Europe and Turkey: foster Classical Studies without Greco-Romano-centric deviations!

In a series of articles, we delved into the historical background of misinterpretations and misconceptions that are the fundamental reason of the European partly unfriendly attitude to Turkey and the basic cause of the erroneous assumption that Turkey is not part of (does not belong to) Europe. There are issues related to
a) confused identity of (Top Priority for Turkey and Europe: Clarify Identity and Limit Confusion! / http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/10-5-2005-78210.asp),
b) undermined cultural aspects of (Urgent Task for Turkey and Europe: Reveal True European History to Europeans / http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/10-10-2005-78484.asp),
c) erroneously assessed nature of (First Objective for Turkey and Europe: Assess the Origin and the Confines of Europe / http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/10-11-2005-78630.asp),
d) partial viewpoint over (Turkey And Europe Must Go Beyond Obsolete Colonial History / http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/10-14-2005-78914.asp), and
e) disregarded – if not intentionally unevoked – origins of (Middle Eastern Civilizations' Expansion Brought Civilization To Europe / http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/10-18-2005-79184.asp) the European History.

In the present article, we intend to analyze that, due to the still prevailing Greco-Romano-centrism, Europeans learn a false History of Ancient Greece and Rome, which at the same time is tremendously prejudicial to the real needs of today's Europe.

Divided Greece or Unified Empire: Model Persons, States, Principles, Theories, and Basic Historical Sources.

As we already specified, the fake Greco-centrism is focused on Democratic Athens, producing therefore educational and cultural patterns for modern Europeans that relate to 5th century BCE Athens. It may look convincing to present a democratic state as example to modern citizens, but how much democratic 5th century BCE Athens truly was? If we push aside the curtains of partial and preconceived approach and interpretation, we soon realize that Athens was not a really democratic state.

Women were not considered as Athenian citizens, and were not given political rights and responsibilities. The misconception and misperception of the Athenian Democratic model by the partial European intellectuals have cost more than a hundred years of delay in according vote rights to women. The most interesting occurrence in this regard is the fact that women in Modern Turkey were accorded the right to elect and be elected a few years before similar legislation was introduced in France! The supposedly best model of Modern Human Rights and Democracy has been bested by a Muslim country that underwent a resolute and unbiased cultural revolution in the 1920s and 30s.

Even worse, slaves were not considered as proper human beings in Ancient Athens. According to scholarly estimations they were mostly of Illyrian, Cimmerian, Scythian and Thracian origin, and they were at least twice as large as the indigenous Athenians. As a consequence, they had no right to participate in the common affairs, the 'res publica', of the 'democratic' Athenians! A free citizen should prove six generations ancestry of permanent residence in Athens in order to be considered as a 'real' Athenian.

Does this situation remind you of something similar? The parallelism between the slaves in Athens and the deprived from political rights Gastarbeiter, the Turkish, Greek, Yugoslavian, African, Indian and other Asiatic foreign workers, in today's Europe is striking. When today's politicians complain about the slow integration of foreign workers, mostly Muslims, in the European culture and lifestyle, they seem unable to understand the degree of alienation faced, the deprivations suffered, and the ensuing results. But few realize that the mistake should not mainly be attributed to either the Gastarbeiter or the unsuccessful and mean political class of Europe. The mistake is to be sought mainly at the level of principle, concept and model.

Truly speaking, Ancient Athenian politics and the elitism of the discriminatory class can barely serve as the paradigm for our modern democratic societies; if this is not understood plainly, Europe will never become an emancipated and unified power, putting an end to a long era of cultural puerility.

No one observed in Europe so far that too much of Thucydides reading did a lot of harm to Europe since the Medieval Ages, plunging the continent into civil wars for which Europe retains the tragic world record. How could Europe possibly avoid the Napoleonic wars, the two World Wars, and so many other wars, the Hundred Years war, the Thirty Years war, and the Cold war, since European education has long been permeated by the spirit of discord, friction and hostility as revealed throughout Thucydides' Civil War (Peloponnesus War)?

Generations over generations in Europe have been educated on the basis of fratricidal wars in Ancient Greece, and in Ancient Rome. It is quite interesting that Caeasar's De Bello Civili is also widely used within European educational systems, although it represents one of the most tarnished pages of Roman History.

Going back to Ancient Greece, we find difficult to believe that post-WW II Europe, and even more so post-Cold War Europe, could find more destructive, harmful, and absolutely counterfeit model as 7th – 4th BCE centuries Ancient Greece, oscillating between Sparta and Athens, Corinth and Argos, Thebes and Megara, Chalkis and Eretria, always engulfed in wars and disputes. What could be the common denominator between a thorough (but relatively ineffective so far) effort of unification and the paranoia of rupture after fracture, and over-splitting after quarreling attested in Ancient Greece?

