Philhellenism

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19th-century intellectual movement

title: "Philhellenism" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["philhellenism", "admiration-of-foreign-cultures", "ancient-greece-studies", "greek-nationalism", "theories-of-aesthetics", "politics-of-the-greek-war-of-independence"] description: "19th-century intellectual movement" topic_path: "philosophy" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philhellenism" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary 19th-century intellectual movement ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Scène_des_massacres_de_Scio.jpg" caption="''[[The Massacre at Chios]]'' by [[Eugène Delacroix]] reflects the attitudes of French philhellenism."] ::

Philhellenism ("the love of Greek culture") was an intellectual movement prominent mostly at the turn of the 19th century. It contributed to the sentiments that led Europeans such as Lord Byron, Charles Nicolas Fabvier and Richard Church to advocate for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.

The later 19th-century European philhellenism was largely to be found among the Classicists. The study of it falls under Classical Reception Studies and is a continuation of the Classical tradition.

Antiquity

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/MithridatesIParthiaCoinHistoryofIran.jpg" caption="The Greek inscription]] reads ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΜΕΓΑΛΟΥ ΑΡΣΑΚΟΥ ΦΙΛΕΛΛΗΝΟΣ ("[coin] of the great king Arsaces, friend of the Greeks")"] ::

In antiquity, the term philhellene ("the admirer of Greeks and everything Greek"), from the (, from φίλος - philos, "friend", "lover" + Ἕλλην - Hellen, "Greek") was used to describe both non-Greeks who were fond of ancient Greek culture and Greeks who patriotically upheld their culture. The Liddell-Scott Greek-English Lexicon defines 'philhellene' as "fond of the Hellenes, mostly of foreign princes, as Amasis; of Parthian kings[...]; also of Hellenic tyrants, as Jason of Pherae and generally of Hellenic (Greek) patriots. According to Xenophon, an honorable Greek should also be a philhellene.

Some examples:

  • Evagoras of Cyprus and Philip II were both called "philhellenes" by Isocrates
  • The early rulers of the Parthian Empire, starting with Mithridates I (r. 171–132 BC), used the title of philhellenes on their coins, which was a political act done in order to establish friendly relations with their Greek subjects.
  • Following the example of the Parthians, Tigranes adopted the title of Philhellene (friend of the Greeks). The layout of his capital Tigranocerta was an example of Greek architecture.

Roman philhellenes

The literate upper classes of Ancient Rome were increasingly Hellenized in their culture during the 3rd century BC.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/JulianusII-antioch(360-363)-CNG.jpg" caption="Julian"] ::

Among Romans the career of Titus Quinctius Flamininus (died 174 BC), who appeared at the Isthmian Games in Corinth in 196 BC and proclaimed the freedom of the Greek states, was fluent in Greek, stood out, according to Livy, as a great admirer of Greek culture. The Greeks hailed him as their liberator. There were some Romans during the late Republic, who were distinctly anti-Greek, resenting the increasing influence of Greek culture on Roman life, an example being the Roman Censor, Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger, who lived during the "Greek invasion" of Rome but towards the later years of his life he eventually became a philhellene after his stay in Rhodes.

The lyric poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, often anglicized as Horace, was another philhellene. He is notable for his words, "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis intulit agresti Latio" (Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium), meaning that after the conquest of Greece the defeated Greeks created a cultural hegemony over the Romans.

Horace's contemporary lyric poets, Virgil and Ovid, both produced magnum opuses (the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses, respectively) which were substantially founded upon Hellenic references and culture. Additionally, Virgil's Eclogues were inspired by Theocritus' earlier pastoral poetry in his idylls. The Aeneid, Virgil's story of Rome's founding myth, notably shares several similarities with Homer's earlier epics, particularly the Odyssey, one of which being both his epic and the Odyssey follow a demigod protagonist's military voyage after the Trojan War. It also was influenced by Homer's Iliad; for example, the ekphrasis of Achilles' divine shield from his mother, Thetis, was mirrored by the ekphrasis of Aeneas' divine shield from his mother, Venus. Ovid's work was perhaps even more influenced by ancient Greek culture than Virgil; his Metamorphoses were inspired by the Greek epic tradition and metamorphosis poetry in the Hellenistic tradition, and its content was derived to a large extent from Greek myth and folklore, including the Trojan War. Ovid's treatment of Greek myths was so impactful for later Philhellenism, especially during the Renaissance, that the well-known versions of some myths are actually Ovid's versions (e.g. Echo and Narcissus). Soon after these writers, other Roman lyric poets such as Lucan (inspired by Greek epics with his Pharsalia) or Persius (heavily inspired by Horace with his Life) continued to exhibit strong interests and admirations for Greek literary, artistic, and religious culture.

Roman emperors known for their philhellenism include Nero, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and Julian the Apostate.

