0:00:27 > 0:00:31If our friends, the schoolmasters, hadn't touched them, the Greeks,
0:00:31 > 0:00:35like Shakespeare, would still seem as exciting as they really were.
0:00:35 > 0:00:39A tiny people, starved by a stony landscape,
0:00:39 > 0:00:42but dreaming new things in art, politics and science.
0:00:42 > 0:00:46Like all Greek thinking, the Greek gods were clear and objective.
0:00:46 > 0:00:50The Greeks kept in touch with them and listened to them
0:00:50 > 0:00:54in the way we pick up a telephone or turn on a wireless.
0:00:54 > 0:00:59And what they heard was to them no less real or unreal.
0:00:59 > 0:01:01The centre of Greek worship,
0:01:01 > 0:01:06in a sense the centre of the Greek world, was the island of Delos.
0:01:06 > 0:01:08There Delos lies in the Aegean Sea,
0:01:08 > 0:01:12untidy with the relics of gods and men.
0:01:12 > 0:01:16So sacred it had become that those about to die or give birth
0:01:16 > 0:01:21were taken off the island to keep it pure and undefiled.
0:01:21 > 0:01:24According to Homer, this was the birthplace of Apollo
0:01:24 > 0:01:27and Artemis and to the Temple of Apollo,
0:01:27 > 0:01:31the whole wealth of the Greek world attributed.
0:01:31 > 0:01:33That wealth has long been scattered
0:01:33 > 0:01:37and the centre of the Greek world is desolation.
0:01:37 > 0:01:40Sometimes across the desolation, a message comes through.
0:01:40 > 0:01:44"I am of the same marble," says the archaic inscription,
0:01:44 > 0:01:46both statue and pedestal.
0:01:54 > 0:01:59The people of neighbouring Naxos offered Apollo their lions.
0:01:59 > 0:02:02These guardians of the holy place have stayed on,
0:02:02 > 0:02:05oblivious of the departure of their gods.
0:02:33 > 0:02:37In front of the lions, there was a sacred lake.
0:02:37 > 0:02:39Today, the lake is a tangled field
0:02:39 > 0:02:44and two or three lonely columns merely remind us how decay's
0:02:44 > 0:02:49effacing fingers have swept the lines where beauty lingers.
0:02:52 > 0:02:55In Delos, too, you were not allowed to look at your own shadow,
0:02:55 > 0:02:59lest death strike you within the year. Help!
0:03:10 > 0:03:14A sacred mountain still caps the sacred island.
0:03:15 > 0:03:20Halfway up, a cleft in the rocks was once a shrine of a rustic kind,
0:03:20 > 0:03:22earlier than the formal temples.
0:03:26 > 0:03:29When the Greek world declined, Delos,
0:03:29 > 0:03:34in its central position, caught the practical eye of the Roman traders.
0:03:34 > 0:03:37They arrived with all the machinery of commerce
0:03:37 > 0:03:41and Delos the Sacred became Delos the Profane.
0:03:41 > 0:03:45Even so, the Roman tradesmen's houses have a certain robust
0:03:45 > 0:03:48charm and are well worth looking at.
0:04:05 > 0:04:10This prosperous Roman town could even boast of three-storeyed houses.
0:04:10 > 0:04:13And one of these, almost a unique survival,
0:04:13 > 0:04:17still stands against the hillside below the sacred mountain.
0:04:17 > 0:04:18Indeed, today,
0:04:18 > 0:04:23when Greek piety on Delos is a mere scatter of marble fragments,
0:04:23 > 0:04:27the Roman mercantile quarter is still upstanding and spectacular.
0:04:27 > 0:04:31History sometimes a strange and wayward hussy.
0:05:02 > 0:05:07The magic of Delos is rooted in a Homeric hymn.
0:05:07 > 0:05:12Homer, whoever he or she was, and some dreary people think of him
0:05:12 > 0:05:17as a committee, Homer is at our elbow everywhere in the Greek lands.
0:05:17 > 0:05:21But how in fact did Homer speak? We don't know.
0:05:21 > 0:05:24But Professor Stanford of Dublin, brave fellow, is prepared to guess.
0:05:24 > 0:05:30I'd like to give you an example of what I think Homer sounded like
0:05:30 > 0:05:33when he was recited in Athens in the 5th century BC.
