GREEKS AND OTHERS

ANCIENT PERCEPTIONS AND PERCEPTIONS OF ANTIQUITY

SUMMARY

otherness of a culture from which our own has indeed chosen to construct a
potent legacy
Paul Cartledge (2002: 192)

From the 18th century to the present day, the ancient Greek culture has been a
powerful and pervading image in the Western European culture, providing a long
string of role models, ranging from aesthetic and artistic, over ethical and
philosophical, to political, practical and even very intimate spheres of life in the
modern world. In the second half of the 20th century the central role played by the
classical heritage in the cultural, academic, social and political domains has been
somewhat marginalized. However, the profound influence of the ancient Greeks is
still present in many forms and shapes our understanding of the world, history and the
past, moral and political issues, identities of groups and individuals. The classical
culture is one of the basic reference points in determination of values according to
which our modern worldview is organized, a benchmark in evaluating intellectual,
political, artistic achievements. And yet, if Greece is central to us Europeans, it is
also removed from us through mythic time, the Greek is not us, even though we
claim it for our own (Shanks 1996: 86). In other words, the chronological gap
separating the modern western world from its influential role model opened up the
space for comparison, emulation, idealization, negation, in a constant interplay of Us
and Them. Over the last decades, numerous researchers in humanities have argued
that group identities are always created in this process of identification of common
traits linking the group members and separating them from the Others. The internal
regulations governing the actions of a community are very much shaped with regards
to this opposition. In the Western European context, for the last three centuries ancient
Greece has been perceived as an ideal external cardinal point towards which to
determine the course of actions. However, the very appropriation of the classical,
Greek as well as Roman heritage, decisively separated the Western European culture
form the contemporaneous Others non-European communities that did not benefit
from this supreme fount. In this manner, ancient Greece is perceived as a remote
realm of supreme order, idealized and detached from Us, and at the same time the
very basis for distinguishing our position as diametrically opposed to modern Others.
As one of the many consequences of the western adherence to the Greek models, the
perceived attitudes of the ancients themselves towards other communities
barbarians, have been harnessed to underline this division of the human world into
civilized Us and inferior Them.
Based on these premises, the volume seeks to explore various relations of
otherness shaping our modern understanding of the world, constructed in relation to
ancient Greek culture. This direction of inquiry presupposes the reconsideration of
some basic assumptions of the study of the past. The provocative starting point is
offered by the writings of Hans Georg Gadamer and his concept of the fusion of
horizons. In order to approach the past, we inevitably include our own experience of
the world in our observations and interpretations of the chronologically remote
culture. We thus shape our horizon by the knowledge acquired about the past,
simultaneously re-creating the horizon of the society we investigate. In this respect,
the research of the past remote in time, is similar to the attempts to understand
cultures different from our own and remote in space. The disciplines of history and
archaeology therefore face a very similar set of problems that have been articulated in
the broader field of humanities over the last decades. The position of the researcher
approaching his/her object of scrutiny becomes a focal point of interest. This applies
not only for the modern scholars, but also for the ones whose ideas have shaped our
present field of research, topics and procedures we work with. The foundations of the
academic disciplines according to which we today organize our knowledge have been
laid under the cultural, social and political circumstances that are sometimes strikingly
different from our present condition. It is therefore essential, in order to reconsider our
position towards the ancient Greek culture, as well as in our own time and space, to
scrutinize the history of the ideas about this potent legacy built into our horizon.
The outcome of this inquiry may well bring the study of the classical past back closer
to the eminent position it held until recently.

