The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity

by Johanna Hanink

Ever since the International Monetary Fund’s first bailout of Greece’s sinking economy in 2010, the phrase “Greek debt” has meant one thing to the country’s creditors. But for millions who claim to prize culture over capital, it means something quite the symbolic debt that Western civilization owes to Greece for furnishing its principles of democracy, philosophy, mathematics, and fine art. Where did this other idea of Greek debt come from, Johanna Hanink asks, and why does it remain so compelling today?

The Classical Debt investigates our abiding desire to view Greece through the lens of the ancient past. Though classical Athens was in reality a slave-owning imperial power, the city-state of Socrates and Pericles is still widely seen as a utopia of wisdom, justice, and beauty―an idealization that the ancient Athenians themselves assiduously cultivated. Greece’s allure as a travel destination dates back centuries, and Hanink examines many historical accounts that express disappointment with a Greek people who fail to live up to modern fantasies of the ancient past. More than any other movement, the spread of European philhellenism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries carved idealized conceptions of Greece in marble, reinforcing the Western habit of comparing the Greece that is with the Greece that once was.

Today, as the European Union teeters and neighboring nations are convulsed by political unrest and civil war, Greece finds itself burdened by economic hardship and an unprecedented refugee crisis. Our idealized image of ancient Greece dangerously shapes how we view these contemporary European problems.

Genres: Greece, Nonfiction, History

352 pages, Hardcover

Published May 22, 2017

About the author

Johanna Hanink took her PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge (Queens' College). Her work in classics focuses on classical Athens, particularly the cultural life of the city's fourth century BCE. She is also interested in the intersections between modern politics and ideas about ancient Greece (and antiquity more generally).

The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity (Harvard University Press 2017) is her latest book; it explores how Western fantasies of classical antiquity have created a particularly fraught relationship between the European West and the country of Greece, especially in the context of Greece's recent "tale of two crises."

She has a volume of newly translated selections from Thucydides forthcoming with Princeton University Press in early 2019 (How to Think about War; An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy).

She is also author of Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy (Cambridge University Press 2014) and co-editor, with Richard Fletcher, of the volume Creative Lives in Classical Antiquity: Poets, Artists, and Biography (Cambridge University Press 2016).

She is active in Brown's Program in Modern Greek Studies and is on the board of the Modern Greek Studies Association. She is also on the editorial boards of The Journal of Modern Greek Studies and Eidolon.

Reviews

[David Zhao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this so much. A bop and a half. The book deconstructs the West's cultural debt to ancient Athens, a retroactive debt which both Western and Greek interests cobbled together from whitewashed fantasies. It ends by compounding this debt upon Greece's government debt, suggesting that the West's punitive attitudes around austerity are colored by a longer tradition of punishing Greece for not living up to apocryphal standards. Also robust discussions re: constructing national identity, Orientalism, refugee crisis, neoliberalism/liberalism...

