Greek, along with Chinese and Hebrew, is one of only three languages in the world with an uninterrupted written heritage of more than 3,000 years.
Ancient Greece coined concepts such as "politics," "philosophy," "drama," and "crisis," and we still use them today.
Traces of Greek civilization are almost everywhere, whether it is art, archaeological heritage, or contributions to philosophy, literature, science, medicine, law, political science, and more, which are widely spread in classrooms around the world.
What is the value of learning about Greek civilization to our lives today?
In 3500 Years of Greece, author Roderick Beaton focuses not on a specific geography, but on "Greek" as a definition of a Greek. The protagonists of the book are people who spoke and wrote in Greek over a long and vast period of time, witnessing the continuous evolution of the Greek language since the history of faith.
3500 Years of Greece
Recently, we invited Professor Yan Shaoxiang of the School of History of Capital Normal University and Chen Yingxue, Director of the Center for Greek Studies at Peking University, to share the theme of "Great Civilizations on the Other Side of the Silk Road: 3500 Years of Greece".
The following is a wonderful excerpt from this conversation, search for the "CITIC Publishing Group" video number to watch the full live replay.
1
Where did Greek civilization begin?
Host: The book "3500 Years of Greece" uses the concept of "Greek speakers" to trace the history of Greece back to the birth of the Mycenaean civilization 3500 years ago. Can the two teachers talk about the beginning of Greek civilization? Where did Greek civilization come from?
Yan Shaoxiang: In the mid-19th century, when the ancient civilization sites of Mycenae and Crete were not discovered, the history of the Greeks could only be traced from Homer's epics, that is, probably from the 10th century BC to the 8th century BC. So when George Grote (a famous British historian of modern times) wrote "History of Greece", Greek history can only be counted from the first ancient Olympiad in 776 BC, before which there were only myths, not history.
In the late 19th century, the German merchant Schliemann was fascinated by Homer's epic poems and ran to the northwest corner of Asia Minor to dig through and unearth the ruins of Troy. After digging, he ran to the Greek mainland to dig and dug up Mycenae and Tirins. He was also going to go to Crete to dig, but after all, he was not engaged in archaeology, he was a merchant, so he could not determine where the site of the Cretan civilization was. He wanted to dig up the land, but he couldn't negotiate with the local farmers.
It was not until the beginning of the 20th century, in 1900, that the British archaeologist Evans went to that place, and he accurately judged that the legendary Minoan labyrinth of the Greeks should be in this area, and the place he circled the excavation was much smaller than that of Schliemann. Of course, he had fewer opponents to negotiate, so he quickly negotiated the place and began to excavate. He spent the rest of his life digging in Crete until Hitler occupied Crete in 1941. Now the British still have excavation sites in Crete.
In this way, we pushed the history of ancient Greece up step by step.
What we now know is presumably that the civilization of Crete was created by Bronze Age people, and there may have been immigrants from Asia Minor. But if a people is defined by language, the language of the Cretans can basically be judged not to be Greek.
But the Mycenaean civilization discovered by Schliemann spoke Greek. We have deciphered the Mycenaean script, which is a Greek word that was deciphered in 1952 by Ventris, a young British construction engineer.
So who were the ancient Greeks? Today's scholars are basically certain to conclude that they were formed around 2000 BC by a combination of Indo-Europeans who entered the Balkans and local Neolithic populations. So they were related to Crete, and in fact Crete also influenced Mycenae, and the Indo-European language combined with those local languages to form the Greek language of later Mycenae.
If you judge from the language, you can basically conclude that Mycenae should be the starting point for the Greeks.
It's just that Western scholars are not very willing to recognize this matter, what is the important reason?
Because the state of Mycenae was very different from the later Greek city-states. The democracy of the Greek city-states, the oligarchy, the aristocracy, etc., are basically decided by the citizens' assembly, but the Mycenaean state is centered on the court, ruled by a king, and in the West, they find it ugly on the face, and they regard the Mycenaean civilization more as an extension of the West Asian and Egyptian civilization. But in fact, quite a few scholars now accept that this is the starting point for the Greeks.
