Philhellenism ("the love of Greek culture") was the intellectual fashion at the turn of the 19th century that led Europeans like Lord Byron to lend their support for the Greek movement towards independence from the Ottoman Empire. Byron provided some more concrete assistance in commissioning several seagoing war vessels which proved to be useful in the successful War of Independence in the early 1820s. The artistic movement of Neoclassicism idealized fifth-century Classical Greek art and architecture ^[1], very much at second hand, through the writings of the first generation of art historians, like Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. 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 ravished the British Philhellenes, many of whom, however, deplored their removal. A popular revival of interest in the shadowy Scythian philosopher 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 at the time. The book went through many editions, was reprinted in the United States and translated into German and other languages. It later inspired European sympathy for the Greek struggle for independence and spawned sequels and imitations through the 19th century. Lord Byron, English poet Lord Byron (1803), as painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, (January 22, 1788 – April 19, 1824) was the most widely read English language poet of his day. ... Imperial motto (Ottoman Turkish) دولت ابد مدت Devlet-i Ebed-müddet (The Eternal State) The Ottoman Empire at the height of its power (1683) Official language Ottoman Turkish Capital Söğüt (1299-1326), Bursa (1326-1365), Edirne (1365-1453), Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) (1453-1922) Imperial anthem Ottoman imperial anthem Sovereigns Padishah... Neoclassicism (sometimes rendered as Neo-Classicism or Neo-classicism) is the name given to quite distinct movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture. ... It has been suggested that Johann Joachim Winkelmann be merged into this article or section. ... Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781), writer, philosopher, publicist, and art critic, was one of the most outstanding German representatives of the Enlightenment era. ... Aegina (Greek: Αίγινα Egina) is one of the Saronic Islands of Greece in the Saronic Gulf, 31 miles (50 km) from Athens. ... // The Parthenon seen from the hill of the Pnyx to the west. ... --88. ... Scythia was an area in Eurasia inhabited in ancient times by an Indo-Aryans known as the Scythians. ... Anacharsis He marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skillful in a thing vie in competition; those who have no skill, judge —Diogenes Laertius, of Anacharsis. ... Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (1716-1795) French writer and numismatist, was born on the 20th of January 1716 at Cassis, in Provence. ... Combatants Greek revolutionaries, United Kingdom, Russia, France Ottoman Empire, Egyptian troops Commanders Theodoros Kolokotronis, Alexander Ypsilanti Omer Vryonis, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt. ...

In the period of political reaction and repression after the fall of Napoleon, when the liberal-minded, educated and prosperous bourgeois class of European societies found the romantic revolutionary ideals repressed by the restoration of old regimes at home, the idea of the re-creation of a Greek state on the very territories that were sanctified by their view of Antiquity, which was reflected in the furnishings of their own parlors and the contents of their bookcases offered an ideal, at a romantic distance. For other uses, see Napoleon (disambiguation). ... Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. ...

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 at home, and providing on two occasions high-minded Philhellene German princes ignorant of modern-day Greek realities, to be Greek sovereigns. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Secondary education. ...

Under these conditions, the Greek uprising constituted a source of inspiration and expectations that could never actually be fulfilled, disappointing what Cartledge called "the Victorian self-identification with the Glory that was Greece". During the later nineteenth century the new studies of arechaeology and anthropology began to offer a quite separate view of ancient Greece. Twentieth-century heirs of the nineteenth-century view of an unchanging "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), who, according to the Classicist Paul Cartledge, "represent this ideological construction of Greekness as an essence, a Classicizing essence to be sure, impervious to such historic changes as that from paganism to Orthodox Christianity, or from subsistence peasant agriculture to more or less internationally market-driven capitalist farming." (Cartledge 1995). Combatants Greek revolutionaries, United Kingdom, Russia, France Ottoman Empire, Egyptian troops Commanders Theodoros Kolokotronis, Alexander Ypsilanti Omer Vryonis, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt. ...

