread their Greek Wisdom(tm) far and wide. The North… didn’t.
The Greeks had far more time to produce work of note.
The southern states had resource extraction economies.
This relates to something I’ve wondered about—why did ancient Greece leave a tremendous legacy while the slave-holding southern states and the Confederacy didn’t?
If you mean a scientific legacy, it is not clear to me that this is true—Thomas Jefferson was Virginian, and though he was a ‘lesser’ scientist than Franklin just over the Mason/Dixon line, he was quite significant.
But supposing it is so, there are so many reasons it seems to me difficult to find out which were most critical.
The Greeks were largely surrounded by less erudite regions (at least, immediately so surrounded). Not so with the southern states, which were competing with the north and Europe at least.
When the Greeks were taken over by the Romans, the Romans spread their Greek Wisdom(tm) far and wide. The North… didn’t.
The Greeks had far more time to produce work of note.
The southern states had resource extraction economies.