greece

"Interest in the Greeks was again partly theological; the world of the church fathers was one suffused with questions about relations between the Greeks and the Jews — after all, the earliest extant version of the Old Testament — the Septuagint — was in Greek, as were the writings of Saint Paul, and Greek is the language of the New Testament."

"One presupposition, which in this matter has been of great harm and continues to do harm, is the separation between oriental and Greek studies and [the Greek and oriental] mind; [this] is increasingly concocted and arbitrarily applied, as if this grand difference had foundations in reality. In the history of humankind the inhabitants of Asia and the Europeans are to be seen as members of one family, whose history ought never to be divided, if one wants to understand the whole."

"If you take away from the Latin, German, and Slavic nations of our day on both sides of the ocean that which they owe to the peoples of Greece and Israel, a great deal would be gone. But we can’t even finish this line of argument; it is simply impossible to deprive these nations of that which was borrowed and to separate it from their very being. It has so permeated their blood and sap, that it constitutes part of the organism itself, which in turn has become its carrier and transmitter. It was the ladder by which these nations ascended to the top, or even better: it was the electrical current which unleashed the slumbering forces within them. Hellenism and Hebraism or — to speak without affectation — Judaism, have together created an atmosphere of ideas without which civilized nations would be unthinkable.... The part played by Hellenism in the rebirth of civilization is acknowledged freely and without envy. It dispersed the flowers of art and the fruits of knowledge. It unveiled the realm of beauty and illuminated it with an Olympian clarity of thought. And a regenerative power continues to pour forth from this literature and the legacy of its artistic ideal. The classical Greeks are dead, and toward them deceased posterity behaves properly. Envy and hatred are silent at the grave of the dead; their contributions are, in fact, usually exaggerated. It is quite different with that other creative nation, the Hebrews. Precisely because they’re still alive their contributions to culture are not generally acknowledged; they are criticized, or given another name to partially conceal their authorship or to dislodge them entirely."

"We Greeks own Egypt, the grand monarchy of letters and nobility, to be the parent of our fables, metaphors and doctrines."

"In short, they forgot none of the interesting features of Egypt, for there is no country in the world which Greeks prefer to hear about."

"And since Egypt is the country where mythology places the origin of the gods, where the earliest observations of the stars are said to have been made, and where, furthermore, many noteworthy deeds of great men are recorded, we shall begin our history with the events connected with Egypt."

"From Egypt Pythagoras thus without doubt brought the idea of his Order, which was a regular community brought together for purposes of scientific and moral culture … Egypt at that time was regarded as a highly cultured country, and it was so when compared with Greece; this is shown even in the differences of caste which assume a division amongst the great branches of life and work, such as the industrial, scientific and religious. But beyond this we need not seek great scientific knowledge amongst the Egyptians, nor think that Pythagoras got his science there. Aristotle (Metaph.I) only says that ‘in Egypt mathematical sciences first commenced, for there the nation of priests had leisure.’53"

"How it happened that Egyptians came to the Peloponnese, and what they did to make themselves kings in that part of Greece, has been chronicled by other writers; I will add nothing therefore, but proceed to mention some points which no one else has yet touched upon."

"He says that the Greeks learnt about processions and national festivals from the Egyptians as well as the worship of the twelve gods; the very name of Dionysos, he says, was learnt from the Egyptians by Melampous, and he taught the rest of the Greeks; and the mysteries and secret rituals connected with Demeter were brought from Egypt by the daughters of Danaos … Nor is this the worst. He traces the ancestry of Herakles to Perseus and says Perseus, according to the Persian account, was an Assyrian; ‘and the chiefs of the Dorians’ he says, ‘would be established as pure-blooded Egyptians …’; not only is he anxious to establish an Egyptian and a Phoenician Herakles; he says that our own Herakles was born after the other two, and he wants to remove him from Greece and make a foreigner out of him. Yet of the learned men of old neither Homer nor Hesiod … ever mentioned an Egyptian or a Phoenician Herakles, but all of them knew only one, our own Herakles who is both Boiotian and Argive"

"For the whole length of the 3,000 years of her history, Egypt thus, little by little, prepared the way for the Greek scholars who - like Thales, Pythagoras and Plato - came to study then even to teach, like Euclid, at the school in Alexandria."

