PHILHELLENISM encyclopedia topics

The legacy of Philhellenism

In the period of political reaction and repression after the fall of Napoleon, when the liberal-minded, educated and prosperous bourgeois class of European societies found the romantic revolutionary ideals of 1789-92 repressed by the restoration of old regimes at home, the idea of the re-creation of a Greek state on the very territories that were sanctified by their view of Antiquity— which was reflected in the furnishings of their own parlors and the contents of their bookcases— offered an ideal, set at a romantic distance. Under these conditions, the Greek uprising constituted a source of inspiration and expectations that could never actually be fulfilled, disappointing what Paul Cartledge called "the Victorian self-identification with the Glory that was Greece".

Another popular subject of interest in Greek culture at the turn of the nineteenth century, focused on the shadowy Scythian philosopher Anacharsis; the new prominence of Anarcharis was sparked by Jean-Jacques Barthélemy's fanciful Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece (1788), a learned imaginary travel journal, one of the first historical novels, which a modern scholar has called "the encyclopedia of the new cult of the antique" in the late eighteenth century. It had a high impact on the growth of philhellenism in France: the book went through many editions, was reprinted in the United States and translated into German and other languages. It later inspired European sympathy for the Greek struggle for independence and spawned sequels and imitations through the nineteenth century.

In the German states, the private obsession with ancient Greece took public forms, institutionalizing an elite Philhellene ethos through the gymnasium, to revitalize German education at home, and providing on two occasions high-minded Philhellene German princes ignorant of modern-day Greek realities, to be Greek sovereigns.

During the later nineteenth century the new studies of archaeology and anthropology began to offer a quite separate view of ancient Greece, which had previously been experienced at second-hand only through Greek literature and Greek sculpture and architecture. Twentieth-century heirs of the nineteenth-century view of an unchanging, immortal quality of "Greekness" are typified in J.C. Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (1910) or R. and E. Blum's The Dangerous Hour: The lore of crisis and mystery in rural Greece (1970); according to the Classicist Paul Cartledge, they "represent this ideological construction of Greekness as an essence, a Classicizing essence to be sure, impervious to such historic changes as that from paganism to Orthodox Christianity, or from subsistence peasant agriculture to more or less internationally market-driven capitalist farming." (Cartledge 1995).

Among the modern historical relativists, the Classical heritage is only one facet of the vision of Greece that is imagined as ancestral. The theme of Nikos Dimou's The Misfortune to be Greek is the perception that the Philhellenic West's projected desire for the modern Greeks to live up to their ancestors' glorious past has always been a burden upon the Greeks themselves.

Philhellenism and art

Philhellism also created a renewed interest in the artistic movement of Neoclassicism, which idealized fifth-century Classical Greek art and architecture., very much at second hand, through the writings of the first generation of art historians, like Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. The groundswell of the Philhellenic movement was result of two generations of intrepid artists and amateur treasure-seekers, from Stuart and Revett, who published their measured drawings as The Antiquities of Athens and culminating with the removal of sculptures from Aegina and the Parthenon (the Elgin marbles), works that ravished the British Philhellenes, many of whom, however, deplored their removal.

Philhellenes in Antiquity

In antiquity, the term 'philhellene' (Greek: φιλέλλην, from φίλος - philos, "dear one, friend" + Έλλην - Hellen, "Greek) was used to describe both non-Greeks who were fond of Greek culture and Greeks who patriotically upheld their culture. The Liddell-Scott Greek-English Lexicondefines 'philhellen' as "fond of the Hellenes, mostly of foreign princes, as Amasis; of Parthian kings[...];also of Hellenic tyrants, as Jason of Pherae and generally of Hellenic (Greek) patriots.

Examples:

Alexander I of Macedon was called "philhellen" by the Theban poet Pindar.
Jason of Pherae
Evagoras of Cyprus and Philip II were both called "philhellenes" by Isocrates
Plato also defines the word "philhellen" as "Greek patriot"
The rulers of the Parthian Empire, merging Scythian, Iranian, and Greek culture described themselves as philhellenes.
Nero. Artistic pursuits and adoration and affection for the Greeks led many members of the Roman nobility to resent him. He performed on stage publicly in Naples and went on "tour" to Greece in AD 67. While he was there he participated in many Greek Games (including the Olympics) As a reward for their hospitality they were exempt from taxes in AD 68.

Notes

References

Paul Cartledge, Clare College Cambridge, "The Greeks and Anthropology" in Classics Ireland 2 (Dublin 1995)

Stella Ghervas, « Le philhellénisme d’inspiration conservatrice en Europe et en Russie », in Peuples, Etats et nations dans le Sud-Est de l’Europe, Bucarest, Ed. Anima, 2004.
Stella Ghervas, « Le philhellénisme russe : union d’amour ou d’intérêt? », in Regards sur le philhellénisme, Genève, Mission permanente de la Grèce auprès de l’ONU, 2008.
Stella Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition. Alexandre Stourdza et l'Europe de la Sainte-Alliance, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2008. ISBN 978-2-7453-1669-1
Emile Malakis, French travellers in Greece (1770-1820): An early phase of French Philhellenism
Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from Olympus : Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970
M. Byron Raizis, 1971. American poets and the Greek revolution, 1821-1828;: A study in Byronic philhellenism (Institute of Balkan Studies)
Terence J. B Spencer, 1973. Fair Greece! Sad relic: Literary philhellenism from Shakespeare to Byron