THE GREEK MIRACLE

I sit here in our comfortable family house in suburban Athens, situated on the foothills of Mount Hymettus, whose modest sugar-loaf bulk protects us from wind and tempest. I ponder the history of this place and the contribution Greece has made to human development. I am a proud Scot and a patriotic Briton too, but I have to concede that the Greeks are an extraordinary star-turn by most measures and I wish to pay this grateful tribute to them.

The greatness of Greece emanates first from the poetic sagas of Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey. The Iliad is the story of the siege of Troy, when the Greeks under Agamemnon of Mycenae unite to free lovely Helen, the wife of Spartan king Menelaus, who has been kidnapped by the Trojan prince Paris, son of King Priam.  The epic poem was attributed to Homer (some say there were 3 separate poets) who flourished in about 750 BC, probably in Ionia. The events in Troy, if there is a kernel of truth in them, were dated much earlier, probably in the 12^th or 13^th century BC, according to archaeologists excavating in Mycenae and Troy. A Bronze Age Trojan war is being described by an Iron Age poet, Homer.

We are talking about pre-History here, with no written records. The Greeks had no alphabet or script in those days and these epic poems were transmitted orally and transcribed much later.    

        Homer, father of Greek poetry

Declaimed in sonorous iambic pentameters, Homer’s epic world is one of Olympian gods interfering with the actions of Greek and Trojan heroes and their women, of furious rivalries between warriors and of all the qualities and vices of mankind. His Odyssey describing the adventures of Odysseus (in Latin, Ulysses) is wholly imaginative as he wrestles with monsters and evil spirits on his way home to his wife Penelope on his Aegean-island kingdom of Ithaca. Homer inspired the great Latin epic, the Aeneid by Virgil, praising the founding of Rome by the Trojan hero Aeneas.

To sum up matters Homeric, the brilliant but careless archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated a Bronze age death-mask in Mycenae and like the great show-man he was, telegrammed the King of Greece, with precious little scientific evidence: I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon! The public believed him and loved it though later experts dated the mask a century before any Agamemnon.

             Schliemann’s Famed Mask of Agamemnon

Fast forward to the 5^th century BC and the Golden Age of Athens, when that city-state enjoyed a remarkable flowering mainly under the auspices of populist statesman Pericles. That flowering was led by philosophers like Socrates, who taught Plato, whose pupil was Aristotle. The works of these great minds, in ethics and politics, are still endlessly debated today, (or certainly were in my Oxford days 60 years ago).

The Golden Age also saw the theatre flourish, a religious as well as a dramatic feast in those times. The works of the great dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides thrilled the ancient audiences and modern ones too. In 1960, as a short-term student in Paris, I read all Sophocles’ plays (no great feat, there are only 7). I have attended various classical performances, often at Herodes Atticus, the Roman theatre beneath the Acropolis in Athens. Last time I was there the blinding of a character was graphically enacted. This proved too much for a lady spectator who fell into a noisy swoon and had to be carried out amid much hubbub. An authentic touch, for sure!

The timeless buildings on the Acropolis are also Pericles’ legacy, although he ruthlessly looted the treasure belonging to the Delian League to pay for them.

            The Acropolis today

The Parthenon, the Erechtheion and other temples beautify modern Athens. The finest theatres in Greece architecturally are elsewhere. There is an evocative, but steep, theatre at the wonderful site of Delphi, which was altered to accommodate a visit, and no doubt a bardic performance, by the Emperor Nero. Most people’s favourite is the vast Theatre at Epidaurus in the Peloponnese.

                           

                                                     The acoustically perfect theatre at Epidaurus

On one of several visits years ago, I tested the vaunted acoustics by declaiming the famous speech from Marlowe’s Dr Faustus:

Is this the Face that launched a Thousand Ships

And burnt the topless Towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a Kiss…

My long-suffering wife, seated on high, heard me with bell-like clarity. I did not however achieve immortality!

A Renaissance Raphael fresco in the Vatican depicts the richness of the Academy of Athens:

A copy from the V&A of Raphael’s Academy

I am no scholar but it is possible to identify the historians Thucydides and Herodotus, the mathematicians Pythagoras and Euclid and the sculptor Praxiteles in addition to the usual suspects. Sadly, Pericles and his successors lost the Peloponnesian War against authoritarian Sparta and the spark of the glory of Athens was greatly diminished.

Classical Greece gave way to the dominance of Macedonian Alexander the Great and soon enough to the Romans. Hellenistic culture continued to flourish, Greek was also the language of the New Testament and of the Eastern Mediterranean generally. Although geographical Greece was a mere province, the Byzantine Empire, successor to the Roman, spread her culture very widely. Exquisite churches like Daphni, near Athens, or Hosias Loukas on the road to Delphi testify to that beauty.

      Christ the All-judging in mosaic from Daphni

The Byzantine Empire ended with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 and Greece suffered as second-class infidels under the Muslim yoke. In 1821 the Greeks revolted and achieved liberation in 1830. I am proud that my fellow Scot and alumni in childhood at Aberdeen Grammar School, the poet Lord Byron, played a leading role in rallying European opinion on the Greek side.

I dreamed that Greece might still be free

Modern Greece has had many moments of turmoil but her unique spirit, typified by her brave Resistance to Nazi occupation in WW2, is unquenched and many will join me in proclaiming:

 – Thank you Greece for ushering in Western civilization, all strength to the Hellenic genius, long live Greece!

 

SMD

15.04.22

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2022