"Thus the Phrygians, earliest of all races, call me Pessinuntia, mother of all gods. Thus the Athenians, sprung from their own soil, call me Cecropeian Minerva and the sea-tossed Cyprians call me Paphian Venus, the archer Cretans Diana, Dictynna, and the trilingual Sicilians Proserpine; to the Eleusinians I am Ceres, the ancient godess, to others Juno, to others Bellona and Hecate and Rhamnusia. But the Ethiopians, who are illumined by the first rays of the sun-god as he is born every day, together with the Africans and Egyptians, who excel through having the original doctrine, honour me with my distinctive rites and give me my true name of Queen Isis."

"That Osiris is identical with Dionysos who could more fittingly know than yourself, Klea? For you are the head of the inspired maidens [devotees of Dionysos] of Delphi, and have been consecrated by your father and mother in the holy rites of Osiris."

"I propose to hold my tongue about the mysterious rites of Demeter, which the Greeks call Thesmophoria, though … I may say, for instance, that it was the daughters of Danaos who brought this ceremony from Egypt and instructed the Pelasgian women in it …"

"Egypt can be regarded as the mother of all theogonies and the source of all the fictions which the Greeks received and embellished, for it does not appear that they invented much."

"The name of Greece strikes home to the hearts of men of education in Europe, and more particularly is this so with us Germans … They [the Greeks] certainly received the substantial beginnings of their religion, culture … from Asia, Syria and Egypt; but they have so greatly obliterated the foreign nature of this origin, and it is so much changed, worked on, turned round and altogether made so different, that what they – as we – prize, know and love in it is essentially their own."

"The temple of Athena there [Lindos in Rhodes] was founded by the daughters of Danaos, who touched at the island during their flight from the sons of Aigyptos."

"It was the belief of the Greeks that many elements of their civilization had come to them from Egypt… [I]n Egypt the Greeks acquired many new skills in pottery, textiles, metalworking, and ivory; there, as well as from the Assyrians. Phoenicians, and Hittites, Greek sculptors took the style of their early statues…Second to Egypt’s was the influence of Phoenicia…"

"Almost all the names of the gods came into Greece from Egypt. .. Besides these which have been here mentioned, there are many other practices. . . which the Greeks have borrowed from Egypt....it seems to me a sufficient proof of this that in Egypt these practices have been established from remote antiquity, while in Greece they are only recently known."

"The Phoenicians who came with Kadmos … introduced into Greece, after their settlement in the country, a number of accomplishments, of which the most important was writing, an art till then, I think, unknown to the Greeks."

"The people of Troizen [in the Argolid] ... say the first human being to exist in their country was Oros, which looks to me like an Egyptian name, certainly not a Greek one."

"Rather think that as the Egyptians were the first of men to be allotted the participation of the gods, the gods when invoked rejoice in Egyptian rites."

"Thus the Greeks, emerging from their forests, no longer saw objects under a frightening and sombre veil. Thus the Egyptians in Greece softened bit by bit the severe and proud expressions in their paintings. The two groups, now making a single people, created a language that sparkled with vivid expressions."

"at a riper age I no longer presume to connect the Greek, the Jewish and the Egyptian antiquities, which are lost in a distant cloud."

"Kadmos, the son of Agenor, touched at it [Thera] during his search for Europa and … left there a number of Phoenicians."

"It is impossible that in this exchange of ideas and goods, the Egyptian language did not participate in the formation of Greek."

"We do not know how many works Psellos composed on Hermetic literature. The only one that remains is a gloss on the ‘Poimandres’ … After maintaining the influence of ‘Genesis’ on the formation of the cosmogonic doctrines of the ‘Poimandres’, Psellos affirms that all Hellenic conceptions of God are influenced by Eastern models. He justifies this superiority of the East over Greek philosophy by pointing out that Porphery [the Neo-Platonist of the 3rd century AD] had gone to an Egyptian priest, Anebon, in order to receive instruction on the first cause."

"I will never admit that the similar ceremonies performed in Greece and Egypt are the result of mere coincidence – had that been so, our rites would have been more Greek in character and less recent in origin. Nor will I allow that the Egyptians ever took over from Greece either this custom or any other."

