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:
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)