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CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Ancient History and National Identity

Andrew Erskine

In January 2002 the international media announced the death of the world’s oldest currency: the drachma had been replaced by the euro. In this we see the power of national mythologies. There is no denying that the drachma had been the currency of the Greeks of antiquity, but the story implies that it had been continuously in use since then. It overlooks the succession of empires that had ruled over Greece and the various coins of these occupying powers, the Roman denarius, the Byzantine solidus, the Ottoman akçe. The drachma had long been out of circulation when in 1832 the recently created Greek state decided to invoke its memory by naming their new cur- rency after it. By asserting continuity with the classical past, the Greeks claimed that past for their new nation and effectively erased the intervening centuries.

The Greek and Roman past has played and continues to play an important part in modern national identity, not only in Greece and Italy, where it might seem to have a particular relevance, but also in other European countries such as Germany, France, and most controversially the former Yugoslavian republic of Macedon. It is not, however, limited to Europe and the Mediterranean, as the example of the United States of America with its senate and senators demonstrates. At various times the classical past has turned out to be a very real and potent presence in the formation and development of nations. In the 1990s it was a central feature in the often bitter diplomatic dispute between Greece and its neighbor the Republic of Macedonia, while earlier in the twentieth century ancient Rome was fi rmly worked into the ideol- ogy of Mussolini’s Fascist regime. This chapter explores some of the ways in which the ancient past has been appropriated by nations of modern times, and also considers why this should be so.

1 Creating a National Past

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw major changes in the political structures of Europe, notably the formation of nation-states, which gradually came to replace

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the shifting alliances of ruling aristocracies so common in the West, or the sprawling Ottoman, Tsarist and Austro-Hungarian empires further East. These emerging states often looked back to the ancient world as part of the process of establishing their identity in the present. By highlighting ancient roots they were able to show that the nation, new as it might appear, was not the creation of the moment but something that had, in spirit at least, existed all along, and had a right to exist now. At the same time this could allow the divisions of more recent times to be by-passed in the inter- ests of promoting unity. The ancient past was of relevance to two of these states in particular, neither of which existed at the beginning of the nineteenth century – Greece and Italy.

Greece came into existence in a somewhat piecemeal fashion during the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, progressively adding parts of the Ottoman empire. In the early 1830s its territory for the most part covered the Peloponnese and central Greece, in 1881 Thessaly was added, and in 1913 the state was extended southward to include Crete and northward into Epirus and Macedonia. It is in this northern area that territorial battles were at their most intense as Greece competed with other new states such as Serbia and Bulgaria for the spoils of the failing Ottoman empire. Italy’s situation was rather different. Whereas Greece had been under the single rule of the Ottoman empire for centuries, Italy had been politically divided since the end of antiquity, a mix of independent kingdoms and principalities, papal states and foreign powers, only coming together as a unifi ed state between 1859 and 1871. Nevertheless, in both cases local, regional, and other identities would generally have been stronger than any identity as Greeks or Italians.

These new states had to create an identity, not only for their own citizens but also for the outside world. Both Greece and Italy had the classical past to look back to, and they drew on it as they defi ned themselves in their new status, Greece rather more so than Italy, at least until Mussolini took power (section 2 below). It is evident in the choice of capitals, Athens and Rome, cities that recalled former greatness and, more disturbingly perhaps, imperial power. When these cities became capitals of their respective modern states, however, neither was an obvious powerhouse of national change; Athens was a modest town, although with impressive ancient remains, while the papal state still occupied part of Rome, as it does to this day (for the debate about whether Rome should be designated capital, Giardina and Vauchez 2000: 185–89). But Athens and Rome had tremendous symbolic value. Greece and Italy’s desire to possess their classical past is nowhere clearer than in the laws each state produced early in their development to control the practice of archaeology. Already in 1834 Greece passed a law that all antiquities were “national heritage” and “state property” (Hamilakis and Yalouri 1996: 119), while the Italian government shortly after unifi - cation instituted a ban on foreign excavations in Italy or its territories and established its own archaeological service (Dyson 2006: 98–101). This might seem only to be expected, but the point is that to legislate was to make an explicit claim to the past. As Kyriakos Pittakis, ephor of antiquities in the new Greek state, said of archaeologi- cal discoveries, this was “material to be used to demonstrate that the inhabitants of Greece are descendants of the ancient Greeks” (quoted in Dyson 2006: 75). Similarly the names of the various administrative regions of the state were deliberately modeled

