Nix Kazanzaski said in "A Trip to Greece": "If we know how to listen and how to love, then we will not be amazed by ignorance of the beauty of Greece." The landscapes here have their names, and they are intimately connected to the memory – we are humiliated here, we are glorified here; The blood on the icon grows out of the earth, and the landscape immediately becomes rich and all-encompassing history, and the whole spirit of the Greek pilgrims is thrown into chaos. ”
It is difficult for a foreigner to understand the entanglement of Kaznzawaski, a modern Greek. When Shelley said, "We are all Greeks." I believe what he was really trying to say was, "We are all ancient Greeks." ”
Indeed it is! Walking on the Peloponnese, more often than not, we are "constantly intoxicated by the wonder of a rock that reminiscent of the inhabitation of gods and heroes." While wandering through the agora (ancient market) at the foot of the Acropolis, we expect to meet Pericles, Cristhenes, Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Ictinus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Socrates or Plato. It was these geniuses who miraculously gathered in this small Greek city 2,500 years ago for a century or two that created a brief but glorious golden age and set the tone for the overall ethos of Western civilization. In the minds of the Gentiles who were deeply immersed in classical culture, the Greek spiritual world seemed to be and always would be shining with reason, light, harmony and supreme glory, and chaos and hardship were never related to it.
However, for the modern Greeks who were born and raised in Sri Lanka, history did not come to an abrupt end after Alexander the Great's conquest of Greece. Not only did they live in the shadow of the majestic shore 2,500 years ago, but they also had to face and digest the plundering and domination of their bodies by the Macedonians, Romans, Slavs, Franks, Catalans, Florentines, Venetians and Turks, as well as the assimilation and alienation of their spirits. This accumulation of repetitive memories made it difficult for Kazanzhaski to be naïve enough to indulge in the story of "gods and heroes", because the light of the classical era in a short century or two was not enough to illuminate the long chaos and darkness that followed.
Athens, on the other hand, encapsulates all the glory and hardship of the Greeks.
A city where gods and heroes live
The birth of Athens is a myth.
The mountains here are very low, the sky is very close, and God and man often come and go. Legend has it that the Phoenicians intended to build a city at the southern tip of the Attica Peninsula, and Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Athena, the goddess of wisdom, came to compete for the status of protector and the glory of the name. Zeus, the king of the gods, then set the rule that the god who could provide humanity with the most useful things would win. Poseidon conjured a war horse by striking the ground with a trident, and Athena conjured an olive tree with a spear, the former representing war and force, and the latter symbolizing peace and prosperity, and the Phoenicians hesitated and decided to choose Athena as their patron saint.
Athena's patronage did not bring immediate peace and prosperity to the Athenians. From about the 9th century BC until the 6th century BC, when the Spartans roamed the Peloponnese and became the recognized leaders of the Greeks, Athens was only a second- or even third-rate player among the Greek city-states. Even in 510 B.C., the Persian king Darius asked curiously, "What kind of people were the Athenians?" ”
The Persians soon had the opportunity to get to know the Athenians. In 490 BCE, Darius was defeated by the Athenians on the plain of Marathon. Ten years later, Xerxes, the son of Darius, led a 100,000-strong Persian army to invade Greece again, and the Spartan king Leonidas led 300 warriors to resist desperately at Thermopylae Pass but still failed, and the Persians continued to advance south, and soon reached the city of Athens, and the Greco-Persian War, which lasted for ten years, came to an end. Forced to abandon the city and retreat to the island of Salamis, the Athenians were confronted by the Persians across the sea who burned their houses and destroyed the temples on the acropolis, and despite their "fear and despair," they were determined to fight the Persians to the death.
