Originally Answered:

What is the single best answer you’ve ever written on Quora?

My answer after my first 1000 answers (Nick Nicholas’ answer to For Quora writers who have over 1000 answers: What is your favorite answer you have written?) is still my answer now:

Nick Nicholas’ answer to How can one summarize the Watergate scandal to a kid?

Once upon a time, there was a president called Dick.

No, that really was his name.

Why are you laughing?

Dick was very clever, and worked very hard. But he was also very angry. He was very angry, because he was sad that people didn’t think he was cool. Like the other president, Jack. People thought he was cool.

…

It was a lot of fun. I was asked to do a follow-up with the Iran-Contra scandal, but that was actually too depressing to contemplate.

No, I haven’t done a cartoon version of the Watergate answer. Yet.

Name is your blog name; e.g. My Fancy Blog.

URL is not the entire Blog URL, but the prefix of the URL: if your blog will be fancyblog.quora,com, you type fancyblog in the URL.

Desmond, I have the highest of regard for you who have A2A’d me, and you have the highest of regard to me to have A2A’d me.

The problem is, I don’t even know who Clearchus is. Yes, I am actually an impostor.

But Wikipedia remedies that!

So. Clearchus of Sparta – Wikipedia, and Battle of Cunaxa – Wikipedia. I’m going to go throw in the flaws I can discern in his biography, and then identify what Classicists would zero in on as his big lesson of a tragic flaw. And I’ll pose the question to my betters: was it actually a flaw?

Born about the middle of the 5th century BC, Clearchus was sent with a fleet to the Hellespont in 411 and became governor of Byzantium, of which town he was proxenus. His severity, however, made him unpopular, and in his absence the gates were opened to the Athenian besieging army under Alcibiades (409).

Flaw 1. Being too much of a hardass in a situation that called for more common sense: being military governor of an occupied town that could easily turn itself over to a more lenient enemy. Not a tragic flaw, but certainly bad judgement.

[Recalled to Sparta, sent back to Byzantium]. When the ephors [of Sparta] learned that the citizens of Byzantium considered him a tyrant, they recalled him through a messenger that reached Clearchus while he was still in the Isthmus of Corinth. Clearchus ignored the messenger and proceeded to Byzantium, and thus he was instantly declared an outlaw by the ephors.

Flaw 2. Disobeying the orders of your superiors. Being an outlaw is well and good—if you have the means to get back on top. He didn’t, so more bad judgement.

He fought the Thracian tribes successfully, in the process gaining the unofficial support of the Greek cities that were thus relieved. Clearchus, counting on his successes to gain him back the Spartan ephors’ good graces, was ultimately disappointed in this expectation.

Flaw 3. He actually won back the favour of Byzantium and/or the neighbouring Greek colonies—but not, as he expected, the favour of Sparta. More bad judgement.

[Recruited as a mercenary by Cyrus the Younger]. Clearchus accepted not because of the money but because he knew that sooner or later he would have to face his fellow Spartans since he was still considered an outlaw by the ephors.

Not a flaw, but an outcome of Flaw 2: he didn’t have the means to get back on top, so his options were limited.

Clearchus tricking his men into staying on to fight for Cyrus in Anabasis 1.3 is not a flaw; it’s good management of an army. Sun Tzu would approve.

The infighting between Clearchus and Menon’s troops in Anabasis 1.5, when Clearchus lost his shit, I don’t count as a flaw more than usual in any headstrong commander.

(Some cutting and pasting of Wikipedia)

Cyrus then approached Clearchus, the leader of the Greeks, who was commanding the phalanx stationed on the right, and ordered him to move into the center so as to go after Artaxerxes. … Artaxerxes was in the center of his line, with 6,000 units of Persian cavalry (which were some of the finest in the world and by far superior to anything Cyrus or the Greeks could field).

So Cyrus is ordering Clearchus, commanding Cyrus’ elite mercenaries, to go after Artaxerxes’ even more elite troops. Which makes sense for Cyrus.

Clearchus refused this owing to the insecurity that the Greeks had for their right flank, which tended to drift and was undefended, as the shields were held in the left hand.

Which is a rational military precaution, I guess; but:

Clearchus, not desiring to do this – for fear of his right flank – refused, and promised Cyrus, according to Xenophon, that he would “take care that all would be well”.

Flaw 4. Fobbing off your superiors. He’s a mercenary of course, so that’s not outright treason, but it’s not going to get you rehired.

That Clearchus did not obey this order is a sign of the level of control that Cyrus had over his army, as a couple of other occasions throughout this campaign prior to the battle reveal also. This is inconsistent with military discipline, even in this day.

Flaw 5. Disobeying the orders of your superiors. Which Sun Tzu (again) explicitly approves of, if your superior is a militarily clueless king and you are a clueful general.

The Greeks, deployed on Cyrus’s right and outnumbered, charged the left flank of Artaxerxes’ army, which broke ranks and fled before they came within arrowshot.

Which means Clearchus’ gamble paid off for the Greeks.

the Greek mercenaries, who […] were heavily armed, stood firm. Clearchus advanced against the much larger right wing of Artaxerxes’ army and sent it into retreat.