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really interesting book brings together a number of strands: the dominance of classical antiquity as a cultural mode in modern Greece, the fantasy of ancient Greece (or, more specifically, Athens) as the foundation of "Western" civilization, the philhellenic imposition of a Western cultural fantasy onto the modern state of Greece and disappointment that modern Greeks don't live up to the impossible fantasy, the concept of a cultural debt owed to Greeks/Greece by the West, and the contemporary political economics surrounding the Greek financial crisis. Hanink shows how all of these forces blend together to put Greece in a no-win situation where it is simultaneously exhorted to live up to the classical ideals of Europe and punished for never being able to do so. This, of course, is a fundamental principle of psychoanalysis--that our dealings are guided by an ideological fantasy, which always fails to align with the world as it is, and that the Real of our desire marks the limit of the fantasy where its fantasmatic status is revealed, often traumatically. In the case of Greece's position in/on the margins of Europe, the fantasy was/is philhellenism: a culturally constructed ideal of ancient Athens/Hellas based on an idealization of classical literature, art, architecture, rhetoric, etc. (largely developed through what Hanink calls Athens' "national brand," which they promoted in order to increase their own imperial power and wealth among the Hellenic city-states). In many important ways, this image of ancient Greece is distorted. For instance, during the 18th century, people began--largely on the basis of Johann Joachim Winckelmann's work--to equate the whiteness of Greek statues with the highest standard of artistic and human beauty. This has fueled the white supremacist notion that white people are inherently superior to other races/ethnic groups, and they have volumes of pseudo-scientific analysis of Greek statuary to "prove" it. But the reality is that the statues weren't originally white at all. Most ancient Greek statues were, in fact, brightly (some would say rather garishly) colored. What this means for modern Greeks is that they are expected to live up to an impossible ideal--an ideal that the ancient Athenians themselves would have fallen far short from. But because modern Greece and modern Greeks do not live up to this ideal--and how could they?--Europe/the West periodically punishes them for the failure. This punishment is broken up largely by periods when the Greek state manages to publicize and promote itself as guardian and inheritor of classical antiquity sufficiently for the notion of the classical debt to Greece outweighs the philhellenic disappointment with the realities of Greek life and culture. And in the period of the Greek financial crisis, that disappointment manifests in ways that are tinged with more than a bit of racism, but a racism that is rarely called out because of the philhellenic ideological assumption that the modern Greeks really are a degenerated form of their ancestors (with some even suggesting that modern Greeks aren't really Hellenes at all, but Slavs), and therefore deserve scorn.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a survey of the relationship between the legacy of ancient Greece and Greece as it is today and in the (mostly) recent past. With the Renaissance the Greek legacy became far more important to western Europe than to Greece itself. Indeed the people of Greece called themselves Romans during the middle ages. Greece became a vassal state under the Ottoman Turks and others. Byron, Shelly, and others gave rise to Greek pride in their heritage and an impetus for them to fight repeatedly for freedom. In order to obtain help from the west, Greeks promoted as a longstanding debt the contributions from their ancient heritage to western civilization.

This recourse put them in a bind. Reliance on their ancient achievements in art, philosophy, rhetoric, science, and war (Persians) was thus of some assistance to getting help in the short term but had unfortunate consequences.

The underside of ancient Greece was downplayed, such as the frequent wastage of its youth in warfare, its imperialism, and its dependence on very many slaves. Indeed no little of what the ancient Greeks produced was clever propaganda in furtherance of imperial aims and standing. Modern greeks asking again for help then suffered all the more from unfair comparisons with their glorified past as it exists in the western mind, comparisons used against Greece, for example, in argument against their deserving forbearance in the recent debt crisis, which crisis is addressed tangentially.

Also western archaeologists and adventurers looted ancient Greek artifacts with the rationale that they were preserving them from the current citizenry. Many remain in the west, in part for the same given reason.

Recommended for anyone interested in the subject.

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well researched and contextualized. Great overview of the construction of Greek identity, the bipolar relationship between Greece and the West, the Athenian propaganda and it's ongoing influence today and the continuing stereotypes that are portrayed in media.

[Drianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was SO good, and I think it is incumbent upon all Classicists to read this. So important.

[Luby K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such an important book, and one I've been looking for for some time now.

[dolohov · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book.

[Mr Siegal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Colonisation of History

‘The Classical Debt’ by Johanna Hanink explores Greece’s history and relationship with its past. It starts with how ancient Athens built its empire and a very strong brand name and how, a couple of millennia down the line, modern Greeks utilised this brand name in order to gain their freedom from the Ottomans. As an extremely brief history lesson, the Greeks where Hellenes in antiquity, Romans in the middle ages, and Hellenes again in modern times. So, this change of identity in order to gain freedom has had some repercussions, and they are discussed in the latter part of the book.

The latter part of the book is the most interesting one, as it highlights the issues that identity change brings. In essence, a dead civilisation was revived so as to gain military support. Indeed, it is worth mentioning that while the British where colonising the world, they where sending money and aid (with interest) for the plight of the Greeks.

On the one hand then, this resurrection was in a sense a stroke of genius; the entire west believed in the undisrupted continuity of Hellenism and helped Greece out, and now Greece, besides its current economic woes, is doing far better than Turkey, the country that Greece was occupied from for 400 years. Indeed, for a previously occupied country, Greece has had remarkable economic and political progress.

