Why did the Greeks win the battle of Salamis?
Reasons for Victory:
Narrow waterways favoured Greek ships.
Persians taken by surprise
Persian fleet severely weakened by removal of Egyptian squadron
Triremes more agile than Persian ships
Themistocles understood the importance of naval power, advantage of the Bay of Salamis
Plato contends we are all made of the same three parts yet not all have the parts aligned in a healthy balance. The result is that greed, ambition, and foolishness rule in these unbalanced people. Plato lived through the democratic period in Athens' government and through the oligarchy period when the conquering Spartans installed the wealthy oligarchists as rulers of Athens, a move that unleashed a fierce retribution of bloodshed upon the unseated democratic rulers.
Plato rejected the rule of the mistake prone and seemingly unreasoning democratic faction and equally rejected the oligarchic rule of the retaliatory wealthy elite. After a period of seclusion, Plato wrote the Republic. In it he describes human nature and uses human nature (as he described it) as a metaphor and template for a reasonable government.
He assigns ruling authority to those who have a functioning alignment and balance between their three constituent parts and a dominant dedication to the highest: (1: lowest) love of money (laboring and merchants classes), (2: middle-most class) love of honor (military), and (3: highest) love of wisdom ("scientists, scholars, high-level experts, and similar sophisticates" [Jorn K. Bramann]).
His idea is that the two models he has seen don't work, so a third is needed. That third model is to make a government out of those who have the best minds by virtue of being best trained, best informed and best balanced (in the quote below, take note of and understand the "or"):
Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, ... cities will never have rest from their evils. (Republic)
<span>Certainly not. The United States has never, since its founding, consisted of a small number of citizens, still less of citizens that could practically assemble in one place at one time and debate their actions. A pure democracy in this classical Greek city-state sense was never practical, and was not seriously considered.
What the Framers created was a constitutional representative republic. Sovereignty is vested in the people, like a democracy (and unlike a constitutional monarchy), but the people do not rule directly. Instead, they elect representatives, at regular intervals, and these rule in the peoples' stead. Their powers are limited, first, by the fact that they are elected for only short terms, and must be re-elected if they wish to continue in power, and secondly, and much more importantly, by the Constitution itself, which puts express written limits on their powers even between elections.</span>
Literature aided it by spreading the word of slavery and why it should come to an end. people began reading what was wrote about slavery that began the movement
