I have been studying the ancient Greeks for most of my life. I took graduate classes in ancient and medieval Greek history and wrote my doctoral dissertation on a scholar who also went deep in his studies of ancient Greek culture, especially medicine.
Koraes
This man, Adamantios Koraes, 1748-1833, became the golden link between ancient and modern Greece. He edited Greek classical texts that became textbooks in Greek schools. He spread his knowledge and patriotism, becoming the father of the Greek Revolution.
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| Adamantios Koraes, 1748-1833. Statue in front of the University of Athens, Athens, Greece. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos. |
Koraes grew up in a country ruled by Turks, so his passion for ancient Greece was a passion of life and death. He lived the Turkish humiliations and the corruption necessary for survival. He probably told himself he had to get away from the Turks or die. A Dutch pastor taught him Latin and encouraged him to go to “enlightened” Europe.
Koraes succeeded in leaving the oppressive environment of Smyrna, where he grew up, for Amsterdam and, eventually, Montpellier, France, where he earned a doctorate in medicine. His dissertation was on the father of medicine, Hippocrates.
Armed with a medical degree, but, above all, better understanding of ancient Greek science and culture, Koraes went to Paris. He arrived in Paris in 1789. This was not a good time to be in Paris. The French people were up in arms against the king and the ruling classes, including the clergy. The French Revolution was inspiring and terrible, consuming itself and Europe. Nevertheless, Koraes survived the terror and violence of the French Revolution.
Superiority of Greek Civilization
I studied Koraes carefully. He appealed to me. Like him, I was in love with the ancients. Both of us realized Greek civilization was superior to modern cultures, be those of the eighteenth century or those of the twenty-first century.
That superiority (in knowledge and ethics) was obvious in the very ruins of Greek culture: laws published on stone, jury trials, democratic voting for officials of the polis, beautiful art, the Parthenon, exquisite architecture. Then Greek scholars during the Renaissance had brought to light Greek thought -- the texts of Homer, those of tragic poets, fragments from the writings of philosophers, the near complete works of Plato and Aristotle; complete text of historians like Herodotus and Thucydides; fragments or some of the work of scientists like Democritus, Hippocrates, Eudoxos, Euclid, Eratosthenes, Archimedes, Apollonios of Perga, Aristarchos of Samos, Hipparchos, Poseidonios, Galen and Ptolemy.
The thought coming from these surviving texts challenged superstition, authoritarianism, and the dogmas of one-god religions. It made reason, like Plato had said, king on Earth and heavens. It opened the human mind to the science and beauties of the cosmos.
Koraes knew that ancient Greek thought had the seeds of a future Greek independent state and society. That’s why he spent his life in Paris editing Greek texts.
In my case, and like Koraes, I was convinced modern Greece needs badly its own Hellenic Renaissance. Christianity and the Turks had deformed the country. Only a chronic acquaintance of modern Greeks with ancient Greek thought could possibly weaken and replace the deleterious non-Hellenic legacy in Greece.
Away from Home
I have spent most of my life outside of Greece. Living in America has not been easy. I disagree with academics and politicians who see the country like a new Roman empire. I always thought America should be a democracy.
Koraes was definitely against Turkish power in Greece. His aversion to power intensified his affection for the ancients. Something like this happened to me.
I am not comparing Americans to Turks. I am simply saying that each of us in difficult times turns to a better imaginary world. You either make up that world or you imagine a world that existed long ago.
University of Wisconsin
My mental journeys to ancient Greece took roots in times of trouble – late 1960s. I was then at the University of Wisconsin. The 1960s was a time of war and unrest in America.
My advisor, Michael Petrovich, was superficially polite, but not a man who inspired confidence. He was a cold war warrior. In addition, he was a Serbian-American with strong opinions about the Slavs and the Greeks. He had a grudge against me because I questioned the role of medieval Slavs in Peloponnesos.
So, when I was searching for a teaching job, his letter of recommendation must have been less than outstanding. Indeed, it could have been outright negative. This probably destroyed my academic dreams – and I knew it, but could not do anything about it.
The first time I sensed this invisible hostility was in 1972, the year I earned my doctorate in history. I had an encouraging interview with the Dean of Humanities at the University of Chicago. Yet, nothing happened. My mind immediately raced to the Slavs in Peloponnesos and Petrovich.
This academic black hole left me doubtful about the integrity of professors and the entire infrastructure of higher education.
The Vietnam War
The University of Wisconsin, like most of the universities in America, was supporting the war in Vietnam: a war of large-scale poisoning of the natural world of southeast Asia, especially Vietnam; a war that devastated Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. America bombed those countries to the stone age. I kept asking why? There was no reason for such American atrocity, save for the insanity of several presidents who feared dominoes in the spread of communism. The students at the University of Wisconsin were protesting the war and the local police and national guard invaded the campus.
I left the University of Wisconsin with bitter feelings of betrayal. Petrovich and the Vietnam War became one source of complain that has nagged me for a long time.
Making a living
I did post-doctoral studies in the history of science at Harvard, wrote my first book, and worked for Congress and the US Environmental Protection Agency for 27 years. Yet this experience left me unsatisfied. I learned about things I never knew existed. But, overall, I was not happy. In fact, the more I entered the American way of doing things, in my work, the more I felt dispirited and angry.
A spiral of evil
How could the American government be so foolish and cruel to approve deadly farm chemicals entering our food, drinking water, and the entire natural world? This was no pest control. It was invisible chemical warfare, a monstrous reality that disturbs me to this day.
Like in the development of nuclear weapons, the development and deployment of farm chemicals did not take place accidentally or in ignorance. On the contrary, officials who made policy knew very well that, for example, the use of pesticides on a mass scale for several decades would bring trouble, big trouble. My view is that such odious policy, inevitably, would trigger a chain of evil of unpredictable consequences.
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| Greenpeace poster against glyphosate weed killer of Monsanto, 2017. |
What do I mean by a chain of evil? I mean a deforming and blinding reality-policy. Like nuclear bombs, toxic substances used in agriculture in the millions of tons per year, have become so “normal” they no longer exist in public discourse or public policy. It’s as if the national media, academia, government, and industry have signed an agreement never to question their “safety.”
It does not matter that cancer and neurological diseases are exploding; that insects, birds, amphibians, endangered species and wild life are threatened as never before. It does not matter that the temperature of the planet is rising, threatening all life and the Earth.
This is another reason I have been searching for answers from the ancient Greeks.
Why the Greeks?
Because the Greeks used reason, small farms, and, above all, because they looked at the natural world and saw powerful natural forces they called gods.
One of these natural forces was Zeus. Homer described Zeus as the cloud gatherer. He was also a god of justice, hospitality, oaths and a protector of the household. The Greeks honored him in a variety of celebrations and names all over the country, primarily in the Olympics.
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| Olympieion, temple honoring Zeus in the Athenian agora, Athens, Greece. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos. |
In other ways, the Greeks were just as violent as we are. They were also extremely competitive and fiercely independent. They failed to form one Hellas, thus inviting enemies like the Romans. Greece became a Roman province in 146 BCE.
In general, the ancient Greeks asked questions about themselves and the cosmos, inventing democracy, science and scientific technology more than a millennium and a half before anybody else. An example of this explosion of knowledge is the Antikythera Mechanism, a laptop-like computer invented and built in Greece 2,200 years ago.
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| Reconstructed model of the Antikythera computer by Dionysis Kriaris, a mathematician living in Athens. Courtesy Dionysis Kriaris. Right: front view of the computer. Left, back view of the computer. |
These are the reasons why I am attracted to Greek civilization.
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