What Every American Should Know About Europe

by Melissa L. Rossi

  EUROPE’S LI’L HELLION

  Until recently, Greece has been such a pain that the Hellenic Republic was sometimes called the “spoiled child of Europe.” She was the weak link in European security—making little effort to go after the assassination-prone November 17 group until 2002—and her airports were so lax that the U.S., for one, issued travel warnings about going there. Greece got into a serious diplomatic tiff with Macedonia over the use of the name, also the name of a region in Greece. She kicked up problems in Cyprus, sending guerrillas there and supporting coups—and with a nod from the Greek Orthodox Church, Greek soldiers fought along with Milosevic’s troops in Serbian slaughters of Muslims. Greece was the site of a 1988 ferry attack (in which Palestinians killed nine tourists), and at times her government seemed to love to goad the West by chummying up with Soviets. And on numerous occasions, the international community had to pull Greece and Turkey apart.

  Greece appears to be mellowing and moving up in the world. Two things pulled her out of the gutter. The first was joining the European Union in 1981, a move that brought hundreds of billions in development funds and offered wider economic markets. The second stimulus was an event that first started in Athens in 776 BC: the Olympic Games. Preparations for the 2004 Olympics catapulted Greece into the twenty-first century, bringing fancy new stadiums, an expanded subway, a new airport, and tram lines. Kicking up a construction flurry, the event also gave Greeks a new pride—and an international stature—that they haven’t had since about the time Constantinople fell. Some hailed the 2004 Olympics as the finest in recent history; many were simply amazed that the construction for it finished on time. Greece was so behind that the International Olympic Committee nearly yanked the Games away at the last minute, and up until opening day, construction itself was an Olympic event in the form of a round-the-clock work-a-thon.

  Invented by ancient Greeks as an amusement for Zeus, the Olympics began in the eighth century BC, with chariot races, distance running, and discus-throwing—many events performed in the buff. The Games’ flames were blown out in AD 393, when Romans took over Greece, but the jock-a-thon was revived in 1896—in Athens—by French baron Pierre de Coubertin, who required that athletes don clothes.

  Like the Olympics, which are integral to Greek identity, the Greek Orthodox Church plays a profound role in defining Greece—and ensures that she clings to memories of her past, including all misdeeds inflicted upon her. In May 2001, when Pope John Paul II visited Athens—the first pope to set foot in Greece in almost 1,200 years—his arrival was treated as a national tragedy. Orthodox clergy held an all-night pray-a-thon that he wouldn’t make it, flags hung at half-mast, churches were wrapped in black, bishops led protest demonstrations of the faithful chanting, “down with the two-horned pope,” and Orthodox archbishop Christodoulos loudly demanded that the pope repent for harming the Byzantine Empire in medieval times. The pope did indeed apologize for past acts, specifically the Crusader sacking of Constantinople in 1204, but even after the pope ate crow, Greek clerics snubbed the repenter; at least Christodoulos came forward to hug him. The rest of the room remained coldly silent, and the anger toward the Catholic Church burns on.

  THE GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH

  The Orthodox Church is the official keeper of centuries of Greek history. The icon-heavy and ritual-rich branch of Christianity split with the Catholic Church almost 1,000 years ago and is more conservative than even the Catholic Church, and arguably more powerful—at least in Greece, where there is scarcely any separation of church and state, and religion is taught in schools. The Church is so important that clerics—routinely called in for government affairs and christening new buildings—are on the government payroll.3

  The Church is now headed by Archbishop Christodoulos, who has a few secular issues on his mind—like yanking back all of the lands that were once ancient Greece, even if it takes a war to do it. He calls Turks “barbarians,” wants to block Turkey’s entry into the EU, and tried to prevent the first mosque from rising in Athens, which until recently was the only European capital where Muslims didn’t have a house of worship. Lately, Christodoulos and the entire Church are in hot water. VIPs are accused of lurid crimes, from drug peddling, smuggling, and money-laundering to sexually abusing young boys, carousing with prostitutes, and bribing judges. It’s serious, and bishops are flying. The archbishop presided over the March 2005 swearing-in of President Karolos Papoulis but, says the Guardian, Papoulis shunned kissing him. Not a good sign.

  The Greek Orthodox Church, whose wealth is estimated to be about $1 billion, owns vast amounts of Greek land; only the government owns more.4

  Politically stable (for Greece), with popular conservative leadership, and still beaming over being the champions of the soccer tournament EURO 2004, Greece may be on a winning streak. Greece still has problems—a lagging educational system and high poverty rate are two—but at least now she has a reason to hope for the future and can stop dwelling solely on her glorious past.

