Why Greeks Matter - by Christopher Janus
WHY THE GREEKS MATTER
By Christopher Xenepulos Janus
Scholars in most countries and languages have been writing about Greeks for 3,000 years. Thomas Cahill, distinguished best-selling author, has written an excellent book WHY THE GREEKS MATTER and I’ll be quoting him later on in this essay.
First I’m going to review my own collection over the years of Greek sayings and comments from historians and newsmakers. One of my favorites is Winston Churchill.
One of his famous sayings is:
‘ Greeks don’t fight like heroes Heroes fight like Greeks”
At a news conference he said he was proud like Lord Byron to be a Philhellene. At the same time he said he approved sending the Elgin marbles back to
Greece.
Greeks have always loved Winston Churchill.
I believe that one of the many reasons that the Greeks matter is that the Greeks were the first people to stand for dying for a principle? It could be for your country, God,
Your family, love for a woman or dying for your honor. The Greeks were among the first people to introduce the concept of unconditional loyalty – an awesome concept.
There was a lack of discipline in the Greek army when they occupied
Sicily and unconditional loyalty became a requirement for the Army .Today unconditional loyalty is part of the social system in
Sicily and this where the Mafia got the idea.
Following are a few of my favorite sayings about Greeks:
“Of all people the Greeks have dreamed the dream of life.” Goethe
“Except the blind forces of nature, there is nothing in life which is not Greek in it’s Origin.” Sir Henry J. Maine
“To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in, was a mark of the Greek spirit which distinguished it from all that had gone before. It is a vital distinction. Edith Hamilton
Knowledge of Greek thought and life and of the arts, in which the Greeks expressed their thought and sentiment, is essential to high culture. A man may know everything else, but without this knowledge he remains ignorant of the best intellectual and moral achievements of his own race.” .Charles Eliot Norton
“By being so long in the lowest form (at Harrow) I gained an immense advantage over the cleaver boys….I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence which is a noble thing…naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; I would make them all learn English; and then I would let the clever ones Latin as an honor and Greek as a treat.
Sir Winston Churchill “Maid of
AthensEre we partGive, oh give me back my heart.” Lord Byron“: The most ungreek we can do is copy the Greeks – the Greeks emphatically were not copiers.” Alfred North Whitehead.
One of the most unique and surprising interviews I’ve had was in my meeting in 1972 with Chairman Mao when it was almost impossible for Americans to get visas to visit China, Valerie Valentine through personal meetings with Chinese officials in Washington and Canada was able to get visas for China. I invited Professor Willis Barnstone. Translator of Mao’s poetry, to come with us and I think that’s he reason Chairman Mao received us. Apparently he had been told I was of Greek descent because he opened the conversation with us through an interpreter by saying he was once invited to go to
Athens and speak to the Greek parliament but he couldn’t go at the time. Then he said he had a copy of Confuses’ philosophy and Plato’s Dialogues at his bedside.
Then he said “I weren’t born Chinese, I’d rather be Greek!
In a meeting with Albert Einstein in 1938 in
New York I heard the same kind of thing. Einstein said if he couldn’t be Jewish, intellectually he would rather be Greek.
Now let us see what scholar Thomas Cahill has to say in his book about why Greeks matter and what they say about him:
“The Greeks invented everything from Western warfare to mystical prayer, from logic to statecraft. Many of their achievements, particularly in art and philosophy, are widely celebrated, other innovations and accomplishments are unknown or under appreciated.
Thomas Cahill explores the legacy. good or bad, of the ancient Greeks. From the origins of Greek culture in the migration of armed Indo-European tribes into Attica and the Peloponnesians peninsula to the formation of city-states to the art, architecture to the Birth of Western literature, poetry, drama, philosophy. Cahill makes the distant past element to the present.
Greek society is one of the two primeval influences on the Western world: while the Jews gave us our value system, the Greeks set f foundations and framework for our intellectual lives. They are responsible for our vocabulary. Our logic and our entire system of categorization. They provided the intellectual tools we bring to bear on problems in philosophy, mathematics, medicine, physics and other sciences. Their modes of thinking considered in classical times to be the pinnacle of human achievement are largely responsible for the shape of the Christian religion tool.
But, as Cahill points out, the Greeks left a less appealing bequest as well. They created Western militarism and in making the warrior the ultimate ideal perpetuated the assumption that only males could be entrusted with the duties of citizenship. The consequences of their exclusion of women from the political sphere and the social segregation of the sexes continues to reverberate today.
Now finally a quote from my friend, Melina Mercouri, who was Minister of
Culture in
Athens: “Don’t beware of Greeks bringing gifts – accept the gifts with enthusiasm and enjoy them. What the Greeks want is usually with much appreciation and good will and their friendship is very much worth it.’
