Institutions, voting for example which remains fundamental to our politics today. And for 500 years, for another 500 years. Dependent the measure of success. With the similarity between two deegan guest interesting question. And setting the terms of legitimacy, and it is true in the roman republic, no law could be passed without being passed by the popular assembly. And in the senate for example, the senate couldnt pass laws, they could make decrees, manager business, the budget, but if they wanted to tackle the law, they had to go to the people landed is interesting that even under that ideas that the people fundamentally are responsible for setting the terms of legitimacy continues the romans fought the people claim the new emperor and it is from that public acclamation that their legitimacy derives and some of that idea gets into medieval matters and political thought and becomes the important underpinning of popular sovereignty. Host who are the leaders in the Greek Development of policy . Guest in athens, the athenian democracy emerges in stages so one of the most important figures in its pre history, is the lawgiver stolen. And the lived in around 594, at the beginning of the sixth century, and established the principles of justice between the rich and the poor. And they spot the upper hand and at first, they were not necessarily a bad sense, by the end of this dynasty, they did become quite corked. It was in 510 that they are overthrown and athens really in 508 starts to take a turn towards becoming a democracy in the next century under pericles and others. Host who had more authority, was it the greek people the roman people . In many ways the athenian people in the sense of the popular ordinary poor people they had the greatest authority inactions more than the board did. And they placed key roles for example in the court system, so they were staffed by huge popular injuries come as many as 500 people and there were no professional judges so they didnt have the division we have between the law and fought. They decide what they thought the law required. That was an incredibly important source of power. He stepped a lot of the Civil Service the ordinary bureaucratic functions establishing weights and measures. One of the things i argue is sometimes modern political theorists exaggerated that too far. Sometimes people say they run everything by lottery and no division between rich and poor. The ford did everything and that is an overstatement. The athenians had certain political roles buddy there by law or custom were reversed for the rich but the poor still could hold the rich accountable land the fundamental ability to control the rich and hold accountable accounts for the powers of the athenian people. Host one of the things you talk about in your book is some of the things that modern politics has derived from both the greeks and romans and one of those things is virtue. What do you mean by that . Guest virtue is the idea coming in greek is the word for excellence. Being good at what you do. It can happen at nonmoral meaning. We can say a night has the virtue of cutting, that is what it is to be a knife. One of the things the greeks debate is do we have political virtues . Virtues of the way of life of a human being, are there things that as human beings we need to do well just as a knife needs to cut well land to be a good knife. Those are the terms in which they thought about politics. In a way there was a longstanding greek agreement going back to the poetry of homer, the great dramatist also, what some of those virtues work things like wisdom courage, pie eddie, justice, moderation, the great period of the classical age when we have a lot of these ridings, as this debate, what about the virtue of justice, is that really a virtue or does it is a lucien, something that is good for us as humans, good for us in our lives as individuals or is that simply something we have been suckered into doing in cutting political rulers and a lot of the philosophers i write about in the book are devoting that question. What do you teach at princeton . Wikipedia political theory, i teach in the department of politics and associated faculty member. And medieval political theory and greece and rome and political model, and even on science and democracy. It takes me a little far from the greeks but one of the interesting things about the greeks is they were some of the people who insisted knowledge and expertise should be central to politics. And modern society. When you talk about the greeks and their political growth period and the romans and their political growth period, exactly what ages are we talking about . In athens, solan is in 510 b. C. The end of the sixth century, goes the other way when you are going backwards. Played leather sought or are riding in the 300s. Athenian democracy more or less comes to an end after alexander the great fight a battle that distinguishes it in 322. There are a few skirmishes by essentially that. I write about the hellenistic period under alexanders generals and at almost the same time you have the rise to the roman republic. Also arguably established in 510 gradually again becoming new institutions being formed, the emergence of tribunes of thes and others until he essentially is extinguished in 20 25 years before the birth of christ and i wrote a little bit about the early centuries of the roman empire after the birth of christ. Host another one of the ideas and what a matter today according to melissa lane is cosmopolitanism. Guest this is interesting. To the greeks, politics was something that took place in the city state bounded by the citys laws. What happened partly with this breakdown of greek city states and the rise of alexander the great empires in the hellenistic period, you get empire is based in egypt and based in macedonia and other parts of the larger mediterranean, people start to think about politics, maybe politics could even in principle not just through conquest expand beyond particular citys walls so this becomes the idea, i am not citizen of the cosmos as opposed to being a citizen of athens, citizen of sparred at. That developed into a kind of ethical ideas that may be one can live according to a kind of sense of universal values and lots that are not bound to geographically and i think that is the origin of our idea of cosmopolitan ethics today. Host that was a daring idea back then to declare that you were a cosmopolitan. Guest absolutely. The first person who did it was diogenes the senate. He meant it in a kind of inyourface kind of rejecting way. He was famous for it rejecting not just the citys boundaries but also all kinds of human conventions because he lived in a bowl he often defecated in public or had sex in public didnt abide by any of the conventions of clothing more money that ordinary people would follow and according to him this was living according to nature political boundaries were just another part of the norms of conventions he rejected but later philosophers and especially stoic take up the idea and make it gradually they make it something more seemly you might think. Where it doesnt have to do with rejecting every existing boundary but pushing our allegiances to wider and wider circles. You might start with allegiance to my own body and soul, my family, my count, my state then why not go further and have an allegiance to our rational beings and the cosmos. Host what would played against equities think of the current democracy . Guest i think they would raise some powerful challenges. Platos view was it is hard to imagine a democracy that can take scientific expertise and scientific knowledge seriously enough. He thinks in a democracy the problem is people think they are all equal and that means they think their opinion is just as good as everybody elses about anything and so that makes it very hard to respect what we would call scientific knowledge scientific authority. This was toqueville in the nineteenth century. The jury is out in terms of platos criticism. It is a question still whether democracy can actually manage to take sufficient account of scientific challenges, to the vendor standing and respond adequately and respond quickly enough. I think we need to take stock of that challenge and kind of reflect on the resources democracy has to meet it. Host what about socrates . Guest hes played as teacher, we know about his ideas only through the writings of plato and others but what socrates did in his life was raised a similar kind of challenge but really to the individual. Most people were concerned with pursuing power and wealth not unlike what a lot of people spend their time to dave pursuing an socrates challenged them as individuals to say what is the real value of what you are pursuing . Dont power and wealth and do themselves . You always want more power. What do you want well for . There must be some good which is the end to which wealth is the means . He really challenged people to see that again virtue might be logically the more fundamental thing they need to evaluate the need to care about reliving an ethical life more fundamental event pursuing power and wealth. That is a case of melissa lanes the birth of politics 8 greek and roman political ideas and why they matter. There is the cover. You have been watching booktv on cspan2 from princeton university. You are watching booktv. Next, erick stakelbeck, post and terrorism analyst for the Christian Broadcasting Network talks about the appeal of isis in the middle east and the threat the organization opposes to americans living in the united states. [applause] thank you for coming out tonight and i thank my good friend sara stern. I consider sarah on modernday debra for our times. For such a time as this. I have to tell you the endowment