0:05:33 > 0:05:37I can't give you any guarantee whether that was the original
0:05:37 > 0:05:40Homeric form, but still, now there are two things to keep in mind.
0:05:40 > 0:05:45One is the rhythm, which is in four time - one, two, three, four,
0:05:45 > 0:05:48one, two, three, four, and the other is a very peculiar thing.
0:05:48 > 0:05:52It's pitch accent - a kind of melody which the poet
0:05:52 > 0:05:56can control by marking certain actions on the line.
0:05:56 > 0:06:01Now, listen, if it seems quite idiotic, well, blame me, but I think
0:06:01 > 0:06:05it has a certain charm, rather like plainsong, or something of that kind.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09Now, here are the first five lines of The Odyssey, more or less
0:06:09 > 0:06:14I think, as, say, in 450 BC, you would have heard them in Athens.
0:06:14 > 0:06:19HE RECITES
0:07:01 > 0:07:04Well, Homer may have sounded something like that.
0:07:04 > 0:07:08One wonders, too, how the great plays of Ancient Greece came over
0:07:08 > 0:07:10to their Greek audiences.
0:07:10 > 0:07:14At least we've seen shape of their theatres at Miletus and elsewhere.
0:07:14 > 0:07:18Now, here at Epidaurus is the best of them all.
0:07:44 > 0:07:48The Greeks were past masters at acoustic contrivance.
0:07:48 > 0:07:53This famous theatre still holds 15,000 people and even a stage
0:07:53 > 0:07:57whisper could be picked up by the furthest spectator
0:07:57 > 0:07:59with the cheapest ticket.
0:07:59 > 0:08:02Listen for yourself to these lines of Escalus.
0:08:02 > 0:08:06ACTOR RECITES LINES
0:08:30 > 0:08:34But all the stones we've been looking at are the mere symbols
0:08:34 > 0:08:38and monuments of the people who created and used them.
0:08:38 > 0:08:41They tell us nothing about the government of the Greeks,
0:08:41 > 0:08:44nor how their society was organised.
0:08:45 > 0:08:47Well, how was it organised?
0:08:47 > 0:08:51Sir John Wolfenden summed up Plato's ideas
0:08:51 > 0:08:56and you'd hardly guess that Plato's been dead this 2,000 years and more.
0:08:56 > 0:08:59And it was really in order, I think, to try to disentangle what he was
0:08:59 > 0:09:04saying about psychology that Plato moved on to trying to invent
0:09:04 > 0:09:09an ideal state. And his description of that is really quite clear.
0:09:09 > 0:09:11You've got three layers of people.
0:09:11 > 0:09:14Those who are the governors, those who are the executive
0:09:14 > 0:09:16and those who are the governed.
0:09:16 > 0:09:20And let's be quite clear about this - there is no suggestion here of
0:09:20 > 0:09:24democracy in anything like the sense in which we understand the word.
0:09:24 > 0:09:26The Greek city state,
0:09:26 > 0:09:30all the societies that we know in Greece, were based, as everybody
0:09:30 > 0:09:34here knows, fundamentally and primarily, on slavery.
0:09:34 > 0:09:38Here, you've got in Plato's ideal picture, three ranks,
0:09:38 > 0:09:42three layers, three castes, because that's what they are.
0:09:42 > 0:09:47The governors, who are to correspond in the individual to the rational
0:09:47 > 0:09:49element in a man's total personality.
0:09:49 > 0:09:52And you've got the executive element,
0:09:52 > 0:09:55which in the individual corresponds to the will,
0:09:55 > 0:09:59what gets things done. And then you've got, very oddly,
0:09:59 > 0:10:02the governed, the whole mass of other people,
0:10:02 > 0:10:07corresponding in the individual to undifferentiated and rather
0:10:07 > 0:10:12unspecific desires, emotions, hopes, ambitions and suchlike.
0:10:12 > 0:10:18Now, in a state, the state is well run if the governors govern,
0:10:18 > 0:10:21and the executive people execute,
0:10:21 > 0:10:25and the people who are governed are content to be governed
0:10:25 > 0:10:29and do their job properly, as persons who are governed.
