High life
Athenian ideals
Taki
The reason for the invasion was George and Iro Kovas's ball on the occasion of their daughter's wedding. The Kovases, as you may imagine, are not exactly starving. Their industrial and shipping fortune is major league, and their house and boat in Porto Heli are renowned for non-stop sum- mer partying. Basically they are very gener- ous and, like most Greeks, love to have a good time. Last summer I visited them and they showed me beaches and quaint little ports around the Peloponnese I never knew existed. George, like yours truly, is known to take the occasional drink, and it sure came in handy last summer. There's nothing like finding a kindred spirit while on a binge.
Mind you, history repeated itself last Sat- urday, at least where yours truly was con- cerned. It was inevitable. The ball was held at Cipriani's 42nd Street, in a phantas- magorical setting that once upon a time was the Bowery Bank. Built as a temple to money, when people had to trust banks, it's authoritarian, grand and majestic, i.e., a perfect place for a party, with the 150-ft ceiling and the great orchestra playing Fifties tunes helping one forget the ever growing barbarism of the modern world. Most of the who's who in Greece were pre- sent, starting with the King of the Hellenes, Crown Prince Pavlos and his wife, George Livanos, and, of course, la giovinezza, friends of the bride and groom. For some strange reason I was placed among the grandees, so for a while I behaved myself, but then the inevitable happened.
Incidentally, there was a lot of talk about the Athens Olympics of 2004, and whether the city will make it on time. As always
when Greeks get together, opinions dif- fered. I haven't the foggiest, and I was much too busy dancing, but on a different matter altogether, I think that King Con- stantine would be a great president of the IOC once Antonio Samaranch steps down. I have not spoken to the king about it, but he's a natural. A gold medal winner, he has impeccable credentials, has never been remotely involved with the hanky-panky that went on, and enjoys the prestige required to get the Games back on track.
We Greeks are a strange lot. Left to our own devices, we prosper by being bold and working hard. Restrained by bureaucracy and socialism, we turn corrupt. My idol has always been Alcibiades, that most fascinat- ing of condottieri, whose magnificent dis- dain for democracy is, in my not so humble opinion, a virtue in a present world of envi- ous levellers. Then comes Pericles. He was called the first citizen of Athenian democ- racy, although his enemies called him a tyrant. Some tyrant. He was annually elect- ed `strategos', one of ten, and never placed himself above the law or above the consti- tution. He believed in intelligence, reason, restraint and peace. He presided over Athens during its golden age, and was the sustainer of sophrosyne (moderation) against hubris.
Nowhere in the ancient world was there such a form of government as the Athenian one, and to those modern critics who see Athenian democracy as not meeting their requirements, I say the contrary. If only modern democracies could meet the ancient Athenian requirements for govern- ment. If they did, they would not have con- genital liars and flim-flam men like Blair and Clinton in power, and politicians would not behave like halfwits because without the support of of halfwits they are lost.
`I only drink to be sociable.' Unlike today's lot, Pericles was an aris- tocrat, a soldier, an imperialist, a visionary and a hero. Everything Blair and his mot- ley bunch are not. Although Athenian democracy insisted on equality before the law (isonomia), economic equality was never an issue. Pericles and Athenian democracy can teach the modern world lotsa things, starting with the fact that promising economic equality (isomoiria) simply does not work. There was no iso- moiria in the Bowery Bank last week, and it was one of the reasons that made it so much fun.
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