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Old 04-15-2007, 11:10 PM   #28
Solon
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SeattleUte View Post
With respect to your Classical allusions point, again, what's Classical, and what's modern is often inseparable conceptually. We allude to Classical thought all the time without realizing it. In JS's time there was a lot of enthusiasm about rediscovering this part of our past (as well as ancient Egypt, etc., essentially all of antiquity) and much Classical thought was in the air and absorbable by osmosis.
Definitely, but I was alluding more to the obvious repetition of stories from Classical Greece and Rome in Book of Mormon text - like Aristomenes of Messenia, the brave military leader of a doomed people who buried metal plates with his people's sacred rites on them, promising that as long as the plates were preserved, the Messenians would eventually return to inherit the land of their fathers (see Pausanias for the story); or the Roman story of the rape of the Sabine women / wicked priests of Noah; or Alma's discussion of king-men vs. democracy-men and Thucydidean paradigms of civil war as a result of democrats vs. oligarchs . . . . etc. . .
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