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Philhellenism ("the love of Greek culture") was an intellectual movement prominent mostly at the turn of the 19th century. It contributed to the sentiments that led Europeans such as Lord Byron, Charles Nicolas Fabvier and Richard Church to advocate for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.
The later 19th-century European philhellenism was largely to be found among the Classicists. The study of it falls under Classical Reception Studies and is a continuation of the Classical tradition.
Some examples:
Among Romans the career of Titus Quinctius Flamininus (died 174 BC), who appeared at the Isthmian Games in Corinth in 196 BC and proclaimed the freedom of the Greek states, was fluent in Greek, stood out, according to Livy, as a great admirer of Greek culture. The Greeks hailed him as their liberator.A modern assessment is E. Badian, 1970. Titus Quinctius Flamininus: Philhellenism and Realpolitik0 There were some Romans during the late Republic, who were distinctly anti-Greek, resenting the increasing influence of Greek culture on Roman life, an example being the Roman Censor, Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger, who lived during the "Greek invasion" of Rome but towards the later years of his life he eventually became a philhellene after his stay in Rhodes.
The lyric poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, often anglicized as Horace, was another philhellene. He is notable for his words, "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis intulit agresti Latio" (Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium), meaning that after the conquest of Greece the defeated Greeks created a cultural hegemony over the Romans.
Horace's contemporary lyric poets, Virgil and Ovid, both produced magnum opuses (the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses, respectively) which were substantially founded upon Hellenic references and culture. Additionally, Virgil's Eclogues were inspired by Theocritus' earlier pastoral poetry in his Idyll The Aeneid, Virgil's story of Rome's founding myth, notably shares several similarities with Homer earlier epics, particularly the Odyssey, one of which being both his epic and the Odyssey follow a demigod protagonist's military voyage after the Trojan War. It also was influenced by Homer's Iliad; for example, the ekphrasis of Achilles' divine shield from his mother, Thetis, was mirrored by the ekphrasis of Aeneas divine shield from his mother, Venus. Ovid work was perhaps even more influenced by ancient Greek culture than Virgil; his Metamorphoses were inspired by the Greek epic tradition and metamorphosis poetry in the Hellenistic tradition, and its content was derived to a large extent from Greek mythology and folklore, including the Trojan War. Ovid's treatment of Greek myths was so impactful for later Philhellenism, especially during the Renaissance, that the well-known versions of some myths are actually Ovid's versions (e.g. Echo and Narcissus). Soon after these writers, other Roman lyric poets such as Lucan (inspired by Greek epics with his Pharsalia) or Persius (heavily inspired by Horace with his Life) continued to exhibit strong interests and admirations for Greek literary, artistic, and religious culture.
Roman emperors known for their philhellenism include Nero, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and Julian the Apostate.
Another popular subject of interest in Greek culture at the turn of the 19th century was the shadowy Scythian philosopher Anacharsis, who lived in the 6th century BC. The new prominence of Anacharsis was sparked by Jean-Jacques Barthélemy's fanciful Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece (1788), a learned imaginary travel journal, one of the first historical novels, which a modern scholar has called "the encyclopedia of the new cult of the antique" in the late 18th century. It had a high impact on the growth of philhellenism in France: the book went through many editions, was reprinted in the United States and was translated into German and other languages. It later inspired European sympathy for the Greek War of Independence and spawned sequels and imitations throughout the 19th century.
In German culture the first phase of philhellenism can be traced in the careers and writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, one of the inventors of art history, Friedrich August Wolf, who inaugurated modern Homeric scholarship with his Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795) and the enlightened bureaucrat Wilhelm von Humboldt. It was also in this context that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Hölderlin were to compose poetry and prose in the field of literature, elevating Hellenic themes in their works. One of the most renowned German philhellenes of the 19th century was Friedrich Nietzsche. In the German states, the private obsession with ancient Greece took public forms, institutionalizing an elite philhellene ethos through the Gymnasium, to revitalize German education at home, and providing on two occasions high-minded philhellene German princes ignorant of modern-day Greek realities, to be Greek sovereigns.The history of pedagogically conservative philhellenism in German high academic culture has been examined in Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 (Princeton University Press, 1996); she begins with Winckelmann, Wolf and von Humboldt.
During the later 19th century the new studies of archaeology and anthropology began to offer a quite separate view of ancient Greece, which had previously been experienced second-hand only through Greek literature, Greek sculpture and architecture.S. L. Marchand, 1992. Archaeology and Cultural Politics in Germany, 1800–1965: The Decline of Philhellenism (University of Chicago). Twentieth-century heirs of the 19th-century view of an unchanging, immortal quality of "Greekness" are typified in J. C. Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (1910) or R. and E. Blum's The Dangerous Hour: The lore of crisis and mystery in rural Greece (1970).Cartledge, Paul. "The Greeks and Anthropology."
Accessed 9 June 2023.
According to the Classicist Paul Cartledge, they "represent this ideological construction of Greekness as an essence, a Classicizing essence to be sure, impervious to such historic changes as that from Greek paganism to Orthodox Christianity, or from subsistence peasant agriculture to more or less internationally market-driven capitalist farming."
The Philhellenic movement led to the introduction of Classics or Classical studies as a key element in education, introduced in the Gymnasien in Prussia. In England the main proponent of Classics in schools was Thomas Arnold, headmaster at Rugby School.
Nikos Dimou's The Misfortune to be Greek Η δυστυχία του να είσαι Έλληνας, 1975. argues that the Philhellenes' expectation for the modern Greek people to live up to their ancestors' allegedly glorious past has always been a burden upon the Greeks themselves. In particular, Western Philhellenism focused exclusively on the heritage of Classical Greece, while negating or rejecting the heritage of the Byzantine Empire and the Greek Orthodox Church, which for the Greek people are at least as important.
The groundswell of the Philhellenic movement was result of two generations of intrepid artists and amateur treasure-seekers, from Stuart and Revett, who published their measured drawings as The Antiquities of Athens and culminating with the removal of sculptures from Aegina and the Parthenon (the Elgin Marbles), works that inspired the British Philhellenes, many of whom, however, deplored their removal.
Some, notably Lord Byron, even took up arms to join the Greek revolutionaries. Many more financed the revolution or contributed through their artistic work.
Throughout the 19th century, philhellenes continued to support Greece politically and militarily. For example, Ricciotti Garibaldi led a volunteer expedition ( Garibaldini) in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897.Gilles Pécout, "Philhellenism in Italy: political friendship and the Italian volunteers in the Mediterranean in the nineteenth century", Journal of Modern Italian Studies 9:4:405–427 (2004) A group of Garibaldini, headed by the Greek poet Lorentzos Mavilis, fought also with the Greek side during the Balkan Wars.
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