the modern world is deeply attracted to ancient Greece every year around 1
million people visit the Parthenon and wander around the ruins
because they're sure the place and the culture of which its supreme embodiment
has something important to say to them but it's often not quickly what what can
ancient Greece to for us it's a big vulgar but central question
there are perhaps five big ideas we can take away from ancient Greece the Greeks
thought it was extremely important for everyone regularly to witness a certain
sort of gory tale
they called a tragedy festivals existed to honor these tragedies and governments
closed civic buildings businesses and law courts to enable citizens to go and see
them some festivals such as the festival of Dionysus in Athens which began in 508 BC
would last a week and involve up to 17 plays famous plays included a
Aeschylus's the Auristia, Sophocles' Ajax, Oedipus the King, and Electra,
Euripides Madea in these tragedies people were seen to break a minor law or
make a hasty decision or sleep with the wrong person and the result was ignominy
and death yet what happened was shown to be to a large extent in the hands of
what the Greeks called fate or the gods
it was the Greeks poetic way of saying the things often work out in random ways
according to dynamics that simply don't reflect the merits of the individuals
concerned in the Poetics the philosopher Aristotle to find the key ingredients of
tragedy
the hero of the tragedy should be a decent person better than average often
highborn but prone to making small mistakes as we all do at the start
it may not be obvious that it is an error they are making but by an
unfortunate chain of events for which they are not wholly to blame this small
mistake leads to a catastrophe tragedy is the sympathetic morally complex
account of how good people can end up in disastrous situations
it's the very opposite of today's tabloid newspaper or social media sphere
with a mob that rushes to make judgments on those who slipped up
Aristotle thought it was extremely important that people see tragic works
on a regular basis to counter their otherwise strong inclinations to judge
and moralize tragedy is meant to be a corrective too easy judgment without the
idea of tragedy we can make existence for everyone far crueler and far more
judgmental than it really need be we should look back to the Greeks to
recover an extremely important idea
athens was the cradle of philosophy home of the three greatest philosophers
Socrates Plato and Aristotle what unites the Greek philosophers is a search for
what they termed eudaimonia which translators happiness and fulfillment
they saw philosophy as a hugely practical subject that could help people
find their way through the dilemmas of life
the approach was already contained in the word philosophy itself in Greek
phyllo means love or devotion and Sophia means wisdom philosophers were people
devoted to wisdom that would be an abstract the concept of wisdom isn't
mysterious being wise means attempting to live and die well leading as good a
life as possible within the troubled conditions of existence
what we call the history of Greek philosophy is made up of repeated
attempts over the centuries to address ways in which we are unwise
so for example Socrates paid special attention to the problem of how people
get confused in their minds
he was struck the people didn't quite know what they meant by key ideas like
courage or justice or success even though these were the main ideas they
used when talking about their own lives
Socrates developed a method which still bears his name by which you can learn to
get clearer about what you mean by playing devil's advocate with any idea
the game isn't necessarily to change your mind
it's to test whether the ideas guiding your life are sound a few decades later
the philosopher Aristotle try to make us more confident around big questions
he thought the best questions with those that ask what something is for he did
this a lot and over many books asking what is government for what is the
economy for what's money for what
art for today he might be encouraging us to ask questions like what's the news
media for what is marriage for what is pornography for also active in ancient
greece were the stoic philosophers who were interested in panic
the Stoics noticed a really central feature of panic we panic not just when
something bad occurs but when it does so unexpectedly when we are assuming that
everything was going to go rather well
so they suggested that we should arm ourselves against panic by getting used
to the idea that danger trouble and difficulty are very likely to occur
at every turn the overall task of studying Greek philosophy is to absorb
these and many other lessons and put them to work in the world today
the point isn't just to know what this all that philosopher happened to say but
to aimed exercise wisdom at an individual and societal level
starting now
Athens is known as the home of democracy democracy was developed in the fifth
century BC first under Solon then Cleisthenes and Ephialtes however
democracy came under threat in the later stages of the fifth century BC when
Athens was in the midst of fighting a lengthy war with its nemesis