  History Review

  From the scraps we have of antiquity, it’s clear that ancient Greeks were latching on to ideas far ahead of their time—and which sometimes weren’t proved true until thousands of years later.

  The history of ancient Greece was lost for centuries. Islamic scholars living around the ninth century first translated the works of the wise; long ignored by Europe, the classical ideas and designs later inspired the Renaissance. America’s founding fathers so adored ancient Greece that they toyed with the idea of making Greek the official language of the United States.

  DIFFERING PHILOSOPHIES

  Still major names in philosophy, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle took different approaches to explaining the world.

  Socrates (470–399 BC): Believing “the life unexamined is not worth living,” Socrates cross-examined everything and everyone so voraciously that there is a word—“aporia”—for the resulting bewilderment. A Delphic oracle declared him Athens’ wisest, and he became arrogant in his “All I know is that I know nothing” conceit—and refused to write anything down. After two of his students overthrew Athens, he was found guilty of corrupting youth and forced to drink hemlock.

  Plato (427–347 BC): Best known for his written discourses involving Socrates, Plato believed that our perceptions were foggy at best, like shadows flickering on cave walls. “Know thyself,” he taught, believing true knowledge came from within; the senses merely led one astray.

  Aristotle (384–322 BC): Plato’s finest student, Aristotle, believed understanding came only from empirical observation, and laid the basis for the scientific method. Teacher to Alexander the Great, he left behind writing on topics from anatomy to astronomy, politics to poetry, and is the most widely respected of the three.

  Prosperous city-states such as Athens and Sparta rose up around the sixth century BC across the Aegean, producing evolved societies whose citizens voted in leaders and thinkers postulated the existence of atoms, calculated earth’s circumference, and correctly portrayed the galaxy as a collection of faraway stars. Greeks invented coins, pumps, sundials, and public works, leaving us the first written histories—as well as maps that were used into Renaissance times. Many of the most memorable achievements took place in Athens in the fifth century BC, during the Golden Era of Pericles.

  Greek city-states expanded territorially across the Mediterranean, creating a beachfront empire that included Sicily, south Italy, the southern Balkans, and North Africa.

  GREEK GURUS

  Homer: The blind poet is credited with transforming the Trojan War into the lyrical epics The Iliad and The Odyssey, but some historians doubt he existed.

  Sappho: (c. 630 BC) From the island of Lesbos, she wrote love poems to women but threw herself from a cliff over a man.

  Sophocles: (496–406 BC) Wrote 123 plays, only seven of which survive, including Antigone.

  General Thucydides: (c. 455–395 BC) Preserved his battlefield memories in the multivolume History of the Peloponnesian War.


  Hippocrates: (460–377 BC): Called the father of medicine, but some doubt he penned the Hippocratic Oath.

  Pythagoras: (569–475 BC) Best recalled for his formula a2 + b2= c2 for triangles, he also experimented with musical tones (inventing the octave), exalted vegetarianism, and ran a philosophical society that reduced everything to numbers; initiates went for five years without talking.

  Aeschylus: (525–456 BC): Famous for tragedies, he died comically when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head.

  Eratosthenes of Cyrene: (276–195 BC): Calculated Earth’s circumference, off by only a few thousand miles.

  Democritus: (460–370 BC): Theorized that atoms make up matter, stars are far-off planets, and the universe holds many worlds that might have life.5

  Ptolemy: (c. AD 90–168): Astronomer and profoundly important cartographer, his maps were the best the world had until European discoverers revamped them.

  Despite occasional claims of being descended from Zeus, early Greeks were mere mortals, and as such entered into occasional wars. Their first enemies were the Persians, who began conquering Greek lands in the sixth century BC. Closer to home, alpha dog Athens and militaristic Sparta were always going at it. Starting in 431 BC, the two knocked each other about for twenty-seven years in the Peloponnesian War; Sparta emerged victorious, but other city-states soon shoved her off the stage. Constant infighting made the city-states vulnerable, and in 346 BC, Thebes changed the dynamic when she hired an outside fighter to help her cause. Warrior Philip II of Macedon expanded Thebes’ territorial holdings, and brought in his son Alexander, who forged even wider boundaries for all Greece.

