Excepting machinery, there is hardly anything secular in our culture
that does not come from Greece. Schools, gymnasiums, arithmetic, geometry,
history, rhetoric, physics, biology, anatomy, hygiene, therapy, cosmetics,
poetry, music, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, theology, agnosticism, skepticism,
stoicism, epicureanism, ethics, politics, idealism, philanthropy, cynicism,
tyranny, plutocracy, democracy: these are all Greek words for cultural
forms seldom originated, but in many cases first matured for good or evil by the
abounding energy of the Greeks. All the problems that disturb us today-
the cutting down of the forests and the erosion of the soil; the emancipation of
women and the limitation of the family; the conservatism of the established, and
the experimentalism of the unplaced, in morals, music, and the government; the
corruption of politics and the perversions of conduct; the conflict of religion
and science, the weakening of the supernatural supports of morality; the war of
the classes, the nations, and the continents; the revolutions of the poor
against the economically powerfully rich, and of the rich against the
politically powerfully poor; the struggle between democracy and dictatorship,
between individualism and communism, between the East and the West- all these
agitated, as if for our instruction, the brilliant and turbulent life of ancient
Hellas. There is nothing in Greek civilization that does not illuminate our
own... Will Durant