The book, 3500 Years of Greece, also began with Crete-Mycenae. Crete-Mycenae, unsurprisingly, should have been part of Greek history. I wonder if Mr. Chen can agree with this statement from the perspective of modern history?
Chen Yingxue: Beaton's book is about "the history of Greek speakers", and I think his positioning is relatively accurate, he uses language to find the commonality of this population. The Mycenaean script should be the origin of modern Greek, and from this point of view, then the Mycenaean civilization should also be an origin of Greek civilization.
2
Can the "Greek pseudo-historiography" be believed?
Host: In recent years, a kind of "Greek pseudo-history" has become popular on the Internet, and there are three main views of this statement, the first is that Greece is small and mountainous, unlike India and China, which has large river plains, so it cannot feed a large population and lacks the conditions for developing civilization.
The second is that the great scholars of ancient Greece appeared in this short period of time in the classical era, and their works were lost before the Renaissance, and these works may have been written by later generations and by Arabs and Renaissance scholars under their names.
The third point is that the Minoan palace of Crete and the ruins of Troy on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea are attached and have nothing to do with ancient Greek history.
Historians and enthusiasts alike will find this statement ridiculous, but readers who do not have a certain amount of knowledge of ancient world history will still be confused. I hope the two teachers can give you a brief explanation.
Yan Shaoxiang: "Greek pseudo-history", I think it seems that in the past few years it has still had a great influence on Chinese society, and a group of people have raised relevant questions.
On the first question, Greece was indeed relatively poor in ancient times, by the Greeks themselves. Herodotus, the father of history in the West, said that poverty was the companion of the Greeks. Perhaps the Greeks were not as rich, but the distribution of wealth throughout its society was relatively even, as we can see from Solon's reforms in 594 BC.
At that time, he divided the citizens into four classes according to land income, so the first class citizen was 500 wheat dou, and the fourth class was less than 200 wheat dou, in fact, we see that the difference in wealth between the first class and the bottom class is only two and a half times, which is not so big. 200 wheat buckets may not seem like much to us today, but in fact, the grain a person eats in a month may be 2/3 bucket, so 200 wheat buckets is a lot of income for a Greek farmer.
So although the ancient Greeks were not so rich, it did not affect their creation of civilization. Marx said that some people in the tropics do not do any labor, they have something to eat all day long, but they really cannot create civilization. On the contrary, where resources are scarce, there is an appropriate concentration of resources, and after society is organized, it is easier to create civilization.
Of course, we have a series of archaeological and documentary evidence for the history of Greece, and the clue to how these documents passed from ancient times through Rome, through the Arab Renaissance, to our present is very clear.
One reason that people often say is that how can these ancient books have so many words? There were so many papyri in ancient times, and many of the things that archaeologists found from Egypt were placed there, and we can all see that this is one of them.
In addition, as they say, famous cultural people only appeared in the 5th century BC and 4th century BC, whether Homer is unclear, but Homer's epic has basically appeared in the 8th century BC. In fact, Homer is not a person, he is followed by a large group of people, and it is precisely because of a large group of people that the Homeric epic seen today has been born. Among the papyrus documents left in Egypt, Homer is the most, and I have the impression that it accounts for 2/3. There are also some other writers' records and so on, so this one is no problem.
The third is archaeology, and they suspect that people are fake. I think those pseudohistorians may have forgotten the basic fact that they imagine the so-called Western world as monolithic, as if the West could join forces to fake. But in fact, the academic history of Western countries in modern times is very nationalistic, each country has the interests of each country, if you dare to fake, immediately people in another country will expose you.
The "Greek apochrasic" argument actually has little truth. I would like to ask Mr. Chen to talk about the circulation of Greek literature.
Chen Yingxue: There is a saying in Greek pseudo-history that before the Renaissance, the works of these classical writers were lost for a long time, so it is not true, it was made up by others. But in fact, before the Renaissance, at least in the Byzantine Empire, these classical writers have always been studied and praised, and their manuscripts and manuscripts have always been available. Having such a view may itself be unfamiliar with this aspect of history.
In addition, the Renaissance was largely completed by the fall of Byzantium. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, a large number of Byzantine intellectuals brought these Greek classical works to Renaissance Italy and taught Greek in Italy. It was from that time that the West had a tradition of learning Greek.