sparta the Peloponnesian War so to remind Athenians of their importance
within a democracy the great general Pericles delivered a rousing speech at
the annual funeral oration to mark the dead of the war in 430 BC what makes
Pericles his famous speech so striking is that he isn't defending democracy
just as a way of running the state
he's defending what we might call the Democratic spirit a spirit of equality
community and comradeship that can develop in societies where members more
or less feel themselves to be equal to one another
the voting system is a root or something much deeper that we might term fellow
feeling and emotion the Greeks discovered for Humanity Pericles
declared the administration of Athens favors the many instead of the few
this is why it's called a democracy if we look to the laws they afford equal
justice to all in their private differences if there is no social
standing advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity class
considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit nor again does
poverty by the way if a man is able to serve the state
he has never hindered by the obscurity of his condition against the brutality
of the Spartans Pericles celebrates the generosity erudition openness public
spiritedness and dignity of Athenian Democratic life
these values parently says enables Athens to provide a shining beacon of
freedom and decency to the Greek world and now to our own times two
the Greeks were architects par excellence they were involved in the
construction of five of the seven wonders of the ancient world the temple
of artemis at ephesus statue of zeus at olympia the mausoleum at halicarnassus
colossus of rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria but the most common inspiring
buildings without ordinary temples magnificent structures typically made of
limestone and scattered all across Greece in its islands
aside from the temples on the Acropolis other great structures include the
Temple of Apollo at Corinth the temple of zeus at olympia and the Temple of
Poseidon at Sounion the architectural language of these temples has spread
around the world
even when their specific religious uses our fallen by the wayside because they
suggest values which humanity will always find impressive harmony dignity
calm reason the Greeks toward the west how to build in such a way that would
externalize some of the noblest ideals of human beings
where earlier civilizations such as the Egyptians Persians Assyrians found
nakedness shameful
the Greeks celebrated the naked body of both gods and citizens works such as
Zeus or Poseidon of Artemision on shows the stature power and physical prowess
of a nude Greek god Discobolus shows the action of a naked discus throw mid
motion again the sculpture celebrates the poise and physical beauty of an athlete
his muscles perfectly toned the Greeks loved physical exercise
there was at least one major national athletic competition every year the most
famous sporting event was the Olympic Games held every four years from 776 pc
but what's distinctive in the Greek approach is that they didn't want
athletes merely to be athletes
the idea was that everyone should train both mind and body
it's telling that Milo of Croton a celebrated wrestler of the sixth century
BC was also an associate of a great mathematician pythagoras one of the
important Greek managers
was that a healthy mind could only dwell in a healthy body
the Greeks thought exercise condition discipline and people which would enable
them to be diligent and virtuous Democratic citizens in athens or devote
and controlled warriors in Sparta ancient Greek gyms were nothing like the
mindless body pumping places of our own times they were both public centers for
physical training and intellectual hubs gymnasium and schools were simply the
same thing
a great number of Socrates is dialogues about ideas around justice and truth
unfold tellingly at the gym we owe to the Greeks the remarkable now often
forgotten idea that our bodies should be looked after just as our minds are and
that for someone to be merely an intellectual or merely a body builder is
obscene
true virtue means a balance between the physical and the mental there is a sad
morality tale about the end of ancient Greek civilization they had much nicer
ideas and their enemies but they weren't as well organized so they got defeated
and the ideas got lost for centuries the Greek city-states fought among
themselves
endlessly over the course of the fifth and fourth centuries bc and were
eventually stripped of their independence under Alexander the Great
the Greeks failed to add political stability to their virtues the ideas of
Greece no longer survive in the country in which they first originated but it
should be a tribute to ancient Greece that the best of these ideas remain of
complete relevance to our own times with the help of the Greeks
we need to remember the role of tragedy emphasize the practice of philosophy
honor the spirit of democracy build with harmony and dignity and exercise both
mind and body in equal measure for all this
we can be grateful to the now absent Greeks as we wander among the rubble of
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