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| Olympieion: Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos |
I studied Greek
history in college. However, unexpected changes in my student life diverted me
from my goal of teaching about the Greeks. However, I kept reading the Greek
texts. I also wrote two Greek history books.
In America, 1961
Moving from Greece
to America in 1961 was shocking. The startling contrast was that of size. In my
village and high school town in the island of Cephalonia nearly everything was
human-sized. Landing at Chicago’s giant O’ Hara airport was exciting and
frightening. I had never seeing so many people, so many stores, and buildings
vainly trying to reach the heavens.
My uncle George
picked me up from the airport. He drove through downtown Chicago. I noticed a
tremendous contrast between the glamorous stores of downtown Chicago and the tiny
stores and homes lining the streets leading to Oaklawn, a suburb in south
Chicago where my uncle George lived.
On our way to
Oaklawn, I started seeing electrified large glass crosses, headed with large
glass letters reading “Jesus Saves.” I thought these crosses were more than an
appeal to Jesus. They looked to me they carried some kind of a secret message.
They were all over south Chicago. What did they mean?
These peculiar
crosses became my introduction to a divided America. Whites and blacks had
their own societies right next to each other. Whites had the power and wealth.
Blacks had very little, save a living memory of slavery. They protested white oppression
and struggled for integration within the large white society. But, in 1961, things
looked frozen. Trouble was in the air.
Being eighteen with
rudimentary English and starting college removed the injustice of America from
my mind. I could not handle it. My instinct led me eventually to the Greeks.
The choice had something to do in helping me cope with my new environment –
strange, silent, threatening, difficult to decode.
Moral decline
After several years
at the University of Illinois and University of Wisconsin, I earned a doctorate
in history from the University of Wisconsin. I followed that with postdoctoral studies in the history of science
at Harvard. I then worked on Capitol Hill and the US Environmental Protection
Agency. My unpleasant and often bitter experience in these institutions partly
reflects my disappointment with the lax ethical standards and corrupt science
prevailing in political Washington and industrialized America.
Greek architecture shaped
the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, and Congressional buildings. In
fact, in a dreamy moment I compared the Congressional neighborhood of
Washington, DC, to fifth century BCE Athens.
I went to work
thinking that some of this Hellenic affection of America must have been more
than a fake imitation of Greek architecture. So I went to work thinking how to
improve human life and protect the natural world from the myriad gadgets and
poisons industry had been churning out for decades.
Once my delusions
about America faded, I embraced the Greek achievement even more. I felt good
and secure in those imaginary and real realms of Greek literature, philosophy,
science, gods and heroes.
The
Antikythera Mechanism
My Greek journey took
a new turn about ten years ago with my study of the Antikythera Mechanism, a
gear computer of scientific technology Greeks created in the second century
BCE.
In 2007, I saw for
the first time the fragments of this sophisticated astronomical device in the
Archaeological Museum in Athens. I looked carefully at these fragile fragments
and examined dozens of x-ray pictures of the largest fragments revealing the
intricate and interlocking gear trains inside the computer. This immersion in
the technology and beauty of the astronomical device brought me closer to
understanding why the Greeks invented and manufactured this machine, without
doubt the greatest achievement of their civilization.
They put their
modern-like science and engineering skills and virtues in this computer in
order to open another window to the heavens, a cosmos of order and beauty. The
device accurately followed the movement of the Sun, Moon and the planets and predicted
the eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. It was also an accurate calendar.
The expansion of the
Greeks to Egypt and the Middle East after the death of Alexander the Great in
late fourth century BCE set the foundations for the modern world. The Greek
kings of Egypt created the Mouseion, a university of sciences and humanities,
and a Library. They funded the exploration of the natural world and the heavens
and the study and editing of the poets and writers of ancient Greek
civilization. The Italian scholar of the Alexandrian age, Lucio Russo, said the
result of this intellectual activity at the Mouseion and Library was an
explosion of scientific knowledge about the world. The Antikythera computer
came out of the scientific institutions and Library of Alexandria.
Greek Art
My research and
interest in this explosion of enlightenment in the Greek world led me to Greek
art – the intellectual and material remains of Greek civilization and the images Greeks made of
themselves and their world. They decorated everything, including the humble
ceramic cups they used for drinking water and wine. They painted the walls of
their homes and those of public buildings, including the Parthenon.
Mosaics, paintings, ceramic
vessels, jewelry, coins, statues, altars, stadia, theaters and temples told the
story of their makers. The end was a mixture of science, craftsmanship, beauty
and goodness. It’s in that combination
you can see ancient Greeks.
The surviving art
shows the Greeks no different than the characters coming through the pages of
poets like Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes; philosophers
like Plato and Aristotle; and the writers of the Alexandrian era. Art was
philosophy.
Naked athletes
Of course, the
Greeks were not perfect; they knew that well. Their literature was mostly about enlightenment,
not perfection. They aimed at eudaimonia,
the enjoyment of the good and examined life. They left perfection to gods and,
possibly, heroes.
The athletes competed
naked in order to erase any sign of inequality among them. In addition, nakedness
revealed beauty. And looking at a naked athlete, god or hero you also think of
the good and beautiful embedded in that nakedness.
Seeing is believing
I borrowed images
from museums, books and Wikipedia. I also take my own pictures. I use photos for
the illustration of Greek history. Pictures give life to the Antikythera
computer, Greek traditions from the second millennium BCE to mid-twentieth
century, the Olympics and other Pan-Hellenic games, the Iliad and Odyssey of
Homer, mythology and Greek medieval and modern civilization.
These images bring
me slightly closer to ancient Greeks who gave us so much of our civilization:
political theory and the warnings of Plato and Galen, the great Greek physician
of the second century, not to put money and wealth ahead of virtue and especially science; the
Parthenon; the biology of Aristotle; the geometry of Euclid and abstract
mathematics; the geometry and engineering of Archimedes; mathematical astronomy
and gears for computers.
Greeks are especially relevant today
We need Greek wisdom
right now, especially science uncontaminated by money and lobbyists.
I know that I live
in revolutionary times. America and other countries devoted to the
commercialization and militarization of science and technology are threatening
civilization and the world.
Second, in 2018,
America is falling apart. President Trump is consolidating the power of the
rich, pushing America to plutocracy. The Republicans and Trump lowered the
taxes of corporations and the rich, handing them something like a trillion-and-a-half
dollars.
This inequity, which
in 1961 troubled me, has become a gigantic gangster-like force undermining
democracy and civilization. The conflict between Republicans and Democrats may
lead to civil war. Trump’s attack against public and environmental health is an
onslaught against each one of us and the natural world. Honeybees are on the
verge of extinction. The very institution I worked for twenty-five years, the US
EPA, is openly licensing corporations and factories to pollute.
The Greeks did not
need an EPA. The natural world was sacred to them. But they went through
political schisms and civil wars. Reading them sheds light on the roots of
America’s breakdown.
The Greeks thought plutocracy
was a bad government. It still remains the worst form of government.
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