The Magnificence That Was Greece

The glorious Acropolis which rises above Athens.

Nowadays we read about near-bankrupt Greece and what is happening to this country in terms of European Union issues. What we tend to forget, however, is that this nation was once one of the world’s greatest civilizations where wise men like Socrates and Aristotle were telling the world about philosophy and natural science when their brothers in other countries were still uncultured hordes wearing animal skins, devouring raw meat and eliminating each other solely for the pleasure of it.
  

Come to think about it, everything in fact comes from the Greeks (and many modern-day citizens of the world have sadly forgotten about this). In fact there is nothing in ancient Greek civilization that does not illuminate our own. 

In Greek history, we truly see the mind being liberated from superstition through the works of men like Zeno and Epicurus who formulated the most lasting philosophies in history. But at the end of its run Greece had to welcome those conquering Romans through whom dying Greece would bequeath to Europe her sciences, her philosophies, her letters, and her arts as the living cultural basis of our modern world. 
  

The Acropolis. Not far from here Paul the Apostle told
the learned men  of Athens about the Unknown God
of whom  they had no knowledege of. 

In his glorious book about Greece, historian Will Durant (The Life of Greece, Simon and Schuster, New York: 1939) explains: “Excepting machinery, there is hardly anything secular in Western culture that does not come from Greece. Schools, gymnasiums, arithmetic, history, rhetoric, psychics, biology, anatomy, therapy, cosmetics, poetry, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, theology, agnosticism, stoicism, ethics,  politics, idealism, tyranny, democracy, epicureanism, plutocracy: these are all Greek words for cultural forms seldom originated, but in many cases first matured for good or evil by the abounding energy  of the Greeks." 

To Dunant’s list I would like to add Xenophobia, which is still rife on many continents today. Ever heard about the Spartan Xenophon and his Ten Thousand? 

Remains of the Temple of Delphi where the oracle was consulted  in ancient Greece.

A Roman copy of a Greek statue attributed to  Leochares
which is standing in the Louvre, Paris.

Durant again: “All the problems that disturb us today – environmental destruction, the emancipation of women and the limitation of the family; the conservatism of the established, and the experimentalism of the unplaced, in morals, music, and government; the corruptions of politics and the perversions of conduct; the conflict of religion and science, and the weakening of the supernatural supports of morality; the war of the classes, the nations, and the continents; the revolutions of the poor against the economically powerful rich, and of the rich against the politically powerful poor; the struggle between democracy and dictatorship, between individualism and communism, between the East and the West – all these agitated, as if for our instruction, the brilliant and turbulent life of ancient Hellas. There is nothing in Greek civilization that does not illuminate our own.” 

May we never forget those wonderful people of ancient Greece who made a colossal contribution to create a civilised world.   

All images are from Google