“Greeks brace as Europe threatened”. That newspaper headline (The Globe, 3 March) might have been dated anytime in the Fifth Century B.C. In 490 the Greeks led by Miltiades of Athens turned back the invading Persians on the plain of Marathon. The herald who carried the news 40 kilometres to Athens ran the first ‘marathon’.

Ten years later, in 480, the Greeks were again triumphant at the narrow mountain pass of Thermopylae. Other invasions followed. The Persians were finally defeated under the leadership of Themistocles at the naval battle of Salamis. The Persian invasions of Greece came to an end.

As the revolutionary leaders of modern Persia/Iran again threaten international peace, it is a good thing that the defence of the Western world does not still depend upon Greece alone. Its present population is not, of course, ethnically identical with those who fought with Themistocles or at Thermopylae. Between the 15th and early 19th Centuries the Turkish Empire controlled the whole of Greece which did not regain independence until 1830. Its political instability during the next century or so is now matched by its financial crisis.

At the present Greece is faced with indebtedness that could destabilise the whole of the Euro (€) zone. It has a national debt of the equivalent of $448 billion or 134% of its gross national product. All countries using the euro are required by law to keep their annual deficits below 4% of GDP. That of Greece stands at 12.7%.

Under the pre-1923 Ottoman Empire Turkey was “the sick man of Europe”. It now stands outside the European Union awaiting acceptance. Meanwhile, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain and perhaps the Republic of Ireland threaten the failure of the European monetary (but neither fiscal nor political) experiment in unity. That is, unless either some EU countries or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) come to the rescue.

While planning Iran’s future nuclear capability, Mr Ahmadinejad, even though he is reported to be hiding Jewish family roots, presumably knows his history. He knows that Greece was the place where ‘the West’ began and where once upon a time Asiatic incursions into Europe were stopped. Does he nurse a renewed Persian ‘manifest destiny’ complex?

Greece’s contribution to history was to plant the seeds of democracy, not to achieve it. The receptive soil was that of the city of Athens. In a population of 225,000 only about 35,000 male citizens had full political rights and only about 5,000 of them were sufficiently wealthy to play a major role. There were about 70,000 slaves who had neither drachmas nor freedom.

Among those who wielded power, only the military generals and the financial trustees were elected by the Assembly. It could be attended by all free citizens. Meeting ten times a year, it usually numbered three or four thousand. Those with rhetorical skills dominated the meetings. There were temporary coalitions of like-minded men but no political parties. A varying minimum number of votes was required to carry a motion.

Beyond that, the daily administrative organ was the Council which met daily and consisted of 500 men chosen annually by lot rather than a vote from a preselected pool of eligible persons. The Council determined taxation and expenditure, governed Athens and negotiated or fought with other city states and foreigners. In particular, it is notable that those who handled finances were changed annually. Any mismanagement or misappropriation would quickly be evident.

The legal system under which Socrates was condemned in 399 B.C. for “corrupting the youth of Athens” by encouraging unorthodox ideas and practising nonapproved educational methods is a subject for another time. It is enough to say here that the democratic reforms put in place by Cleisthenes in 508 B.C. provided that once a year citizens could ‘ostracise’ a prominent man, sending him into exile (without loss of property) for 10 years.

He need not have committed any crime; he need only be seen as a threat to democratic decisionmaking and the Athenian culture because of what we would now call his ‘thinking outside the box’ and/or an unapologetic arrogance in dealing with opponents. On a day chosen annually by the Assembly each attending citizen wrote on an ‘ostrakon’, a small pottery shard, the name of a person to be banished. A minimum of 6,000 such ‘ostracisms’ would decide the matter. Suffice it to say that Socrates chose self-administered death rather than exile.

Apart from proto-democracy and the dawn of the age of reason, Athens produced in the Fifth Century B.C. people who laid the foundations of Western art, architecture, philosophy, natural science and drama. “An Athenian is always an innovator”, said a Corinthian in criticism. Pericles, under whom Athens reached its apogee, said , “ We do not imitate others; we are a model for them”.

The crowning glory of Athens, the Parthenon, was built under the general supervision of Pericles’ friend, Phidias. Other architects and sculptors were involved in the creation of the marble marvels on the Acropolis, now so disfigured by later Turkish neglect, museum mavens and, of course, by time. Still, although man marks the earth with ruin, his control stops with the realm of ideas and artistic skill.

Twenty-six centuries ago there was in Greece an awakening of the human psyche. In spite of further wars and defeats the genius of Athens in particular began to influence the rest of what we know as Europe and Euro-America. Christopher Dawson, author of “The Making of Europe” (1932), wrote “It is from the Greeks that we derive what is most distinctive in Western culture”. That is again threatened by European neo-barbarians and Asian fanatics. En garde!

In the Third Century A.D. Tertullian, the controversial ‘father of Latin theology’, asked “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem”? Many have asked the same about Rome.

All three are, in fact, the roots of our civilisation. There is a recurring human tendency to isolate the physical from the spiritual. It was because of its balanced delight in the things of body, mind and spirit that Athens was where ‘the West’ began.