It was a triumph of wisdom over force. The Athenian Themistocles sent slaves to the Persian army to surrender, falsely claiming that the Greeks would retreat at night from the western exit of the Gulf of Salamis. Xerxes is said to have sat majestically on the shore watching the battle, and in the early morning he had counted thousands of ships and sails and 100,000 soldiers on the sea, but when the sun went down, Xerxes was left with a lament: "Where are they?" ”
The victory in the Battle of Salamis was significant. Disheartened, Xerxes returned to Asia Minor, never to return. "Now Greece no longer has one leader, but two," said the British scholar Kitto, who celebrates the rise of Athens in epic terms: "This peaceful city-state, still in its youth, now stands side by side with the heroic city-state of Sparta, admired by all." ”
Excellence and honor for the Athenians
What kind of people were the Athenians? In the Greco-Persian wars, at least one Persian partially approached the answer to this question. He was a cousin of Xerxes, Tritantaykimes, and when he heard that the Greeks had been rewarded not with money but with a crown of olives, he said to all those present: "Oh, Mardonus, what kind of men against whom you have led us, and they are competing with each other for honor, not for money!" ”
Honor is indeed the most important thing for all Greeks. What Tritantaykmes didn't understand, however, was that the Athenians valued honor very differently than the Spartans. About 50 years later, in the early days of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles compared the differences between Athens and Sparta in a speech at the public funeral of the fallen soldiers:
"We allow anyone to enter our city-state, and we do not periodically expel them for fear of outsiders seeing too much, for in war we rely on our own bravery and courage, not by intrigues. Our enemies have been trained very hard since childhood in order to prepare for war; We live our lives of ease, but we are confident in the face of danger. In fact, without the help of its allies, Sparta never dared to attack us alone. Our bravery comes from natural temperament, not by the compulsion of law. So we have the advantage of not having to train for the most basic and that we are as good as they do when the test comes. We love art, but we don't show off too much; We love wisdom, but we don't let it become weak. ”
Pericles' rhetorical exaggeration is undoubtedly there, but the picture he describes is basically true, and in fact, he himself is practicing such an ideal of civilization.
There is an interesting anecdote about Pericles: around 450 B.C., Pericles led a Greek fleet to drop anchor near an island in the Aegean Sea and prepare to attack early the next morning. As night fell, Pericles invited his lieutenants to join them in a conversation of wine, and as a young attendant poured wine for them, Pericles was moved to see the young man's handsome face, quoting a poet who described his face as "purple light." The young general next to him disagreed: he had never thought the word to describe the color was appropriate, and he preferred another poet to describe the young face as a rose-like color. Pericles objected to him, and the conversation went on, each invoking an appropriate word in response to the other, as if the shadow of war had never existed.
It is hard to imagine that the Spartans would have an elegant literary discussion at the dinner table on the eve of the Battle of Thermopylae. The citizens of Sparta were to be chosen from birth, the sick and weak were to be abandoned, the strong ones were left to be trained for war, and cultural education was considered a meaningless thing. They are taught from an early age that the less they say, the better, and the less they think, the better. The Spartans believed that war was the noblest form of human activity, and that dying in battle was the greatest honor in this life. The Athenians, on the other hand, relied on debate and persuasion to make decisions, accustomed to "thinking, observing, understanding, doubting, questioning everything." The male citizens of the city-state of Athens would not hesitate to take up arms when war came, but in normal times they were just ordinary craftsmen, architects, poets, or philosophers. The Athenians never considered war to be a good thing, but pragmatically acknowledged that war was necessary, as if they had never thought there was anything appealing about dying on the battlefield, but that did not prevent them from dying for the common good and the honor of the city-state.
There is an important concept in ancient Greek called arete, which was later translated as "virtue" or "virtue", and the result is "the loss of all Greek flavor", because virtue or virtue is a word for morality, but in ancient Greek, arete was "universally used in all fields", and the most appropriate translation would be "excellence". When the word "excellence" is applied to man, "it means all the virtues that man can have, moral, mental, physical, and practical." ”
People are "honored" for "excellence". When Pericles led the Athenian sergeants to fight valiantly on the front lines, discussed the meaning of nous (mind) with the philosopher teacher Anaxagoras, discussed the precision of adjectives with his lieutenants on the eve of the Great War, and delivered an earth-shattering speech at the funeral of the fallen soldiers, his "excellence" was dazzling because he realized the full range of human moral, mental, physical, and practical potential. In contrast, the Spartans' attempt to raise their children to be war machines was characterized by heroism, but it was still a narrow understanding of "excellence". Because of this, in the history of human civilization, the Athenians ultimately won far more honors than the Spartans.
The rise of the Athenian Empire
After the Greco-Persian Wars, Athens quickly entered a golden age of vitality and vitality.