"Now I have an idea that Melampous … introduced the name of Dionysos into Greece, together with the sacrifice in his honour and the phallic procession. He did not, however, fully comprehend the doctrine, or communicate it in its entirety; its more perfect development was the work of later teachers. Nevertheless it was Melampous who introduced the phallic procession, and from Melampous that the Greeks learnt the rites that they now perform. Melampous, in my view, was an able man who acquired the art of divination and brought into Greece, with little change, a number of things which he had learned in Egypt, and amongst them the worship of Dionysos … Probably Melampous got his knowledge about Dionysos through Kadmos of Tyre and the people who came with him from Phoenicia to the country now called Boiotia. The names of nearly all the gods came to Greece from Egypt. [my emphasis] I know from the enquiries I have made that they came from abroad, and it seems most likely that it was from Egypt, for the names of all the gods have been known in Egypt from the beginning of time … These practices, then, and others which I shall speak of later, were borrowed by the Greeks from Egypt … In ancient times, as I know from what I was told at Dodona, the Pelasgians offered sacrifices of all kinds, and prayed to the gods, but without any distinction of name or title – for they had not yet heard of any such thing. They called the gods by the Greek word theoi – ‘disposers’… Long afterwards the names of the gods were brought into Greece from Egypt and the Pelasgians learnt them … then as time went on, they sent to the oracle at Dodona (the most ancient, and at that period, the only oracle in Greece) to ask advice about the propriety of adopting names that had come into the country from abroad. The oracle replied that they would be right to use them. From that time onward, therefore, the Pelasgians used the names of the gods in their sacrifices, and from the Pelasgians the names passed to Greece."

"The Bronze Age saw the timber problem spread from formerly forested Magan to Mesopotamia through Anatolia, the Levant, Cyprus and Crete. Eratosthenes said that late Bronze Age Cyprus was heavily forested despite tree-felling for agriculture, copper and silver smelting and shipbuilding. But its copper industry collapsed around 300 BC through lack of timber. Slagheaps suggest a total copper production of 200,000 tons, a fuel equivalent of 200 million pine trees, 16-times the area of the island. The 30 known silver mines in Attica, the area around Athens, required timber for smelting. Four tons of ore made two kilograms of silver. Taking 3,500 tons of silver and 1.4 million tons of lead production for classical Athens, a million tons of charcoal and 2.5 million tons of forest were consumed. Plato wrote that Attica is ‘a mere relic of the original country…All the rich soil has melted away.’ Originally heavily forested, timber had to be imported to build the fleet that beat the Persians at Salamis in 480 BC."

"The status of Indology in Greece is almost non-existent. There is a Department of Hindi in Athens University but nothing more. Few people attend - and those mainly to learn Hindi for commercial and other financial reasons. I think much of the cost is covered by the Indian government. Very few people are interested in Indian culture beyond modern music and dancing and going on tours and holidays to various places in India, or the dinners and very occasional presentations of music and dancing organised by an Indo-Hellenic Society. I myself gave three public lectures every year for several consecutive years on affinities between Greek and Indic cultures (yoga, religion, philosophy, epics, the arts, etc) but, in fact, few people attended and not once anybody from the Indian Embassy or from the University or from the Indo-Hellenic Society. Frankly, the Indian Embassy has never shown interest in promoting the traditional Indian culture. I doubt this will change."

"For most Greeks India is just another country somewhere far in South-East Asia with exotic customs and arts, curious religions, colourful fabrics and much poverty - and it was invaded in ancient times by Alexander the Great and possibly visited by Pythagoras even earlier. There is a pretty late legend that god Dionusos came from Greece and civilised India and all Far East, even Japan, at c 7000 BCE (Dionusiaka, Nonnus of Alexandria, c 400 CE)."

"Greek literature is a Near Eastern literature."

"The Greek Dances are extremely pleasant, and full of Mirth. They are of two kinds: The first is a sort of Country-Dance or Couranto, danc'd by Pairs; and the second a kind of Gavote or Branle, in which the Men and Women are mingl'd, as at Passepied in France; only you must hold in your right-hand the Left-hand of your Left-hand Woman, and in your Left the Right-hand of her that is on your Right-hand. The Man who leads the Dance holds the Corner of a Handkerchief and gives the other to his Lady, that he may have room enough to take his Measures, and to give the Dance what Figure or Turn he pleases. At first they begin very gravely with a Saraband-Step, two Steps forwards and three backwards: Then mending their pace by degrees, they begin to leap and run, yet still observing the Rules of a Harmonious Motion; so that the Dance becomes very Gay and Amorous: For the Women leaping one Step forwards, draw their Bodies backwards with a certain pretty Turn that cannot be call'd immodest, yet gives a Man occasion to think of something more than he sees. And besides, the Musick contributes very much to the pleasantness of their Dances, for their Tunes are extremely Brisk and Airy.The fittest time to take the pleasure of viewing their way of Dancing, is when they are met at a Wedding; for on such Occasions they give themselves up to Joy and Pleasure, drinking, eating, and sporting, and indulging themselves in all manner of Diversions."

