News & Articles

Maybe you’ve seen “The Trojan Women” or “Iphengenia in Aulus” or “The Bacchae”. Such ancient Greek plays are not for the fun-loving. And yet, thousands of years after these tragedies were first staged, we’re drawn to them. The horrors they portray- if need be, think “Medea”- mesmerize us. The emotions grip us. They are our very own.

Like Medea, we have all felt the agony of being spurned. Would we, could we ever reach bottom as she does, and resort to multiple murders to exact revenge? Nor does playwright Euripides flinch in “The Trojan Women”, an examination of the excruciating toll war takes. Greece has prevailed over Troy. We watch as a Trojan mother must execute her own son.

What made the Greeks record the atrocities of their time? Will we ever know why Euripides was compelled to portray such deep consonance with women or to seek sympathy for everyman?

My granddaughter was just in “Themistocles and the Persian War”. In 472 BCE, Aeschylus wrote the oldest surviving play in the history of theater, “The Persians” about this famed battle that takes place at the island of Salamis, or as it’s known in Greece, Salaminas. Whereas Aeschylus’ work enters the Persian palace to examine their defeat, Athena’s play follows the brilliant strategy of Athenian politician, Themistocles, that leads Athens to triumph.

And it seems Athens is again experiencing triumph, and Greece for that matter. As the hard-hit world has been standing up for itself, Occupy has been amplified in Greece. In the U.S. its thousands in the streets; there it’s tens of thousands, even 100’s of thousands.

I have experienced the Greeks. They are savvy and indomitable and not afraid to express themselves. Whatever happens in public school does not seem to mute them. I was with my son and his aunt, Rhodopi, on a street corner in Piraeus. She was in a spirited conversation with another woman. When I asked who that friend was, Rhodopi said she didn’t know her. How admirably Greek!

I predicted the Greeks would resist Geithner/Merkel’s austerity measures. Auction off the Parthenon? The Greek islands? The ones their ancestors fought for? The people spoke this past weekend as did the French. And their votes seem to have been counted accurately. Greece, as all nations, has lived tragedy, but the Greek people are now devising an alternative to the imposed tragedy that was costing them   their lives and their very homeland.