πρωτοσέλιδο άρθρο αυτού του Σαββατοκύριακου στο New York National Herald

By Leonidas Petrakis *, PhD

"Greece is the cradle of Western Civilization", we Greeks proudly remind the world, claiming a special kinship (ownership!) to the achievements of ancient Greece ("A rocky promontory in the Mediterranean, it has nothing to distinguish it but the efforts of its people, the sea, and the light of the sun", in the words of George Seferis, Greece's first Nobel Prize winner).

What does it mean to be Greek? The Ancients had a simple answer -they divided the world into Greeks and the rest, the Barbarians. The latter uttered incomprehensible "bar, bar" sounds, did not speak Greek, and therefore were incapable of understanding the revolutionary, sophisticated ideas that the Greeks were advancing in philosophy, literature, music and the other arts, medicine, mathematics, the sciences.