The Athenians had good reason to feel noble. "Those Athenians who witnessed this victory," said Kitto, "learned from their fathers how Solon freed Attica from slavery and made it rich, and at the same time laid the foundations of democracy; They themselves saw Pisistratu lend grain to the poor, and gradually turn peaceful Athens into a city-state that was much of the attention of other Greeks; In middle age, they saw the demise of tyrantism and the establishment of a new liberal system by Christinees. Now, at the Battle of Salamis, the Athenians have demonstrated for themselves that freedom and reason are more powerful than tyranny and fear.
From 467 BC to 428 BC, Athens ushered in the forty-year-long Pericles era. The self-confident and cosmopolitan Athens of the time attracted the most talented Greeks, who emerged collectively to lay the foundation for the next 2,500 years of Western civilization, so much so that the poet Oscar Wilde lamented: "In fact, everything in our modern life owes to the Greeks." ”
As one of the Ten Generals, Pericles seemed to share power with the other nine generals, but he was usually the one who decided the big things. Thucydides' comment on this is "in the name of democracy, in the name of one man." Athens, however, was still a democracy, because Pericles' power had to be conferred through annual elections, and he was able to hold office for so long because of his great ability and impartiality.
After Athens became the leader of the Delian League, its power expanded rapidly, and the outline of the Athenian Empire was ready to be revealed. In 454 B.C., Pericles made a major decision that would affect future generations: the headquarters and treasury of the Delian League were moved to Athens, where they were directly under the control of Athens, and the League money became essentially "tribute money". At the same time, he proposed that the league be used to restore the temple on the Acropolis, which had been destroyed by the Persians, and to make Athens "a city that people would be happy to go for any purpose."
At the beginning of the vote, when the majority of the Athenians advocated that the money should be distributed to individuals to satisfy their own selfish desires, Pericles responded: "Very well, do not put these building costs in your account, but pay for them; When I engrave the words on it, engrave my name. When the Athenians heard him say this, they all shouted in unison: "Let him spend as much as he can...... Don't save money until the project is complete. ”
Pericles finally got his wish. In 449 BC, he commissioned the architect Ixtinus and the sculptor Phidias to build the Parthenon dedicated to Athena, and 11 years later the main building was completed, and the carving work was not completed until 432 BC, just a year after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Plutarch praised these buildings as "the most pleasing decoration of Athens, and the greatest wonder of mankind." "Anyone who has seen the Acropolis with his own eyes will not think he is sensational, even if what we see today is nothing but the ruins of the ruins that have been ravaged and looted.
It was the most glorious moment of Athens, but it was also a moment of imminent decline, and the beginning and end of history are always so dramatic.
The Fall of the Athenian Empire
In 431 BC, the Peloponnesian War broke out, and for 27 years, almost all the Greek city-states were involved in the war. The true cause of the war is disputed, but a popular but slightly ironic view is that the Athenian Empire was gradually losing its supremacious character and becoming unusually domineering towards its allies, with the result that Sparta "volunteered to be a Greek fighter for freedom."
At the beginning of the war, the Athenians did not realize that their glory would come to an end. In his famous speech in 430 B.C., Pericles proudly declared:
"Our government is truly a democracy because the right to rule belongs to the many, not to the minority. In private disputes, our laws guarantee equal treatment of all people. …… The citizens of Athens did not neglect public affairs for the sake of private business, because even our merchants had the right knowledge and understanding of politics. Only we Athenians regard those who do not care about public affairs as useless, although they are not harmful. In Athens, policies are set by a few, but we, the people, are the final arbiters. ”
Today, Pericles' speech is like a swan song, a tribute to the great political system and way of life of Athens, as well as a summary of his personal achievements and political ideals.
