se of the value of the individual, and this also meant that one of the issues that had to be addressed was the proper relationship between the individual and the collective, between the individual and the state:
That sense had its manifestation as much in practice as in theory; and it issued into action in the shape of a practical conception of free citizenship of a self-governing community--a conception which forms the essence of the Greek city-state. Whatever may be said of the "sacrifice" of the individual to the State in Greek politics or in Greek theory, the fact remains that in Greece, as contrasted with the rest of the ancient world, man was less sacrificed to the whole to which he belonged than he was elsewhere (Barker 2).
The classical features of Greek democratic tradition was an emphasis on disbursing political power among all citizens, and the participation of all citizens was seen as essential both to the well-being of the state and the citizen himself. This tradition is embodied in aspects of the political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, as will be indicated in an exploration of certain of the themes that recur in Greek political philosophy, such as the question of justice and the nature and meaning of citizenship.
In the Roman era, much of Greek literature and culture was either adopted or held up as an example even though the Romans had a different worldview in many ways. The gods of Greece were carried over into the Roman pantheon, though the names and some of the stories were changed. Plutarch showed a belief in deeper connections between the Greeks and the Romans in his Lives in which he generally paired a Greek and a Roman, showing that the thought of the two halves of these pairings as equal in stature in some field, as the Greek Demosthenes and the Roman orator Cicero, or Alcibiades and Coriolanus. He wrote about the Greek political leader Pericles and compares him to Fabius Maximus, who fought a...