On the other hand however, focusing on just one aspect of Greece’s history has negative effects on the Greeks, as they all know that they will never live up to the supposedly high standards of the ancients. Indeed, the west still views the Greeks as unworthy inhabitants of Greece and wonder where it all went wrong. The only bargaining chip of Greece is still its history as the cradle of western civilisation, and though while this is indeed a fact, it has little to do with how reality in Greece is at the moment. As an analogy, it is like the British believing that just because they had a strong industry they would continue to have one. Though this may have been true, it is not anymore; the same with Greece.

The most interesting aspect of the entire book however is the notion of the colonisation of history. Indeed, because of the fact that the Greeks are not considered worthy of their own history, and because of the fact that during the renaissance and enlightenment periods in the west, Greece was being held back by being under Ottoman rule, the west thinks of itself as a better vessel for Greece’s history. In essence then, Greeks have their history, not because of themselves, but because of the west. And because the west took care of Greece’s history, it has a very big stake in it and in part, owns it.

In conclusion, I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to gain a little more knowledge into what Greece really is. Greece is not just Athens in 300BC, just as the UK is not just London in 1800. History is not a place in a point in time, but keeps on changing, evolving or devolving. Greece has the luck of having such a long history; it is also its greatest curse.

[Ada · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across Johanna Hanink’s book through sheer coincidence. There was an event organized in my local bookshop in which she was discussing her new book (which I had heard nothing of) with Mary Beard. I was curious enough to see Mary Beard live– so I attended the event. And as I had spent my last holiday in Greece, it was perhaps inevitable that I came out of with a copy of the book that had been discussed that evening.

Johanna Hanink is an Associate Professor of Classics at Brown University who has lived in Greece. Her book, The Classical Debt is a historical perspective on the notion of the various ‘debts’ both owed to and by Greece. She starts with the ancient notion which positioned Athens as the city which saved civilization from the Persian barbarians. All the other cities in Greece thus owed it respect. After the Athenians defeated the Persians, the Delian League used to pay Athens money every year. The notion of ‘debt’ was conveyed in actual currency.

The book quickly moves on to 17th-century travellers’ perceptions of Greece. Typically, it was perceived in the shadow of its ancient past. Western travellers to Greece would describe Greeks as orientalized and polluted by Ottoman rule (although the book also includes the perspective of an Ottoman traveller from the same period, Evliya Çelebi, who naturally did not share this point of view). Travellers from England, France, and the Netherlands were not interested in the contemporary inhabitants of Greece – instead, they were drawn to its glorious past, which they tended to identify with.

Hanink pays considerable attention to Johann Joachim Winkelmann and his History of Art and Antiquity (Geschichte der Kunst des Alterhums 1764) , which is credited not only with the basic chronologic division of Greek art into the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods, but also with the pernicious idea that whiteness, whether of marble or of human skin contributed to aesthetic perfection. Though by the end of his life Winckelmann acknowledged visible traces of pigment on Greek sculptures, he did not manage to revise his work before his death (he was murdered in a tavern by a robber) and the irrevocable damage had been done. Greekess was irrevocably linked to issues of race. Even though in the 19th-century, the German historian Fallmerayer suggested that the modern inhabitants of Greece were of Slavic origin and not connected to the ancient Greeks in any way. His thesis has been the subject of controversy ever since.

In the 18th-century, however, Greeks took up the notion of their ancient roots (and there is evidence to suggest that this development of Greek identity was helped by the mid-eighteenth century Greek translation of a French work of history, Charles Rollin’s Histoire Ancienne.) Influential Greek secular thinkers, such as Adamantios Korais (1748-1833) started to argue that the Greek people should realize that the spirit of ancient Athens is still present in them – and rebel against the Turks. Korais blamed the Orthodox Church and the Ottomans for the corruption of the Greek spirit and strove to develop a new version of the Greek language, called Katharevousa which retained most of the popular spoken version of modern Greek, but ‘purified’ of its acquired ‘barbarism’. Societies of Philhellenes around Europe were keen to help restore Greece to its former glory, and they helped Greece gain its independence in the early 19th-century. Europe’s debt to the ancient world of Greece was, in theory, repaid. Though in fact, European powers could not stop themselves from meddling with Greek politics – and the Kings of Greece were not chosen by the Greeks themselves, but by foreign politicians.