I Cradle of the European civilization

By far the most influential person in the creation of our present understanding
of the Greek culture is Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717 1768). Working as a
custodian of the Vatican collection of antiquities, he established the chronological
sequence of the ancient sculptures it included, based upon their stylistic
characteristics. Today this procedure is the very basis of analysis in art history and
archaeology, but in Winckelmanns time and age this was not the case. By establishing
a temporal value to the style of execution of artifacts, he set the foundations of these
disciplines in their modern form. The result of this endeavor was the periodization
that is still, in its essence, the basic way of organizing our knowledge and inferences
about the ancient Greek culture. Winckelmann worked with the art objects in the
Vatican collection, but extended his observations far from the artistic achievements of
the ancients, inferring the intimate link between their aesthetic and ethical values.
Therefore, when art reached the most perfect form, the same applied for the moral and
political development. The time in which Winckelmann saw the supreme realization
of the artistic, ethical and political ideal was the period of the 5th century BC, the one
that we now label the classical period. He passionately argued that the ancient Greek
culture of Pheidias and Pericles was the ideal role model for thoughts and actions for
all times. In very vivid and highly inspired writings (Gedanken ber die Nachahmung
der Griechischen Werke in der Mahlerey und Bildhauer-Kunst, 1755; Geschichte der
Kunst des Altertums, 1764), Winckelmann announced his ideas to the learned elite of
his time.
The political and cultural circumstances of the moment created a very
receptive audience for the narrative of ancient Greece as the cradle of the European
civilization, the source of ultimate inspiration and wisdom. After the devastating
defeat from Napoleons army, Winckelmanns native Prussia was in search for the
programme of renewal. By the end of the 18th century, the post of the Minister of
Education was held by Wilhelm von Humboldt, an admirer of Winckelmann, a lingust
trained in the filhelene spirit, and a philosopher firmly rooted in the ideas of the
Enlightenment. His primary task was to create an efficient educational system that
would help the recuperation of the state. The central notion of his system was the idea
of Bildung cultivation of ones talents and disposition leading to liberation of the
mind from tradition and superstition. This concept, strikingly in the spirit of the
Enlightenment movement, was equally accepted by the leading figures of the
Romanticism, such as Johann Gottfried Herder. One of the basic elements of
Humboldts educational programme was a detailed and devoted study of the classical
antiquity. Through the highly efficient system of educational institutions gymnasium
evoking its role model by the very name the generations of cultural and political
elite were trained to take up the leading positions in the state. Soon, the Prussian
model, slightly modified, was adopted in the other Western European countries, Great
Britain and France particularly. Mastering of classical texts and works of art, the deep
admiration for classical Greece and a strong conviction that the European culture
stems from these roots, thus became a common intellectual ground for the elite of the
leading European countries of the time. The Greek ideal pervaded their notions of
superior human achievements. The knowledge about it that they shared made them the
rightful successors of the 5th century Athens.

II Lords, colonels and the Athenians

Soon, the possession of the knowledge of the antiquity was not sufficient to
satisfy the newly acquired passion of the Western Europeans for classical Greece. By
the beginning of the 19th century tangible remnants of its glory arrived to the major
cities Paris, Berlin and above all London. In 1799 Tomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, a
young Scottish diplomat, was sent to Constantinople as the British ambassador. His
task was primarily to strengthen the position of the Crown at the Ottoman Grand Port,
in the turmoil that swept over the Mediterranean due to the movements of the French
army under Napoleon. However, Lord Elgins mission included several members with
different assignments: Professor Joseph Carlyle from the Cambridge University was
in quest for the ancient manuscripts, and Giovanni Batista Lusieri, a much esteemed
Italian painter, was supposed to make sketches and casts of the Athenian monuments.
They were to collect the material evidence of the classical world and to bring them
back to Britain, in order to improve the knowledge of the ancients and the style of the
arts at home. Lord Elgins mission was not alone in these aspirations, and the French
ambassador in Constantinople, Compte de Choiseul Gouffier had already posted his
envoy in Athens, consul Louis Franois Sbastien Fauvel, with a similar task. The
diplomatic and military missions of the European countries at the time often
combined their immediate assignments with the antiquarian interests. So the British
Colonel William Leake, posted in Northern Greece from 1803 to 1811, assisted the
Turkish army in organizing the defense from the French, but also undertook a detailed
topographic research and collected numismatic material. As a result, he published
several very influential scholarly studies (Numismata Hellenica, 1854; Topography of
Athens, 1821).
In 1800 Elgins men arrived to Athens and started working at the Acropolis.
Their efforts were severely impeded by the Turkish garrison that held the post in the
midst of the ancient ruins of the Parthenon and on the slopes of the hill. The
Ambassador used his high esteem in Constantinople to obtain the permission of the
Sultan himself for his crew to draw, but also to remove parts of the monuments. A
long and dramatic journey of the Parthenon marbles to England started, to bring them
finally to the British Museum in 1816. The British public acclaimed their beauty, but
the actions of Lord Elgin started raising controversies even before the sculptures
reached their final destination. The most fervent opponent was Lord Byron, a
flamboyant poet and a devoted supporter of the Greek movement for independence
from the Ottoman rule. Not only that he spoke and wrote for the cause, he also joined
the palikari and died from fever among them in 1824.
These two British aristocrats were equally guided by the admiration for the
ancient Greek past, but one of them Lord Byron, extended his emotions to the
inhabitants of Greece of his own time and argued strongly that the material remains of
their glorious past should not be removed from the land of their origin. On the other
hand, Lord Elgin was convinced that the 19th century Greeks did not hold in high
esteem the classical heritage and that by bringing the marbles to Britain, he was in
fact preserving them for the benefit of the civilized world. He epitomizes the feelings
that the ancient legacy far surpassed the particular claims of the modern Greeks and
that the cultural milieu devoted to its meticulous study, deep understanding and
continuation of its values is the proper setting for its material remains. The classical
antiquity was appropriated colonized by the Western European imagination.

