Greeks vs Romans: YOU DECIDE

Outside a party of the great-and-good by the Thames last night I met an old friend, a great-and-good Greek.

He had noticed not only the TLS's latest classics issue -

and the beginings of what will doubtless be a lengthy row in our letters page over sex in ancient temples and theatres -

but the choice of subject for our TLS debate at the Cheltenham Festival on Saturday.

Greeks vs Romans.

That's what we are going to consider.

What has each civilisation done for us?

What is each still doing?

Before our audience at Cheltenham, the distinguished scholar and TLS contributor, Edith Hall, will speak for the Greeks.

Birthplace of democracy, tragedy, philosophy, k.t.l. (as we say in Greek when we mean etcetera).

Need she say more? And I'm sure she will be clearer than the image of her book-cover that I've found - and can't quite improve.

My colleague, and fellow blogger, Mary Beard, will wave a spear (and her excellent new book on the Roman Triumph) for the Romans.

Warfare, roads, aqueducts, the secret ballot et cetera (as we more normally say).

She will doubtless list much more. And her books on sale will have the title visible - unlike the closest image of it that I can find right now.

My Greek friend last night was appalled that we should even ask the question.

Obviously it was the Greeks.

The Thameside party was to celebrate a new list of the 1000 most influential people in London today.

'Influential', he spluttered.

We don't even know the meaning of the word.

The thousand people who've had most influence on London today were all Greeks.

Well, perhaps a very few Romans.

It's 'a point of view' - as we chairmen of events at literary festivals say when we have run out of polite excuses to move on.

If any reader of this blog is in the Cheltenham, area on Saturday morning, why not join us.

Comments

[Palladio]

An upper-school premise, impossible to argue one way or another. The Romans understood this by seeing the differences between the Greeks and them, the better to emulate Greece.

Priority is no proof of anything except on the ground that both peoples started at the same time and under similar conditions, which is patently false.

Hellenists especially jump to the wildest conclusions about the Greeks founding this or that in the West (post-classical civilisation) by ignoring classical tradition. The first "modernist fiction?" La princesse de Cleves? Madame Bovary? Not too much in common with the Odyssey.

The main factor of classical tradition is Latin language and literature. Even after the Renaissance recovered Greek for the West it was recreating, this is true. The theme became more what I love about Greece and Rome--especially in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries--than about either the compartive merits or demerits or their actual influence on the shape and trajectory of the West.

But the criticisms to be leveled are more than there is space to record. Could the debate be restaged with as much spirit but more evidence and better perspective?

[Dion Per Sona]

"...: structured thinking started in Greece while applied thinking prospered in Rome and the negation of thought was brought upon us by Christianity."

I did notice something like this, Monsieur Descarte, when I decided that J the Baptist was a gallic druid. The VIth legion was raised in "Gaul" and brought big ideas to Hellenized Judea, as well as some remarkable individuals. Double-Hellenization brought with it especially convincing "proof": old gods, new names, but always the same four participants, organised as belief systems, parties orguiding principles: the Vine, the Horse, the Lamb and the Lion. Or the four winds, similarly named, forming a cross.

But the Roman rabble comprising it's main armies, indoctrinated to violence - Blackwatered, you might say - worshipped Mithra and carried blood sacrifice throughout "pacified" territories they controlled. They called it Christianity, and gruesome images of torture marked massacre sites, as warnings. They still do.

[Dion Per Sona]

Dear Mr Stevens
I was going to describe the geographical area to which you refer as the "celts" habitat as "Gaul".

Are there any pithy aphorisms turned in the Cheltenham lingo? Can we begin weaving them in, here and there? does it sound anything like Basque?

[Richard Stevens]

Romans or Greeks - neither, it should be the Celts.
The first European-wide culture, Spain to Greece, France, Germany, England, Wales and Ireland
Taught the Romans metalworking, coinage, wine-growing, chariots.
Named all the great European rivers from the Thames to the Danube
Conquered Rome in 390BC.
Survived in Ireland and Wales after the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Saxons and the Normans
A living language now only 30 miles from Cheltenham, unlike Latin and Greek
Was the language of Cheltenham for one thousand years from 500BC to 550AD
But - ignored and disparaged even though it is the genetic basis of England

[Gavin Le Boutillier]

Both sides were unfortunately let down by the fact that they relied on slave labour and were ultra-conservative, meaning that progress happened slowly if at all. Who knows how more advanced their knowledge of mechanics may have been if they had been a bit more 'hands-on'. However, I think the argument may just lie in the hands of Archimedes, a celebrated Greek thinker and inventor, killed by a Roman soldier for not showing respect.

