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The later 19th-century European philhellenism was largely to be found among the
Classicists.
Philhellenes in antiquity
In antiquity, the term philhellene ("the admirer of Greeks and everything Greek"), from the (
Greek: φιλέλλην, from φίλος - philos, "friend", "lover" + Ἕλλην - Hellen, "Greek")[1] was used to describe both non-Greeks who were fond of ancient Greek culture and Greeks who patriotically upheld their culture. The
Liddell-Scott Greek-English Lexicon defines 'philhellene' as "fond of the Hellenes, mostly of foreign princes, as
Amasis; of
Parthian kings[...]; also of Hellenic tyrants, as
Jason of Pherae and generally of
Hellenic (Greek) patriots.[1] According to
Xenophon, an honorable Greek should also be a philhellene.[2]
The early rulers of the
Parthian Empire, starting with
Mithridates I (
r. 171–132 BC), used the title of philhellenes on their coins, which was a political act done in order to establish friendly relations with their Greek subjects.[5]
Following the example of the Parthians,
Tigranes adopted the title of Philhellene (friend of the Greeks). The layout of his capital
Tigranocerta was an example of
Greek architecture.
The literate upper classes of
Ancient Rome were increasingly
Hellenized in their culture during the 3rd century BC.[6][7][8]
Among Romans the career of
Titus Quinctius Flamininus (died 174 BC), who appeared at the
Isthmian Games in
Corinth in 196 BC and proclaimed the freedom of the Greek states, was fluent in Greek, stood out, according to
Livy, as a great admirer of
Greek culture. The Greeks hailed him as their liberator.[9] There were some Romans during the late Republic, who were distinctly anti-Greek, resenting the increasing influence of Greek culture on Roman life, an example being the Roman Censor,
Cato the Elder and
Cato the Younger, who lived during the "Greek invasion" of Rome but towards the later years of his life he eventually became a philhellene after his stay in Rhodes.[10]
The lyric poet
Quintus Horatius Flaccus was another philhellene. He is notable for his words, "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis intulit agresti Latio" (Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium), meaning that after the conquest of Greece the defeated Greeks created a cultural hegemony over the Romans.
In the period of political reaction and repression after the fall of
Napoleon, when the liberal-minded, educated and prosperous middle and upper classes of European societies found the
Romantic nationalism of 1789–1792 repressed by the restoration of
absolute monarchy at home, the idea of the re-creation of a Greek state on the very territories that were sanctified by their view of Antiquity—which was reflected even in the
furnishings of their own parlors and the contents of their bookcases—offered an ideal, set at a romantic distance. Under these conditions, the
Greek uprising constituted a source of inspiration and expectations that could never actually be fulfilled, disappointing what
Paul Cartledge called "the Victorian self-identification with the Glory that was Greece".[11] American higher education was fundamentally transformed by the rising admiration of and identification with ancient Greece in the 1830s and afterward.[12]
Another popular subject of interest in
Greek culture at the turn of the 19th century was the shadowy
Scythian philosopher
Anacharsis, who lived in the 6th century BC. The new prominence of Anacharsis was sparked by
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy's fanciful Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece (1788), a learned imaginary
travel journal, one of the first
historical novels, which a modern scholar has called "the encyclopedia of the new cult of the antique" in the late 18th century. It had a high impact on the growth of philhellenism in France: the book went through many editions, was reprinted in the United States and was translated into German and other languages. It later inspired European sympathy for the Greek War of Independence and spawned sequels and imitations throughout the 19th century.