Soon after, a sudden plague struck Athens, killing about a quarter of the city-state's lives, including the dying Pericles. As the war continued, the situation went through several ups and downs, and Athens had the opportunity to turn things around, but it ended in defeat with the loss of a visionary leader like Pericles. It is said that after the fall of Athens, the Spartans once wanted to completely destroy the city, and on the night before the atrocity was carried out, the Spartans held a grand celebration party, during which someone recited a poem by Euripides, I really don't know whether to thank Euripides for the wonderful verses, or to thank the Spartans for the spirit of ancient Greece that flows in their blood after all. In short, at that moment the Spartans listened to the wonderful, moving psalm, forgetting the victory, forgetting the revenge, "and they agreed that a city capable of producing such a great poet should never be destroyed." ”
In 399 B.C., five years after the end of the Peloponnesian War, Greek politics was in a "chaotic, dull, and frustrating" period. The Spartans won the war, but they were never ready to take on the leadership of the Greeks, and the defeated Athens fell into extreme disorder. Sadly, the Spartans did not destroy the city of Athens, but the Athenians ended the Great Golden Age on their own. That year, the democrats who had regained power began a counter-attack, finding the 70-year-old Socrates as a target and sentencing him to death for seducing young people and introducing new gods. In Life in Greece, Will Duran argues that "the Golden Age ended with the death of Socrates." The body and soul of Athens were already exhausted, and only the terrible anguish of the long war that corrupted the character of the Athenians could explain the cruelty they had given to the island of Milos, the harsh verdict on Mytilene, the mass execution of the triumphant generals, and the sacrifice of Socrates on an altar of declining faith. ”
Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic World
Walking at the foot of today's Acropolis, one of the most eye-catching sights is the dogs lying on the side of the road, whether it is early in the morning or in the afternoon, they always sleep comfortably on all fours, and only by experiencing the heat and clarity of the Athenian sun will you suddenly realize why the etymology of cynicism comes from the ancient Greek word "Kynikos" (dog), and why Diogenes said to Alexander the Great, who humbly visited: "Go away, don't block my sun!" The latter's response was also an apt expression of the conquistador's reverence for civilization from a barbarian people, who is said to have exclaimed, "If I were not Alexander, I would rather be Diogenes." ”
Alexander's reverence for Athens was even greater than for Diogenes. After Alexander's conquest of Greece in 336 BC, he immediately marched north to the Danube, and soon there were rumors in the city of Athens that Alexander had died in battle, and the Greeks were ready to become independent. However, he forgave Athens for his betrayal, and not only that, but he also gave much of the spoils of the Battle of Asia to the Acropolis, transported the statue captured by King Xerxes of Persia back to Athens, and after a hard battle, said: "Ah! O Athenians! Do you believe that I have gone through great hardships to gain your praise? ”
Alexander went on an expedition to the East in 334 B.C. and never set foot in Greek territory since, but his reverence for Greece never diminished, and Greek architecture, theater, philosophy, and even customs took root everywhere Macedonia went. During the 12 years of his crusade, Alexander built more than 70 Greek-style cities, and sent Greeks rather than Macedonians to garrison them, because Alexander wanted the indigenous population to become accustomed to city life and try to imitate Greek culture. Alexander himself had Aristotle's nephew by his side during the Crusades, reciting Homer's epic poems to Achilles when he was drunk.
"Alexander's name marks the end of one era and the beginning of another." This new era is the Hellenistic era. At this time, Athens was still revered as a cultural mecca; But at the same time, the aggressive self-confidence of the past is declining.
We all remember that honor was the most important thing for the Greeks, but as the motto of the Temple of Delphi warns, "Do not overdo anything", the excessive pursuit of honor fuels personal ambition and leads to endless strife. In its heyday, Athens was able to maintain this exquisite balance and moderation, but it was soon consumed by imperial ambitions.
When a golden age of vitality fades away, it is reflected in philosophical uncertainty about what constitutes a "good life." Aristotle provides two alternative answers to this question, one is the political life of a statesman and the other is the contemplative life of a philosopher. Aristotle believed that the latter was the higher realm, because the honor of political life was too superficial compared to the philosopher's life of perfection (contemplation) – the honor depended on the giver and not on the recipient. Aristotle's statement is certainly philosophical, but if we understand the ancient Greek definition of "happiness": "the extraordinary manifestation of the power of life in the vast space that life has given", then it is natural to conclude that the Greeks were moving away from their high-spirited youth when they began to devalue the status of honor and instead seek self-sufficiency and peace for themselves. By the time cynicism and Stoics became the dominant philosophy, the Greeks saw "a world without joy" "with a cold gaze."
"Little Greeks"
Before the Roman conquest of Greece, Greece was on the verge of falling apart, as Will Durand said well: "No great power can be conquered by another until it destroys itself." "Fortunately, the Greeks once again encountered a conqueror who longed for their civilization.