How can the tiny politicians of Athens, the kings of Sparta, the wise men of Argos, the merchants of Corinth, and the dictators of Thebes – always focusing on their lot and disregarding the entirety, always unable to consider anything in non-divisive terms – be possibly taken as model by today's Europeans without immediately jeopardizing the few chances left for Europe to successfully unite?

European intellectuals and academics must understand once forever that Cleombrotos and Perikles, Epameinondas and Cleisthenes cannot anymore be taken as models, Demosthenes and Thucydides cannot anymore be taught and used as foundations of European culture, and the city-state that condemned Socrates to death cannot anymore be given any credit, except that of oblivion.

If Europe is to be based on solid moral foundations, certainly the Greek Heritage can serve this effort and offer numerous moral examples as described within original historical sources. Today's Europe needs the humble spirit of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, who admitted that they traveled and studied in the great temples – universities of Babylonia, Persia and Egypt in order to transfer the Lights of the Civilization back to Uncultured Greece.

Modern Europe needs Pythagoras' contemplations, Plato's discernment, Xenophon's adventurism, Arrian's grandiosity, Strabo's universalism, and above all Europe needs Alexander's dream that many centuries later kept motivating great people like Ptolemy II, Cleopatra VII, Caesar, Octavian Augustus, Trajan, Julian, and Justinian. Europe needs the research spirit of the librarians of Alexandria, and in this regard Eratosthenes is far more valuable than Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus overshadows Lycias, and Heliodorus eclipses Euripides. Europe needs to delve into the Gnosticisms of Late Antiquity, and Poimandres, as the first Book claimed to have been entirely written by the Supreme God, Hermes Trismegistus, is far more instructive and enlightening than Lucretius' De Rerum Natura.

At the Apex of European Unification, Alexander and the Late Antiquity are the Correct Source of Inspiration.

With Turkey having started official negotiations with Europe, and with discussions focusing about the possible adhesion date for the poorer Balkan states, several commentators start pondering about the chances of Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and eventually Russia to complete the picture, and ultimately set up the European House aspired by M. Gorbachev long ago. Even if it all ends with Ukraine, and Russia is given a special partner status, under conditions of substantial democratic progress, separation of the judiciary from the executive, and respect for Human Rights and its numerous and sizable minorities, European Union will have nothing to do with a small city – state or a modern national state formed around a single – people nation.

The historical model for Europe, whether old fashioned and myopic politicians like Giscard d' Estaing are able to understand it or not, is the Ancient Oriental Empire. European Union is the de facto revivification of the Roman Empire; no matter however one is predestined to accept it and perceive it, whatever the references may be, to the Eastern Roman Empire, to the Western Roman Empire, to Justinian's Empire of Reconquista, to Octavian's Empire with some strong democratic features still functioning or to Theodosius' Christened Empire, European Union is the revivified Roman Empire. It relates to the Byzantine and the Ottoman traditions of Nova Roma / Constantinople / Istanbul, to the Russian tsarist tradition of Third Rome, to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. And as all these imperial formations sought to resuscitate the Universalist Dream of Alexander, the Macedonian Empire remains the ultimate European point of reference to the Ancient Greek world: all the Greeks, except the Lacedemonian Spartans, were united under the non-Greek, Macedonian scepter of the great conqueror, who was full of contempt for the mean, tiny cities – states of the Greek microcosm, Athens, Thebes, Argos, Corinth, and Sparta.

A European Imperial Educational and Cultural reference to Alexander does not consist in a threat for the Democratic Ideals and Principles elaborated by modern European philosophers and intellectuals over the past three centuries. It would be a dramatic confusion to interpret the term 'imperial' as 'undemocratic' or 'totalitarian', although – it is true – throughout many historical periods 'imperial' became synonym of the 'absolutist' and the 'cruel'. At its original connotation, the 'imperial' does not contradict but it rather corresponds to the Humanist ideals that were elaborated in Renaissance Europe. Imperium signifies ultimate peace, one country encompassing a great number of communities and peoples sharing the same rights and bearing the same responsibilities, all living in peace, one country with citizens of varied origins and beliefs enjoying progress and prosperity without borders separating one from another and generating wars and conflicts.

