We owe so much to the Hellenic culture of the ancients, not least the simple moral lessons of their fables and epics. Somehow, modern Greeks opted to ignore the advice their forebears bequeathed to all humanity. If only they had stopped their ears against the siren song of the spendthrift left.
Greece is an amazing country with history to match. The rest of the world owes Greeks big-time for their bequest of immortal literature, theatre, art, democracy, science, medicine, philosophy, travel, the alphabet. At the risk of sounding like the heroine’s father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the fact is that a great many things in our modern lives have been borrowed or adapted from the Greeks. Hellenic culture is regarded as one of the three foundation stones of Western civilisation, the trifecta being Jewish monotheism, Roman law and Greek democracy. That legacy highlights Greek culture’s contribution to the way we live, think and behave. Another gift is the lessons we ought to draw from Greece’s default on the country’s debt.