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on ancient Greece. As a government directive at the time said, this was in order “to resurrect, through this measure, antiquity, to connect the present of Hellas with its illustrious past, to give birth to noble competition among the Hellenes through old memories, to present a picture of classical Hellas abroad, and, fi nally, to enrich the neo-Hellenic language with names both Hellenic and melodious” (quoted in Alex- andri 2002: 192).

Beyond Greece and Italy the relation with the classical past was more complex. France, for example, was shaping a new post-revolutionary national identity, while a German nation-state was progressively being formed out of several hundred princi- palities and free cities until a German empire was established in 1871. In nations such as these we see two distinct approaches at work. Their existence as a separate people is affi rmed by emphasizing their resistance to Roman rule, and consequently heroes of that resistance are celebrated (Schulze 1996: 95–97), while at the same time a Roman heritage is claimed through their having been part of the Roman empire.

France’s Napoleon III encapsulates this very neatly. In the 1860s he was an active promoter of the idea of France as a Gallic nation, something which had gained force since the revolution of 1789, whereas the toppled aristocrats were associated with the Frankish invaders of late antiquity. This Gallic/Celtic character is still a major element in French identity today (cf. Dietler 1994 on its use from Napoleon I and Mitterand to Asterix and Gauloises cigarettes). In particular Napoleon III sponsored archaeological excavations at the site of Alesia, where Vercingetorix, the leader of the Gallic rebellion against Rome in 52 BC, made his last stand against Caesar (cf. Witt, THE “CELTS,” section 2a). The conclusion of the excavations was marked by the erec- tion of a large statue of Vercingetorix, the features of which were said to resemble Napoleon III. Nor was this assertion of France’s Celtic past to have mere local sig- nifi cance; the 6.6-meter-high bronze statue was fi rst displayed in Paris and then carried upright on a wagon through the French countryside to Alesia, where it was placed on a 7-meter-high plinth. The equation between the French people and the ancient Gauls was made explicit in the two inscriptions in French, one reading “Napoleon III, Emperor of the French people, to the memory of Vercingetorix,” the other “Gaul united, forming a single nation, animated by the same spirit, can defy the world” (Dietler 1998: 72–76). Signifi cantly, however, the second is loosely based on words attributed to Vercingetorix by Caesar in his account of the war (BG 7.29); thus the site, the hero, and even his words are all determined by the Roman Caesar. Napoleon’s debt to Caesar and his preoccupation with him was such that he wrote a two-volume study of the Roman general in which Rome’s place in the devel- opment of the French nation was treated as fundamental:

In honoring the memory of Vercingetorix, we must not lament his defeat. Let us admire the ardent and sincere love of this Gallic chief for the independence of his country, but let us not forget that it is due to the triumph of the Roman armies that we owe our civilization; our institutions, our customs, our language, all of this comes to us from the conquest. (quoted and translated in Dietler 1998: 76)

Two German monuments convey something of this dual heritage not long after the establishment of the German state. In 1875 Kaiser Wilhelm I, his title evocative of

