Socrates on Youth

The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for
authority, they show disrespect to their elders.... They no longer
rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their
legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.
Quoted by Plato

This quote is often used to make the point that their elders are always complaining about the youth of the day: “Those old farts are always complaining.”

Light weight modern commentators should be a little more careful around famous classical philosophers.

What is not generally understood is, that at time that the quote was used by Plato, the Peloponnesian War has just ended, and had seriously weakened the Greek States ability to resist outside aggression.

Five years after the death of Plato, Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s Father,  begins his conquest of the Greeks, and ends Greek independent rule.  So the moral decay of youth, and society in general was very much a timely complaint.

·         Socrates                                                    469 B.C - 399 B.C.

·         Plato                                                         428 B.C . - 347 B.C.

·         Peloponnesian War                               431 B.C. – 404 B.C.

·         Philip’s Conquest of Greece                 342 B.C – 352 B. C.