In Beaton's book, there is a passage dedicated to this history, about the contribution of Greek scholars to the Italian Renaissance after the fall of the Byzantine Empire.
Yan Shaoxiang: Let me add a little more that even the documents of the Greeks were not completely lost in the West in the Middle Ages, such as Plato, which was known to Westerners in the Middle Ages, and some texts were circulated at that time. There are also fragments of writings about the Greeks, which also circulated in the Middle Ages. It's just that in general, Western Europe in the Middle Ages did not understand Greek.
Yingxue Chen: Yes, the medieval Latin world learned Greek mainly for diplomatic purposes, and if there were foreign contacts with Byzantium, some people would learn Greek.
In addition, in the late Byzantine period, probably from the 13th century, some people in the Western Latin world also learned Greek. The purpose of these studies was mainly to engage in some theological debate with the Byzantines.
The Western world once again studied Greek for classical writings, beginning with the Renaissance.
3
Is Greece a land civilization, or a maritime civilization?
Host: There is a saying that divides civilization into marine civilization and continental civilization: marine civilization is more open and continental civilization is more restrained. Greek civilization is a typical maritime civilization, after all, the early civilization of Greece is also known as the Aegean civilization, and China is a continental civilization, and the differences in the character of these two civilizations have put them on different development paths. Do the two teachers think that the division between the two civilizations is justified? Do Chinese and Greek civilizations have anything in common?
Yan Shaoxiang: This is a very big question, and it is really not easy to answer. This is a very popular saying in our country in previous years, and this statement cannot be said to be completely unreasonable in my personal opinion, but it cannot be said that it is correct.
China's exploration of the sea, at least after the Tang and Song dynasties, was also obvious, until the Ming and Qing dynasties. At least as far as ancient Greece was concerned, it was based on agriculture, not industry and commerce, and this should be the basic question to be clarified.
The simplest example, Solon's reform, which I mentioned earlier, the criterion for dividing the rank of citizens at the time of the reform was not the amount of money income, nor how much assets there was, it was based on the amount of land income. Until the 4th century BC, the contradiction between the rich and the poor in the city-state was particularly serious, and the Greeks often wanted to make revolutions. The first confiscation of property, the second division of land.
Until the end of Greek civilization, land came first, and land was always considered the most important social wealth by the ancient Greeks.
But did the Greeks have any marine activity? Indeed, there is. At the beginning, it was called the Aegean civilization, but it has nothing to do with the sea, mainly because this civilization is centered on the Aegean Sea, including some islands in the Aegean Sea, not that those people must make a living by the sea. To really make a living, you still have to rely on the ground.
Of course, when the Greeks expanded, they used the method of maritime expansion. I think it's normal, because the Balkans are such a projectile land, where to expand? A dozen to the north, the Thracians, then the Sicyans on the Danube, the interior could not expand at all.
They all used the simplest method: sail out, find a piece of land, see that the land is good, and stay here. Of course, this place may already be occupied, so what is the way to take when there are people? Either discuss peaceful coexistence with everyone, or exchange something for a piece of land. When the Greeks colonized North Africa, they consulted with the local population, and the local people said that this land would be for you to live in, and they would stay there.
The colonies of the Greeks were all along the coast, and another factor was the convenience of returning to the Balkans. Because it was very difficult to travel on land in ancient times.
I often talk to students about this problem, we live in an era of high-speed rail and airplanes today, and we often don't think that distance is a big problem, but in ancient times, you tried walking on your own two legs? Do you try horse breeding? The Greeks were so poor that those who could afford horses were rich, but what about cattle? The cow walks very slowly.
However, you can sail by the wind at sea, of course, sailing is also limited by seasons, and basically do not go out after September and October, because the storm at sea is more obvious in winter.
But even so, it is not possible to come out with the idea of it, and you have to use the wind to walk. When we saw that the Greeks' grain came from the Black Sea region, we thought it was very convenient, but in fact it was not convenient at all, especially when we went to sail completely against the north wind, it was quite difficult, and it was relatively easy to return. Transporting grain from Egypt is even more fatal, because you have to walk against the wind, and in ancient times it was often a month or two or even half a year, which was the norm.