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Rome, dedicated the Hermann Monument near Detmold, which honored Arminius, chieftain of the Cherusci, whose most famous achievement had been the annihilation of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9 (on the battle, P. Wells 2003); this massive bronze statue on a pedestal towers up over 50 meters and holds a sword on which is inscribed “German unity is my strength, my strength is Germa- ny’s power” (Deutsche Einigkeit, meine Stärke, meine Stärke, Deutschlands Macht). Here then Arminius stands as a precursor to the German nation of the nineteenth century, an image larger and more triumphant than the meditative statue of Vercin- getorix to be found across the border in France; the sword for example is raised aloft rather than at his side. Near Bad Homburg in Hessen, however, it is the Roman heritage that is recalled; a visitor will fi nd the Saalburg, a full-scale reconstruction of a Roman legionary fort that was part of the limes frontier defense system that linked the Danube with the Rhine. The building of the Saalburg took place between 1898 and 1907 on the basis of earlier excavations, and was a project encouraged by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was there to lay the cornerstone in 1900 (Schallmayer 1997). Together these monuments root Germany in the ancient past, but at the same time their military tone carries a powerful message for the present and for their neighbors in particular.

2 Past and Future Glory

The classical past could provide a new state with traditions and identity, but that identity itself would also be shaped by present goals and ambitions. Former glories might be seen to serve the present well. Several nations sought to legitimize imperial and expansionist ambitions by reference to the achievements of their ancestors.

In Greece, for example, there was the Great Idea (Megale Idea), that all Greeks should be unifi ed in one state (Greene 2000). Given the scattered nature of the Greek community, this was problematic from the beginning, but it did act as one of the driving forces for the extension of the Greek state. This justifi cation was put very clearly by Ioannis Kolettis, Greek prime minister from 1844 until his death in 1847:

The Kingdom of Greece is not Greece. [Greece] constitutes only one part, the smallest and poorest. A Greek is not only a man who lives within this kingdom, but also one who lives in Jannina, in Salonica, in Serres, in Adrianople, in Constantinople, in Smyrna, in Trebizond, in Crete, in Samos and in any land associated with Greek history or the Greek race . . . There are two main centers of Hellenism: Athens, the capital of the Greek kingdom, [and] “The City” [Constantinople], the dream and hope of all Greeks. (quoted and translated in Clogg 1979: 76)

This also reveals an early tension in the concept of Greek national identity, on the one hand looking back to Athens and a classical past, on the other to Constantinople and an Orthodox Christian identity. The Great Idea came to an abrupt halt in 1922 with the failure of Greek forces to occupy the region of Asia Minor around Smyrna.

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The resulting débâcle led to massive population transfers: some one million Greeks moved from Asia Minor to Greece, and almost 400,000 Turks went the other way, both defi ned by religion (Orthodox Christian or Muslim), not language. These new Greeks also helped to bolster the Greek presence in the parts of Macedonia that had been acquired in 1913 (Clogg 1979: 120–23).

The great imperial power of antiquity, of course, was Rome, and the new Italian state looked backed to it for inspiration. Thus parallels were drawn between Italy’s intervention in North Africa in 1911–12 and Scipio Africanus’s assault on Carthage at the end of the Second Punic War, the latter recaptured in one of most spectacular fi lms of early Italian cinema, the 1914 Cabiria (Wyke 1999, Llewellyn-Jones, HOL-

LYWOOD’S ANCIENT WORLD, section 1). But it was Mussolini’s Fascist movement in the wake of the First World War that really took hold of Rome’s ancient past. For a country that was still very much in the process of unifying and becoming a nation- state (cf. M. Clark 1996: 177), Rome offered a national story, one that the Fascists embraced and made their own. The appeal to the past also made it easier for the Fascist regime to inaugurate radical change (cf. Quentin Skinner 1974: 294–95 on the need for every revolutionary “to march backward into battle”); it was merely the revival of the Roman empire, a return to Rome’s greatness.

