u/dolfin4

Love this, hate this, upvote it, downvote it, but we need to clear up several misconceptions.

Not misconceptions from people like ChaltaHaiShellBright (I responded to her here. Save it in your Reddit dashboard, copy-paste it into a Word document, so you can use it in the future...I don't care, you all have my blessing).

But to the echo chamber misconceptions that are promoted on Reddit by misguided people that are trying to defend Greek civilization.

In particular, I am going to respond to some claims made by u/kickynew and u/kodial79 in this discussion here. Those misguided comments got a lot of views and likes, but I just noticed them. So, rather than responding a day late -and no one will read it- I am making a new post with a new headline.

My response to your comments:

>This is due to the western conceit 

Actually, it looks like ChaltaHaiShellBRight is an Australian of POC descent. Or at the very least, a woke person.

Which actually explains it.

The vast majority of people that push these narratives are Anglos that are either woke or "POC" descent, not "westerners". They do that because they feel left out of the Anglosphere's "Eurocentric" civilizational storytelling. So, they try to separate Greece form Europe, because they're trying to pull Greece into the "POC" direction and away from "bad white people".

Please trust me on this.

Most of the people that criticized the casting choices have been "White" (European) descent, so the narrative that Ancient Greece "belongs to the whole world" has been a woke/left reaction, not a ""western"" one.

So, please don't post misinformation.

>So basically, western histiography begins in Ancient Greece, particularly Athens. Then it goes on to Rome, then after the western court falls in 476 and Odoacer sends the imperial regalia to the emperor in Constantinople, they shift their focus away from the Mediterranean region and to France, Germany, England and so on. But this is an entire narrative, so the implication western schoolchildren are taught when they first hear about history is "Greece and Rome are the start of your story". There are for example no primary education that begins with the ancient celts or druids.

This only describes the Anglosphere. And it just as much leaves out Italy after a certain cutoff period, as it does Greece.

Everyone in Europe studies Ancient Greece & Rome, because it influenced them, which is actually true. The Russians do too, the Poles do too, the Ukrainians to doo, the Nordics to too. Greece and Rome mentally conquered the whole of Europe. And Greek society is proud of that.

And it's not just "people in 18th century Britain discovered Plato".

From Justinian's code (the basis of almost all European legal sytems), to the Early Christian Councils and the shaping of Christianity, to Greek contributions to the Italian Renaissance, to the Greek Revolution (which influenced other nation-state movements in Europe), Greece really did conquer all of Europe (not just """western"""), and it continues after "Ancient Greece".

Greece doesn't drop out of the conversation in 146 BC. Nor were we isolated from influence from the rest of Europe, nor is that a bad thing. The Roman Empire very heavily shaped Greece. The Ionian-Cretan Rennaissance, the Modern Greek Enlightenment (yes, despite the Ottomans), Greece was always in dialogue with the rest of Europe. What you guys are going is: you're committing the same fallacy that you're criticizing: placing Greece outside the "west".

>They started saying that the Greeks are not the real successors of Rome, they (Charlemagne and the Pope) are the true successors and importing the Roman cultural heritage and later the Greek too. That's how the west was born, by culturally appropriating Greece and literally saying "it belongs to us and you are fakes" to us. Over one thousand years ago and that sentiment still echoes today.

You're giving Charlemagne waaaaaaaaayyy too much credit for influencing ""western"" opinion in the Early Modern period and how people in the Anglosphere view history. No one views Medieval Germany as "real Greece & Rome".

I'm sorry, but this is just nonsense that people in r/byzantium tell themselves.

I have never been made to feel outside Western Civilization by "western Europeans", and I have lived in France, have had ordinary French friends, and have close exposure to American and French Academia. The only people that place me outside Western Civilization are misguided Byzantine nationalists in r/byzantium, American converts to Orthodoxy, and -lately- Anglos of POC descent. Sometimes it's someone from Turkey (with good -if misguided- intentions).

While it's true that Charlemagne was crowned "Roman emperor" by the Pope, this wasn't some sort of conspiracy to de-westernize Greece. It was a political move -like most things in history- and the rest of Europe referred to the East Romans as "Greek" and "Greece", undeniably associating the East Romans with Greek civilization. In Sweden, they have the Greklandsstenarna ("Greece runstones") which honor men that went to Constantinople to work (mostly as Varangian Guards) and never came back. In Italy, there are several icons called Madonna Greca, referring to Marian icons that miraculously arrived in Italy, either fleeing the Iconoclasms or the Ottomans. ERE intellectuals and emperors themselves revived "Hellene" as early as the 11th century. Greek nationalism as distinct from other parts of the Roman Empire (past or current) very gradually starts then.

