Comment by bowsamic
2 days ago
> the Greeks and Romans were not cultures of conformity or austerity - quite the opposite, but the seeds of the philosophy sank in hard, and here we are.
I don’t think anyone thinks they were. They are usually assumed to be hedonistic in popular culture
With Romans, at least, the typical (and incorrect) popular narrative is that they were initially austere - and that period is when their civilization achieved its peak - and then became decadent and ruin followed.
I think you really start to see the fetishization of the Greeks and Romans in the Neoclassicism movements in the 18th century as an aesthetic, and I'm actually not sure how much was known about the actual Greek and Roman lifestyles (Roman, in particular - a big lot of this is tied up with the notions of Empire) at the time.
Kids are taught about them as about super serious no fun civilizations. Then I associate it woth fetishisation of military conquest and such.
I would see God's as hedonistic but not greeks. Honestly, my bias is that they were very boring amd sort of artificial.
Maybe not “the Greeks” broadly, but Spartans specifically are equated with austerity to the extent that “spartan” is adopted as an adjective meaning “showing indifference to comfort and luxury”.
Do people associate the Greeks with the Spartans more than the Athenians though?
Heh, not in Southern Europe. They are like the spark of the Western Civilization from Law to Arts to Mathematics and Science.