A social history of Ancient Greece which sternly judges the Hellenic character as well as its democratic excesses, but ultimately holds up Hellenistic society as the pinnacle of pre-Roman development. Most reliant on literary artifacts – legend as well as artistic works – the 19th-century German identifies four primary phases (heroic, agonal/polis, declining, and Hellenistic) through which state power gives way to tyranny of the masses as well as incipient individualism. Much in the latter that resembles 21st-century America.
Greece
2. Hamilton, Echo of Greece (7 Feb 2016)
Most of the leading thinkers of ancient Greece lived in the fourth century, after the democratic triumph of Pericles and the fall of Athens. Hamilton sketches the oeuvre of these men, particularly emphasizing the humanistic qualities and also contrasting Plato with Aristotle, the latter so long in the former’s shade. Ultimately, the Greeks sought to identify freedom, the Romans order. The conclusion is a departure: what would have become of the Christian church had it followed the Greeks?
16. Clogg, Modern Greece (17 Aug 2020)
From the late Ottoman era (the decline of Turkokratia), Greece has struggled with the boundaries between democratic and authoritarian government while international affairs have frequently overshadowed domestic political rivalries. In the run up to the 1820s, Ottoman decline afforded Greek merchants opportunity to gain local power; these individuals vitally underwrote the ‘native’ intellectual revival of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Simultaneously, traditions of irregular warfare and maritime autonomy (e.g., Hydra shipowners) proved valuable in the War of Independence, particularly control of the seas. The new state, founded in 1832, encompassed but one-third of Greeks in the Ottoman empire, omitting the major commercial centers: Smyrna, Salonica, and Constantinople. Midcentury, neoclassicism (especially German Romanticism) contended with Byzantine tradition while a new generation of politicians challenged those reared in the Ottoman tradition. Contemporary office was not the means to fortune as patronage demands were heavy. The slump of 1893 forced Greece to default on its international loans, bringing the unwonted supervision of Great powers; an indemnity following loss of the 1897 Turkish lower exacerbated balance-of-payment problems. By result of the 1913 war, however, Greek population grew by 70 percent (to 4.8 million from 2.8), its landmass by roughly the same. But the new populace was not homogenous: after 1923, some 1.1 million came to Greece while ~ 400,000 were sent to Turkey.) As much as World War I, the Megali idea divided Eleftherios Venizelos and King Constantine (whose family ties traced to the German Kaiser), and the effects of the National Schism (ethnikos Dikhasmos) between Venezelists and royalists set the precedent for recurrent 20th century purges of civil servants and teachers. The Metaxas dictatorship, commencing 1936, presaged the ‘worst decade’ of the century, comprising Nazi invasion and then savage liberal-communist civil war. The 1950s saw economic growth and continuing repression of the communist left. The Cyprus crisis evidenced renewed predominance of international affairs, the military dictatorship of 1967 the next bout with the authoritarian rule. Afterward, Karamlanis sought to draw clearer boundaries of civic rule; post 1974, Greece spent as much as 20 percent of its GDP on the military, pointing its attention to Turkey. Papandreou was often out of the step with NATO and Greece’s new partners in the European Community, but shifted the basis of patronage from individual to party.