Hanink notes that Europe’s obsession with Greece’s ancient past has at time harmed other relics. King Otto’s decision to ‘purify” the Parthenon involved removing “all postclassical structures from the Acropolis and… [dismantling and demolishing ] even the Byzantine monuments – churches among them – in the neighboring quarters below it.” Monuments removed included a medieval castle built around the gateway to the Acropolis, the Frankish Tower that had dominated the skyline of Athens, and most obviously the mosque on the Acropolis and its minaret. I have acquired the book The Acropolis and its new Museum when I was in Athens – and it does not contain a single image of the Acropolis before its purification, so I am incredibly grateful to Hanink for including one. In fact, the museum book doesn’t even mention that the dismantling of medieval structures ever took place.



According to Hanink’s account, it took a while for the medieval past of the Orthodox Church and the Ancient Past of Greece to stop competing against each other and form a unified nationalist ideology.

And here we come to the part that many readers will find most relevant. The question of Europe’s debt to Greece, or rather Greece’s debt to Germany in the present day. Hanink talks a great deal about the stereotype of the lazy Greeks not deserving the legacy of their ancestors appearing in American and German newspapers – but she doesn’t underline the fact that this stereotype originates not only from relations made by 17th century travellers, but with ancient Rome, which on its conquest of Greece, created an idea of a historically and culturally valuable but nevertheless indolent and effeminate nation that needed to be ruled by strength.

Hanink is very good at picking out and analyzing the historical allusions made by the Greek government and its representatives while talking of Europe’s debt to Greece. She even interviewed Yannis Varoufakis about why he used antique tropes while talking to his audience.



But there are times, when (dare I say it) Hanink doesn’t seem quite attuned to the historical emotion attached to certain situations. For example, she cites a scandal which electrified the Greek news in 2015. The story went that apparently a German man travelling with his family had approached a guard at the Heraklion Archeological Museum and said: “look after the antiquities, because they belong to us and we want to make good use of them”. Now, Hanink (as an American) says this was insensitive because “German politicians had started to call on Greece to sell off the country’s antiquities to help pay down the debt”. Then she goes on to say that the Greek’s reaction of “ownership” towards their antiquities has “roots as deep as the War of Independence.”

She completely misses the point. The point is this – not only were the Greeks being squeezed by the German Parliament at the time but also they remember the archeological artifacts that were stolen during World War II. Indeed, in May 2015, the Greek Ministry of Defense was calling on Germany to pay repatriations for the Nazi occupation. – Hanink talks about this campaign in the first chapter of her book but then fails to connect the dots. She is very accurate however in monitoring the way ancient Greek origins are used in the xenophobic anti-immigrant rhetoric used by the Golden Dawn

Hanink also quotes Mirjam Brusius‘s reservations towards Western notions of ‘heritage’ and ‘archeology’. I will be nasty and say that this is probably mostly because Hanink is a historian by trade and historians archaeologists tend not to get along. Yes, archeology does get used by political propagandists, but so does history. That does not discredit either as a discipline.

The most bizarre bit of Hanink’s book is its last paragraph, in which she tries to redefine ‘classical debt’ –

“the debt would cease to be seen as on that is owed to (certain) Greeks whose literal ancestors supposedly illuminate the path of Western civilization. Rather, it could be construed as a debt owed for the centuries of destruction that other people’s dreams of ancient past have wrought… The reconceived debt would be owed to everyone whose life has worsened, or whose human value has been demeaned at the hands of the West’s Greek ideal. ”



I’m not quite sure what she means here.



I suppose she could mean that the debt is owed to the refugees by the Western world? Those people have been created as barbarian other thanks to the Western/ Greek framework? This is a tricky argument for me – I do believe that refugees deserve help as human beings, right here, right now.



But the problem is, the reframing of the idea of ‘the classical debt’ as the debt that the West owes to the rest of the world is problematic. It involves the idea of ancient Greece as somehow owned by the West. Now that is a narrative the West likes to tell itself. But it isn’t true. Arabic translations of ancient Greek works in many cases ensured their survival, and Arabic mathematicians developed Greek ideas. The idea of Greece is not ‘owned’ by the West or the East, and not even simply by the Greeks themselves. It has a life of its own now – and is the shared property of all mankind.



Johanna Hanink’s book is a fascinating exploration of the notion of “the classical debt” through history. I would recommend it to any foreigners wanting to learn more about Greece – both ancient and modern.