III Colonization and colonialism Words and meanings

In the vocabulary of most of the modern languages, the word colony is used to
denote three very different and temporally remote phenomena. In its original Latin
form, it refers to a Roman military post in the conquered lands, and the meaning is
later extended to the civil settlements that developed around the camps. In the modern
political context, the word stands for the regions under the military, political,
economic and cultural domination of the Western European imperial powers,
spanning from North America to India. Finally, colony also refers to the settlements
mushrooming on the Mediterranean coasts in the 7th and 6th centuries BC, where the
Greek presence is testified both by archaeological and written sources. However, in
the ancient Greek these sites are called apoikiai. This extension of meanings indicates
that these three distinct situations are taken to be analogous to the great extent, and
that the same logic governed the operations of the Roman imperial rule, the British
administration in India, and the foundation of Cyrene or Massalia. And yet, profound
differences separate these historical events. Their condensation into a sole colonial
experience points to the importance of the ancient models in the shaping of the
modern imperial and colonial policies and attitudes towards the non-European
colonized.
This need not come as a surprise, since the members of the political and
cultural elite of the 18th and 19th centuries shaped their worldview very much in
accordance with their understanding of the ancient world. The efficient imperial
administration of the Romans offered a rich source of solutions for the British colonial
officers. On the other hand, in a circular line of inference, their own experience
influenced the interpretations of the ancient world. Thus the movements of the Greeks
throughout the Mediterranean in the 7th and 6th centuries BC were equated with the
military conquest of the later periods. The research of this period was geared by these
premises and heavily leaned upon the later written records of Thycidides and other
Greek authors. Thus a narrative was formed of the culturally and economically
superior Greeks inhabiting the lands of the inferior barbarians. From the new centers
they founded, the Greek culture penetrated the hinterland and helenized the
populations, bringing them all the benefits of the superior culture. By the same token,
the imperial rule of the Europeans brought civilized order to its overseas dominions.
However, the archaeological investigation of the sites in southern Italy and
France points to a much more complex picture, especially in terms of the ethnic
affiliation of the first inhabitants of apoikiai. Strong arguments have been put forward
in favor of settlements in which, along with the Greek presence, strong Phoenician,
Levantine and various local components are felt, creating a cosmopolitan hybrid
culture based upon joint social and ideological pattern, rather than ethnic
determinations. This brings us to the issue of ethnicity in the ancient and modern
world.