In 156-155 B.C., the declining Athenian government sent leaders of three major philosophical schools to Rome to persuade the leaders of the three major philosophical schools, namely Caniades of Plato, Diogenes of Babylon of the Stoic school, and Cletolaus of the Lyceum of Aristotle. Among them, Carniades's speech caused a sensation in Rome, and the charm of ideas made the Romans rush to it and be obsessed. Although the trio were eventually exiled by the Roman Senate, Greek morality, philosophy, and art were all the rage in Roman high society, and almost all Roman emperors were Stoics, most notably Marcus Aurelius, the author of the Meditations.
Cultural conquest could not reverse the decline of national power, and only ten years later, in 146 BC, the Athenians were routed by the mighty Roman legions, and Greece became a Roman province. In 86 BC, Athens was again sacked by the Roman general Sulla. During this period, Athens was so destitute that they were forced to sell the island of Salamis, which is a glorious memory of the Greco-Persian Wars, and Plato's Athens was moved into the city from Akaderma in the northwest corner of the city. Despite this, Athens was a center of knowledge and attracted countless scholars from both the East and the West.
The Roman poet Horace famously said, "The conquered Greece conquered its savage conquerors, bringing literature and art into the boorish Latin." By the end of the 2nd century BC, Greek had become the first language in Roman education, and from Africa to Italy, from Gaul to Egypt, Greek language and culture were unimpeded.
The Romans took a bold gesture to extract nourishment from Greek culture and spread light to the world. This pro-Hellenism reached its peak during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, who visited Athens three times and built Hadrian's Arch in 131 AD, a triumphal arch that divided the city into two districts: the new city expanded by Hadrian to the east and the old city to the west. An inscription is carved on each side of the frame of the arch, and the side facing the Acropolis reads: "This is Athens, the ancient city of Theseus." The side facing the new city reads: "This is Hadrian's city, not Theseus' city." ”
This inscription reflects the complex mentality of the Romans: they always had reverence for the civilized ancient Greece, and they could not hide their contempt for the "listless Greeks of our time". In contrast, as conquered people, the Greeks had a more mixed heart, "hatred, admiration, fear, gratitude, anger, disappointment, and above all panic." ”
An example that haunts the Greeks to this day is that the Greeks had called themselves "Hellenes" since the 6th century BC, but the Romans disparaged it with the pejorative new term "Graeculi" (meaning "little Greek"), which eventually became "Greece" and is still used today.
Drowsy and sleepy
Russell said, "The psychological preparation of the Christian spirit for birth began in the Hellenistic period and was associated with the decline of the city-state." After Hellenism, the empire was too large for the political concerns of the city-states to be impossible. In a world of suffering, people do not care about "how to create a good country", but "how to achieve happiness", and this happiness is usually achieved not in this world, but on the other side.
However, when St. Paul arrived in Athens in early 51 AD, he found that the Athenians were not psychologically prepared for Christianity. St. Paul saw an altar with the words "Unknown God" written on it, and he tried to reconcile Christianity with Greek philosophy, persuading the Greeks to believe that this "unknown God" was "the God who created the universe and all things." This was the first time that the Athenians had come into close contact with Christian thought, and the Athenians reacted to St. Paul: "Look at this guy who picks up rags, what does he want to prove?" ”
In 324 AD, Constantine I moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Byzantium and renamed it Constantinople. The Roman Empire was thus divided into two. The Roman Empire in the West was Catholic, and the Byzantine Empire in the East was Orthodox. In order to eradicate the influence of pagan ideas once and for all, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian announced the permanent closure of Plato's Athens in 529 AD, an event that is considered a "turning point" in Athenian history – the collapse of the last pillar that supported the classical rational world. From then on, the Parthenon was no longer dedicated to Athena, it became the church of the Virgin; The Greeks no longer called themselves Greeks, but Romans; Athens ceased to be "a city to which people were happy to go for any purpose", a center of knowledge and the birthplace of free thought, but an insignificant provincial capital of the Byzantine Empire.
The history of Athens that followed was humiliating and bleak. In 582 AD, the Slavs invaded Athens, and this time it was different: Athens was completely destroyed—not conquered, but destroyed, and it was not until two centuries later that Athens slowly recovered. Then there were the Franks, the Catalans, the Florentines, the Venetians......
