In times of geopolitical uncertainty and cultural fragmentation, Europe often struggles to define its identity. Yet the roots of that identity run deep in the Classical world, whose myths, philosophy and civic ideals still resonate today. This article, originally published in Italian, reflects on how the legacy of Greece and Rome can serve as a guiding light for Europe’s future — a reminder that beyond crises and divisions lies a shared cultural horizon.
Which roots can give new momentum to Europe and its Union of States and Peoples? The Judeo-Christian roots, the roots of the so-called “GerusAthens,” the purely Christian ones, or those of Classical Greece?
Today’s European system still rests on fragile cultural foundations, and it is the Greek roots that should serve as the emblem to which we look in order to improve society.
Roman civilization, especially in the imperial age, drew its origins from the myths of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Aeneid, a self-celebratory work of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, sought to establish both a divine lineage and a classical one for the imperial family. It drew directly from the work that marks the birth of Western literature — the epic that recounts the stories of the Trojan War.
The reference to the Hellenic world as the basis of an advanced European culture reappears in the Renaissance: in Raphael’s School of Athens, in the works of Michelangelo, and later in Bernini’s colonnade of St. Peter’s Basilica, deliberately recalling the Greco-Roman tradition. Every stage of European history that has sought to inaugurate a new era has implicitly turned back to Classical Greece: one need only think of the monumentalism of cities like Washington, heavily indebted to Classicism, or the Second Reich’s fascination with the sites of the Trojan War, as pursued by Heinrich Schliemann.
Yet this return to the Classical Greek world did not occur with the birth of the European Union. On the contrary, such cultural and social models were set aside in favor of an Anglo-Saxon culture only weakly connected with the European tradition. It is true that the Union consists of two blocs: the “Classical” one, represented by Mediterranean-oriented states (Italy, Greece, France, Spain, Portugal), and the “Celtic” one, linked to the nations north of the Alps (Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden). Attempts to merge the two cultures — as in the cultural revolution within the ideology of Pan-Germanism — have always collided with the reality of deep and irreconcilable differences.
Still, while peoples tied to the Classical tradition rarely — if ever — looked to Celtic culture, the Celtic peoples consistently sought links to the Classical world, underlining the superior pedigree of Greco-Roman civilization over the Celtic one.
The Greek vision of society also resonates in our own time: consider the principle of citizenship, which leads most Italians to oppose the concept of ius soli, echoing the Athenian model that limited citizenship to a narrow group. Another example is the idea of democracy itself, alongside humanity’s persistent tendency to seek a “strong leader” to govern public affairs.
Figures such as Agamemnon, Minos, and Dionysius I of Syracuse emerge powerfully. The latter left us the famous tale reported by Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations, illustrating the insecurity and heavy responsibilities that come with great power.
Europe must therefore decide what it wants to become. Does it wish, culturally as well as politically, to be a branch of the Anglo-Saxon and American tradition — both external to the Union — or to embody political continuity but cultural discontinuity with the United States and the United Kingdom? Only in the latter case can Europe credibly reclaim the role of the North Star of world culture. Conformity, by contrast, would condemn a continent already in crisis to lose the only pedestal that still sustains it.
M.S.