"Romanness" is complicated discussion for a whole other day, but this idea that the "western Europeans" came up with "Byzantine" in the Middle Ages is false and a conflation with a much later event: the term "Byzantine" wasn't coined until the 16th century by philhellene Hieronymus Wolf who was and admirer of Medieval Greek literature & history, and put together several Medieval Greek literary works and published them in the ""west"" as Corpus Historiae Byzantinae. Likewise, Greeks in Venice were very active in publishing Greek-language material for the rest of Europe. The first Greek printing presses were established in Venice by Greeks from Venetian Greek territories (like Crete).

Some of the best Byzantine-Revival churches from the 19th century are Catholic Churches in France, Britain, or the USA. American organizations like American School of Classical Studies Athens (ASCSA) have contributed immensely to the restoration of Byzantine mosaics in Thessaloniki, Hosios Loukas, Nea Moni. They do a lot of events and research on Byzantine studies. American art historians, like the Khan Academy (and their fantastic Smarthistory website) have done far more to advance our understanding of Byzantine art history, than any Greek organization has ever done. Greek art historians are stuck on this idea of "thousands of years of tradition", which is false. There were several styles and movements, and -sadly- when I read Greek academic art history papers, most of them are still stuck with Foti Kontoglou's propaganda that we were culturally static for 1000 years.

So, it's not true that they only care about pre-Roman Greece. And it's not true that they belittle Medieval Greek Civilization. WE do that (unintentionally). We have been doing it since the 1930s.

>This is why the western philhellenists supporting the revolution wanted Athens to become the capital of Greece -- its part of their own origin story.

There was definitely some romanticism, but this is mostly nonsense.

#1

Sorry mate, there were no plans during the Revolution where Greece's capital would be. So, this claim is just false.

#2

The early Greek state was only Peloponnese, Rumely, and the Cyclades. Major Greek-populated urban areas like Thessaloniki, Constantinople, or Corfu were outside the Greek state. They chose Nafplio, but choosing a new location in Attica also offered geographic advantages, as well as a blank slate to build a new city with government buildings.

#3

Greeks were all for it. This idea that the 19th century romanticism was driven entirely by ""western Europeans"" against the will of those dumb Greek plebs, is just false. Greeks themselves were just coming off of the Modern Greek Enlightenment which started in the late 17th century, due to a combination of:

• the Byzantines and Ottoman-era Greek church never stopped teaching the Classics
• the emerging Ottoman-Greek shipping industry which starts in the 16th century, and traded heavily with the rest of Europe
• the Cretan-Cypriot-Ionian Renaissance in Venetian Greece in the 15th-17th centuries
• the old Byzantine-Latin aristocracy, like the Phanariotes, the Mavrokordatoi, or the Chios nobility that shaped the Modern Greek state. And yes: they took a huge interest in Classical Greece. It wasn't something "forced on us" by foreigners.

#4

Your narrative is vastly oversimplifying the Greek Revolution.

Yes, there were European intellectuals that were thinking of Ancient Greece too. (And others viewed it as a Christian nation fighting a Muslim empire). But it was not the primary motive.

Coming off of the Modern Greek Enlightenment, Greeks -and revolutionaries across Europe- were deeply influenced by the French Revolution and wanted to spread Republicanism, or at least Constitutional systems. Many German & Italian rebels volunteered for Greece during the War of Independence, because they viewed it as another phase of the Europe-wide radical revolution. After the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, many French rebels came to Greece for the same reason.

Many European governments were actually opposed to helping the Greek Revolution because they were afraid of Revolution at home. The rebels seeking reforms and a unified nation-state in the Italian and German states, where heavily suppressed. The German states passed several anti-free-speech laws in the 1830s to suppress German revolutionaries. This is also why Greece was forced to take a monarchy in 1832. It wasn't because "they looked down on us", it's because of revolutionaries in their own countries.

So, please, if you don't know Greek history and the broader European context, please don't post nonsense online.

Edit:

I have turned off reply notifications. If you write a rebuttal, and I don't respond, it's because I'm fully aware of the propaganda at r/byzantium, and I know what the arguments are, and dispelled all of them.