IV Spirit of the people

The prevalent modern experience of belonging to a nation-state is a

consequence of a historical process that started by the beginning of the 18th century,
when the feudal order was challenged, that for centuries before shaped the political
map of Europe. As opposed to the small realms of the medaieval times, much larger
states were created, changing the perceptions of the individuals of their belonging to a
community. Instead of local traditions and identifications with social groups, another
base was necessary to create bounds among the members of large communities and
distinguish them from the outsiders. Language became the new element of cohesion
and was soon followed by the perception of the shared past. The territories of the new
states, encompassed by the administrative systems of courts, taxation, army and
police, now became a shared domain of a people. For the first time, the land and its
inhabitants were equated to a state, a coherent and integrated community with a sense
of collective past, tradition and culture, different from the others.
This was the setting from which the modern academic discipline of history
originated, incorporating into its basic premises the principles of the modern states
and projecting them onto its object of study. Thus the idea of a people a community
bound by predetermined biological links, naturally adhering to a set of values and
norms, was taken to be equally valid for the nation states of the 18th century Europe
and for the remote past. This assumption is strongly felt not only in traditional
historiography, but also in the archaeological reasoning under the culture-historical
paradigm, well into the 20th century. On the other hand, over the last couple of
decades, the notion of ethnic affiliation as a given has been severely challenged by a
number of authors (B. Anderson, E. Gellner, E. Hobsbawm), and the concept of
constructive ethnicity has been put forward. Rather than arguing that the belonging to
an ethnic group is a predermined fact of human lives, ethnic identity is seen as: that
aspect of a persons self-conceptualization which results from identification with a
broader group in opposition to others on the basis of perceived cultural
differentiation and/or common descent (Jones 1999: xiii).
Along this line of argument, several recent studies (E. Hall, J. Hall, P.
Cartledge) have reconsidered the stark opposition of the Greeks and the barbarians,
obvious in some of the ancient written sources. At the first glance, it presupposes the
monolithic Greek ethnicity, in accordance with the 18th and 19th century perceptions of
the subjects of nation-states. However, the all-pervasive notion of Greekness emerged
as late as the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th century BC, very much as a
result of the experiences of the Persian wars. The stereotypes of the Other were
shaped especially in the Athenian polis, and are perfectly illustrated by Aeschylus
play The Persians (472 BC) and Herodotus Histories (mid 5th cent.). In the centuries
before this massive change, the predominant identification of the inhabitants of
ancient Greece was that of the polis of his/her birth and the social group they
belonged. During the period of dynamic encounters on the Mediterranean shores
during the 7th century BC, the line separating the Greeks from the foreigners was
porous and articulated in various ways. In order to move toward some of the possible
ways of interaction, we should abandon the birds-eye view and approach particular
situations of encounter of the Greeks with other populations. More often than not,
archaeology proves to be a very appropriate strategy in this quest.

V Greeks, barbarians and archaeologists mapping the contact

Throughout the history of archaeological research of the contacts between the

Greeks and other populations, the attention was focused on the objects of the Greek
manufacture registered in the context of other cultures. The quality and the amount of
these goods were indicative of the level of helenization profound and inevitable
influence of the Greek culture on the inferior barbarians. The mechanisms of the
contacts leading to this decisive change in the local cultures have been explained
mainly in terms of routes of influences suitable geographical communications along
which the luxurious goods penetrated the hinterland. In this framework, one of the
assumptions is that the space over which the objects moved is an absolute and definite
component, always perceived, measured and represented according to the same rules
and parameters. This is one of the many instances in which our modern experience
and knowledge is projected onto the communities we investigate, whose perception
and articulation of their world might have been quite different. Space, for instance, is
situationally experienced, relationally constructed, culturally specific medium
through which individuals act and are acted upon (Tilley 1994: 11), differently
perceived in various cultural settings. The graphic representations of geographical
knowledge vary dramatically over time and space, and some cultures choose not to
create visual depictions of it at all. This does not reflect only not even
predominantly the level of the technological skills of the society in question, but its
perception, ways of selecting, processing and communicating the relevant information
about the spatial dimension of their lives.
When archaeologists and, for that matter, specialists in other disciplines, too
draw maps on which arrows point along the routes of influences, they presuppose a
number of assumptions about the actions of humans in the past. First of all, these
arrows start from a certain point and lead to another, indicating the flow of culture
from more dense areas, culturally dominant centers to the inferior periphery, where
the influences are readily accepted. When dealing with the Greek products in the
European hinterland, this procedure inevitably involves the well-established idea of
helenization and the spread of the superior Hellenic culture over the barbarians.
The recent archaeological theory has paid much attention to the lived
experience of the humans in the past and to the ways in which we may approach it by
the means of material culture. The situations of encounter and strategies of particular
societies to overcome the tension caused by the external factors tend to be reflected in
particular material manifestations, strikingly different from the established repertoire
of the group. Some unusual objects registered in archaeological record, causing great
trouble for the researchers, may plausibly be interpreted as reflections of some
strategies for resolution of the tension caused by intercultural encounter. The
interpretation along these lines takes into account the dynamic interaction of
communities, negotiation of identities and porousness of their boundaries.
On the northern fringes of the Greek lands, near the lake Ohrid in Macedonia,
at the site Trebenite, an exceptional find of five funerary masks of golden foil has
posed difficult questions to archaeologists, especially in terms of the ethnic affiliation
of the deceased whose faces they ornated. One possible way of interpreting these
unusual objects is to suggest that they played a role in a strategy of the community
encountering the Other. On archaeological maps the masks from Trebenite are
irregular dots on a route of influence from the Hellenic South to the barbarian
hinterland. In the suggested interpretation, these objects offer an insight into the actual
encounter between the Greeks and the barbarians.