Bonus! They defeated the left wing, and they defeated the right wing. That just leaves the elite centre wing, which Cyrus was to fight on his own.

Uh-oh.

However, on the Persian right the fight between Artaxerxes’ army and Cyrus was far more difficult and protracted. Cyrus personally charged his brother’s bodyguard and was killed by a javelin, which sent the rebels into retreat.

Well, that was stupid of Cyrus, and it’s not clear the Greeks could have defeated the cavalry. But Cyrus certainly didn’t.

Only the Greek mercenaries, who had not heard of Cyrus’s death and were heavily armed, stood firm. […] Meanwhile, Artaxerxes’ troops took the Greek encampment and destroyed their food supplies. Only after the battle did they hear that Cyrus himself had been killed, making their victory irrelevant and the expedition a failure.

So they defeated the left and right wings, but not the wing that mattered.

They offered their services to Tissaphernes, a leading satrap of Artaxerxes, but he refused them, and they refused to surrender to him.

Not having options. Again, a bad situation to find yourself in.

The Greek senior officers foolishly accepted the invitation of Tissaphernes to a feast. There they were made prisoner, taken up to the king and there decapitated.

Flaw 6. Accepting the proffered hand of yesterday’s enemy, who is still your enemy today. It’s what happens when you’ve run out of options though. The Greek senior officers decapitated included Clearchus, their commander. It did not include Xenophon, who took command of the mercenaries and led them back to the Black Sea.

Six flaws. Which is the tragic one?

Flaw 4–5 is the moment Clearchus is famous for: it’s why Xenophon ends up having to lead the march that is the focus of his Anabasis. And people would have sought to explain such a military failure as a character flaw in Clearchus.

Cyrus the Younger – Wikipedia characterises Clearchus’ disobeying Cyrus in terms of the character flaw we all expect in hamartia:

Clearchus, out of arrogance, disobeyed.

This random LaRouchist tract I found pinpoints a different character flaw, fear:

Clearchus had made the fatal mistake of worrying more about his own survival than about achieving victory. Had he obeyed Cyrus, and led the assault, instead of allowing Cyrus to lead the Greek forces into battle, Cyrus would have survived to become King of Persia!

All we actually know is what Xenophon says (or speculates) Clearchus did:

Clearchus, though he could see the compact body at the centre, and had been told by Cyrus that the king lay outside the Hellenic left (for, owing to numerical superiority, the king, while holding his own centre, could well overlap Cyrus’s extreme left), still hesitated to draw off his right wing from the river, for fear of being turned on both flanks; and he simply replied, assuring Cyrus that he would take care all went well.

The fobbing off could be arrogance, and the hesitancy could be genuine fear; and both of them would be tragic flaws. In the end, Clearchus’ gamble paid off tactically, and success overrules all flaws—but it did not pay off strategically, because Artaxerxes actually won (and left Clearchus with no way out). Clearchus not going after the centre flank looks like yet another error in judgement—a panicked caution to complement his wonted rashness. Bad judgement to me sounds like a flaw more consistent with Clearchus’ earlier career.

But I have to say, I’m not ruling out that Clearchus’ decision was militarily sensible— especially if he was more interested in keeping his Greek army alive than his employer. Wikipedia gives a tactical constraint which Xenophon knew, but did not make explicit: “the insecurity that the Greeks had for their right flank, which tended to drift and was undefended, as the shields were held in the left hand.”

So this question should go to someone who knows both their Xenophon, and their military tactics.

Nick Nicholas’ answer to What happened when your friends found out about you being a famous Quoran?

Well, the prize for this goes to a friend of my wife’s, who took to saying “Oh My God, you’re, like, the Beyoncé of Quora”.

I mean, obviously.

Steve Theodore, https://www.quora.com/What-happe…

My response:

… Wow. Who knew that if you merged Beyoncé and Nick Nicholas, you got Porthos as portrayed by Oliver Platt:

Stoyan Shentov’s answer that Greeks ultimately came from the Proto–Indo-European homeland is not unreasonable; but we can answer the question more proximately, as what the likely homeland of the Proto-Greek speakers were. (And of course, the Proto-Greek speakers did not come into terra nullius: they intermarried with the Pelasgians or whatever they were who were already living there.)

See Greeks – Wikipedia and Proto-Greek language – Wikipedia. It has long been agreed that the proto-Greeks came from north of Greece, and that the Dorians were a subsequent wave of migration.

The Proto-Greeks probably arrived at the area now called Greece, in the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. The sequence of migrations into the Greek mainland during the 2nd millennium BC has to be reconstructed on the basis of the ancient Greek dialects, as they presented themselves centuries later and are therefore subject to some uncertainties. There were at least two migrations, the first being the Ionians and Aeolians, which resulted in Mycenaean Greece by the 16th century BC, and the second, the Dorian invasion, around the 11th century BC, displacing the Arcadocypriot dialects, which descended from the Mycenaean period. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age and the Doric at the Bronze Age collapse.

An alternative hypothesis has been put forth by linguist Vladimir Georgiev, who places Proto-Greek speakers in northwestern Greece by the Early Helladic period (3rd millennium BC), i.e. towards the end of the European Neolithic.