0:10:29 > 0:10:32Similarly, in an individual, you've got a rational element,
0:10:32 > 0:10:36which directs the whole operation of the personality,
0:10:36 > 0:10:39you've got a will, which gets the job done,
0:10:39 > 0:10:43and you've got this undifferentiated material of emotions
0:10:43 > 0:10:47and desires and ambitions, out of which the rational element,
0:10:47 > 0:10:50with the support of the operative element,
0:10:50 > 0:10:55gets the total personality fused into one operative human being.
0:10:55 > 0:11:00And the essence of it is that each of these three layers,
0:11:00 > 0:11:04and each of these three elements in the individual personality,
0:11:04 > 0:11:07does its own job and doesn't try to do anybody else's job.
0:11:07 > 0:11:11In fact, they fit together into what I suppose is the key word
0:11:11 > 0:11:16of most Greek thought and most Greek art, certainly,
0:11:16 > 0:11:19and a good deal of Greek living, they all fit together in a harmony,
0:11:19 > 0:11:23which literally means 'a fitting together' in Greek.
0:11:23 > 0:11:26They all fit together in a harmony where each person,
0:11:26 > 0:11:31each element in a person, is doing his or its own proper job
0:11:31 > 0:11:35and not aspiring to do anybody else's.
0:11:35 > 0:11:39Well, no social mobility, you're not allowed to move out of the lot
0:11:39 > 0:11:43to which the Almighty, or Zeus, or whoever it was, called you.
0:11:43 > 0:11:46It wasn't Victorian hymn writers who invented the rich man
0:11:46 > 0:11:48in his castle and the poor man at his gate.
0:11:48 > 0:11:53There they were, rigidly set in those ranks and the education
0:11:53 > 0:11:59of each was the one appropriate to doing that particular job right.
0:11:59 > 0:12:03Now, if you've got a breakdown of an individual personality, or if you've
0:12:03 > 0:12:06got a breakdown in a society, that came
0:12:06 > 0:12:10because one of these three ranks, or one of these three parts
0:12:10 > 0:12:14of the individual, was not doing its job properly,
0:12:14 > 0:12:16so that the harmony broke down.
0:12:16 > 0:12:20A rigid caste system, if you like, with the education available
0:12:20 > 0:12:23and appropriate for each.
0:12:23 > 0:12:28You see, the Greeks had no idea, let's get this clear, of progress.
0:12:28 > 0:12:30Certainly not of automatic progress.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34If they had any views about it at all, it was the opposite.
0:12:34 > 0:12:38That the ideal, the perfect time to have lived was way back
0:12:38 > 0:12:39in the days of Kronos
0:12:39 > 0:12:43and everything that had happened since was a decadence,
0:12:43 > 0:12:45a move downwards.
0:12:45 > 0:12:50So, what you've got in real life was a departure from this perfect
0:12:50 > 0:12:54society of the three layers, wherever any one of those three layers
0:12:54 > 0:12:57tried to do the job of another layer.
0:12:57 > 0:13:00And you've got a cyclical motion.
0:13:00 > 0:13:04Your ideal situation - which was really aristocracy
0:13:04 > 0:13:07and not democracy at all, in our sense of the word -
0:13:07 > 0:13:10your ideal situation went bad
0:13:10 > 0:13:13if the best men didn't do their job properly.
0:13:13 > 0:13:18Then you had a lead into one man - the rule of a monarch -
0:13:18 > 0:13:21and then the rule of democracy, in the bad sense,
0:13:21 > 0:13:23the rule of the mob,
0:13:23 > 0:13:26and that went wrong and resulted in obvious chaos, and you got
0:13:26 > 0:13:32back to the rule of the best and your three layers re-established.
0:13:32 > 0:13:35That all may sound rather unreal
0:13:35 > 0:13:39and a little bit of the study rather than of actual practical politics,
0:13:39 > 0:13:42and poor old Plato himself got landed in the situation
0:13:42 > 0:13:46which fortunately not many political theorists do get landed in.
0:13:46 > 0:13:50He was, in fact, asked to apply his principles in real life
0:13:50 > 0:13:52when he was asked to go
0:13:52 > 0:13:55and deal with the constitutional crises in Syracuse
0:13:55 > 0:13:59and came away from it, twice in fact, wiser, but I'm pretty sure,
0:13:59 > 0:14:03a much sadder man because in real life it didn't work.
0:14:03 > 0:14:09From Plato's Athens to the modern city is more than a jump in time.
