A review by theyoungveronica
The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization by Arthur Herman

4.0

"Rome it seemed, was never in worse shape; and never more powerful...'the steady degeneration of its noble character into vice and corruption'—of which the chief sign was, paradoxically, its imperial growth and steady advance over its foreign rivals."

"Self-restraint, integrity, and virtue were disregarded; unscrupulous conduct, bribery, bribery, and profit-seeking were rife."

"On the one hand, Rome enjoyed a power without equal or limits. On the other, the glory surrounding that power would seem increasingly hollow—even a sign of imminent dissolution and moral collapse... 'Here in the city nothing is left,' wrote one of Sallust's contemporaries, 'the real Rome is gone forever.'"

"To the perceptive eye,' Plato wrote in the Timaeus, "the depth of their degeneration was clear enough, but to those whose judgement of true happiness is defective they seemed, in their pursuit of unbridled ambition and power, to be at the height of their fame and fortune." Zeus and the gods knew the truth, Plato says; and together they plotted the doom of Atlantis—a doom so devastating it vanished forever."

"'Plato raised up the walls of Atlantis', Aristotle wrote, 'and then plunged them under the waves.'"

The old signs of a republic paradoxically at the height of its power & prosperity and on the precipice overlooking imminent decline . . .

As it was with Rome and with Atlantis, so it is with us.

Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I shall move the earth.
—Archimedes (287-12 B.C.E.)