VI Europe, Asia, Africa

The interactions of the ancient Greeks with the populations that inhabited the
shores of southwestern Europe form an important link in the creation of the idea of
ancient Greece as the fount of the European civilization: the Greek settlements on the
Mediterranean coast radiated influences deep in the hinterland and disseminated the
seeds of civilization on the continent. However, the settlements very similar to
Massalia or Syracuse in many respects existed on the non-European shores, in
northern Africa and the Pontic regions. These have been largely neglected in the grand
narrative of the eminently European character of the ancient Greek culture. Equally,
the research of the periods of the Greek history prior to the splendours of the 5th
century has downplayed various connections linking it to the Oriental soil.
One notable response to this bias has been the work of Martin Bernal (Black
Athena The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, 1987). Combining the
linguistic, mythological and archaeological material, this scholar argues that the
foundations of the classical Greek culture were laid during the second millenium BC,
under the massive influence of the Egyptian and Phoenician colonies in mainland
Greece. Furthermore, Bernal detects in the later Greek tradition the traces proving that
the ancient Greeks themselves considered their culture to be intimately linked to the
African and Asian sources. In his opinion, this obvious fact has been neglected or
even concealed by the 19th century authors, since it implied the Semitic and black
African origins of the classical civilization. The ancient model of the Greek origins,
the one that the Greeks themselves held true, was replaced by the aryan model,
constructed under the influence of the emergent racism of the 19th century Europe.
Bernals arguments were gladly accepted by various audiences, ranging from left-
wing British media to the extremist Afro-American movement. On the other hand, the
specialists in the fields of classical studies, linguistics, archaeology, have pointed to
numerous methodological flaws of his research. Above all, Bernal operates in the
same teoretical framework that the sets off to criticize: dominant external influences
determine the course of events inside a culture. Instead of the all-pervasive Greek
cultural domination, he postulates the Egyptian and Phoenician basis that gave rise to
the classical achievements. However, in spite of the heated and rightful criticism of
the specialists, Black Athena brought into the forefront several very important traits of
the study of ancient Greece: the classical civilization did not emerge from the void,
but from a long process including dynamic relationships with neighbouring
communities; the study of the past and the resulting reconstructions are dependant
upon the prevailing cultural, social and political context; the classical heritage may be
a burning issue in the contemporary world, sometimes leading outside Europe.
The echoes of the profound importance of classical Greece are felt as far as the
Caribbean, where a poet from the island of St. Lucia, Derek Walcott chose the
Homeric poems as a source of inspiraton for his higly acclaimed poem Omeros,
published in 1990. In his verses, he celebrates and at the same time subverts the very
foundations of the European culture, creating the masterpiece of the post-colonial
literature, in which the classical topoi are evoked to create a thick fabric of
intercultural associations. While mastering and re-creating the key elements of the
culture of the colonizers, Walcott articulates a particular voice of the colonized. The
European legacy in St. Lucia, along with its fundamental classical component, is
perceived from another point of view.
In the process of Europeization of the ancient Greek culture, the reception of
its heritage in non-European contexts slipped into the margins of the academic and
public discourse. One such example is the profound importance of the classical Greek
texts in the Arabic world of the 9th century AD. In the cultural and educational policy
of caliph Al Mamun (813 833 AD), the writings of Aristotheles, Euclid, Ptolemy
and Galen formed an important corpus of knowledge, to be studied, commented and
built upon. However, with the exception of Aristotheles, the texts considered to be the
very foundations of the Greek legacy in the European tradition, notably Homer, did
not attract the attention of the Arabic scholars. The modern European view of the
ancient Greek culture is but one of the possible ways of experiencing all its beauty
and riches. It is firmly rooted in the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and his
overwhelming enthusiasm for all things Greek, but not all elements of his passion
filtered through the intervening centuries.

