How do you make sure good ideas win? Once upon a time the Spartan elders of the gerousia liked a proposal but didn’t like the proposer.   They wanted to take the bill to the general Spartiate assembly to be voted and ratified, but the man who came up with the idea did not live…

Everyone thought Callisthenes was a lucky man.  He was victorious.  He got the girl.  What went wrong? Sometimes when we think we have won, we are not in the clear yet. Aristocleia was the most beautiful young woman in the town of Haliartus, and she had two suitors.  One of them was a local boy,…