"As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers"

"In an account from Herodotus, "When the banished Samians reached Sparta, they had audience of the magistrates, before whom they made a long speech, as was natural with persons greatly in want of aid." When it was over, the Spartans averred that they could no longer remember the first half of their speech, and thus "could make nothing of the remainder. Afterwards the Samians had another audience, whereat they simply said, showing a bag which they had brought with them, 'The bag wants flour.' The Spartans answered that they did not need to have said 'the bag'; however, they resolved to give them aid.""

"When asked by a woman from Attica, "Why are you Spartan women the only ones who can rule men?", Gorgo replied, "Because we are also the only ones who give birth to men.""

"Polycratidas was one of several Spartans sent on a diplomatic mission to some Persian generals, and being asked whether they came in a private or a public capacity, answered, "If we succeed, public; if not, private.""

"On the morning of the third and final day of the battle, Leonidas, knowing they were being surrounded, exhorted his men, "Eat well, for tonight we dine in Hades.""

"Herodotus recounted another incident that preceded the Battle of Thermopylae. The Spartan Dienekes was told that the Persian archers were so numerous that when they shot their volleys, their arrows would blot out the sun. He responded, "So much the better, we'll fight in the shade". Today, Dienekes's phrase is the motto of the Greek 20th Armored Division."

"After the Greeks ended the threat of the second Persian invasion with their victory at Plataea, the Spartan commander Pausanias ordered that a sumptuous banquet the Persians had prepared be served to him and his officers. "The Persians must be greedy," he remarked, "when, having all this, yet they come to take our barleycakes.""

"Following the disastrous sea battle of Cyzicus, the admiral Mindarus' first mate dispatched a succinct distress signal to Sparta. The message was intercepted by the Athenians and was recorded by Xenophon in his Hellenica: "Ships gone; Mindarus dead; the men starving; at our wits' end what to do".{{cite web"

"On her husband Leonidas's departure for battle with the Persians at Thermopylae, Gorgo, Queen of Sparta asked what she should do. He advised her: "Marry a good man and bear good children.""

"King Demaratus, being pestered by someone with a question concerning who the most exemplary Spartan was, answered "He that is least like you.""

"When Leonidas was in charge of guarding the narrow mountain pass at Thermopylae with just 7,000 allied Greeks in order to delay the invading Persian army, Xerxes offered to spare his men if they gave up their arms. Leonidas replied, "Come and take them" (Greek: Μολών λαβέ, Molon labe). It was adopted as the motto of the Greek 1st Army Corps."

"A visitor to Sparta expressed surprise at the plain clothing of King Agesilaus II and other Spartans. Agesilaus remarked, "From this mode of life we reap a harvest of liberty.""

"Responding to a visitor who questioned why they put their fields in the hands of the helots rather than cultivate them themselves, Anaxandridas explained, "It was by not taking care of the fields, but of ourselves, that we acquired those fields.""

"When he was consulted on how Spartans might best forestall invasion of their homeland, Lycurgus advised, "By remaining poor, and each man not desiring to possess more than his fellow.""

"When he was asked why he had come to fight such a huge host with so few men (300 Spartans), Leonidas answered, "If numbers are what matters, all Greece cannot match a small part of that army; but if courage is what counts, this number is sufficient." On being again asked a similar question, he replied, "I have plenty, since they are all to be slain.""

"When asked whether it would be prudent to build a defensive wall enclosing the city, Lycurgus answered, "A city is well-fortified which has a wall of men instead of brick.")"

"Nearing death, Agesilaus was asked if he wanted a statue erected in his honor. He declined, saying: "If I have done anything noble, that is a sufficient memorial; if I have not, all the statues in the world will not preserve my memory.""