VII Eroticism of the discipline

Winckelmann spoke about the works of art of ancient Greece in a very

personal voice, describing his emotions before the statues he studied in a manner that
is not customary in the later academic writings. His ideas circulated not only in the
books he published, but also in the epistolar form, through the social network
connected by common ideals and lifestyle. This public/private alliance of members of
the intellectual elite, spanning from the Prussian emperor Friedrich the Great to poet
and philosopher Goethe, shared Winckelmanns fascination with the classical Greek
culture and recognized some of the practices of the ancients as models for their social
behaviour. Along with the state policy, embodied in Humboldts programme, this
parallel channel communicated messages about classical Greece that touched upon
intimate choices. The prevalently male circle of Winckelmanns admirers engaged in
close emotional encounters, that would today be described as homosexual and quite
often stigmatized. However, in the German-speaking environment of the late 18th
century this was not the case and the ideal of Greek love was freely worshipped
even in the Emperors residence at Sanssouci.
The social and intellectual climate of the next period brought about a drastic
change in the public attitudes towards male intimacy, and the label homosexual was
coined to desribe an aberration in the human behaviour (Richard Freiherr von Krafft-
Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, 1886). By the end of the 19th century, public
expressions of Greek love were considered to be a gross indecency and
prosecuted by law, as in the notorious case of Oscar Wilde. The long string of
filhellenes who considered it to be the purest and noblest of feelings and the very
essence of the Greek social life, starting with Winckelmann and including, among
others, Lord Byron and Oxford teachers Walter Pater and John Addington Symonds,
was now deprived of the voice.
Accordingly, the academic study of classical Greece turned to the issues
appropriate to the spirit of the time. The intimate behaviour of the ancients was not
studied at all, pushed to the margins of scholarly interest, or interpreted in terms of the
current public norms. The intimate and erotic dimension of ancient Greece found
expression in another medium, that of visual representation. In Victorian Britain, one
of the most esteemed painters was sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who chose his subject
matter in historical settings, from Merovingian to Greek and Roman. Almost without
exception, his paintings are laden with eroticism and the characters such as Sappho
and Alcaeus are depicted in situations clearly evoking their gender and erotic
preferences. Alma-Tadema exibited his works in institutional settings, such as the
Royal Academy in London, and was highly acclaimed for his artistic achievements.
However, the erotic aspect of the images was not commented upon publicly. The
Victorian norms dictated that the sensual aspect of the ancients can be viewed in
public and admired as a work of art, but not spoken about or studied as a proper
subject of academic research.
It was as late as the second half of the 20th century that Greek love once
again became the subject of academic interest. In 1978, Kenneth Dover published his
ground-breaking volume Greek Homosexuality, which discusses the relations between
the male citizens of the Greek polis. He inferred stern social norms regulating the
roles and limitations of the rapports between erastes and eromenos, indicating a
complex network of relations of power in the Greek society. Dovers work greatly
influenced Michael Foucault, the French historian and philosopher, and his History of
Sexuality (1976 1984). Extending his conclusions from the classical antiquity to the
human societes in general, he argued that human sexuality is not governed by some
natural and universal order, but rather socially constructed and regulated by specific
norms depending on the wider context and reflecting the distribution of power in a
particular society. Foucaults work opened up a new path in the study of the human
intimate relations and influenced a number of currently prominent authors, such as
Judith Butler, Homi Bhabha and Edward Said.
Dover and Foucault brought the Greek sexuality back into the focus of
academic interest. Based upon their work, over the last couple of decades the bodily
experiences of the ancients received the attention that resulted in fresh and
challenging insights into the classical world. But, among the classicists the vibrant
personal voice of Johann Joackim Winckelmann has still been a part of the history of
the discipline, proto-academic if not obsolete. In the broad field of humanities and
literary criticism in particular, on the other hand, the last decades of the 20th century
have been marked by the raising tendency to articulate the personal voice of the
researcher and relate his/her experience to the object of research. One of the possible
explanations for the reluctancy of the researchers of classical antiquity to join in, in
spite of Winckelmanns legacy, may be the reverend attitude towards the object of our
research. Initial steps in this direction (cf. Hallet, Nortwick, eds. 1997) bring the
discipline closer to the contemporary debate and, nuch more important, to the interests
and needs of the society we live in. Following this path, we may come to the new
understanding of the profound influence of the ancient world on our own particular
situations.
 VIII On the bridge