The Fascist party modeled fi rst itself and then the state after Rome. One of the most prominent symbols of Fascism and later the Italian state was the fasci, the bundle of rods (fasces in Latin) that the lictors in ancient Rome carried in front of a magistrate to represent his authority. The fasci were a very visible presence on public buildings throughout Italy. Mussolini’s sobriquet, Il Duce, harked back, sometimes explicitly so, to the Latin dux, leader (cf. fi g. 48.1; Giardina and Vauchez 2000: 220–24). As the regime came to be identifi ed with the state, so there also came into force a new system of dating, which marked the Fascist era as beginning in 1922. This was the year Mussolini, in imitation of Sulla and Caesar, came to power with his “march on Rome,” but the new calendar also defi ned this as the year that the fasces were restored – in other words Fascist Italy was the true successor of the Roman: 1940, for example, was the eighteenth year since the restoration of the Fasces (Anno XVIII Fascibus Restitutis). Rome becomes not merely the past but also a means of looking forward. In 1937 there was a great exhibition to celebrate two thousand years since the birth of the emperor Augustus, the Mostra Augustea della Romanità (The Augustan Exhibition of Romanness). As the many visitors from all over Italy entered the exhibi- tion, they would have passed through an entrance above which were written the words of Mussolini: “Italians, you must ensure the glories of Rome’s past are surpassed by the glories of the future” (Cannistraro 1972: 127).

Fascist Italy saw the re-emergence of imperial Rome, not only in exhibitions and symbols but also as a physical reality. Much of it had long disappeared beneath medi- eval and later structures. Mussolini stripped these away to expose the true Rome beneath, and in the process created the ancient city that tourists see today, just as the Greeks in the nineteenth century had cleared the Acropolis of post-classical build- ings. This was archaeology as propaganda (Dyson 2006: 76–77, 177–79; for similar treatment of more recent monuments in nineteenth-century Paris, Colin Jones 2007). The focus of this activity was the imperial fora and the area around the Mausoleum

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of Augustus. Through the middle of the newly excavated imperial fora Mussolini built a huge road, essentially a parade route for military display. It ran from his head- quarters in Palazzo Venezia to the Colosseum, linking the new Rome with old, and its name, Via dell’ Impero (Empire Road), captured both the achievements of the past and the aspirations of the present, although those of the present would remain largely unfulfi lled (Hyde Minor 1999). They do, however, reveal the continuing vitality of the ancient world in the construction of modern national identity.

3 Contested Symbols: Macedon and Greece

The turbulent and violent break-up of Yugoslavia’s federal structure in the early 1990s led to the formation of a series of independent republics, one of which was the Republic of Macedonia, previously a constituent part of Yugoslavia as the People’s Republic of Macedonia created at the end of the Second World War. Now, as an emerging nation-state it sought to shape its identity in the modern world by appro- priating symbols associated with the ancient kingdom of Macedon. This rapidly brought it into confl ict with Greece, which claimed sole ownership of the ancient Macedonian past.

48.1 Mosaics from the Foro Italico, Rome, formerly the Foro Mussolini in the manner of an imperial forum. An old Roman art form, but twentieth-century Fascist themes. Note the rifl es and the repeated salutation of Mussolini as Il Duce. (Photo: author)

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New states need an identity, and symbols help to defi ne and affi rm that identity. The republic of Macedonia not only had a name that recalled ancient Macedon, it also chose to make that connection explicit on its fl ag. Here was dis- played a golden-yellow 16-pointed sun against a red background. This symbol of the sun was derived from the decoration of a gold casket (larnax) found during Manolis Andronikos’s excavations of the royal Macedonian tombs at Vergina in Greece in the late 1970s; that motif was variously known as the Sun or Star of Vergina (fi g. 48.2). Since the fl ag of the former Socialist republic had been a fi ve-pointed star outlined in gold or yellow on a red background, the new fl ag in its design expressed a degree of continuity with the recent past, but the use of the Vergina imagery also suggested that, however new the state might seem, it had in some sense always existed. Nor was this any old Macedonian symbol: Andronikos believed that the casket had contained the bones of Philip II and that the symbol was “the emblem of the Macedonian dynasty” (Andronikos 1981, esp. 212–13, and 1984; contrast Borza 1990: 253–66).

