The Western Question - 1922

The Western Question in Greece and Turkey,

A Study in the Contact of Civilisations by Arnold J. Toynbee

London - Bombay - Syndey 1922

 

"In the northeastern provinces of Turkey, the massacre of Armenians by Moslems has been endemic since 1895; in Macedonia the mutual massacre of Greeks, Bulgars, Serbs, and Albanians since about 1899; and after the Balkan Wars the plague of racial warfare spread—with the streams of Moslem refugees—from Macedonia to Thrace and Western Anatolia." (pg. 17)

"The Khilafat movement is also part of that wave of sentiment which moves Modern Greeks to think of themselves as the special heirs of Pericles or Alexander, or to overload their language with reminiscences of Thucydides and Homer." (pg. 29)

"Lysimachus was one of Alexander’s generals and heirs, and he laid out Ephesus at a moment when all Asia, from the Aegean to the Pamirs, had been opened to Greek enterprise by Alexander’s conquests." (pg. 149)

"Then there are the conquests of Alexander—jubilantly trumpeted by the Greek Press of all parties in 1921, whenever their troops advanced. The ‘Gordian Knot’ was to be cut once again by General Papulas! They forgot that Alexander had not after all out witted the oracle. Whoever untied the knot was to rule Asia. Alexander cut it, and destroyed the Persian Empire (which had tied the Middle East together for two centuries) without founding another. His enduring achievements were negative. By overthrowing the Oriental world-state he threw open the Middle East to Hellenic civilisation, but he did not permanently annex to his ancestral kingdom of Macedonia either Western Anatolia or any other of the vast territories which he overran. After his death, Western Anatolia was fought over for more than a century by rival Powers—a Greek kingdom at Antioch, pushing up north-westward along the modern route of the Baghdad Railway; a Greek kingdom in the Balkans, first in Thrace and then in Macedonia, which never secured any hold; a Greek kingdom in Egypt, operating coastwise from overseas; local Powers like Pergamon (a revived Lydia) and the city-states of Cyzicus and Rhodes; and the immigrant Galatian tribesmen. In the midst of this political anarchy, Hellenic civilisation only made progress in Anatolia because there was no counter-influence like Islam in the field against it (the civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt being remote and by that time enfeebled). Moreover, even this cultural progress was comparatively slight until it was assisted by the Roman conquest and political unification of the country." (pg. 222)

"For ten days I walked about in the Morea, sleeping in the villagers’ houses, talking with them over the evening meal, and continuing the conversation on the mountain-tracks next morning; and afterwards I made a more rapid excursion into Western Macedonia. The Morea was the heart of ‘Old Greece’ and had been solidly Royalist. The Greeks of Macedonia had only been united to the Kingdom after the Balkan War, and, like most of their newly liberated kinsmen, had been supporters of Mr. Venizelos. The Moreots are provincials, the Macedonians— linked up with the West by railway more than a generation ago—are comparatively in touch with the world." (pg. 243)

Discovered by Marsyas Periandrou

Delphic maxims from Ai-Khanoum

Ai-Khanoum (lit. "Lady Moon" in Uzbek) is located in Kunduz Province of Afghanistan. City was founded by Alexander the Great around 328 BC. City may have been Alexandria on the Oxus, or later named اروکرتیه or Eucratidia. The site was excavated through archaeological searches by a French DAFA mission under Paul Bernard between 1964 and 1978, and looks just like a Greek city, including temples, a heroön, palace, colonnaded courts, city wall, gymnasium (sport school), houses, Corinthian columns, free-standing statues, and a theater with 5,000 seats.

The inscription with the Delphic precepts, at Ai-Khanoum

In Ai-Khanoum have been found various inscriptions in Classical Greek. Robert Lane Fox, about the Greekness of those inscriptions, said:

"Excavations at Ai Khanoum on the northern border of modern Afghanistan have produced great quantities of Greek inscriptions and even the remnants of a philosophical treatise originally on papyrus. One of the most interesting is the base of a dedication by one Klearchos, perhaps the known student of Aristotle, that records his bringing to this new Greek city, Alexandria on the Oxus..."

On a Herôon (funerary monument), identified in Greek as the tomb of Kineas (the oikistes, founder, of the Greek settlement), it's written:

ἀνδρῶν τοι σοφὰ ταῦτα παλαιοτέρων ἀνάκει[τα]ι
ῥήματα ἀριγνώτων Πυθοὶ ἐν ἠγαθέαι·
ἔνθεν ταῦτ[α] Κλέαρχος ἐπιφραδέως ἀναγράψας
εἵσατο τηλαυγῆ Κινέου ἐν τεμένει.

Bactria — Aï-Khanoum — 3rd c. BC — CRAI 1968.421-430 — Merk.-Staub., Jenseits Euphrat 103A; Fouilles Aï-Khanoum VIII (1992) 389,1a — Merk.-Staub. III 12/01/01

English translation:

"These wise sayings of older men, far-famed, are dedicated in holy Pytho; from where Clearhus assidously copied these things and set them up in the temenos of Cineas to shine out far and wide."

παῖς ὢν κόσμιος γίνου,
ἡβῶν ἐγκρατής,
μέσος δίκαιος ,
πρεσβύτης εὔβουλος,
τελευτῶν ἄλυπος.

Bactria — Aï-Khanoum — 3rd c. BC — CRAI 1968.424-426, 429 — Merk.-Staub. III 12/01/01

English translation:

"As children, learn good manners
as young men, learn to control the passions
in middle age, be just
in old age, give good advice
then die, without regret."