Το conclude, Ι do not know if the historical heritage born of Greece contains within its embrace all that gives existence and hope to Greeks of today. Rather it is almost certain that modern Greeks possess elements that originate in other traditions, (among them European), foreign traditions which assimilated Greek classical learning at times when Greece itself was displaying an historical and intellectual lethargy.
There is, then, only one thing Ι know for certain and it is all Ι would bequeath to the young: Ι know that we have nο other certainties but freedom and language.
But that and that alone is enough to bind Greeks undyingly to a mythical, if imaginary and fantastical, very ancient Greece, a Greece perhaps nonexistent today but nonetheless immortal.
Immortal like the yearning implicit in Romiosyni, that invisible and unbroken thread of Greek actualities which, as Seferis says with a profound sense of piety, is seated in the lap of the Virgin Mother.
—
Excerpts from H. Ahrweiler, The Making of Europe, Athens 2000. Helene Glykatzi Ahrweiler was a professor of history in France, vice-president, and then president of the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, Rector of the Academy of Paris, Chancellor of the Universities of Paris, and president of the Centre Georges Pompidou.
