Greece - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
By Constantine Buhayer and Culture Smart
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Greece - Culture Smart! - Constantine Buhayer
chapter one
LAND & PEOPLE
CONTRADICTIONS, CONTINUITIES, AND CONTRIBUTIONS
From the day of its emergence as a modern nation-state, Greece sailed against the wind and set many precedents. This theme will recur throughout the book, if only because of its recent impact on EU integration and the world markets. After debating its freedom for centuries, Greece came into existence by staging a revolution in 1821 to oust its Turkish Ottoman masters; soon it was fighting and arguing its way to independence. At the time, this stood out as a global and challenging precedent, because the world was being carved up between ever-growing empires—British, French, Russian, Dutch, or Austro-Hungarian. Greek independence set a dangerous
precedent for other subject peoples; meanwhile the new Greek state itself was a cause of friction between the big powers, most of whom wanted either to take the country over or to suppress it. But this was not, in the public European imagination, an ordinary people. These were the descendants of Homer, Aristotle, and Pericles. Europe was adopting the Greek style for its official architecture, while Romanticism animated the passions of the European intelligentsia and even the emerging working classes.
They wanted to see the Greeks succeed, and to restore the glory of their ancient civilization. All things Hellenic were in fashion, and the Greeks seemed unstoppable.
Therefore, by the time European enthusiasm began to wane in the early 1840s, the country had established its independence. In fact, Greeks began dreaming of reestablishing their own, Byzantine empire. Crucially, this was no venture to conquer distant peoples. It was a vision to unite adjoining lands inhabited by their own people as well as by a middle class and an intelligentsia educated in the Greek language. Until the late nineteenth century, Greek was to the southeastern Mediterranean what English today is to the world. Greeks were spread from British-held Corfu to the far ends of the Pontus on the Black Sea (in today’s northeastern Turkey), from Greek-dominated Wallachia (today’s Romania) to Cyprus and Crete.
Meanwhile, opposite forces were hard at work. Not least, the great powers were against the rise of a strong, commercially enterprising nation in the East Mediterranean. In the Balkan neighborhood, various peoples who were inspired by the feats of the nineteenth-century Hellenes began emulating them, then fighting them, and calling for their own nation-states.
Greece was moving toward a series of head-on collisions. Some of those experiences sharpened the country’s survival skills, others generated new traumas. Today, you can see the human and cultural results of this interaction concentrated within the amazing natural beauty and urban sprawl that is modern Greece.
GEOGRAPHICAL OVERVIEW
The philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) pointed out that his countrymen lived around the Aegean Sea like frogs around a pond. The sea has always been associated with them. No Greek habitat is further than fifty miles from the convoluted shoreline that gives rise to an endless variety of natural bays, gulfs, inlets, lethal rock cliffs, and gentle beaches. Africa is three hundred times the size of Greece; its coast is only three times longer. Greek territory is surrounded by three seas: the Aegean, the Ionian, and the Mediterranean. Across its pristine blue waters are scattered more than 3,000 islands, islets, and rock islands.
The father of Western mysticism, George Gurdjieff, an early-twentieth-century Anatolian Greek, proposed that philosophical speculation was developed by those ancient Aegean fishermen, who, when stranded by the weather, would seek shelter in quiet places. To escape their boredom, he fancied, they played mental games, which the brighter ones developed into the Greek sciences that shaped humanity. Today, in those same sheltered recesses of the Aegean isles, people choose to harbor, relax, practice nudism, or read lengthy novels.
The mainland consists of interlaced mountain chains. Some of them descend abruptly into the sea, and may reemerge in rows of islands. The terrain was difficult to cross and therefore ideal for the rise of the ancient independent city-states. Later, it sheltered Greek communities from invaders, often providing havens for their cultural and military development. The physical features of the country and its unique archipelago forged a pronounced individuality and strong local patriotism. It was only in the 1990s that a comprehensive road network began linking the country, but even so, it remains an adventure to cross it from east to west.
