We Are Not the Greeks

Shelley once said, "We are all Greeks," a sentiment which was echoed by many of his contemporaries who shared his belief that theirs was an age of achievement comparable to the Greeks.[1] Even beyond that era, people today hold a widespread belief that, although we aren't quite Greek ourselves, we are quite capable of understanding them, and that we have an innate familiarity with the Greek tradition.

Our claim of an affinity to Greek literature can be found almost anywhere in modern society; the intelligentsia sprinkle allusions to all things Greek in books and films; the reference to Homer is considered the calling card of academic legitimacy. We are the consumers of a dominant culture that is rife with references to Greek literature. Consumerism does not lead to understanding, however. Anyone could justifiably make the argument that people experience the same struggles and emotions no matter what years bookend their lives and regardless of what gadgets or people fill up the space between them. However, to say that an emotion finds expression equally well on a Greek face or an American face leads to a false sense of our affinity to the Greeks. The point is not whether we share the same range of human experience, but whether we are capable of understanding the same means of expression. Just as much as we accept that Greek is a language foreign to us, we must accept that cultural differences exist that make most of those familiar names and quotes merely accessible parts of a culture that is largely inaccessible to the masses today.

The average American is separated from the Greek epic. Although the lowest man is as capable of tragic struggle and feeling as any Greek hero, he is not capable of comprehending the scale and scope of the epic in his own life. We have no way of grasping the gargantuan undertaking of an epic. The epic poem is nonexistent in modern literature, and the number who read epic poems is decreasing rapidly as well. We may read excerpts or quotes about famous works, and from those remarks be able to afford remarks of our own, but this is a form of Cliffs Notes to cultural fluency. The fact that these facile and passing acquaintances serve as the bulk of our culture's understanding reveals the imperfect nature of what we assume we know. We feel qualified to claim a connection with the Greeks, through no proper understanding of our own, but rather through an opinion about an interpretation of a translation.