EDITOR’S NOTE (Nick Stamatakis). Few Classicists can measure up to the “megalith” of knowledge that Ioannis Kakridis was (link here for his bio). What was the third and most important reason? The quest for Freedom, which defines us Hellenes more than anything else….
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“There are three main reasons why we must help our children communicate as much as possible with the ancient world. The third is the most important one.”
Excerpt from a speech by the late Professor I. Th. Kakridis, who devoted his life to the study of ancient Greek literature, educated generations of Greek philologists, and left us with excellent translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which we studied in school.
In his speech, I. Th. Kakridis discusses the value of teaching Ancient Greek:
“Why, truly, do we teach Ancient Greek to the children we want to educate, and for so many hours?
There are three main reasons that compel us to help our children communicate as much as possible with the ancient world.
First of all, because we too are Greeks. From the time of Homer until today, about two thousand seven hundred years have passed. Through the centuries, we Greeks have often found ourselves at the height of glory, and at other times on the brink of irreversible disaster — we have conquered and been conquered countless times; we have endured invasions and enslavements; we have changed religion; and in recent centuries, technological science has transformed the very form of our lives. Yet we have remained Greeks — with the same language (naturally evolved), the same ideals, much of the same character, and a multitude of cultural elements inherited from pre-Christian times.
In the intellectual sphere, no nation can progress if it ignores its history, for ignorance of history means ignorance of oneself. To be a Greek, a conscious Greek, means to have absorbed within oneself the spiritual history of the Greeks from Mycenaean times to the present.
The second reason that obliges us to know ancient intellectual Greece is that we too are Europeans. The entire European civilization rests upon the ancient Greek, with Roman culture as its connecting link. What binds us to the other Europeans is, of course, Christianity — even though certain doctrines divide us. But even Christianity had to be shaped first through Greek thought before it could spread throughout Europe. The root of all European civilization lies in ancient Greek thought and art. Therefore, no one who wishes to feel that they belong spiritually to Europe can afford to ignore them.
But the most important reason why our youth must not remain ignorant of ancient Greece is another: it was in Greece that, for the first time in the history of the world, man was discovered as an autonomous value — man who wishes to remain free from every kind of slavery, material and spiritual alike. Among the peoples surrounding Greece in those ancient times, many had great civilizations — above all, the Egyptians and the Persians. Yet these peoples neither know nor desire the free man. Their autocratic systems compel individuals to bow their heads without protest before kings and religious leaders. Free action and free thought are unknown outside the Greek world.
And the Greeks? They were the first — driven by an inner force alone — to transform despotism into democracy, and from a will-less, irresponsible mass of people, to form a society of free citizens, each feeling responsible for his own progress and that of others. Thought itself becomes free, soaring boldly in the flights of mind and imagination.
The Greek is the first to know that man cannot cross the boundaries of human nature and become a god without punishment, and yet he is filled with deep optimism about human capacities and with love for mankind — believing man capable of overcoming his imperfections and becoming what he ought to be: the perfect human being.
This faith in the perfect man, combined with the deep artistic sense that characterizes the Greek race, gives the ancient Greek the desire and the ability to shape countless ideal forms in whatever he undertakes — with mind, imagination, and hand: in the simple forms drawn by craftsmen on everyday pottery, in great painting, in sculpture of bronze and marble, and above all in their speech — prose and poetry alike.
This is the world we want to give to our children, so that they may be educated — to cultivate their thinking by analyzing the thought of the ancient Greeks; to cultivate their artistic sense by studying whatever beautiful things the hands and imagination of their ancestors created; so that they too may feel themselves optimistic, free, and responsible for the destiny of mankind upon the earth — and above all, so that within them may grow the longing for the perfect human being.”
