Searching for Ancient Greece - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 177

tion among events, behaviors, and values. And it can do so because the Greeks saw the
world as conforming to rules and patterns, a world that was orderly, that was “cosmos.”
Most every person has his or her own list of gifts from the Greeks. Those who live
in democratic societies honor Athens as the first democracy ( demos : the people; cracy : to
rule). And as the framers of the American Constitution took pains to observe, a wise demo-
cracy is more than mere numbers; it also requires a Periclean virtue, protection for the opin-
ions of the minority.
Those with special appreciation for literature know that the Greeks invented both
tragedy and comedy. Comedy enables us to laugh at our own foolishness and to accept with
grace unhappy turns in our own lives. Tragedy, as many (including Aristotle and Freud)
point out, enables us to confront the unthinkable and the unbearable: the death of someone
we love, the self-destruction of someone we admire. The Greeks gave us lyric poetry, cries
of the heart, its joy and its wounds. The poems of Sappho call across time:
On the black earth, say some, the thing most lovely
Is a host of horsemen, or some, foot soldiers,
Others say of ships, but I—whatsoevever
Anyone loveth— [149]
The Greeks did more than give us insight into our lives; they offer us the belief that
each of us has a dignity and self-worth that can attain its fullest purpose when put in the
service of a great enterprise. Civic obligation is an enduring facet of that enterprise. Here
is Pericles's “Speech to the Assembly of Athens,” following a military reversal:
I hold that it is more in the interest of the individual that his country should prosper
than that he should flourish while his country falls.… Born as you are, citizens of a
great state…you should be ready to face the greatest disasters …. Cease then to grieve
for your private afflictions, and address yourselves instead to the safety of the com-
monwealth. [150]
And in his oration honoring Athenians who have died in battle:
… fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens.… Reflect that what made her
great was men … who knew their duty….They gave her their lives. [151]
Not all at once, but over the centuries, Greek intellectual leaders rejected the idea
that angry and capricious gods are responsible for our suffering, replacing them with ideas
of an orderly universe in which every consequence has a cause. “Happy is he,” said the
poet Hesiod, “who knows the cause of things.” [152] With that rejection, the Greeks laid the