A symbol that transcended the recent past had a particular value in this new Republic of Macedon, a nation inhabited by a multitude of ethnic groups, each with its own traditions. In the 1994 census there were questionnaires in six languages – Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish, Rom, Serbo-Croat and Vlach, the largely Orthodox Christian Macedonian group making up two-thirds of responses, with almost a quarter coming from the mostly Muslim Albanian-speakers (K. Brown 2000: 127). This diversity is in part a consequence of centuries of Ottoman rule, though shaken up somewhat by the radical population transfers that affected the Balkans and western Turkey in the early twentieth century. Unlike, for example, Christian symbols, those rooted in the Macedon of Philip and Alexander had the potential to unify. By their remote, essentially mythical character they did not exclude; instead they could bring together the peoples of this complex nation at a time when ethnic confl ict

48.2 The gold casket (larnax) from Vergina; on its lid is the symbol of the star/sun adopted for the short-lived Macedonian fl ag. (Drawn by Dora Kemp, fi rst published in Antiquity 1994)

Publisher's Note: Permission to reproduce this image online was not granted by the copyright holder. Readers are kindly requested to refer to the printed v ersion of this chapter.

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was rife among its neighbors, most notably in Bosnia-Herzegovina (K. Brown 1994, 2000).

Greece, however, felt threatened by a state on its borders laying claim to any kind of Macedonian heritage, especially when its own northern region, acquired in 1913, was also known as Macedonia. From the Greek perspective it was especially provoca- tive to take the imagery for the fl ag from an archaeological site within Greek territory. Greece, therefore, campaigned vigorously against the pretensions of this new state, partly by seeking to prevent the use of the name “Macedonia” and associated symbols in international fora, partly by promoting itself as the true heir of ancient Macedon. When the Macedonian republic was accepted into the United Nations in April 1993, it was as a state with no name. Whereas the republics of Serbia, Bosnia and Herze- govina, Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro have all now been recognized by the United Nations under those names, the Republic of Macedonia at the time of writing still appears in the United Nations membership lists under the provisional title of “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (www.un.org/members/list.shtml listed under “T” for “The,” a compromise between M and F). Nor would Greece allow the Macedonian fl ag to be hoisted at the United Nations (on the complex diplomatic maneuver that allowed FYR Macedonia, as it is often known, into the UN, see M. Wood 1998). Only in 1995, after a year-long economic blockade on its Greek border, did the Macedonian government fi nally agree to abandon its use of the Vergina sun/star symbol. The new fl ag did not, however, break all links with its predecessor; it consisted of a golden sun dramatically splashed across a red backdrop.

At the same time, ancient history became heavily politicized and pervasive. In 1992 Kavala airport in northern Greece was renamed Alexander the Great Airport, while two years later Alexander the Great appeared on the Greek 100-drachma coin with the Vergina Star on the reverse. Greece was making absolutely clear that this was her heritage. Arguments and counter-arguments fl owed: the Skopje republic (so called by the Greeks, after its capital) was not where the kingdom of Macedon had been, and the population anyway were Slavs who only arrived in the sixth century AD; on the other side it was argued that the ancient Macedonians were not Greeks, and that had been said by no other than Demosthenes (Danforth 2000: 349–52). The debate was waged not only between Greece and the new Macedonian republic, but among their respective diaspora communities as far away as Canada and Australia (Danforth 1995). The dispute between the two states may have become less vocal since the mid-90s, but Macedonia remains without a name at the United Nations and there is no sign that it has abandoned its claim to an ancient past; in 2007 the Skopje International Airport was renamed Skopje Alexander the Great Airport.

Both Greece and the Republic of Macedonia have been providing themselves with a past where no national past existed, due to their earlier incorporation within larger political structures. Ancient history is one route to such a past, one that because of its very remoteness has the fl exibility to be inclusive and so allows for the possibility of a unifi ed identity. It can be the subject of confl ict, however, because by having a past a nation also has a future. But the relationship between ancient history and national identity is a two-way process. Just as ancient history may shape a nation’s

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conception of itself and its past, so that conception in turn may feed into the way the ancient past is studied, taught, and understood. The ancient historian today, so practiced at analyzing the historical context of the sources, needs also to think about more recent interpretations of the antiquity and the context in which they too have evolved.