Why Study Classics?
- lloydgretton
- Dec 21, 2025
- 12 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Fred Dagg was the icon of my youth fifty years ago. The country bumpkin is a familiar caricature in urban societies. He is a butt for lampoons and jokes. The unique difference in New Zealand was he became a venerated sage figure. He appeared in a television skit with the Prime Minister. Thus he demonstrated New Zealand intellectually was the stupidest country in the world. But not technically. The New Zealanders' unique mastery over technology kept New Zealand as an advanced first world country. But since the New Zealand political earthquake in 1984, the chickens have come home to roost on Dagg's head.
In my Classical Greek history class in 1974 at Victoria University, the Junior Lecturer predicted. "One day, we will all press a button that will determine the Government and the laws of the land. In my Ancient Roman class at Auckland University in 1975, the Classics Professor said, "Economists always give splendid justifications for Government deficit spending. But all through history, deficit spending ends in public bankruptcy and ruin." Both predictions by the most ignored and mocked people in New Zealand, Classicists, will turn out exactly right. To this day, I cannot read or hear the word, Classics without wincing. Such is my legacy in New Zealand. Should I ever make a riposte to a sneering public comment about my kind of University degree, the media will disgustingly not publish it.
Ancient Greece reached her apotheosis in Aristotle. New Zealand reached her apotheosis in Dagg.
This book will focus on Athens and its region Attica. It is in Athens that the first direct ballot rule by male free citizens was implemented. It was termed in Athens in the fifth century B.C. Democracy. People's Government. All Governments in the world unless they are absolute Monarchies claim to be Democracies. The Westminster Parliamentary forms of Government have fooled their peoples by calling themselves Democracies despite that word never appearing in their legal codes. Likewise the self proclaimed Republics such as the United States claim to be Democracies but real power resides in their elected politicians and their State institutions. Republics were invented by the Romans Res Publica, the public thing. That is Roman history and belongs to another book. In 510 B.C. or near that year, in Athens and in Rome, tyrannies and foreign rule were overthrown in Athens by Democracy the people, in Rome by the public thing, the Brutus family and the Senate.
Attica, as is all of central and southern Greece, is made up of localities large and small divided by mountains, hills and rivers. In such a land, centralised control was rarely implemented and never lasted long even under the Roman peace. Local identities and cultures flourished instead. Each locality had its own local God and shrines. Likewise New Zealand. The Maori tribes established their identities in their whanau family and their hapu, their resource areas. Later comers to New Zealand established their identities in their localities of towns and rural districts. Life in both Ancient Greece and New Zealand was a constant struggle for survival in unforgiving lands. The gold mines gave the South Island of New Zealand a reprieve from poverty until they ran out. The Ancient Greeks had to sail the Argonaut with Captain Jason to find in Georgia the golden fleece.
War was a constant experience in Ancient Greece as their cities, poleis fought for resources and excellence arete. As it was for the Maori for resources, excellence mana and vengeance utu. In every year, Greek and Maori war parties ventured out to engage in hand to hand combat. With the coming of the British and their imposition of Crown rule, wars ended in New Zealand. But the war spirit as expressed in politics and sport has endured. The Maori war dance haka precedes every sport engagement and in 2025 in a contentious debate in Parliament.
In 2008, I flew over the Dardanelles Straits on my way to Istanbul. I looked down from my seat. I felt my heart leap with joy. There was the Hellespont. To my left, there was the Aegean sea, to my right, Anatolia. There was the battleground of the Trojan war and the Gallipoli campaign. In the legendary Trojan war, the ancient Greeks discovered their national culture. In the Gallipoli campaign, the Kiwis discovered their national culture. From the Trojan war, there came Homer's Iliad, from the Gallipoli campaign, there came the epitaph to the buried dead by Kemal Ataturk. Homer wrote his epic in homage to the Greek dead invaders. Kemal wrote his epitaph to the Gallipoli dead invaders. Homer wrote his first lines in Homeric Greek. "Rage: Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage, Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls Of heroes into Hade's dark, And left their bodies to rot as feast for dogs and birds." Ataturk wrote in Turkish. "Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives. You are now living in the soil of a friendly country." A Kiwi radio broadcaster burst into tears when he read the epitaph. Kemal may not have written it being a soldier and statesman, not a poet. Homer may not have written it being maybe a legend. I saw a Gallipoli cartoon. A soldier declaims in the Gallipoli trenches, "Gallipoli is the birth place of the New Zealand nation." A fellow soldier in his bed mutters. "Someone put a bullet in him.."