The later nineteenth-century Philhellenes were largely to be found among the Classicists, in the growing split between anthropological and Classicist approaches to Ancient Greece.

Among the modern historical relativists, the Classical heritage is only one facet of the vision of Greece that is imagined as ancestral. The theme of Nikos Dimou's The Misfortune to be Greek^[2] is the perception that the Philhellenic West's projected desire for the modern Greeks to live up to their ancestors' supposedly glorious past has always been a burden upon the Greeks themselves. Nikos Dimou (b, 1935 in Athens) is a Greek writer and a broadcaster. ...

Philhellenes in Antiquity

The term "philhellen" in English can mostly be attributed to non-Greeks. On the other hand, "philhellen" in Ancient Greek language means "friend of Greeks" and can be attributed to both foreigners and Greeks. Note: This article contains special characters. ...

Examples:

• Alexander I of Macedon was called "philhellen" by the Theban poet Pindar.
• Jason of Pherae [1] and
• Evagoras of Cyprus [2] were both called "philhellens" by Isocrates[3]
• Plato also defines the word "philhellen" as "Greek patriot"[4].
• So does Xenophon[5].
• The Roman emperors Hadrian and Nero were discribed as philhellenes.

There are many more examples of the Ancient Greek use of the word philhellen for Greeks[6]. Alexander I was ruler of Macedon from 495 BC to 450 BC. He was the son of Amyntas I of Macedon. ... Thebes (in Demotic Greek: Θήβα — Thíva, Katharevousa: — ThÄ“bai or Thívai) is a city in Greece, situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. ... Pindar Pindar (or Pindarus / Pindaros) (522 BC – 443 BC), considered the greatest of the nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, was born at Cynoscephalae, a village in Thebes. ... Euagoras was the king of Salamis (410 - 374 BC) in Cyprus. ... Isocrates (436–338 BC), Greek rhetorician. ... For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ... Xenophon, Greek historian Xenophon (In Greek , c. ... Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus (January 24, 76–July 10, 138), known as Hadrian in English, was Roman emperor from 117–138, and a member of the gens Aelia. ... Nero[1] Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (December 15, 37 – June 9, 68), born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, also called Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus, was the fifth and last Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (54–68). ...

See also

• Laconophile
• Anglophile
• Germanophile
• Francophile
• Scandophile

Laconophiles are those who have a love of Lacedaemon or Sparta, in Laconia, and its culture and laws. ... An Anglophile is a non-English person who is fond of English culture and England in general. ... A Germanophile is a person who is fond of German culture, and Germany in general, exhibiting as it were German nationalism in spite of not being an ethnic German. ... A Francophile is term given to people with a severe mental illness: its symptoms are a craven attitude towards fighting to preserve what is claimed to be loved, a belief that the French Emprie was and is vastly superior to the British (a falsehood) and an habitual insertion of... A Scandophile (or Septentrionalist) is a person of non-Scandinavian origin with an affinity to Scandinavian (North Germanic) culture. ...

Notes

1. ^ It often selected for its favoured models third and second century sculptures that were actually Hellenistic in origin, appreciated through the lens of Roman copies: see Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique 1981
2. ^ I Dystihia tou na Eisai Ellinas, 1975.

The term Hellenistic (established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen) in the history of the ancient world is used to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance...

References

• Paul Cartledge, Clare College Cambridge, "The Greeks and Anthropology" in Classics Ireland 2 (Dublin 1995)

Further reading

• Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from Olympus : Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970
• M. Byron Raizis, 1971. American poets and the Greek revolution, 1821-1828;: A study in Byronic philhellenism (Institute of Balkan Studies)
• Terence J. B Spencer, 1973. Fair Greece! Sad relic: Literary philhellenism from Shakespeare to Byron
• Emile Malakis, French travellers in Greece (1770-1820): An early phase of French Philhellenism