I think in that sense, the Greeks also lived on land, and it was still a land civilization. China is the same in this respect, at least not as pronounced as we might think.
Chen Yingxue: Teacher Yan is talking about the experience of the ancient Greeks. I also agree that people want to live on land, and if you open the map of Greece, you will have a more intuitive feeling of its so-called maritime civilization.
There is also a map of Greece on the book "3500 Years of Greece", you can take a look, it has many islands, it should be thousands of islands, which are divided into several archipelagos. It can be seen that the Greeks go out to the sea.
The ancient experience that Teacher Yan mentioned just now, the current experience is that the main economic pillars of Greece, one is tourism, and what is the other? It's shipping. You may have heard of some of the "ship kings" of Greece, and many of them have been mentioned in Beaton's book, and from its current economic structure, we can also call Greece a maritime civilization.
4
Is Athenian democracy unique?
Host: The following question is that it is generally believed that Athenian democracy was the earliest democracy in the world, established during the reform of Christini in 508 BC, and after Athens was conquered by Macedonia and then Rome, democracy was never restored. In fact, many ancient Greeks, such as Plato and Thucydides, criticized Athenian democracy, and Socrates also died in Athenian democracy, so is Athens' democracy a special case? Was it a suitable system for the ancient state?
Yan Shaoxiang: I think many readers are very interested in this question, and this is also a particularly big question.
First of all, we have to explain that 508 BC as the starting point of democracy seems to be a basic consensus in the current academic circles, but in fact it was not in ancient times, Herodotus believed that Christini was the founder of Athenian democracy, but Aristotle was more inclined to think that Solon was the founder of democracy.
After the modern era, 508 BC was used as a symbol of the birth of democracy, who did it begin?
The great British historian George Grote of the mid-19th century was just mentioned, and this statement began with him. What is an important factor he considers? Decades after Solon's reforms, democracy disappeared, and if Solon was the starting point of democracy, how could it be replaced by the tyrant rule of Pisitratu? Therefore, when the modern West criticizes that democracy is not a good system, just take this as an example, a bunch of poor ghosts will not do anything, just a few days in power and sell themselves to the worst buyer.
Grote was a very sincere believer in democracy, and he felt that this matter was really embarrassing, so after research, he set the date at 508 BC, and then made a more detailed argument.
Why is this the right time? Because after the birth of democracy in 508 BC, the first thing he did was to defeat the armed intervention of Sparta, which shows that democracy is powerful. Then in the early 5th century BC, the Greco-Persian War, Athens and Sparta united to defeat Persia, and then the Athenians expanded in the 5th century to establish a maritime empire until the time of Pericles. So after democracy came up, Athens kept going up.
But in reality, this theory has some political considerations. We know today that the earliest democracy of the Greek city-states did not begin in Athens, but actually from the island of the Aegean Sea, a place called Caios, some translated as the island of Chios, probably around 570 BC, which must have predated Cristiny.
After classical times, many city-states had a similar act of delegating power to the people at about the same time as Athens. This is not a unique phenomenon in Athens, it is a fundamental trend throughout the Greek world at the end of the 5th century BC.
In this sense, Athens is not special. Unfortunately, however, we know very little about the democracy of other city-states, some have only a few words of record, or there is an inscription, and the most documents left are the Athenians.
Athens is relatively special in Greece, most Greek city-states are about 1000 square kilometers or less, but Athens is 2600 square kilometers, which is relatively large. Another point is that most Greek city-states were very barren, and Athens had Laurion silver mines. Why did Athens have such a powerful navy in the 5th century BC? The navy wants money, and the Laurion silver mine provides it with a lot of income, and it can use this navy to control other places and let other city-states pay for it, so it becomes more and more powerful, and there is a series of situations later.
Therefore, Athenian democracy should be said to have its universality, and at the end of the 6th century BC, the entire Greek world had a tendency towards equality. However, because most city-states' democracies tend to be short-lived, they are not for long. Athens is the only one that has been able to last a long time and leave so many documents, and we hardly know anything else.
In this sense, Athens is a special one, and because it is special, everyone likes it.
5
Greece, conquered by Rome, did civilization break?
