Athens: Metropolis of Knowledge. By Bruce Clark.Pegasus; 512 pages; $35. Head of Zeus; £25
Choosing Athena as protector as an alternative of the ocean god Poseidon was a intelligent transfer by the residents of Athens. The parable holds that the goddess of knowledge received them over by planting an olive tree as a promise of fruitful longevity. She was nearly as good as her phrase. Three thousand years on, town stays one of many nice and most intriguing capitals of the world. On this vividly entertaining new historical past, Bruce Clark exhibits readers why. In 500 pages, he expertly tells the story of a metropolis that held the stage for a millennium, then retired to the wings, however by no means misplaced its capability to fascinate.
That founding fable, with its message of Athenian exceptionalism, turned the topic of one of many Parthenon’s pediments within the fifth century bc. The Athenians lived as much as it: they trounced two Persian invasions, constructed magnificence on the Acropolis and created a revolutionary type of authorities that empowered its residents to do distinctive issues. It was an concept so highly effective that it survived a disastrous struggle with Sparta and endured in some type for an additional 200 years. Throughout the Roman interval, Athens remained the nerve centre for mental life, educating the empire’s elite and galvanizing a lot new constructing. Hadrian’s Arch, his library and the Temple of Olympian Zeus are all nonetheless there at present.
As Christianity unfold, polytheistic Athens misplaced a lot of its significance; the Byzantine Emperor Justinian closed its colleges of philosophy within the sixth century. However Mr Clark is eager to point out that one thing of its affect survived the Christian takeover. Readers study that the Parthenon turned a splendid church and place of pilgrimage dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and that, within the seventh century, an Archbishop of Canterbury might properly have been educated in Athens. As Byzantium slowly disintegrated, Athens was fought over by Italians and Spanish till it fell to Ottoman vassalage in 1460. Three centuries on, the Acropolis was residence to a Turkish garrison and European travellers had been again sketching its ruins, some cynically plundering them for the adornment of their Scottish pile.
After independence in 1832, Athens was bulldozed to create a pastiche of her classical self and the Acropolis was stripped to its classical necessities. But it surely was capital to a nation of solely 800,000 souls that wanted extra taxpayers to succeed. So started the Megali Thought of gathering all Greeks right into a neo-Byzantine polity with Constantinople as its capital. Eleftherios Venizelos’s “nearly infallible political genius” almost made it occur, however the failure of the irredentist idea led to an unlimited Greek/Turkish inhabitants trade which Mr Clark describes with feeling: each the expertise of particular person refugees and the indelible contribution they made to Greece’s financial and cultural life.
Greece’s drawback was great-power interference. Twice within the twentieth century, the streets of Athens witnessed preventing between British and Greek forces, and, within the twenty first, violent protests in opposition to the austerity package deal which was a part of a bail-out settlement with the European Union. Mr Clark deftly guides readers by the impact of the Greek monetary disaster on Athens, each its horrible human value and the extraordinary renewal—cultural, culinary—that has include restoration.
All through the guide, Mr Clark summons the marvellous refrain he’s assembled to share the story: Saint Philothei, a Sixteenth-century nun who was martyred by bandits and have become town’s patron saint; the nurse Florence Nightingale, who walked the Acropolis by moonlight and introduced residence a child owl; the poet George Seferis who dared to talk out in opposition to the army junta and whose chic poetry opened the Olympic video games in 2004.
Athens is a muddle of a metropolis, a mixture of matchless magnificence and downright hideousness, whose eccentricities provoke a love that can not be uncritical. Mr Clark’s crucial esteem shines by each web page as he describes the “gimcrack piece of kitsch” that's the cathedral, the steep lanes of Plaka (“one of many oldest constantly inhabited locations on this planet”) and the limitless polykatoikia (house buildings) that will damage the attention however lend themselves to social mixing and household cohesion. “Athens: Metropolis of Knowledge” is a triumph of a guide that ought to be learn by those that already know this metropolis’s significance and attraction and people who wish to. It's a rare achievement. ■
JAMES HENEAGE*
*Our coverage is to determine the reviewer of any guide by or about somebody carefully linked with The Economist. James Heneage is a novelist and the creator of “The Shortest Historical past of Greece”, printed in 2021.
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