Cyprus-Forum.com

[yialousa1971]

Saturday, 21 January 2012

The myth of the Greek ‘dark ages’and the Orientalising revolution'

Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origins. (Sir Henry Maine)

Robin Lane Fox’s book, Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer is a mesmerising account of the journeys Greek traders, settlers and adventurers made across the Mediterranean in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, their contact with beguiling landscapes and exhilarating stories that helped them explain the origins of the Greek gods and advance Greek civilisation.

Not that Lane Fox’s book is an exercise in wonderment at Greek endeavour or an anthropological quest to explain the origins of Greek myths. Rather, it is an assertion that the so-called Greek ‘dark ages’ were, in fact, quite luminous; that between the collapse of Mycenaean civilisation (1200 BC) and the Archaic Period (800 BC), Greek civilisation was not introverted and lacking in ambition but sophisticated and progressive and the evidence of this is the intrepid seafarers from the island of Evia who, in their journeys to the Near East, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily and Italy – where they mingled with Greeks and barbarians alike – absorbed what they saw and returned to Greece not with a new culture or new ways of thinking but with a deeper understanding of their own culture and an enhanced appreciation of their distinctive worldview.

Cyprus plays a key role in this narrative, the island’s strong Greek presence providing a natural place for western Greeks to trade and settle, and an ideal launching pad for further Greek exploration of the Levant. Lane Fox doesn’t deny these Levantine adventures left cultural and intellectual impressions on the Evians – it was from Phoenician colonists in Cyprus that Greeks learned the Alphabet – but he does refute the suggestion that this amounted to a Levantine or Oriental colonising of the Greek mind.

The theory that Greece only emerged from its ‘dark ages’ due to an Orientalising revolution, the massive importing and borrowing by Greeks of religion, literature and crafts from Anatolia, Assyria, Phoenicia and Egypt, is most associated with Walter Burkert, who is explicit about his objective; which is to mock the West’s traditional anti-Semitism by showing how Semitic culture shaped Greek and hence Western civilisation. For Burkert, the denial of formative Semitic influences on Greek culture was a calculated act of anti-Semitism devised by 18th and 19th century German classicists.

But for Lane Fox, these modern political considerations fly in the face of the evidence; which is that the East did not come to Greece, it was the Greeks who went to the East and that the Greeks used what they found there not to transform their identity but to embellish or explain what they already knew or believed. Thus, Greek originality and innovation not Oriental influence and models remain the key elements in any narrative on the origins of Western civilisation.

*The video below is the BBC documentary with Robin Lane Fox based on his book. Watch it while you can, before Metacafe takes it down.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/7997542/marble_threshing/

http://hellenicantidote.blogspot.com/20 ... esand.html

[GreekIslandGirl]

Brilliant, Yialousa.

Robin Lane Fox is Britain's most formidable and accomplished historian. Proving that when Brits seek the truth, respect academia, philosophy and dignified moral conduct; they are worthy of being Honorary Greeks in the highest manifestation this term can take.

- I wish he would give some lessons to that moral-mishap, MacGregor, about returning the Parthenon marbles to their rightful place.

[Get Real!]

Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origins. (Sir Henry Maine)

Who can possibly doubt the success of the greatest scam in the history of mankind when otherwise intelligent and respected people make such ridiculous statements…

[kimon07]

Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origins. (Sir Henry Maine)

Who can possibly doubt the success of the greatest scam in the history of mankind when otherwise intelligent and respected people make such ridiculous statements…

Oh, dear dear. Such persuasive arguments from GR. As usual.

[kimon07]

Saturday, 21 January 2012 The mythof the Greek ‘dark ages’and the Orientalising revolution' [b]Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origins.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/7997542/marble_threshing/ http://hellenicantidote.blogspot.com/20 ... esand.html

Nice one yialousa. Thanks. Keep the British Brigade delirious.

[Paphitis]

Brilliant, Yialousa.

Robin Lane Fox is Britain's most formidable and accomplished historian. Proving that when Brits seek the truth, respect academia, philosophy and dignified moral conduct; they are worthy of being Honorary Greeks in the highest manifestation this term can take.

- I wish he would give some lessons to that moral-mishap, MacGregor, about returning the Parthenon marbles to their rightful place.