In
German culture the first phase of philhellenism can be traced in the careers and writings of
Johann Joachim Winckelmann, one of the inventors of art history,
Friedrich August Wolf, who inaugurated modern
Homeric scholarship with his Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795) and the enlightened bureaucrat
Wilhelm von Humboldt. It was also in this context that
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and
Friedrich Hölderlin were to compose poetry and prose in the field of literature, elevating Hellenic themes in their works. One of the most renowned German philhellenes of the 19th century was
Friedrich Nietzsche.[13] In the
German states, the private obsession with ancient Greece took public forms, institutionalizing an elite philhellene
ethos through the Gymnasium, to revitalize
German education at home, and providing on two occasions high-minded philhellene German princes ignorant of modern-day Greek realities, to be Greek sovereigns.[15]
During the later 19th century the new studies of archaeology and anthropology began to offer a quite separate view of ancient Greece, which had previously been experienced second-hand only through
Greek literature,
Greek sculpture and
architecture.[16] Twentieth-century heirs of the 19th-century view of an unchanging, immortal quality of "Greekness" are typified in J. C. Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (1910) or R. and E. Blum's The Dangerous Hour: The lore of crisis and mystery in rural Greece (1970).[17]
Nikos Dimou's The Misfortune to be Greek[19] argues that the Philhellenes' expectation for the modern
Greek people to live up to their ancestors' allegedly glorious past has always been a burden upon the Greeks themselves.[20] In particular, Western Philhellenism focused exclusively on the heritage of Classical Greece, while negating or rejecting the heritage of the
Byzantine Empire and the
Greek Orthodox Church, which for the Greek people are at least as important.
Philhellenism and art
Philhellenism also created a renewed interest in the artistic movement of
Neoclassicism, which idealized fifth-century Classical Greek art and architecture,[21] very much at second hand, through the writings of the first generation of art historians, like
Johann Joachim Winckelmann and
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.
The groundswell of the Philhellenic movement was result of two generations of intrepid artists and amateur treasure-seekers, from Stuart and Revett, who published their measured drawings as The Antiquities of Athens and culminating with the removal of sculptures from
Aegina and the
Parthenon (the
Elgin Marbles), works that inspired the British Philhellenes, many of whom, however, deplored their removal.
Philhellenism in the Greek War of Independence and later
Some, notably
Lord Byron, even took up arms to join the Greek revolutionaries. Many more financed the revolution or contributed through their artistic work.
Throughout the 19th century, philhellenes continued to support Greece politically and militarily. For example,
Ricciotti Garibaldi led a volunteer expedition (Garibaldini) in the
Greco-Turkish War of 1897.[23] A group of Garibaldini, headed by the Greek poet
Lorentzos Mavilis, fought also with the Greek side during the
Balkan Wars.
^
abLiddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert.
"φιλ-έλλην". A Greek-English Lexicon. Tufts University.
Archived from the original on 2021-09-17. Retrieved 2021-09-17 – via Perseus Digital Library.
^Winterer, Caroline (2002). The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910. Johns Hopkins University Press.
^The history of pedagogically conservative philhellenism in German high academic culture has been examined in
Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 (
Princeton University Press, 1996); she begins with Winckelmann, Wolf and von Humboldt.
^S. L. Marchand, 1992. Archaeology and Cultural Politics in Germany, 1800–1965: The Decline of Philhellenism (University of Chicago).
^Cartledge, Paul. "The Greeks and Anthropology." Anthropology Today, vol. 10, no. 3, 1994, pp. 3–6. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/2783476. Accessed 9 June 2023.
^Cartledge, Paul. "The Greeks and Anthropology." Anthropology Today, vol. 10, no. 3, 1994, pp. 3–6. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/2783476. Accessed 9 June 2023.
^Cartledge, Paul. "The Greeks and Anthropology." Anthropology Today, vol. 10, no. 3, 1994, pp. 3–6. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/2783476. Accessed 9 June 2023.
^It often selected for its favoured models third- and second-century sculptures that were actually
Hellenistic in origin, and appreciated through the lens of Roman copies: see Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Antique Sculpture 1500–1900 (1981).
^
abcGilles Pécout, "Philhellenism in Italy: political friendship and the Italian volunteers in the Mediterranean in the nineteenth century", Journal of Modern Italian Studies9:4:405–427 (2004)
doi:
10.1080/1354571042000296380
Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Nan A. Talese, 2003)
Stella Ghervas, « Le philhellénisme d'inspiration conservatrice en Europe et en Russie », in Peuples, Etats et nations dans le Sud-Est de l'Europe, (Bucarest, Ed. Anima, 2004.)
Stella Ghervas, « Le philhellénisme russe : union d'amour ou d'intérêt? », in Regards sur le philhellénisme, (Genève, Mission permanente de la Grèce auprès de l'ONU, 2008).