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:
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)