Greece For Sale

Statue of Ploutos and the cornucopia, or the horn of plenty.

Man, there’s so many stuff to talk about once you actually start paying attention to the news. There’s still turmoil about Greece, who is trying to secure another 8 billion loan from the IMF, and other miscellaneous financial babbling. Did you know that Greece is one of the only cultures to actually possess a god related to wealth and riches? I guess avarice is just hardwired into their genetics somehow. And no, before all you fumbling classicists start to think that I’m talking about Haides (which in all fairness is an honest mistake to make since you are nowhere near sufficiently enlightened, that is why you’re reading this dazzling digital publication, after all), I’m not.

I found out from theoi.com that there was a Ploutos, the son of Iason and Demeter, and the personification of wealth. Zeus blinded the poor guy just so he would distribute capital fortune evenly and without any disposition towards the good and virtuous. How egalitarian of those ancient Greeks, eh? Of course, if you’re pious you don’t need earthly riches, you just crave the supernatural abundance of divine grace and perhaps the security of a profitable spot in the paradisial afterlife, which is filled to burst with spiritual prosperity anyway. Well, keep reading and you might just get there.

Now we arrive at Haides, the god of the underworld and the dead, who carried the title Plouton, “lord of riches”, seeing as how below the surface of the earth all kinds of unimaginable treasures were stored. Haides was therefore normally depicted with a cornucopia that sprouted fertility, as was Ploutos. So hey, my advice to the Greeks is: start digging and stop begging.

Haides! With a cornucopia! Pouring fertility! On the earth! Next to him Persephone! His wife! Theoi.com!? Never heard of it!

A New Era Begins

Peter Paul Rubens, "The Rape of Europa", c.1630

And once again you have managed to struggle yourself through the endless piles of worthless chattering and inane stupidities that comprise the world wide web in order to reach this safe haven of intellectual bliss and spiritual tranquillity. And how opportune of you to do so at this very moment, for I am on the verge of starting a new chapter of grandeur and mind-boggling excellence on this already revered outpost of the information interstate. I have declared myself ready and willing to start tackling current day affairs and relate them to the wondrous world of myth, so that the gratitude and astonishment will now spew forth in unstoppable tidal waves from your menial craniums.

So let’s talk for a moment about Greece, which apparently is on the verge of bankruptcy despite the endless drones of sweaty, overweight tourists that penetrate its glorious borders like a pack of hungry Ethiopians descending on a Red Cross emergency provisions-tent. It seems that every day I open the paper there is a DEFCON-2 situation and concern about the state of Greece and subsequently the Euro. Let me tell all you EU-outsiders about the Euro: best thing to have happened on this piece of land since the domestication of cows. Anyway, I really don’t care about all that moaning about the economy and the disarray in the financial markets and since you are here, I’m guessing you don’t either. Or otherwise you just have not learned how to prioritize better, but a quick read of all the previous posts will then suffice to set you straight and will have you falling on your knees in pious supplication in no time.

Like all the other EU-countries, we Dutch people have pumped quite a substantial amount of money into Greece, lest it would collapse and, like a domino, take a bunch of surrounding countries with it. ITALY, SPAIN, ANATOLIA, PHRYGIA: ALL IN DANGER! Well, Anatolia and Phrygia used to make up most of Turkey, but you catch my drift. Of course, no sane person since Dwight Eisenhower has believed in the domino theory, yet here we are regardless. In these perilous times our own fragile economy should take precedence and so the question buzzing all around is: should we invest money that we’re likely to never see back in Greece and other ailing countries such as Italy and Spain? (Their financial problems have something to do with national debt and liquidity-solvability processes I think, but you’d have to ask J.M. Keynes to be sure) To all this I answer with a Herakleian YES, we should! Greece’s cultural heritage alone makes up 50% of the historical canon of Europe (remember that it was named after the helpless Phoenician princess that was kidnapped by Zeus as he was in the shape of a white bull, so he could indulge in some supernaturally sanctioned bestiality) and I recall that there was a time that everybody wanted to roam in the jaunty abodes of Arcadia.

If you ask me, the UK should just transfer some hefty sums of hard cash to poor Greece’s empty account, in order to make up for all those treasures they so remorselessly stole and shamelessly put on display in the British Museum in order to give some more luster to their own destitute society.

So, what have we learned today? Economics is boring and this blog still rules the stars.

Food for thought.