[Susan Balée]

Both! Indubitably, both.

Love to hear the debate, though. I do live in Cheltenham Township, but it's not the right one. My town is the sister city to yours, in Pa., outside Philadelphia. Tant pis pour moi!

Have fun. Don't draw blood.

[Ana Herbage]

Draw: Greeks were the soul, Romans the body...

[Andrew Kenneally]

Though if the Romans represented the application of thought, this must include the intellect used to further a rapacious imperialist power, with no qualms about murdering every living thing in a city that had the temerity to resist this invading force. The application of thought in the form of the 6,000 crucified slaves along the Appian Way, the ghoulish blood circuses of the colliseums. As Aldous Huxley wrote, "Knowledge without charity & goodwill is apt to become inhuman."
As far as Christianity being the negation of thought, if we limit this to the words, or at least attributed words of Jesus, then we are in the presence of one of the great thinker artists capable of distillation of the most immense truths within the simplest, most elegant forms. It would seem strange to describe such a genius who survived because of his thought as a negator of thought.
I'm not naturally attracted to organised religion-it tending to be more organised than religious- but the survival of much of the thought of antiquity owes itself to the monasteries of Christianity through the Dark Ages. These monasteries also being the natural avenue for the intellectually minded of those eras to enter such as Thomas Aquinas.

[eduardo matos]

Well, i guess the lavish vital attitude of a roman, contrasts in many ways with the methodist's ways of a greek bon vivant, if i make my self clear with this... but somehow, they brought that same beauty and interest that lives now in europe, representing the european´s yin-yang continental context! i suppose, talking or arguing under the latin blood boiling at 38ºc turns to be already too much for any of them. either´s indisposition on what turns to reasonly accept others opinions or points of view is rather and barely impossible for us and each and every one of them (so to say) what makes this, not a discussion, but a death trial with pointing fingers towards every one.
Then, whatever their gift to humanity(?) or civilization was, i'd rather think what we have turned to be out of them... we can see: inqusition, 100year's war, 2world wars, and other scrambles and social human race scandals around the "old continent" (balcan's, ira(ireland), eta(spain)), and for so many reasons, like why are we not discussing about each ones' Best of the Best??
i enjoyed Candadai Tirumalaijust dialogy rome/athens with new york/london, well seen that one =)
just.to state it...

[Aristarchus]

The Greeks, the Greeks, and only the Greeks.

Ever red Shakepseare? Greek Tragedy.

Ever red Churchill? Heroduts in English.

Ever red the New Testament? Even at its pinnacle, Rome accepted the pervasiveness of Greek language. The official language? Latin. The language of communication? Greek.

The Romans may have come, seen, and conquered, but Greek thought and culture ruled.

[Rene Descart]

It's quite simple realy: structured thinking started in Greece while applied thinking prospered in Rome and the negation of thought was brought upon us by Christianity.
There is no equivalent of Greece today and England is no Rome but the US's Bush is working very hard to mimick the huns.
RD

[Dion Per Sona]

The Romans appropriated Etruscan history. They were Europe's Commanche, South America's Incas (probably the same cultural group, actually). Rome's portraitists developped a line in "final terror" - the last look at the world by dying eyes.

They were a morbid, sordid lot, as will be anyone who takes up their mantle.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

Harold Macmillan, who was well read in the classics, thought that with the winding down of the British Empire, Britain could play Greece to America's Rome: looking at things from diverse points of view as distinct from driving firmly towards one.
There was the intellectual cross-fertilization of Rome by Greece. Lucretius developed the thought of Epicurus in his great philosophical poem, "On the Nature of Things." Cicero absorbed Greek thought and "translated" it for Roman readers.
If I want subtle dialectic I go to the Platonic dialogues. If I wish for the application of philosophy to daily life, I go to Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca.
The range and variety of poems in the many-volumed "Greek Anthology" is a perennial delight.
Homer or Virgil? Or Homer and Virgil?

[Andrew Kenneally]

To crudely simplify the argument, it would seem to be in the Greek corner, cilvisation, versus the well-organised barbarism of Rome. Thought & the search for truth pitted against imperialism & the will to power. We seem to be descending into a dark age of the latter at the moment with the very existence of truth being denied in an idiot age of blind materialism as possibly shown in the below piece, Materialism is Materialism
http://wwwinabstentia-andrewk.blogspot.com/2007/09/materialism.html. I suppose in this simplification, the Renaissance would be something of an equivalent of the Greeks contribution, with the rise of America & its all-conquering cultural mores being the later Romans.