Seeing the World with Greek Eyes

“I am a Greek born 2,381 years after my ancestors built and dedicated the Parthenon . . . . I am telling Greek history outside the conventional Christian worldview,” writes Eaggelos G. Vallianatos, author of The Passion of the Greeks: Christianity and the Rape of the Hellenes

Born in a Greek village, Vallianatos came to the United States as a young man and earned a doctorate in history at Wisconsin. He has written three other books on globalization and agriculture.

A little bit like Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick’s A History Of Pagan Europe, his book moves from a general discussion of Greek religion through the conquest of a disunited Greece by imperial Rome to the fall of the empire as seen by Greek historians, lingering on the late Christian emperors’ persecution of the Pagan “Hellenes,” those who saw Greek literature, culture, and religion as intertwined.

One appendix discusses and rates works by many noted classicists. Vallianatos likes Robin Lane Fox and Ramsay MacMullen, who “[makes] some difference to our understanding of the dreadful record of Christianity in the Mediterranean,” but has no use for Polymnia Athanassiadi: “Her Christian bias shines through in everything she says about Julian.” And so on.

As its title suggests, the book is passionate. I have read only as far as Chapter 4, “The Treason of Christianity,” because I can take it only in small doses. But I will continue all the way to the end, believe me.