History
The idea of nouveau riche and the struggle within the ranks of the dates from Antiquity, to Ancient Greece (ca. 8th c. BC β 7th c. AD) and the social class animosity between Old Money (inherited wealth) and the appropriators of new wealth. In the sixth century BC, the poet and aristocrat Theognis of Megara wrote how βin former days, there was a tribe who knew no laws nor manners . . These men are nobles, now, the gentlemen of old are now the trash.β This Greek poet wrote these words during a time in Greece, when money and economic growth in relation to trade gave rise to high class proprietors. In the Roman Republic the term "Homo novus" ("New Man") carried similar connotations.
Read more about this topic: Nouveau Riche
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)