Modern times

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/"Lord_Byron_à_Missolonghi"_de_T.Vryzakis(musée_du_Louvre,Paris)(51563019309).jpg" caption="''[[The Reception of Lord Byron at Missolonghi]]'' by [[Theodoros Vryzakis"] ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Victor_Hugo_by_Étienne_Carjat_1876_-_full.jpg" caption="[[Victor Hugo]], a well-known philhellene"] ::

In the period of political reaction and repression after the fall of Napoleon, when the liberal-minded, educated and prosperous middle and upper classes of European societies found the Romantic nationalism of 1789–1792 repressed by the restoration of absolute monarchy at home, the idea of the re-creation of a Greek state on the very territories that were sanctified by their view of Antiquity—which was reflected even in the furnishings of their own parlors and the contents of their bookcases—offered an ideal, set at a romantic distance. Under these conditions, the Greek uprising constituted a source of inspiration and expectations that could never actually be fulfilled, disappointing what Paul Cartledge called "the Victorian self-identification with the Glory that was Greece". American higher education was fundamentally transformed by the rising admiration of and identification with ancient Greece in the 1830s and afterward.

Another popular subject of interest in Greek culture at the turn of the 19th century was the shadowy Scythian philosopher Anacharsis, who lived in the 6th century BC. The new prominence of Anacharsis was sparked by Jean-Jacques Barthélemy's fanciful Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece (1788), a learned imaginary travel journal, one of the first historical novels, which a modern scholar has called "the encyclopedia of the new cult of the antique" in the late 18th century. It had a high impact on the growth of philhellenism in France: the book went through many editions, was reprinted in the United States and was translated into German and other languages. It later inspired European sympathy for the Greek War of Independence and spawned sequels and imitations throughout the 19th century.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Nietzsche187a.jpg" caption="language=en}}"] ::

In German culture the first phase of philhellenism can be traced in the careers and writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, one of the inventors of art history, Friedrich August Wolf, who inaugurated modern Homeric scholarship with his Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795) and the enlightened bureaucrat Wilhelm von Humboldt. It was also in this context that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Hölderlin were to compose poetry and prose in the field of literature, elevating Hellenic themes in their works. One of the most renowned German philhellenes of the 19th century was Friedrich Nietzsche. In the German states, the private obsession with ancient Greece took public forms, institutionalizing an elite philhellene ethos through the Gymnasium, to revitalize German education at home, and providing on two occasions high-minded philhellene German princes ignorant of modern-day Greek realities, to be Greek sovereigns.

During the later 19th century the new studies of archaeology and anthropology began to offer a quite separate view of ancient Greece, which had previously been experienced second-hand only through Greek literature, Greek sculpture and architecture. Twentieth-century heirs of the 19th-century view of an unchanging, immortal quality of "Greekness" are typified in J. C. Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (1910) or R. and E. Blum's The Dangerous Hour: The lore of crisis and mystery in rural Greece (1970).

According to the Classicist Paul Cartledge, they "represent this ideological construction of Greekness as an essence, a Classicizing essence to be sure, impervious to such historic changes as that from paganism to Orthodox Christianity, or from subsistence peasant agriculture to more or less internationally market-driven capitalist farming."

The Philhellenic movement led to the introduction of Classics or Classical studies as a key element in education, introduced in the Gymnasien in Prussia. In England the main proponent of Classics in schools was Thomas Arnold, headmaster at Rugby School.

Nikos Dimou's The Misfortune to be Greek argues that the Philhellenes' expectation for the modern Greek people to live up to their ancestors' allegedly glorious past has always been a burden upon the Greeks themselves. In particular, Western Philhellenism focused exclusively on the heritage of Classical Greece, while negating or rejecting the heritage of the Byzantine Empire and the Greek Orthodox Church, which for the Greek people are at least as important.

Art

Philhellenism also created a renewed interest in the artistic movement of Neoclassicism, which idealized fifth-century Classical Greek art and architecture, very much at second hand, through the writings of the first generation of art historians, like Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

The groundswell of the Philhellenic movement was result of two generations of intrepid artists and amateur treasure-seekers, from Stuart and Revett, who published their measured drawings as The Antiquities of Athens and culminating with the removal of sculptures from Aegina and the Parthenon (the Elgin Marbles), works that inspired the British Philhellenes, many of whom, however, deplored their removal.

Greek War of Independence and later

Main article: Greek War of Independence#Philhellenism

Many well-known philhellenes supported the Greek Independence Movement such as Shelley, Thomas Moore, Leigh Hunt, Cam Hobhouse, Walter Savage Landor and Jeremy Bentham.

Some, notably Lord Byron, even took up arms to join the Greek revolutionaries. Many more financed the revolution or contributed through their artistic work.

Throughout the 19th century, philhellenes continued to support Greece politically and militarily. For example, Ricciotti Garibaldi led a volunteer expedition (Garibaldini) in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. A group of Garibaldini, headed by the Greek poet Lorentzos Mavilis, fought also with the Greek side during the Balkan Wars.

