Calabria was/is mainly mountainous, so things are a bit different there. While Apulia, Campania and Sicily were/are more fertile so they could develop large-scale urban life etc.

Isn’t Italy as a whole refined?
Yes, it is, but I was talking of a peculiar refinement one can see only in the South, which seems evident to me but is hard to explain in words. Maybe sweeter, too sweet for a person from central Italy like me. I’ll think of it, whenever I have time (now I’m leaving for the weekend).

Ciao

And the beaches…wow.

Isn’t Italy as a whole refined? And how do you define it? For me it’s the way they go about things, mannerisms, how they treat diet etc.

Are you referring to the Peloponnesian Wars? If so, it not only had a profound effect on Hellas but upon the world at that time…didn’t think to go that far back

Yes, of course, that war was awful, all the elements of an irrational tragedy being there, also fuelled by Greek extreme individualism (in the negative sense). The plague in Athens caused by the amassing of people within Athens’ walls, which killed Pericles himself; an unjust and cruel Athenian foreign policy towards other Greeks; the extreme foolishness of the Sicilian expedition (an attempt to conquer the rich Greek-Sicilian Syracuse) who led Athens to ruin together with the magnificent flower of her youth.

History shows its cruel irony, sometimes, this disaster being conceived and carried out by Socrates’ brilliant pupil, the beautiful and talented Alcibiades, whose vanity his mentor unsuccessfully tried to restrain.

Yes, I think that some differences between the Romans and the Greeks explain a lot. Simplifying, I am thinking of a tradition of sense of duty and self-effacement, on one side, and of an excessive individualism and craving for distinction on the other side. The Greeks, as I said here and here, taught the world to reason more efficiently, but were not champions of rationality themselves.

And yes, after the sudden self destruction of classic Greece, we had Alexander the Great, but here also his adventure had some foolish traits: his reaching up to the gates of India, for example, such romantic nonsensical flight… many of Alexander’s conquests have been more durable, it is true, but at his death everything fragmented and it was easy to Rome to conquer all piece by piece. Rome has shown to possess those qualities (prudence: prudentia, concord: concordia, literally ‘hearts sticking together’ etc.) that the Greeks lacked (the opposite also being true, of course).

Summarizing, why the civilization of Greece disappeared after the Rome-Athens era?

I believe one of the reasons lies in the Greeks suffering from this self destructive individualism which (is it by chance?) we find in those parts of the Italian South that were originally Greek (it is irresistible to me not to renounce to this thought).

This could explain the destructiveness of Naples, one of the most refined Italian towns (is it again by chance?), no doubt about it – despite all her troubles.

(Bwt, there is a peculiar refinement in the Italian south one can’t find elsewhere in this country, I should write a post on that; many superstitions – related to the belief that ‘Gods look at humans with an envious eye – and behaviours – like men using perfume – seem Greek etc.)

It is hard to prove that there is a direct link between such distant historical times, I know, but, are they that distant? Plus let us not forget that only a couple of generations ago some people still spoke Greek dialects in the Italian Mezzogiorno.

If so, it not only had a profound effect on Hellas but upon the world at that time.

Interesting take MOR. I didn’t think to go that far back and yet it makes perfect sense to do so.

One thing I can shoot now about the Greeks and why they sort of disappeared … they were total deep geniuses, too much depth kind of leading to self-destruction. Their civilisation at its best (Fifth Century BC) collapsed all of a sudden because of the terrible war between Sparta and Athens…what an amazing foolishness, if one checks in history books the way it all happened. I think in this they were very similar to the modern Germans.

I always wondered if this self-destruction we see sometimes in an Italian city like Naples can be somewhat explained by its Greek origins…

Not at all. It was a fair comment.

p.s. I have posted some Hindi film songs in this post. I remembered u had once asked Geek Wrestler to do so i thought of leaving u a link.
http://opinionsandexpressions.wordpress.com/2008/07/12/the-8-tag/

And yes, Kazantzakis’ memoirs are great. This synaesthetic thing he’s got struck me (but of course it isn’t his sole virtue). When he was a boy – he writes – he started to be attracted like everybody to the bad words the elder boys used. So one day he uttered one of those words in front of his mother and the woman, furious, washed his mouth with pepper. Since that day till old age, every time he heard such words he always felt the taste of pepper ….