The largest plain is in Thessaly (central Greece), birthplace of the Centaurs and of the eighteenth-century visionary revolutionary Rhigas Ferraios, which stretches beneath Mount Olympus. Some islands, such as Crete, Corfu, or Chios, are large enough or in such strategic geopolitical locations as to have sustained what might be considered near-autonomous Hellenic civilizations.
Climate
Greece has a Mediterranean climate. The further south you go, the warmer it gets. The best times are from May to July, and from September to late October, with temperatures in the range of 68–82°F (20–28°C). Summers are hot, normally over 90°F (32°C). Occasionally, a northern summer breeze, called meltémi, brings the temperature down to a bearable level. Winter months can see temperatures fall below 40°F (5°C), especially in northern Greece. Some of the islands experience great humidity. Macedonia, Epirus, and Thrace often have snow and mist in the winter. The Ionian Islands enjoy a wetter climate.
HELLENIC REPUBLIC OR GREECE?
Which is the proper name for Greece? Most of us are familiar with both terms. Aristotle observed that near Dodoni, in the northern province of Epirus, the Hellenes were referred to by their neighbors as Grekoi. The term was adopted by the Romans, and was popularized after Christianization. Another theory is that a Hellenic tribe moved to Sicily. Asked where they had originated from, they said Graia, their small city in Boeotia; hence, later, the Romans adopted the name Graeci. There are other theories, too.
Today, the official name of the country is the Hellenic Republic, or Elliniki Dimokratia. The people, in their own language call themselves Hellenes, and the country Hellas and Ellada. In EU documents, the acronym EL refers to Elliniká, or Greek (EN is for English, FR for French, DE for German, and so forth). The references involving the term Greek
are more usual, but that’s for another book. In maps and international organizations (including the EU, NATO, and the UN) the country is referred to as Greece. At sporting events we see the acronym GRE. Car registrations are GR. The Internet addresses registered in Greece are indicated by .gr
.
There is one more name. Most Muslim countries refer to Greece as Yunan,
a Persian and Arabic version of Ionia,
the ancient Greek province of Asia Minor. A related name appears in the Hebrew Bible, in Genesis 10.1–4, where the Table of Nations lists the descendants of Noah and the nations they founded. One of Noah’s grandsons was Yavan—a name associated with or derived from Ionia.
Appropriately enough, since these developments occurred after the great flood, Yavan sired the maritime peoples: his son Kittim gave rise to the Cypriots, and another son, Dodanim, to the people of Rhodes. Yavan’s uncle Shem produced the more landbound Semitic peoples.
Today’s Greece is a modernizing European country facing new challenges.
MORE THAN JUST A LANGUAGE
There is an extraordinary depth to the Greek language. It is not just the backbone of the people’s recorded history; there are different strands used down the ages. Each period of Hellenic civilization had its own communication needs, and would naturally update the language accordingly, but without discarding the earlier versions. To give a rough illustration, if this had happened to English (which only became an official language in 1362), British and American people would be speaking (or hearing) Anglo-Saxon, French, Chaucerian, Elizabethan, and American English, all used for different purposes.
In Greek, up to six different versions have survived. Occasionally, these versions of the language competed to the point of bloodshed. Entire regimes were undermined on linguistic grounds as different strands of society tried to impose their choices. And what were the choices? Well, after excluding the regional dialects, the official languages of Greek can be divided into Attic, Alexandrine/Ecclesiastic, Katharévousa (or purified), and Koiné (or Demotic) whose direct roots are in the Alexandrine.
Today, Demotic is the state language—that is the one you will be communicating in with your friends, partners, and government institutions. Ecclesiastic Greek is that of the Orthodox Church, while Attic Greek is an obligatory subject at schools, and also a centuries-old university subject around the world.
WRATH, SING, GODDESS
Can one judge a people from its first recorded utterance? The opening words of the Iliad are wrath,
sing,
and goddess.
They make up the sentence "Mῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληιάδεω ’AΧἳῆoςᾣ (Menin aeide, thea, Peleiadeo Achileos), or "Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles, son of