0:14:09 > 0:14:12But Greece is still the home of sailors and the challenge
0:14:12 > 0:14:16and invitation of the sea is the reality behind ancient
0:14:16 > 0:14:19and modern Athens alike.
0:14:19 > 0:14:23In the beginning, it was the native harshness of their land that
0:14:23 > 0:14:25drove the Greeks to the sea.
0:14:25 > 0:14:28It was the sea which made Athens great
0:14:28 > 0:14:31and enabled it to fight off the armed might of Persia.
0:14:34 > 0:14:38Athens today is a swarming modern city.
0:14:38 > 0:14:41For such is the power of its antique threads
0:14:41 > 0:14:46that like the emperor's clothes, you see them when they aren't there.
0:14:46 > 0:14:51Is it fanciful to suggest the manner of political argument hasn't
0:14:51 > 0:14:53changed all that much?
0:15:04 > 0:15:09And does it require any imagination to think that the interests
0:15:09 > 0:15:15and passions of Greeks have remained much the same over 2,000 years?
0:15:33 > 0:15:35A powerful link between ancient
0:15:35 > 0:15:40and modern Greece is the Greek Orthodox Church.
0:15:40 > 0:15:45We happen to arrive in Athens at the onset of the Greek Easter.
0:15:45 > 0:15:49Here, the whole rich panoply of ritual opens vistas of the east,
0:15:49 > 0:15:52of Byzantium, where all Greek influence,
0:15:52 > 0:15:55including its Christianity, was transmuted,
0:15:55 > 0:15:59where the rival Church to Rome was set up in Constantinople.
0:15:59 > 0:16:04To the east, the Greeks had carried their power and their glory.
0:16:04 > 0:16:09But from the east, the Greeks had taken their price.
0:16:09 > 0:16:12THEY SING
0:17:42 > 0:17:46Saturday is the last day of the Lenten fast
0:17:46 > 0:17:50and all Athens makes for the cathedral square and waits, together
0:17:50 > 0:17:56with its king, for the sacred words "Christos anesti", Christ is risen.
0:18:08 > 0:18:13RELIGIOUS CHANTING
0:18:52 > 0:18:56The next day at the royal palace, as in the last
0:18:56 > 0:19:00backstreet of Athens, the Easter lamb is roasted on the spit.
0:19:21 > 0:19:25Hard-boiled eggs in crimson shells are knocked against one another
0:19:25 > 0:19:29by the king and his guards, as if to symbolise the opening of the tomb.
0:19:41 > 0:19:45And so we'd come to Athens very properly, by way of the sea
0:19:45 > 0:19:47and looked upon the modern city
0:19:47 > 0:19:50and witnessed its greatest religious festival.
0:19:50 > 0:19:53It was time to look down on the sprawling uneasy
0:19:53 > 0:19:56hive from the vantage of its central citadel.
0:19:56 > 0:20:00Down there was the marketplace where Socrates had tried to convince
0:20:00 > 0:20:04the Athenians by his dialectic, and St Paul convert them.
0:20:04 > 0:20:09There stands the most complete temple in the Classical world.
0:20:20 > 0:20:25There, too, is the Portico, rebuilt through American benefaction.
0:20:25 > 0:20:28More like a railway station, I'm afraid,
0:20:28 > 0:20:29than a respectable antiquity.
0:20:31 > 0:20:34But here is a good place from which to look upon
0:20:34 > 0:20:36the Acropolis for the first time.
0:20:36 > 0:20:40This is a spot to which one ought to come every ten years
0:20:40 > 0:20:43of one's life to maintain one's sense of values.
0:20:43 > 0:20:46It doesn't take much here to conjure up the material greatness
0:20:46 > 0:20:51of Athens, for the essential quality of the stones has remained.
0:20:51 > 0:20:54When the Athenians had won their great sea battle of Salamis
0:20:54 > 0:20:56against the Persian invader,
0:20:56 > 0:20:58they carved these wonderful structures
0:20:58 > 0:21:01out of the marble which they hacked from the hills nearby.
0:21:01 > 0:21:05The Parthenon, the greatest war memorial in the world.
0:21:05 > 0:21:08The building, which with Santa Sophia of Istanbul,
0:21:08 > 0:21:12is the triumphant achievement of Greek architecture.
