Word: anciently
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...center of the stage of the ancient theater of Herodes Atticus at the foot of the Acropolis, a frail old lady stood one night last week nodding to the applause of cabinet ministers, diplomats and Athenian intellectuals. The mayor of Athens had just proclaimed Miss Edith Hamilton of Washington, D.C. an honorary citizen, and for an instant it seemed as if she might break down. Instead, Edith Hamilton, just four days short of 90, walked up to a microphone and in a firm voice declared: "I am an Athenian citizen! I am an Athenian citizen! This is the proudest moment...
...modern Greek. Though the performance was a bit too complicated to arouse noisy enthusiasm, Edith Hamilton's appearance more than made the evening. Over the years she had done as much as any scholar to spread in so eloquent and popular a form the story of the ancient world among English-speaking readers, and last week the Greeks were determined to show their gratitude. In the name of the King, the Minister of Education decorated her with the Golden Cross of the Order of Benefaction. But in a sense, the honor of citizenship was a mere formality...
MacLeish uses the ancient legend to criticize the tactics used by Senator Joseph McCarthy, in his Congressional investigations. He warnes Americans that "in adopting the tactics of the enemy and in branding as traitors those who try to reason with us, we haul within our gates the agent of our own destruction. Americans, as well as Trojans, can mistake a monster for a God ..." forgetting that patriotism must involve intelligent questioning, rather than passive acceptance or conformity...
Crossroads Jumble. The ancient city has seen the glory and decline of two empires. Founded by the Greeks six centuries before Christ, and chosen as the site of a new Rome by the Emperor Constantine in A.D. 330, the city was known first as Byzantium. As Constantinople, it was a world capital for 1,100 years until it fell in 1453 to the founders of a new empire, the vigorous Turks of the Ottoman Conqueror Mohammed...
When the new Turkish republic of Kemal Ataturk took over from the moribund Ottoman Empire after World War I, the ancient glories of Constantinople were already flaking away in a slow death of peeling paint, collapsed masonry, commercial clutter and neglect. Nobody much cared. The fashion then was to lavish attention on the bustling new inland capital of Ankara. As time passed, tourist interest and national pride in the possession of a great historical monument gradually restored Turkish affection to the city they now called Istanbul. Still, nobody did much about repaving its streets, restoring its buildings or clearing...