The common modern perceptions of East and West as incompatible entities

have been defined under the cultural and political circumstances of 18th and 19th
century Europe, including the tacit presumption of the technologically, politically and
culturally developed West and the East lagging behind. The European colonial
experience, that lies at the very base of this polarization, was decisively guided by the
interpretations of the ancient Greek attitudes towards their Oriental contemporaries.
Edward Said encapsulated this long tradition of stereotyped and romanticized images
of Asia and the Middle East in the Western culture in the concept of Orientalism as a
discourse organizing the modern European outlook on other cultures. The Balkans,
however, do not fit into this neat opposition.
Squeezed between a pure West and a pure East, the region has gradually
but constantly gained the attributes of a crossroad, a bridge linking yet separating the
antipodes. In discussing this awkward position, Maria Todorova identified the
discourse of Balkanism, forming gradually during 18th and 19th centuries, to become
fully articulated in the years before the World War I. Compared to Orientalism of
Edward Said as a discourse of imputed opposition, Balkanism is about an imputed
ambiguity. This in-betweenness of the Balkans, their transitionary character, could
have made them simply an incomplete other; instead they are constructed not as other
but as incomplete self (Todorova 1997:17). This perception is shared by both the
external observers and the insiders the modern inhabitants of the Balkans. The term
is often laden with negative connotations and supplanted by euphemisms such as
South-Eastern Europe. In the countries geographically located in the penninsula, the
cultural distance from the Balkans is emphasized, particularly in modern Greece. The
modern Greek identity is shaped in the tension between Hellenism idealization of
the classical past, and Romiossini the strong links to the Byzantine and Ottoman
traditions. The glorious classical past secures the European affiliation and generates
superiority to the Balkan neighbours; the Byzantine ties anchor Greece closer to the
local heritage. The ambiguity of Balkanism is apparent.
The geographically central position in the penninsula is occupied by modern
Serbia. In the current public discourse the focal point in the past around which the
national identity is built is the mediaeval period, with a rich narrative of the 13th and
14th century prosperous state and the succeeding long period of the Ottoman
domination over the Serbian lands. During these five centuries, the national tradition
was preserved primarily in the form of epic poetry, celebrating the heroes of the
resistance to the Turks. The leading Serbian classicist of the first half of the 20th
century, Milo uri devoted the major part of his professional activity to establishing
close affinity between these epics and the Homeric poems. His translations of Iliad
and Odyssey, published in the 1960s, are praised by the subsequent scholars for
demonstrating equal mastery of the language of Homer and that of Filip Vinji, the
legendary narrator of the Serbian epics. uri argued that the moral and human values
embodied in both the oral traditions are universal. The fact that the Serbian epics
share these values grants them their superior and universal merit. So the leading
scholar in the study of the classics among the Serbs was devoted to bridge the
distance between classical heritage and the fundamental legacy of our culture. Ancient
Greece figures once more as the absolute criterion of moral, philosophical and literary
excellence.
 The mediaeval period offers another strong link through which the Serbian
culture is connected to the classical tradition the Byzantine Empire. Ironically, this
is precisely the point where the modern Greek identity diverges in two separate
directions, Hellenism and Romiossini. The fragmentation of the Balkan identities and
their ambiguos tensions open the path for conflicting interpretations of the past. At the
same time, the complex and intertwined cultural legacies of the region offer an unique
oporunity to bridge the stereotyped division of East and West. The re-examination of
the role of classical heritage in the contemporary Serbian culture may be a challenging
point of departure. The preceding pages are written in the strong conviction that this is
a rewarding path to follow.