0:21:20 > 0:21:23There it stands, greater than anything that's been written
0:21:23 > 0:21:28or said about it, a structure that satisfies the mind and the senses.
0:21:28 > 0:21:31It's magnificent to look at.
0:21:31 > 0:21:34Every line of it is petrified intelligence.
0:21:34 > 0:21:36The basis of its construction,
0:21:36 > 0:21:40as of so much of the Greek achievement, is mathematics.
0:21:40 > 0:21:42Every line of it is calculated.
0:21:42 > 0:21:46There's hardly a dead straight line in the building.
0:21:46 > 0:21:50The curves and proportions of which it is built are meticulously
0:21:50 > 0:21:54thought out, but they're also inspired and vitalised by genius.
0:21:54 > 0:21:58For example, the outermost columns are set closer together
0:21:58 > 0:22:00to give the eye a feeling of strength
0:22:00 > 0:22:03and tranquillity at the crucial corners of the building.
0:22:09 > 0:22:13The steps and platform are subtly curved to the same end.
0:22:51 > 0:22:54In this great masculine building, the Parthenon,
0:22:54 > 0:22:58with its sturdy, direct columns four square upon the rock,
0:22:58 > 0:23:02you have pre-eminently the masculine principle in architecture.
0:23:04 > 0:23:08And within a stone's throw, there is the feminine
0:23:08 > 0:23:14principle in Greek architecture, the Erectheion, with its Caryatids.
0:23:14 > 0:23:17Stalwart ladies they are, these Caryatids.
0:23:17 > 0:23:20Feminine, but not effeminate.
0:23:20 > 0:23:24What Longfellow might have called a noble type of good heroic womanhood.
0:23:32 > 0:23:34And the Caryatids,
0:23:34 > 0:23:39heroic in sustaining their massive architectural task, are matched
0:23:39 > 0:23:43by the feminine quality of the ionic columns which are their partners.
0:23:43 > 0:23:47Sharp contrast in their delicacy and elegance to the stern
0:23:47 > 0:23:50and muscular Doric pillars of the Parthenon.
0:24:13 > 0:24:17On the southern edge of the Acropolis is the famous
0:24:17 > 0:24:19Theatre of Dionysus.
0:24:19 > 0:24:24Here, the great Greek plays saw the light of day for the first time.
0:24:24 > 0:24:27Though much has been added and much has vanished since the days
0:24:27 > 0:24:32of Sophocles, the solemnity of the place has not faded away.
0:24:32 > 0:24:35These stones are eloquent of the beginnings of modern drama.
0:24:47 > 0:24:53The high priest of Dionysus and the magistrates had the best seats,
0:24:53 > 0:24:57which bore their styles and titles, to prevent mistakes of protocol.
0:25:08 > 0:25:12The front of the stage was carved in Roman times
0:25:12 > 0:25:16with the story of the patron god of drama, Dionysus.
0:25:18 > 0:25:22And upheld by his rollicking attendant Silenus,
0:25:22 > 0:25:24acting the part of Atlas.
0:25:25 > 0:25:29However often one returns to Greece, one is confronted afresh
0:25:29 > 0:25:31with the versatility of the Greek mind
0:25:31 > 0:25:35which could create tragedies that have not lost their truth,
0:25:35 > 0:25:37comedies with which we can still laugh,
0:25:37 > 0:25:41and sculptures that have not lost their beauty.
0:25:41 > 0:25:44Pericles, the master statesman, who adorned the city.
0:25:45 > 0:25:49Ideals of manhood, worthy of the gods.
0:25:53 > 0:25:58The robust maturity of wise action and reflection.
0:26:00 > 0:26:03The gracious dignity and poise of womanhood.
0:26:05 > 0:26:10And around it all, that modern city, splashed across the hallowed
0:26:10 > 0:26:13landscape without completely indulging it.
0:26:27 > 0:26:31A Hellenic cruise is a voyage back into a way of life
0:26:31 > 0:26:36and a habit of thought that are ancestral to our own.
0:26:36 > 0:26:39The Greek achievement rose and fell.
0:26:41 > 0:26:44And rose again.
0:26:44 > 0:26:49And was transmuted, finally, into the European tradition.
0:26:49 > 0:26:52In a world of change and mortality,
0:26:52 > 0:26:56nothing greater has lasted longer than this.
0:27:08 > 0:27:11Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd