Dialectic Journal

“Our city, my city. Now was affaced utterly. We who called ourselves Astakiots were affaced wit it. Without a city, who were we? What were we?”
What point is the author trying to make here?
I think the author is trying to show the readers how important a city was to people back then. Without a city, an army for protection, or friends and family to go back home to people go into a state of detachment from the world.
Do you agree with the author?
Yes I do. This even applies to our modern world. Think for second that you’re in a small village somewhere, just doing the things you would normally do. Then suddenly out of nowhere all of that was taken away from you. Your home lays in ashes, friends panicking trying to get away, family dying before your eyes, and innocent people being ripped apart limb from limb for no other reason than to conquer you. I think the only way to deal with that at first is to be detached from reality, to think that it was all a dream.

“They say that ghosts sometimes, those that cannot let go their bond to the living, linger and haunt the scenes of their days under the sun, hovering like substanceless birds of carrion, refusing Hades’ command to retire beneath the earth. That’s how we lived, Bruxieus, Diomache and I, in the weeks following the sack of our city.”
What strikes you about this passage?
The comparison of the way they lived the weeks after the attack to ghosts who can’t be put to rest for some bond to the living was a really smart and creative way to put it. It really brought me into the feelings of the charters and how the attack affected them.
What point is the author trying to make here?
The author wants the readers to know what the victims of war go through and what they usually have to go through to survive.
“Terror of the sack spread throughout all Greece as word began coming, from the lips of too many to be disbelieved, of the scale of His Majesty’s mobilization in the east and his intent to put all Hellas to the torch.”
What strikes you about this passage?
It’s just the way information traveled back then is amassing. News traveled just by word alone and to reach throughout a country I think is incredible how fast it could travel.
What is your reaction to this quote?
I felt a sense of awe and wonderment. To think that news traveled so fast without technology is amazing to me.