# The Sons of Athens and Rome Carried Civilization Across the Earth by Marco Rubio > “The Persians plundered the temples, burned the shrines, and razed the Acropolis to the ground. But when the Athenians returned, they gathered the broken remains of the old Acropolis and buried them in the hill where it had stood. Decades later, under Pericles, they raised the Parthenon. For twenty-five centuries since, the Parthenon has stood. Empires have risen and fallen beneath its shadow. And the progeny of the men who built it—the sons of Athens and Rome—have carried their civilization with them to the ends of the Earth.” > **— Marco Rubio**, *Remarks at the Pnyx, Athens, October 7, 2026, 2:28–3:12* ## Sources and Context - **Primary recording:** [U.S. Department of State recording, 2:28–3:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOv1DpML7I4&t=148s), October 7, 2026. - **Official transcript:** [U.S. Department of State — Secretary of State Marco Rubio Remarks](https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesman/2026/10/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-remarks), October 7, 2026. The State Department page returned a technical-difficulties notice during the source-research pass; the audiovisual recording remains the controlling primary source. - **Prepared source record:** [[research/Secretary Rubio Delivers Remarks from the Acropolis in Athens|Secretary Rubio Delivers Remarks from the Acropolis in Athens]] preserves the complete spoken transcript, the attendance record, the source architecture, and this statement's position in the full address. - **Editorial record:** The readable quotation is a journalistic-clean rendering of the spoken delivery: punctuation, obvious caption defects, false starts, and non-substantive repetitions are normalized without changing the proposition. The complete uncompressed delivery remains available in the prepared source record for direct comparison. - **Context:** The prepared boundary joins destruction, reconstruction, endurance, and transmission. It makes the Parthenon a civilizational mechanism: the evidence that a people can recover from ruin and send their inheritance beyond its original geography. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/War With Empire|War With Empire]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/war with empire/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Neo-Westernism|Neo-Westernism]] - [[wiki/Marco Rubio|Marco Rubio]] - [[wiki/Civilizational Inheritance|Civilizational Inheritance]] - [[wiki/Western Civilization|Western Civilization]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The Persians plundered the temples, burned the shrines, and razed the Acropolis to the ground. But when the Athenians returned, they gathered the broken remains of the old Acropolis and buried them in the hill where it had stood. Decades later, under Pericles, they raised the Parthenon. For twenty-five centuries since, the Parthenon has stood. Empires have risen and fallen beneath its shadow. And the progeny of the men who built it—the sons of Athens and Rome—have carried their civilization with them to the ends of the Earth.” — Marco Rubio, Remarks at the Pnyx, Athens, October 7, 2026 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-marco-rubio-athens-rome-carried-civilization ```