MODERN GREECE

Παρουσίαση

What is the subject of the history of Greece: a people, a race, a country, a language, a religion, a culture, an idea? It has been called all of these. Something of each of them must go into the answer, but none of them is adequate by itself, and their inadequacy varies. As a complete answer, some of them can be ruled out at once. A country, for instance: the boundaries of what might be called Greece have long fluctuated over a very wide area, and have not ceased to change, though by smaller variations, even in the present century. Or a religion: for the Orthodox Church, which has been the religion of most Greeks for sixteen centuries, is also the religion of millions of non-Greeks, particularly among the Slavs. Or a race: ever since the work of Jakob Fallmerayer in the nineteenth century, it has been unreasonable to think of the inhabitants of Greece (however defined) as racially homogeneous and lineally descended from the ancient Hellenes. It would be equally unreasonable, however, to assert dogmatically that no Greek living today could possibly have had a direct ancestor living in Greece 2,500 years ago. [...] (from the publisher)