Sec. Rubio in Athens: The Civilizations That Built What Stands Behind Me, Have Captivated the Imagination of the Western World

RUSH EXCERPT:
RUBIO: "For thousands of years the civilization that built what stands behind me has captivated the imagination of the Western world Generations of our statesmen artists, and philosophers have looked at to it they’ve looked to it with wonder and they’ve looked to it with awe Now time has a tendency to dull the senses Great victories and catastrophic defeats they they seem to shrink to becoming like a footnote in the textbook another fact for our school children to memorize and forget But the Greeks of antiquity they seem to have an almost mystical hold on our memory They call us back to them again and again 480 years before Christ The armies of Xerxes arrived in this city and they put its sanctuaries to the torch Most Athenians had by then evacuated by ship to a nearby island but there was a handful of them that refused to leave their home So instead they barricaded themselves in the rocky fortress of the Acropolis to fight an extraordinary last stand heaving massive stones down the cliffs onto the Persian invaders and holding the greatest empire of that age at bay for days They were eventually overwhelmed The Persians plundered the temples they burned the shrines they razed the Acropolis to the ground But when the Athenians returned they gathered the broken remains of the old Acropolis and buried them in the hill where it had stood And decades later, under Pericles They raised the Parthenon For 20-five centuries since the Parthenon has stood Empires have risen and fallen beneath its shadow and the progeny of the men who built it the sons of Athens and Rome have carried their civilization with them to the ends of the earth"