Wednesday, March 23, 2011

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM by Ap. Vakalopoulos

REMARKS ON THE RACIAL ORIGIN AND THE INTELLECTUAL CONTINUITY OF THE GREEK NATION

The understanding of intellectual phenomena presupposes not only an adequate stock or knowledge and possess.ion of method but also a maturity of mind, since chiefly with deep personal experience are we able to stand before the remarkable historical and sociological phenomena and try to perceive the course they take in our highly comblex life. The main reason we require much time for the consideration and understanding of phenomena is that frequendy the great changes in history come about very slowly. They unfold gradually and imperceptibly without our being aware of them. The greatest difficulty of all is in following the pattern of these phenomena through the course of the centuries. Such problems are:  the famous origin of the modern Greeks and, second, other problems bound up with this first but nonetheless still thorny and much debated. These are problems concerning the relationships and common ground between the ideas of the Ancient and Byzantine world and those of the modern Greeks.
Moreover I would like to bring to mind the establishment of Roman colonies in various parts of the Greek territory,  in Epirus and Macedonia.....