There is widespread confusion on this one.

There are three iterations of the comment feature:

• Original
• Featured/Other: Featured Comments by Kelvin Ho on Quora Product Updates
• Recommended/All: More Visibility for High-Quality Comments by Diana Gerr on Quora Product Updates

Different people have had different versions of the feature rolled out at different times. Right now (weekend of 22 April 2017), some people are being moved from Featured to Recommended, and some other people (including me) are being moved from Recommended back to Original.

Which makes me conclude that Featured comments are being removed, but that Recommended comments aren’t: the move back to Original is a temporary glitch (though one I am ecstatic about).

How do I feel?

• Featured and Recommended were overengineering the problem of how to manage adverse comments, and the extra click is moderately annoying.
• I don’t have a whole lot of adverse comments to scroll through. But I don’t trust Quora to identify and sequester adverse comments; there have been a lot of innocuous and positive comments sequestered.
• In response to users complaining that Featured was promoting anything they’d upvote, Quora decided to recommend comments ignoring what the user upvoted. (The criterion appears to be somehow tied up with Top Writer status or being followed by the user.)
• So users asking for more control over what gets promoted ended up with less.
• The lesson being: do not give Quora feedback.
• Clearly opinion is split on whether three-tier comments (promoted, not-promoted, collapsed) was a good thing. I think it was not a good thing: I much prefer eyeballing through a single list of comments.

Can it happen? Anything can happen; and for what it’s worth, Greek has even gotten rid of “once”: Ancient hapax, dis, tris, Modern mia fora, ðio fores, tris fores “one time, two times, three times”.

But as Mike Richmond argues (Mike Richmond’s answer to Will the word “twice” become archaic like “thrice” has?), there do not seem to be clear signs of twice perishing quite yet. The spread of two times in American English that others have pointed to is interesting; watch this space!

Reading English is just flowing water to me. The information just snarfs up.

Reading Modern Greek, I’m hyper-aware of stylistic differences; every concession to Ancient Greek or opening up to dialect was a political act up until the 70s, and I learned my Greek in the aftermath of that. Journalistic rigid syntax dismays me; I can rejoice with good choice of words, to the point of forgetting what the prose is talking about. That can happen in English, but the threshold is far higher.

Reading Ancient Greek, which I’m really not comfortable with, is assembling a puzzle. With a sledgehammer. I know what the bits mean, although there’s a fair bit of running to the dictionary; I find it very hard to put the bits together.

Reading French, and reading German, is glimpsing a coastline through a fog. My understanding is foggy, but good enough that I can skim—especially if it’s scholarly writing, where the vocabulary is more familiar.

Reading Esperanto is surprisingly smooth; there’s less texture and shoals to get in the way. My eyebrow still arches if I see a stylistic choice I don’t like.

Now, I’m been led astray from a romantic notion of Turkmenistan as the homeland of Turkdom, and from the religious content of the video, which is clearly triggering some sort of heightened rhetorical register.

But this sounded like… a hyperauthentic Turkish. A Turkish that ululates, proudly, what it is. Stern and guttural, with no mumbling.

Ancient Greek made a distinction between thieves and robbers: kleptēs vs lēistēs or harpax. Both kleptēs and lēistēs are used in the New Testament; the men crucified with Jesus were lēistai.

The Modern Greek vernacular had lost the word lēistēs, and had kept the word kleptēs (as kleftis) to refer to both thieves and robbers.

Brigands are robbers are thieves. Brigands were also celebrated in folksong as indomitable rebels, and formed the backbone of the Greek War of Independence. So brigands, as Klephts, were much feted in the newly independent Greece:

Klephts (Greek κλέφτης, kléftis, pl. κλέφτες, kléftes, which means “thief” and perhaps originally meant just “brigand”) were highwaymen turned self-appointed armatoloi, anti-Ottoman insurgents, and warlike mountain-folk who lived in the countryside when Greece was a part of the Ottoman Empire. They were the descendants of Greeks who retreated into the mountains during the 15th century in order to avoid Ottoman rule. They carried on a continuous war against Ottoman rule and remained active as brigands until the 19th century.

The catch is that Klephts were really just brigands. As folk songs make clear, they would rob rich Christian and rich Muslim alike. They fought the good fight during the War of Independence—and after the War of Independence, they went back to robbing the citizens of the new Greek State. Which was more than a little embarrassing if the new Greek State is using them as part of its foundation story.

The Greek State had a means to deal with this embarrassment: the introduction of Puristic Greek, as a move back towards Classical Greek. The indomitable heroes of the revolution could go on being called klephts. The current scoundrels holding up Greek nationals in mountain passes may well have been the exact same people; but they were not going to be called the same heroic name. They were listis (lēistēs): the ancient and Biblical word was brought back, to castigate them. (Those folk songs featuring the brigands robbing Christians were judiciously ignored, too.)

As a result, Modern Greek now has a word for robber, listis, a word for thief, kleftis, and a cognitive dissonance about the fact that kleftis is also a heroic indomitable hero type.