Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Why Athens to be the Greek capital?

The choice of Athens as capital, a town dominated by the imposing ruins of the Parthenon and with its associations with the glories of the Periclean age but in the early 1830s little more than a dusty village, symbolised the cultural of orientation of the new state towards the classical past. It was only towards mid-century that interest developed in Greece's medieval, Byzantine past and attempts were made to link the classical, medieval and modern periods of Greek history in a theory of unbroken continuity. The fixation on the classical past was reflected in the great emphasis that was laid in the school and in the University of Athens on the study of the culture of ancient Greece and on the katharevousa, or purifying form of the language, a stilted construct that blighted the schooling of generations of children. 

Source: Richard Clogg. 2002. A concise history of Greece. Cambridge University Press.

Read more...