Nicholas B.

A Rhetorical Comparison of Greece and its Modern Counterpart


The world is constantly shaping and reshaping itself: new technologies are developed, new concepts of religions and societies take root, and almost everything is replaced at one point in time by a modern counterpart.  This process is very prevalent in the late second millennium, as nations created colonies that eventually grew apart from their founders.  Why is it  that the United States of America has so many connections to the ancient Greeks?  One would think that after thousands of years we would be above mimicking figures of our ancient past, but so many things in the American world have been derived from our ancestors on the Aegean: our culture, our government, and even the way we go about our daily lives.

When walking through a crowded shopping mall Greek society is probably far from people’s minds, but many things people may think of are truthfully Greek in origin.  A shopping mall is very much like a Greek marketplace or forum, where people of all backgrounds could come together and socialize while thinking about the same issues.  This idea, that life in a city or town should be shaped around a plaza or empty space where people congregate, are public contributions that serve to educate the many instead of just the very wealthy. Without these concepts only the elite today would be able to go to the mall and buy a pair of shoes or even learn how to count.

In this age of technology and reforms, where people take pride in the fact that we can consider ourselves “advanced”, why is it that our government, which has stood as a symbol for national pride and rebellion against our enemies, is almost an exact copy of one that is almost three thousand years old?  This country prides itself in remaining true to its roots in the American Revolution, where a monarchy was overthrown by a colonial democracy, yet we really should give all respect to the Ancient Greeks, who thought up democracy in the first place.  Our senate, which decides all laws that are created in this country, is based on an idea centuries old, which states that monarchies should give way to organized groups of representatives from all classes of people.  Even our individually governed states, cities and towns, which  hold so much power in America, are only copies of the Greek city states that controlled individual territories effectively for thousands of years.

From walking down the street to going to work, our daily lives are filled with Greek influences.  Sometimes this influence is obscure.  For example, the ability to send and receive mail is the kind of government service first thought up by the Greeks.  They were the first people to think of committee selected state officials to deal with important state matters and to provide a good image to neighboring countries.  This committee is what eventually developed into government-funded workers like postmen.  When  purchasing items, people usually pay for them with cash or coins.  With closer examination, all of America’s minted currency has Latin writing on it.  These Latin values, first created by the Greeks, are such great keystones of our society that currency provides the opportunity to take time every day to remember them.  If the Greeks had not thought up these ideas in the first place to better their society and prolong their existence, our world would be a strange and alien place.

Whether it is in social gatherings, the development of democracy or even the way a community of people functions, much of our society can be traced back to Greek roots.  For this I believe the ancient Greeks deserve tribute, and should be thought of by Americans in the same respect as our founding fathers, with an air of pride and gratitude.  I believe that our society overlooks the distant past in search of a clearer, more immediate reference to our society, but I do not think as far as references go that they get any better than the Greeks.


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