A European Union stretched from the Atlantic to Tigris river, to Caucasus mountains, and – why not – to Vladivostok in the northeastern confines of Asia would be the splendid materialization of the most daring Vision of Alexander the Great, and as such it would lead us to the origins of his dream, back to the Achaemenid Empire of Iran, when Cyrus the Great (Alexander kneeled before his tomb at Pasargadae) was viewed as Messianic model by Deutero-Isaiah, and ultimately to Sargonid Assyria, when Sargon of Assyria (722 – 705 BCE) accepted in Nineveh the preaching of Jonah and his great grandson Assurbanipal (Alexander admitted him as the unsurpassed model of imperial and strategist achievement) was viewed by Esdras as 'Great and Just'.

Similarly with the three cases of Assurbanipal, the early Achaemenid Shahs, and Alexander, and contrarily to the various cases of the Epigones (mostly the Seleucids in this regard), the Romans, the Eastern Romans, and the Ottomans on one side and the Arsacid Parthians, the Sassanid Persians, the Umayyad and the Abbasid dynasties, and the Safevid Persians (under whom the Middle East was always divided), the Ultimate European Union as an accomplished Eurasian Empire would consist in a supreme universal achievement and would certainly incorporate the remaining parts of the Middle East within its borders.

Pending these developments, Turkey's adhesion would help familiarize Europeans with the Oriental Heritage that is also theirs, as we already said in previous articles, and would make of Alexander the Great the central figure and of the Late Antiquity the focal period for all Europeans to discover, understand, re-assess and utilize as source of ideological inspiration and common cultural background.

Like this, the Messianic Legend of Alexander, which emanated from his exploits and adventures, searches and fights, and later split in Western (Pseudo-Callisthenes' Alexander Romance) and Eastern (Ferdowsi's Shah-nameh containing chapters on Iskander Dhu' Qarneyn and Nizami's Sekander-nameh) versions, will be found reunified within the Greater Eurasia that should be the ultimate aspiration of all the peoples of the world.

More attention should be given to practices and choices that characterized the Great Macedonian Monarch; his respect for the 'other' made him gain the sympathy and the commitment of all the peoples he invaded from Egyptians to Babylonians and from Jews to Persians. Alexander transferred his capital to Babylon, Pella was too small and marginal, and Athens had gone with the wind. He became a Shah in Persia, and as centuries later Ferdowsi put it, he became Darius in his stead! Son to Amen – Ra, Alexander was depicted as Pharaoh on various Egyptian temples, contributing to the enlargement and the renovations of some of them like the Opet festival temple of Amen at Thebes of Egypt – Luqsor. This did not prevent him from kneeling in front of the Grand Rabbi at Jerusalem, and at the same time he founded 33 cities in his name, and in all of them a theater, typically Greek an institution, was built and functioned.

It has to be understood that already the European Union with 25 members does not reflect anymore realities of the times of the six members of the European Coal and Steel Community (1951) and the European Economic Community (1957). With Turkey, the entire Balkan Peninsula and Ukraine, the situation will differ tremendously. The center of gravity will not stay for long around Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg. Warsaw, Odessa, Kiev Istanbul and Athens will certainly pull Europe's gravitational center to the East.

Where to delve in for cultural and educational inspiration, if not in the times of Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Caesarea, Tarsus, and Imperial Rome? With so many Turks in Germany, what wisdom can Pericles' Athens possibly offer? Contrarily, a better study of, a greater focus on, and a higher concern for Alexandria will help. Assessing historical sources of the Late Antiquity, we will understand better what made possible for Egyptians, Greeks, Macedonians, Persians ('ek tes epigones'), Phoenicians, Jews, Aramaeans, Nubians, Libyans, Sudanese Meroites and other populations to live peacefully in Cosmopolitan Alexandria and thence expand to Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean. The same sources will help us realize what went wrong, and how we will prevent it from happening again, and a terrible discord and fratricide conflicts occurred first between the Greeks and the Jews of Alexandria, later between the Jews and the Greek – Roman front, and then between the Christians and the Egyptians, the Coptic and the Greek patriarchates, and finally the Muslims and the Copts.

The challenges of our times and the devices we have to face impose therefore refocusing the Greco-Roman studies around Philo of Alexandria rather than Aristotle, Flavius Josephus rather than Herodotus, Pistis Sophia rather than Sophocles, the Periplus of the Red Sea rather than the Pindaric odes, Plutarch than Isocrates.

Classical studies, culture and education in Europe cannot be left in their obsolete, inconsistent, and upside down form that dates back to the colonial times of a divided Europe plunged in fratricidal wars. For Turkey a better incorporation of similar changes within the current, deficient to a certain extent, system will be a proof that the entire country, the average Turkish society, and above all the intellectuals and the academia, show a great part of concern for a sumptuous part of Turkey's historical heritage that encompasses among the rest a most thrilling figure of the World's Intellectual Adventure: Celsus.