To Hellenic and Back

摘要

If the ancient greeks had in-vented a durable copyright system in addition to cheesecake, theater, and democracy, modern Greeks might not be in such trouble today. A few weeks ago, Greece's Prime Minister George Papan-dreou exhorted his fiscally ravaged countrymen to "rally together" to keep the nation from "going under." They've rallied, all right-going on strike and staging protests in the streets of Athens. Meanwhile, publishing houses and movie studios throughout the West enrich themselves with stories and characters drawn from the old Greek world: a boomlet of Hellenic novels and movies that culminates on April 2 with the big-budget 3-D remake of Clash of the Titans. I'd call all this appropriation ironic, but it would only rub salt in the wound: the Greeks invented irony too.