Just testing the 'ignore feature'.

As if Greeks are the benchmark for dignified moral conduct. if that is the case then the world is truly f@#ked up.

(Now if this 'ignore' thingy works, I will be in Paradise. )

A women that doesn't answer back! Yippeeee!

And I can catch my flight a very happy man!

[yialousa1971]

@ GreekIslandGirl and kimon07 see below

Why they hate the Greeks

Before this could be recognized, before the innermost dependence of every art on the Greeks, from Homer to Socrates, was demonstrated conclusively, we had to feel about these Greeks as the Athenians felt about Socrates. Nearly every age and stage of culture has at some time or other sought with profound irritation to free itself from the Greeks, because in their presence everything one has achieved oneself, though apparently quite original and sincerely admired, suddenly seemed to lose life and color and shriveled into a poor copy, even a caricature. And so time after time cordial anger erupts against this presumptuous little people that made bold for all time to designate everything not native as "barbaric." Who are they, one asks, who, though they display only an ephemeral historical splendor, ridiculously restricted institutions, dubious excellence in their mores, and are marked by ugly vices, yet lay claim to that dignity and pre-eminence among peoples which characterize genius among the masses? Unfortunately, no one was lucky enough to find the cup of hemlock with which one could simply dispose of such a character; for all the poison that envy, calumny, and rancor created did not suffice to destroy that self-sufficient splendor. And so one feels ashamed and afraid in the presence of the Greeks, unless one prizes truth above all things and dares acknowledge even this truth: that the Greeks, as charioteers, hold in their hands the reins of our own and every other culture, but that almost always chariot and horses are of inferior quality and not up to the glory of their leaders, who consider it sport to run such a team into an abyss which they themselves clear with the leap of Achilles.

Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik
[The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music]
(1872)
by Friedrich Nietzsche

[supporttheunderdog]

@ GreekIslandGirl and kimon07 see below

Why they hate the Greeks

Before this could be recognized, before the innermost dependence of every art on the Greeks, from Homer to Socrates, was demonstrated conclusively, we had to feel about these Greeks as the Athenians felt about Socrates. Nearly every age and stage of culture has at some time or other sought with profound irritation to free itself from the Greeks, because in their presence everything one has achieved oneself, though apparently quite original and sincerely admired, suddenly seemed to lose life and color and shriveled into a poor copy, even a caricature. And so time after time cordial anger erupts against this presumptuous little people that made bold for all time to designate everything not native as "barbaric." Who are they, one asks, who, though they display only an ephemeral historical splendor, ridiculously restricted institutions, dubious excellence in their mores, and are marked by ugly vices, yet lay claim to that dignity and pre-eminence among peoples which characterize genius among the masses? Unfortunately, no one was lucky enough to find the cup of hemlock with which one could simply dispose of such a character; for all the poison that envy, calumny, and rancor created did not suffice to destroy that self-sufficient splendor. And so one feels ashamed and afraid in the presence of the Greeks, unless one prizes truth above all things and dares acknowledge even this truth: that the Greeks, as charioteers, hold in their hands the reins of our own and every other culture, but that almost always chariot and horses are of inferior quality and not up to the glory of their leaders, who consider it sport to run such a team into an abyss which they themselves clear with the leap of Achilles.

Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik
[The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music]
(1872)
by Friedrich Nietzsche

Ah Nietzsche, that drugged-up mad-man.

[GreekIslandGirl]

Yialousa, don't worry about these people with inferiority complexes, who jump on bandwagons to feel part of the 'gang' and impersonate the Turks. They are like the Lyrebird of Australia.

- Only their minds are dark

Today, Greece (Democracy) is fighting a battle against the fiscal fascists (Economy).

Greece is leading the civilised way, again, to take the EU out of its US-Dollar imposed 'Dark Ages'! And, with a big, brave "OXI" to German invasion (WWII never ended for Greece).

[Paphitis]

Greece couldn't organize a root in the brothel and there is no such thing as fiscal fascists.

Anyway, the ignore function seems to have worked.

Boys, I'm in Paradise!

Officially there is a crude women that will never answer back! This is great!

Male heaven. If GreekIslandGirl keeps this up I might ask her to marry me.

Then, I will have a Greek wife that don't answer back.