Dr. John Lewis on "The Architects of Reason: The Ancient Greek Cities of Sicily"
The birth of Western Civilization is the rise of reason into cultural dominance. It is in the ancient Greek city-states where, for the first time, cities, buildings, and political institutions were designed as reason dictated. Human action, not chance, was now the motor of human affairs. This lecture will celebrate, in words and photos, the spread of Greek civilization into the west, through the Greek colonies of southern Italy and Sicily, as revealed in their architecture and its town planning. The great theatres at Syracuse and Taormina, the awesome temples of Agrigento, Paestum and Selinus, the forum at Paestum, even the broken pottery scratched with the earliest written Greek verse, show us that the Greeks were the cultural pioneers of the western Mediterranean. Dr. Lewis will discuss the visible remains of the wonderful culture that would one day spread through Rome, the Renaissance, and into the present day.
Dr. John Lewis is Assistant Professor of History at Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio. He is holder of an Anthem Fellowship for Objectivist Scholarship. He is also active as an Objectivist speaker and writer, publishing in The Intellectual Activist and lecturing at conferences. His Ph.D is in Classics from the University of Cambridge, and his B.A. in History from the University of Rhode Island. He has taught Ancient History at the University of London, and is a visiting scholar at Rice University and Bowling Green State University.