The naming of the Hellespont is derived from the sea of Helle. The mythological Princess Helle drowned while fleeing on a golden ram. The naming of New Zealanders as Kiwis is derived from the boot polish brand of New Zealand soldiers in the Gallipoli campaign. The Ancient Greeks being always poetic. A word derived from doing. The Kiwis being always prosaic and practical. It took the Greeks ten years to conquer Troy by sword in the wooden horse ruse. It took the Kiwis one campaign season to depart proud but defeated by Ottoman courage and cannon
When I landed in Istanbul, I longed to go west to Athens. But there was no employment in the European Union for me as a Kiwi English teacher. Instead I went east into the poisoned land of Iraq. All my life I have gone in the opposite direction from where I should go.
The Earliest Humans In Attica
Discoveries of Upper palaeolithic tools conclude that homo sapiens first inhabited Attica between the 11th and 7th millennia B.C. Hominid tools around 700,000 years ago have been found in southern Greece. It seems these hominids never ventured to Attica. Attica is uninvitingly hilly for land foragers. Permanent organised settlements began to appear in Attica during the Neolithic period around 6000 B.C. These early inhabitants are considered most likely to be the ancestors of the Pelasgians, the indigenous population of Greece. It is unclear if the Palaeolithics had a genius inventor who taught them neolithic tool making and to organise into village settlements. Or they were invaded and genocided by Neolithic invaders. Prehistoric history is merciless to its inferiors. Greek mythology is full of images and stories of Satyrs. They were depicted as part - man human torso and part goat lower body. They were noted for their wine, music, revelry and pursuit of rape. They inhabited remote locales, such as woodlands, mountains, and pastures. In the male society of Ancient Greece, they were considered harmless and amusing. Satyr plays were written about them from which the Latin word satire may have been partly derived. Are the satyrs the historical memory of the Palaeolithics? The great God Pan, leader of the satyrs, shared their goat-like features and connection to primordial forests and the earliest festivals. Pan is the original monotheistic all spirit of the universe.
Satyrs in Pauline Baines' Narnia images
What was he doing the great god Pan
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
and breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
By Elizabeth Browning
Evidence for pre Maori settlement
Maori legends have brought about much alternate scholarly speculation the Patupaiarehe were of Celtic descent who arrived in New Zealand 3000 years ago. If one tries to examine this more realistically when did Celtic populations acquire maritime skills that might in a pre Abel Tasman era have got them to New Zealand? I would suggest via the Irish currachin in the sixth century A.D. The curragh was made of a wicker-work frame covered with hides which were stitched together with throngs. By the sixth century, Ireland was converted to Christianity and there were thriving monasteries and scripture study. Saint Brendan in the early sixth century is legendary for his Irish voyage with fellow monks to the Isle of the Blessed in a currach. In recent history, theories arose that these Irish monks were the first Europeans to reach the Americas. An adventurer Tim Severin in the 1970s demonstrated that it is possible for a currah to reach North America from Ireland.
"Could a sixth century currach sail from Ireland in the sixth century to New Zealand? If its seafarers were determined, skilled and lucky enough over a period of years, I suppose they might. In 2013, an Irish couple completed a 15,000 miles sailing expedition from New Zealand to Ireland in a five foot cruising yacht.
"What reason would motivate a curragh voyage to New Zealand in the sixth century? To take part in a sea voyage without hope of return. Did something of an environmental nature happen in that century for such a drastic undertaking and who might have done so? In 2018, a medieval scholar Michael M McCormick nominated 536 as “the worst year to be alive” because of the extreme weather events caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland early in the year, causing, average temperatures in Europe and China to decline and resulting in crop failures and famine for well over a year. This was the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. The Chronicle of Ireland, ecclesiastical records of Irish events from 432-911 AD, record “a failure of bread from the years 536-539”. The Icelandic volcanic eruption spread ash across the Northern Hemisphere, blocking out the sunlight for over a year. ‘For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year,” wrote the contemporary Byzantine historian Procopius. The world endured a decade of famine and the Plague of Justinian, the Byzantine Emperor. In Ireland without bread, where was there to go except as in Ireland thirteen hundred years later, out to the ocean? Did a flotilla of curragh led by a millenarian prophet embark to find the Isle of the Blessed? Saint Brendan was in his eighties when he sailed to the Isle. That was the 560s. However Saint Brendan’s voyage was not the first voyage to the Isle of the Bless. Another Saint had done the voyage and told him about it. Saint Brendan’s curragh was in the tradition filled with eighteen monks. So half a dozen curraghs would make up about over a hundred men, women and children refugees. The curragh seafarers were simple fishermen. Only their prophet might have been literate in Latin. His followers knew weaving for their fish netting and their boats. Some were skilled in metal work for their tools. Metal weapons they did not know, having always relied on their Irish Lords and Abbots to protect them. But they were well versed in sailing, fishing and singing Christian psalms in Gaelic. They sing them accompanied with the Irish bagpipes.
"In the original tenth century manuscript of the Voyage of Saint Brendan, it is recorded thus.” Brendan and his companions, using iron implements prepared a light vessel, with wicker sides and ribs such as is usually made in that country, and covered it with cowhide, tanned in oak bark, tarring the joins hereof, and put on board provisions for forty days, with butter enough to dress hides for covering the boat and all utensils need for the use of the crew.” This report does not mention a sail. Later the report mentions that with breeze a sail was employed. Otherwise under the commands of their Saint, the monks heaved with the oars.
