The Greeks never made it to Britain, unlike the Romans, who were here for almost 400 years. Yet their voices resound loudest in the UK capital today. It is no longer Athens that is the true heir to the ancient Greek miracle — but the city state of London.
The miracle of ancient Athens remains mysterious more than two millennia after its decline. How did a rugged, sunburnt slice of Mediterranean coast barely twice the size of London — with a population 20 times smaller — give rise to the most sophisticated civilisation the world had ever seen?
Some attribute the Hellenic marvel to competition between city states driving one another towards artistic excellence. In fifth century BC Greece, this gave rise to Aristophanes’ Lysistrata — a translation of which by Germaine Greer opens in London this week, alongside Euripides’ Medea and Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Lysistrata tells the story of the women of ancient Greece staging the first sex strike to bully their husbands into ending the Peloponnesian war. The play closes with successful peace talks and the end of the strike. The tactic is more than ancient comic fantasy: sex strikes have been used from Colombia to Togo, and are still deployed today, nearly 2,500 years after Lysistrata was written.