I have been unable tu understand this reply.

If Plato was in favor of a system that bred people like cattle and lied to them to keep them down, then he was a fascist. If Aristotle defended war because it was "hunting for slaves" and declared that slaves were basically animals with speech so they could be oppressed with impunity, then he was fascist. Just because you were taught in school to admire Plato and Aristotle changes none of that.

Of course there were Greek thinkers that condemned slavery. But for a characterization of Greek civilization, one does not pick one humanitarian needle out of the Greek fascist haystack; one evaluates, to the contrary, the main trends: the haystack itself. The census of Demetrius of Phalerum, ruler of the Athenian Empire, counted 400,000 slaves and 20,000 citizens. We have abundant evidence of how the routine and barbaric cruelty visited by the tiny minority of Greek citizens on their slaves. We have ample testimony that it was a normal Greek practice to exterminate all the adult male citizens of a conquered city, and to take the women and children as slaves (they naturally also took the slaves). All of this, and more, is in the scholarly article that I suggested above that you read.

You seem to think one can refute all that with "further study of Greek History, and Plato’s writings, [which] have led me to the conclusion that your criticism of the Greeks is anachronistic." You are welcome to make that case. But you don't make it by observing that "Plato’s dialogues are one of the great treasures of the world," a claim that I never contradicted. I agree: they are. Plato was a great philosopher. He was also a very bad guy. Plato's virtues as a philosopher when he speculates about mathematics, or meaning, etc., are undiminished by the fact that he was a moral monster, because such virtues have nothing to do with morality, just as Wagner's music remains beautiful to listen to despite the fact that he was an antisemite.

"Plato's true ideal in the Republic" was obviously a society modeled on Sparta, which was in some senses even worse than Athens. It is well known that Plato admired Sparta, and so did his circle.

I find it remarkable that you would consider judging the ancient Greeks, in moral terms, on anything other than the spectacular suffering they imposed on others. And since you point out yourself that at least some Greeks were offended by this, then there is nothing "anachronistic" in judging them as we judge our contemporaries when they inflict suffering on others. There was an entire civilization, next door in Mesopotamia, where ethics and the protection of ordinary folk were central ideals:

So there is no support for the claim that the Greeks were brutal because they were ancient. There are always brutal people, then and now. And there are always ethical people, then and now. The first should be condemned, the second praised. If brutal people produce great mathematics (or whatever) you can certainly recognize and celebrate that, but don't confuse that with applauding them for being "good." And there is little sense in taking offense if someone points out that they are brutal.

The problem in ancient Greece was not that compassion could not be imagined, as you seem to think, and as your professors have told you. The problem was that criminals ended up controlling the government, just as also happens in some modern societies. If two thousand years from now people begin complaining that a negative moral judgment on the German Nazis or the Muslim jihadis is "anachronistic" because, to the people of the future, these societies will be "ancient," they will be making the same mistake you are making now.