Hellenist author, Bruce Clark, who has a long association
and deep understanding of Greece from ancient times to modern, wrote a new book on the history of Athens.
The book, published recently and titled “Athens the City of
Wisdom” is a narrative history of Athens telling the three thousand year story of the birthplace of civilization and democracy.
Born in Northern Ireland, Clark is also a lecturer and a
journalist. As a journalist for Reuters,
The Times, The Financial Times, and The Economist, he traveled numerous times
to Greece.
His command of modern Greek enables him to delve into the
politics, society, culture, and history of the country.
“I can see an inner self-confidence which can have good and
bad results,” he had said of the Greeks.
“There is an impressive ability to recover from disaster, but also a
temptation to court disaster, by flying too near the sun,” he told the Greek
press in a recent interview, as he was working on his above-mentioned book.
From the legal reforms of the law-maker Solon in the 6th
century BC to the travails of the early twenty-first century Athens, as it
struggled with the legacy of the economic crises of the 2000s. Clark brings the
city’s history, evolving its cultural richness and political resonance in its
epic kaleidoscopic history.
“Athens is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities
in the world. It has been a place of
human settlement for at least 5.000 years. But its fortune and its relationship
with the wider world of Greekness have fluctuated widely,” Clark said.
In a note to the press, Clark brilliantly summarizes how the capital of a fragile new kingdom, built on German dreams of the Hellenic past.
From the legal reforms of the lawmaker Solon in the 6th century BC to the travails of early 21st century Athens as it struggles with the legacy of the economic crises of the 2000s, Clark brings the city's history, evolving its cultural richness and political resonance in its epic, kaleidoscopic history.
"Athens is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It has been a place of human settlement for at least 5000 years. But its fortunes and its relationship with the wider sense of Greekness, have fluctuated widely," Clark said.
In a note to the press, Clark brilliantly summarises how the status of Athens has fluctuated over the centuries.
“As barbarians assailed the Roman Empire and the Christian
religion spread, Athens was the last place of polytheist worship and philosophy.
Later it was a place of medieval Christian
pilgrimage a modest town whose culture fired the imagination of rich young
Westerners of then the capital of a fragile new kingdom, built on German dreams
of the Hellenic past.
“Only in the 20th century, amidst wars, refugee flows, occupation, and rapid expansion did Athens take a shape of a chaotic, dynamic hub of modern Hellenism. In the early 21st century, after recovering against the odds of economic disaster, a sprawling conurbation of four million teeters between exuberant, multicultural creativity and ecological dystopia.”
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