"They sailed looking for the Isle of the Blessed. But every land they encountered was occupied and the sun remained gloomy. Darkness still settled over the world as at the beginning of Genesis. It seemed this was end times as prophesied in the Book of Revelation. They sailed around Cape Horn. As they sailed out into the Pacific, they took with them sturdy roots of the kumara and rats. They learnt in their longest voyages to catch rainwater, and drink their urine, and eat fish, rats and semen as fresh food. Then when they were in near complete despair, and the winds were driving them back down into a chilly environment, they sighted a bountiful land empty of people and even of large animals. At the same time as they landed, the sun began to regain its lustre and light returned to the earth. Their prophet announced a miracle. They embarked and sang their Christian psalms to the accompaniment of their pipes. Here, announced their prophet would be their Canaan, their land not of milk and honey but of teeming bird life, rich vegetation and its seas filled with marine life. They built their huts and their stockades. Their smiths fashioned out of fire their tools. Weapons they did not make. There seemed to be no human enemies and their prophet had taught them to live in peace as like their Irish Saints. They took their currachin out to fish in the sea and the rivers and streams. They were master fishermen. The birds were so plentiful and tame they could kill with stones, wooden implements and traps. They planted their kumara and learnt to eat the edible vegetation. They found out many plump birds could not fly. One flightless bird was larger than a man. As pilgrims, they had traded with the peoples they had encountered but had never fought with, enslaved nor raped them. When they were threatened, they promptly took to their boats and the ocean. Their encountered peoples they traded with their fish and their kumara roots. But their metal implements they never traded. Their prophet made them take a vow to always hide them from the native peoples and to never let them see their manufacturing. If the natives acquired these implements and learnt how to manufacture them, they would be exterminated, said their prophet. They also vowed not to teach the natives how to weave their boats and nets. This skill would take away their fishing resource and trade. Each evening, they gathered together and sang their psalms to the accompaniment of their pipes. The native peoples learnt how to cultivate the newcomers’ kumara and preserved legends of fairy white people who arrived in peace, and spoke a strange language in a hissing sound. That sibilant sound they had only heard before from the reptiles.
"Generations passed in their new settled islands that were empty of any other people. When their populations grew beyond their resources, groups departed to the next fertile land. Their prophet died. As only he was literate, his bible was neglected and lost in the bush. Gradually over the centuries, Christianity was lost except for their psalms still sung in their Gaelic. Their Gaelic became more primitive and most of the meanings of their psalms were lost. Eventually their psalms only sang of the sky and earth, and life and death. They carved abstract images of flora and fauna, and non tattooed people."
The reliefs above do look like leprechauns.
The Pelasgians
Arcadia is a mountainous land locked region in the heart of the Peloponnese in southern Greece. It is unique in Greek history as a secluded refuge where ancient traditions and dialects survived for millennia.
The Arcadians considered themselves the most ancient people in Greece. They claimed to be Proselenoi (pre-lunar) -existing before the moon was created. Their Greek neighbours identified them with the Pelasgians, the indigenous people of Greece who predated the Greeks.
Arcadia is named after Arcas, the son of Zeus and the nymph Callisto. It was the mythological home of Pan, the God of nature and shepherds.
Due to its isolation, Arcadia was not conquered by the Dorians during their migration (c. 1100-1000 B.C. ) This allowed the ancient Arcado-Cypriot dialect to survive long after it disappeared elsewhere in Greece.
Arcadia was a mythical pastoral paradise, symbolising harmony with nature, untouched by urban life, and a sanctuary for the Gods.
Arcadia has become a poetic idyllism in Western culture. That started in Classical Greece as it became more urban and sophisticated. From the third century B.C., poets began idealising Arcadia's simple, pastoral life. Greek and later Latin poets transformed Arcadia into a literary ideal. It became a setting for pastoral poetry- shepherds, flutes, love songs, and idyllic landscapes. From Virgil's Eclogues, Arcadia is a universal symbol of rustic innocence and natural beauty.
In the Renaissance Revival, Arcadia became a major theme in European art and literature, restoring its image as a pastoral utopia.
Tuhoe ( Ngai Tuhoe) is a Maori tribe from the rugged, forested Te Urewera region in New Zealand's North Island. They are known as "Children of he Mist" for their deep connection to the land and strong independence. Like the Arcadians, their history is marked by resistance and self-governance. The Tuhoe have fought many battles with the British Crown and the New Zealand Government for their independence. Their last resistance was in 2007. Armed police raided Te Urewera amid claims that Tuhoe had run guerilla training-camps there. This claim was debunked by a Maori politician who said, no one there gets up until 10 A.M.
To be coninued
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