  Forgotten details: The Peloponnesian War ended in 404 BC. Peace, however, wasn’t official for another 2,400 years. Mayors of former city-states Sparta and Athens, now stately cities, finally signed a formal treaty in March 1996.

  Greeks initially disliked the Macedonian, particularly when Philip took their cities and proclaimed himself leader, but he promised the return of Greek lands that were under Persian rule. Philip died shortly after starting that quest, but his son Alexander completed the mission in grand style. Twenty-year-old Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) won back Persian-held cities and conquered new lands from Egypt to Syria. By the time he died at thirty-three, Greek territories stretched all the way to India. The gem of the Greek acquisitions, however, was on the north coast of Africa: Alexandria.

  ALEXANDRIA

  In today’s Egypt, Alexandria was a small village until 331 BC, when Alexander ordered that it be transformed into a metropolis. Palaces shot up alongside temples, theaters, markets, and mausoleums—and the lighthouse of Alexandria (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) was the world’s first beacon for sailors and the tallest building of the day. The city, known for intellectuals, high culture, and kinky affairs, later boasted a well-endowed museum with on-site temples, gardens, a zoo, and the world’s most extensive library, where scholars pored over 500,000 papyrus scrolls, maps, and documents from across Europe and Asia. The collected wisdom of the ancient world went up in flames, although exactly when it caught fire (probably in the first century BC or AD) and who to blame for the blaze that reduced knowledge to ashes is still a mystery (Julius Caesar is one contender).

  The last of the pharaohs of Alexandria, Cleopatra (69–30 BC), had a zesty social life. Married to her brother (and rival), she disposed of him when Julius Caesar visited her city in 50 BC. Caesar was impressed with the hospitality: he received a present of a carpet with Cleopatra rolled inside. The two traveled the Nile for months, and soon the pharaoh was pregnant with the emperor’s child. Cleopatra subsequently married her younger brother, continued sleeping with Caesar until he was murdered, then went for his successor Mark Antony, who handed her Crete, Cyprus, and Palestine as gifts. His foe Octavian declared war on Cleopatra, and, upon winning, threatened her with death. Rather than suffer whatever method he devised, Cleopatra came up with her own, killing herself with the poison of an asp, as befitted the seductress with a toxic effect on men.

  Greek lands fell into Roman hands in the first century AD, although Greek remained the spoken language and Greek culture was mostly absorbed by the Romans; the same gods remained, but with new names. The polytheist religion was later swept aside by Christianity, the official religion of the Roman Empire, by the fourth century AD. In AD 330 the Roman Empire was split into two parts; the new eastern portion—the Byzantine Empire—boasted grand Constantinople, home to many ethnic Greeks, at her center.

  CONSTANTINOPLE: THE LOST CITY

  She was the Queen of Cities, the richest in Christendom, filled with palaces, markets, zoos, and the most beautiful churches—including the mosaic-thick, silver-rich Hagia Sofia, Church of Holy Wisdom. Founded by Constantine I in AD 330, Constantinople spread out along the azure Marmara Sea in today’s Turkey. The capital of the eastern Roman Empire, Constantinople was a city where most, like Constantine himself, spoke Greek and where vestiges of Greek culture lived on, even after barbarian invasions brought the downfall of the Roman Empire and caused many to flee most Greek cities. In Constantinople, Christianity was embodied by the Eastern Orthodox Church, which split with the Catholic Church in 1054 over religious details, such as the question of whether laypeople could preach. Protected by two walls and a deep moat, the city was Europe’s most formidable to enter. The walls were occasionally penetrated: in 1204, Crusaders sent by the Catholic pope sacked the city, looting churches, raping women, and establishing Constantinople as a new site of Catholicism for the next fifty-seven years—an event for which the Greek Orthodox Church would never forgive the pope. The Greek Orthodox Church won back control in 1261, but soon lost it again. In 1453, during one of the most horrifying battles of European history, Constantinople was besieged by Sultan Mehmed II’s Islamic warriors for fifty-five days. Byzantines were greatly outnumbered—Mehmed had 200,000 fighters to their 20,000—but the city remained safe for weeks, thanks to her mighty walls. The Ottomans finally gained entry, not through fighting, but through a mistake: someone inside Constantinople hadn’t locked a small gate in the thick wall,6 and the Ottomans walked right in and claimed the crown city of the Byzantine Empire—and she remains part of Turkey today. Ottomans took Constantinople on a Tuesday, a day many Greeks still regard as jinxed.

