[mullingitover]

> Sadly, their social institutions, even as famous as the republic, were also not practiced and even forgotten for long centuries.

I mean, the main social institutions that underpinned all the others in Rome were massive human trafficking and looting operations. The enlightened Greeks weren't any better.

My personal guess is that we would've had the industrial revolution thousands of years earlier if these groups we like to glorify in our history books would've laid off the enslaving, murder, and robbery.

[halJordan]

Its hurts that people like you are here solely to make others throw out the baby with the bathwater. MLK JR was a baptist. Do i have to hate him because of the baptists' pro-life stance? JKF was a kennedy; do i have to hate the civil rights act because of his illgotten wealth?

[mullingitover]

On the one hand, you have a family that smuggled alcohol and a person who has religious views I don't hold. On the other hand you have people who, as a civilization, committed unapologetic genocide, rape, robbery, and founded their economic system on human trafficking . Personally I don't see how these are remotely comparable.

I'm not saying the Greeks and Romans didn't have any merits at all. Can we learn some things from them? Sure. Do we have to call them 'great,' and aspire to be like them? Absolutely not.