The last outsiders to occupy the city were the Turks. In 1453, the Ottoman Empire destroyed Byzantium and changed Constantinople to Istanbul. Three years later, the Ottoman Empire conquered Greece.
Cultural identity and identity are a delicate matter. Greece has been ruled by four empires for a long time: Macedonia, Rome, Byzantium, and the Ottoman Empire, and the Greeks seem to have embraced the first three as "I" history. For example, docents at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens proudly proclaim that "I share the same surname as Alexander the Great" when introducing themselves; But when we talk to the Greek girl who accompanies us all the way about Istanbul, she insists that it is Constantinople, as if everything is still in the Byzantine period, and that the past 500 years of history have never happened; When asked what the Ottoman Empire had left to the Greeks, Ms. Marina, director of the National Gallery of Athens, answered most ingeniously: only Dolma and Musaka! Translated into Chinese, it is cabbage rice roll with minced meat and eggplant eggs!
History that is too recent always makes it difficult to breathe, not to mention all kinds of indescribable pain and memories in it.
Will Duran used the word "lethargy" to describe Greece under the Ottoman Empire. By 1676, archaeologists have determined that Athens had decayed into a small rural town with a population of less than 7,500 people, and it was about to face one of the most devastating blows. On September 26, 1687, when the Venetians besieged Athens, a cannonball hit the Parthenon, which contained Turkish ammunition, and the temple was reduced to ruins in an instant due to a violent explosion. The Earl of Larbor later lamented: "We will forever lament that a magnificent monument of perfect architecture, which has endured more than two thousand years, and whose years of destruction and barbarism of the world have not been able to destroy it in the hands of Christian Europe." ”
Athens is not a tragedy
Schopenhauer said that in the final analysis, the pleasure of tragedy is a matter of acceptance. One of the things that ancient Greek tragedy has repeatedly tried to illustrate is: Since it has to be so, then good, I will do what you want now. It is a kind of acceptance of life, which has nothing to do with the rebellious spirit of the fighter, but it is also different from acquiescence and submission. In other words, the tragic spirit of ancient Greece is that "it accepts life because it clearly sees that life must be as it is, and not as it should be." ”
After the bombing of 1687, the fate of the Parthenon and the Acropolis did not end, and for more than 100 years, Athens was sacked by Western powers, and a large number of art treasures were shipped to the British Museum in London, the Sculpture Museum in Munich and the Louvre in Paris. Athens seemed destined to be a tragedy, yet the Greeks of the 19th century were not prepared to accept it, not because they had forgotten the tragic spirit of ancient Greece, but because they preserved "the memory of Greek ancient freedom, the battles of Marathon, and the battles of Thermopylae".
Just as the Venus de Milo arrived in Paris, the first uprising of the Greek War of Independence broke out. These Greek militiamen, dressed in short skirts and blue fringed red hats, decided to fight for freedom "on the tombs of their ancestors".
In 1827, Britain, France, and Russia, which supported Greek independence, formed a combined fleet to annihilate the Ottoman fleet in the Gulf of Navarino, and from a military point of view, it was this victory that ultimately led to the liberation of Greece. But for the Greeks, the war of independence made them remember only the name of one English poet: Byron.
Byron arrived in Greece in August 1823 and died the following year of a cold wind. His death had not been rewarded with any military victory, but what could be more important to a people where gods and heroes have resided than to awaken their excellence and honor? It was Byron's death that played the long-hoarse harp, and it was Byron's death that inspired the heroic hymns that had long been silent, so the Greeks would give Byron the highest praise and honor.
In Lamenting Greece, Byron writes:
"O Greek Islands, beautiful Greek Islands!
The fiery Saffer sang love songs here;
Here, the art of war and peace flourish side by side,
Delos rises, Apollo leaps out of the sea!
Eternal summer gilds the island with gold,
But except for the sun, everything was gone. ”
In 1829, Greece declared its independence. In 1833, Athens was made the capital.
Herodotus said in the Histories: "The Greeks had the same blood, the same language, the same temple, the rituals, and the common customs. 2,500 years later, Perrigrinis, a professor of philosophy at the University of Athens, compared the ancient Greeks with the modern Greeks in common: "We live in the same territory and have the same language. That's all. ”
When summer comes, the sun on the Greek islands still gilds the islands golden, but where are the gods and heroes?