File:Une Assemblée d’Officiers Européens, accourus au secours de la Grèce en 1822.jpg|Depiction of Philhellenes in Greece in 1822 File:Zografos-Makriyannis 24 I Ellas evgomonousa List of Philhellenes.jpg|List of philhellenes who contributed during the Greek War of Independence (National Historical Museum). The first two columns from the left are the names of those having died. File:Dupre-Salona-1821.jpg|Louis Dupré's depiction of Greek irregulars hoisting the flag at Salona File:Panagiotis Kefalas by Hess.jpg|Panagiotis Kephalas plants the flag of liberty upon the walls of Tripolizza (Siege of Tripolitsa)" by Peter von Hess File:Pushkin Alexander, 1826 by Vivien.jpg|Alexander Pushkin File:Athens, George Gordon Byron 02.JPG|A statue of Lord Byron in Athens File:Santorre di Santarosa.jpg|Annibale Santorre di Rossi de Pomarolo, Count of Santarosa File:Karl von Normann-Ehrenfels.jpg|Karl von Normann-Ehrenfels File:Portrait de Charles Nicolas Fabvier.jpg|Charles Nicolas Fabvier File:Rosaroll, Giuseppe.jpg|Giuseppe Rosaroll File:Ricciotti Garibaldi.jpg|Ricciotti Garibaldi File:Peppino Garibaldi.jpg|Giuseppe Garibaldi II File:Henry Morgenthau crop.jpg|Henry Morgenthau Sr. File:David Lloyd George.jpg|David Lloyd George

Notable 20th- and 21st-century philhellenes

Notes

References

References

  1. "φιλ-έλλην". Tufts University.
  2. "Xenophon "Agesilaus" (7.4)".
  3. "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, page 54 (V. 2)".
  4. "Search Tools".
  5. Balsdon, J. P. V. D.. (1979). "Romans and Aliens". Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd.
  6. A. Momigliano, 1975. Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization.
  7. A. Wardman, 1976. ''Rome's debt to Greece''.
  8. A modern assessment is E. Badian, 1970. ''Titus Quinctius Flamininus: Philhellenism and Realpolitik''0
  9. "Plutarch • Life of Cato the Younger".
  10. Kotkin, Joshua. (2001). "Shields of Contradiction and Direction: Ekphrasis in the Iliad and the Aeneid". The McGill Journal of Classical Studies.
  11. Cartledge
  12. Winterer, Caroline. (2002). "The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910". Johns Hopkins University Press.
  13. Whitling, Frederick. (2009). "Memory, history and the classical tradition". European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire.
  14. Jaspers, Karl. (1997-10-24). "Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity". JHU Press.
  15. The history of pedagogically conservative philhellenism in German high academic culture has been examined in [[Suzanne L. Marchand]], ''Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970'' ([[Princeton University Press]], 1996); she begins with Winckelmann, Wolf and von Humboldt.
  16. S. L. Marchand, 1992. ''Archaeology and Cultural Politics in Germany, 1800–1965: The Decline of Philhellenism'' (University of Chicago).
  17. Cartledge, Paul. "The Greeks and Anthropology." Anthropology Today, vol. 10, no. 3, 1994, pp. 3–6. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2783476. Accessed 9 June 2023.
  18. ''Η δυστυχία του να είσαι Έλληνας'', 1975.
  19. It often selected for its favoured models third- and second-century sculptures that were actually [[Hellenistic]] in origin, and appreciated through the lens of Roman copies: see Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, ''Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Antique Sculpture 1500–1900'' (1981).
  20. (2001-11-29). "In Byron's Shadow: Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination". Oxford University Press.
  21. Gilles Pécout, "Philhellenism in Italy: political friendship and the Italian volunteers in the Mediterranean in the nineteenth century", ''Journal of Modern Italian Studies'' '''9''':4:405–427 (2004) {{doi. 10.1080/1354571042000296380
  22. (15 November 1947). "The Great Foreigner". [[The New Yorker]].
  23. "Classics".
  24. Stephen Fry. "Truly, one of the great honours of my life. With thanks to the Ambassador, to President Sakellaropoulou and to the people of Greece".
  25. Stavridis, Stavros T.. (2019-07-09). "Hail, Lloyd George". The National Herald.
  26. [https://web.archive.org/web/20180925012908/https://www.poets-radio.net/exclusive-interview-matthias-laurenz-graeff-%ce%b6%cf%89%ce%b3%cf%81%ce%b1%cf%86%ce%af%ce%b6%ce%bf%ce%bd%cf%84%ce%b1%cf%82/ POETS Radio. Irene Gavala, Exclusive interview. Matthias Laurenz Graeff. Ζωγραφίζοντας., 2018]
  27. [https://hephaestuswien.com/de/inter-matthias-laurenz-graff-04-24/ Matthias Laurenz Gräff, NEOS Repräsentant für Griechenland im Interview – Hephaestus Wien]
  28. [https://international.neos.eu/personen/matthias-laurenz-graeff NEOS International, Representative Matthias Laurenz Gräff]
  29. (13 November 2019). "Will Boris Johnson right our colonial wrongs and return the Elgin Marbles? Don't make me laugh".
  30. (2014-10-21). "Former Australian MP, and noted philhellene Gough Whitlam passes".
  31. (20 December 2011). "Philhellene Writer Christopher Hitchens Passes Away".

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philhellenismadmiration-of-foreign-culturesancient-greece-studiesgreek-nationalismtheories-of-aestheticspolitics-of-the-greek-war-of-independence