n the preface to his lyric drama “Hellas”
(1821), written the year before he died, the
poet Percy Bysshe Shelley declared to readers
throughout the English-speaking world that:
“We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our
religion, our arts, have their root in Greece.” For
citizens of the West, Shelley’s statement is as true
now as it was then. Take, for example, the evidence from our everyday language. Nouns in
common usage such as “democracy,” “tragedy,”
“odyssey,” “tyrant,” “theater,” and “poet,” as well
as the adjectives “spartan,” “stoic,” “comic,”
“olympic,” “epic,” and “platonic,” testify to the
enduring influence of the Hellenic past.