Morris has some interesting thoughts on the Greeks and Romans.
He states:
“Greece’s real contribution to Axial thought came not from Democrats, but from the critics of Democracy, led by Socrates. Greece, he argued, didn’t need democracies, which merely pooled the ignorance of men who judged everything by appearances; what it needed was men like himself, who knew when it came to the one thing that mattered – the nature of the good – they knew nothing. Only such men could hope to understand the good… through reason, honed in philosophical debate.”
Of course the beliefs of Socrates were carried forward by his pupil Plato in The Republic and Laws, and Plato’s successor Aristotle in Ethics and Politics.