The modern Greek state is an invention of European powers. The effort began with the Romantics, when Chateaubriand, a great writer but also a wonderful fibber, and then Lord Byron, believed that they could retrieve the sources of Western civilization in Greece—a misunderstanding for which we’re continuing to pay the price. True, today’s Greeks live on the same land as Aristotle and Pericles; but otherwise no great continuation links Hellenic civilization with modern Greece.
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