So as one reads the epic one senses this very deep ambivalence regarding the relative virtues and evils of civilized life and many of the features that make us human.

当人们读到这一段的时候，总是会对文明生活方式的利弊,产生一种很矛盾的感情,然而正是这些特性让人区别于动物。

耶鲁公开课 - 旧约导论课程节选

The reason for that was that in the east and in south, the Greeks lived among people who were more civilized than they, who were more advanced.

究其原因,在东方和南方,希腊人生活在比他们更文明,更先进的民族中间

耶鲁公开课 - 古希腊历史简介课程节选

How do we get out of it? This is of course for much of the book. What do we do to get out of this state of nature to enter ? a condition of civil society and civilized life?

我们怎么摆脱它呢,所要讲的一个重要问题,我们要怎样才能摆脱自然状态,从而进入文明社会的状态，过上文明的生活呢？

耶鲁公开课 - 政治哲学导论课程节选

On the one hand it's clearly good that humans rise above the animals and build cities and wear clothes and pursue the arts of civilization and develop bonds of love and duty and friendship the way that animals do not; these are the things that make humans like the gods in The Epic of Gilgamesh.

一方面，成为人类也未尝不是一件好事,人类优于动物，穿着衣服，用自己的双手建造城市,打造文明的生活方式，而爱和责任,把人类联结起来，这些是动物无法比拟的,在《吉尔伽美什史诗》中，这些特质让人类具有神性。

耶鲁公开课 - 旧约导论课程节选

I think they probably also invented a few things, but it was very,very characteristic of the Greeks to borrow from the cultures they encountered and to adapt them, to make them more useful for their own purposes and nothing could be clearer than the alphabet as an example of that.

我认为他们或许也发明过一些事物,但从他们所遇到的文明中进行借鉴,将之应用到自己的生活中去,并使它们更适于希腊人自己的目的,这样的方式也是非常希腊风格的,也没有什么,能比字母表这个例子更能清晰地说明这点了

耶鲁公开课 - 古希腊历史简介课程节选