Host: Many people think that in ancient civilizations, such as India and Egypt, the history is broken, they have encountered many invasions by outsiders, and Greece was conquered by the Romans. The two teachers think that the history of Greece after the Roman conquest is broken?
Yan Shaoxiang: First of all, one of the questions we have to solve is, what is continuation? What is fracture? The ancient Egyptian civilization we think today is gone, because its writing has been lost, but the loss of writing does not mean that all the elements of Egyptian civilization have been eliminated, right?
The difference between the territory of the Egyptian state today and ancient Egypt is not particularly great. Some scholars have found that ancient Egyptians and today's Egyptians still look quite similar, including the technology of the Egyptians to grow crops, and before the emergence of modern agricultural technology, I believe the difference should not be too big. In these respects, Egyptian civilization cannot be said to be completely broken, it still has continuity.
From this perspective, India is actually more pronounced. When it comes to ancient India, we most often say that it is written in secondary school textbooks - caste system, and the caste system was not explicitly abolished in the constitution until 1947, when India became independent. But Shang Huipeng, a teacher at Peking University, wrote a book called "Caste and Hindu Society," and he said that in fact, until the end of the last century, there were still traces of the caste system in many places. In addition, like Hinduism, it evolved from Brahmanism, so it also has continuity.
Then the Greek side, if politically speaking, it was first conquered by Macedonia. Although some Macedonians say they are barbarians, the Macedonian royal family at least considers themselves authentic Greeks, who migrated from Argos, which is authentic Greece.
And later, after Alexander invaded the East, he basically spread the culture of the Greek city-states. So continuity is both culturally and politically.
We may think that Rome conquered Greece and Greece lost its independence politically, but the loss of political independence does not mean that cultural traditions are gone.
Beaton also said this in "Greece 3500", Rome was already learning Greek culture before conquering Greece, at least from the 3rd century BC, and even now some people think that earlier, in the 8th century BC to the 7th century BC royal era, the Romans have understood Greek culture.
By the time of Augustus, Horace said that the culture that flowed from Greece to Rome was not a trickle, but a gushing flood, of course, this is not the case, probably the meaning. Horace famously said another quote: conquered Greece brought culture to the rude Latin.
Virgil himself admitted that the Romans were completely culturally incompetent and that they had to learn from the Greeks. Eastern Rome used Greek as the official language for a long time, and Latin was of course the official language, but after Justinian, Latin was basically not used much, and it all returned to Greek, so Byzantium was the empire of the Greeks.
The Roman conquest was, in a sense, a cultural extension of the influence of Greek culture.
Chen Yingxue: One of the core points that Teacher Yan just made is very correct, the Roman conquest of Greece was only a political or military conquest, but in fact, culturally speaking, it was actually a conquered object.
Greek culture has always been mountainous for the Romans. Teacher Yan has given many examples, in addition, Greek culture in Greek is "paideia", which will not change with the Greek world or the Greek world, its political system changes, rulers can change like horses, but culture is eternal. Not only was this true of the Roman conquest of Greece, we can see Byzantium as a kind of continuation of Greek culture.
After the end of the Byzantine Empire, the Ottomans occupied the land, the Greek culture still existed, the Greeks still spoke Greek, then those Greek texts, including two epics, were a must-read classic for school students throughout the Byzantine period and the Ottoman rule.
This may come as a surprise, but in fact the continuity of Greek culture is such that you can say that it is stubborn and at the same time it is full of vitality.
Returning to my first question, I mentioned the question of the continuity of the Greek language. The theme of this book is the history of Greek-speaking people, in fact, the so-called history of Greek-speaking people, that is, the history of these people who identified with and passed on Greek culture. This book has already given you the answer, and it is clear that the cultural continuity of Greece will not be broken with the political conquest of Rome.
From ancient Greece to the modern republic
A rare general history of Greece
3500 Years of Greece
Works by Roderick Beaton
Tells the story of three hundred years of Greece
Fighting spirit, hook heart, family politics
Three Hundred Years of Greece
Professor Wu Xiaoqun of Fudan University is a masterpiece of general knowledge
A comprehensive interpretation of the cultural achievements of the ancient Greeks
Greek Thought and Culture
-End-
2023.8.24
Editor: Cellur | Review: Chu Xu