Greek

Virgin territory

April 2007, no. 290

There was a time not so long ago when research on ancient philosophy was confined largely to the study of the great philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and their antecedents. To take one example, in A History of Ancient Western Philosophy, published in 1959 by the respected scholar Joseph Owens, only fifty-one of 419 pages were devoted to post-Aristotelian philosophy, and only two pages to philosophy after the third century of our era. All of this has radically changed. For some time there has been a flourishing industry engaged in research on Hellenistic and early Imperial philosophy. Now the last frontier, the philosophy of late antiquity, is also yielding its secrets.

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Reflections: Selected works from Greek-Australian literature edited by Thanasis Spilias and Stavros Messinis

by Pavlos Andronikos •

August 1988, no. 103

Although this is not the first selection of Greek-Australia literary works to be published in book form – George Kanarakis’s Logotechniki parousia ton Ellinon stin Australia (1985), which was recently published in English as Greek Voices in Australia: A Tradition of Prose, Poetry and Drama, lays claim to this honour – the introduction to Reflections does claim that it represents the ‘first attempt to select, to choose, to say these (Greek-Australian works) … have quality’, ‘these are significant as works of literature’. In contrast, it is argued that Kanarakis’s collection is ‘not an anthology in the normal sense’ because Kanarakis’s aim was to present a sample of the work of all the authors who can be considered Greek-Australian.

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The Classical Tradition by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis

by Christopher Allen •

March 2011, no. 329

Christopher Allen reviews 'The Classical Tradition' edited by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis

Unlike China, whose history similarly goes back to the Bronze Age, Europe has been shaped by spectacular collapses and profound renewals, first after the Mycenaean Age and then with the fall of the Roman Empire, which severed what we know as Antiquity from the modern world. The new Europe that emerged from half a millennium of turmoil, cultural regression, and repeated invasion by foreign predators was fundamentally transformed. Its centre of gravity had moved from south-east to north-west; its population was largely composed of former Celtic and Germanic barbarians; its new languages were vernaculars emerging from the pidgin Latin spoken by illiterates; and its religion was Christianity. What made it possible for these originally tribal peoples to build Europe was the blueprint of an extraordinary civilisation, which at first they barely understood, but to which they became the unlikely heirs.

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