  Orthodox churches remained, and Greeks could freely practice their faith—as long as they paid hefty “non-Muslim” taxes. Ottomans so respected church leaders that they became paid employees of the Ottoman state. The church and the Greek language became symbols for Greeks of their lost culture—and of their dream that greatness would be regained.

  Constantinople and most other Byzantine lands were pulled into the Islamic Ottoman Empire in 1453. For the next three and a half centuries, Greeks were obsessed with their past and with how to restore it. Although there were eras of relative peace, Ottoman rule was often a violent, unhappy affair for Greeks. In 1821, Greeks declared independence; European luminaries such as Victor Hugo and Lord Byron embraced the cause, and Britain, France, and Russia entered the battle, ultimately gaining freedom for Greeks in 1829.

  Lord Byron (who died fighting) and other European romantics fighting in the Greek War of Independence weren’t concerned with geopolitics or inhumane treatment; they came to the battlefield to preserve the ideals of Ancient Greece.

  Leaving Constantinople and descending from mountain villages where families had hid for centuries, Greeks set about re-creating their country, starting with little more than the mainland. On reclaiming Athens, they discovered the once-great city was run down and deserted. Notably missing: the fabulous marble artwork that had wrapped the interior of the Parthenon. Greeks found out the Parthenon’s interior was in London, thanks to a well-meaning earl.

  LOSING THEIR MARBLES

  The Elgin Marbles aren’t small colorful orbs that tots shoot across the floor; they’re intricate marble sculptures and friezes of war scenes and religious ceremonies, created in 440 BC, that were plucked from Athens
in 1799. The Scottish Earl of Elgin, then British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, took the works for safekeeping, since Greece was then occupied by Ottoman Turks. He believed he was saving them, although omens revealed their removal was cursed. First, the earl had to pay exorbitant fees to get the friezes off the walls; then he had to buy a ship to send them. Alas, the vessel sank, and it took two years to salvage the pieces—the cost of which came out of the earl’s pocket as well. Traveling back to Scotland by land, he and his new bride were captured by Napoleon’s forces in France and thrown in prison. The Scotsman sent to negotiate their release was successful with the Mrs.; once he got her out of prison, the two had a spicy affair. When the Earl finally showed up with the marbles in London, the British Museum would only pay a pittance. The poor earl, by then divorced, died in poverty—but the marbles became the museum’s most valued collection. Greece wants the babies back, but the museum won’t part with them, despite pleas lodged by tearful Greek politicians (who begged to borrow them for the Olympics) and VIPs from Bill Clinton to Vanessa Redgrave. Pressure builds for Britain to shoot the marbles back to Greece; reports that the museum’s caretakers have damaged the marbles aren’t helping the Brits’ cause.7

  Athens’ antiquities were further ravaged at the hands of the new Greek king, Otto Wittelsbach, who was foisted on them by Brits, French, and Russians. A Bavarian royal who cared little for Greek culture, he sent out construction to rip down most of the city’s “barbarian” buildings. The Greeks’ nineteenth-century return to their lost heritage was anticlimactic—and civil wars raged across the land. The romanticized past had disappeared, territory was scanty, many ethnic Greeks still lived under foreign rule, and the new Greece was divided, disorganized, and poor. Trying to unify Greeks, the first head of state John Capodistra proposed Megali Idea—a nationalistic plan for Greeks to reclaim their heritage by uniting ethnic Greeks everywhere and reassembling all the lands once included in ancient Greece—Crete, Cyprus, Constantinople, western Turkey, and chunks of the Balkans among them. The idea caught on, fueling assorted wars, and Greece gradually added parts of Bulgaria, Albania, and later Crete. Still missing were Constantinople and assorted islands, including Cyprus. When the First World War rolled around, Greeks—particularly Eleftherios Venizelos, Greek prime minister under King Constantine I—saw a chance to regain them. When Britain and France dangled the prospect of regaining Constantinople, Cyprus, and Thrace under his nose, Venizelos quickly signed Greece up to fight alongside the Triple Entente (Britain, France, and Russia). King Constantine I, however, wanted to stay neutral in the war his brother-in-law German Kaiser Wilhelm II had started. Venizelos was so determined to gamble for the lost lands that the king fired him. Britain and France intervened: they gave the king a choice—abdicate or watch Athens be turned into ruins—and occupied the capital to assure they meant business. The king gave the throne to his son Alexander, Venizelos was reinstated in Athens, and in 1917 Greece was dragged into the war.