We have already said it: the story of Europe It begins reluctantly and exhaustion. Europe (whose name means “wide look” or “water extension”, in reference to the Mediterranean) was a Phoenician princess that Zeus fell in love. To kidnap her, the king … Of the gods it became a white bull, on whose rump Europe came to Crete and began the one we call our civilization today.
According to Herodotus, the Greeks called Europe to the central zone of Greece, and only later the name extended to the entire continent. In fact, the classical world conceived borders (word that etymologically means “door”, which can be opened or closed according to who is before it) as a cultural phenomenon and almost never as a geopolitical fact.
Ancient Greece was nothing more than a set of promontories and islands in sea blue. Each city-state adopted its own laws, its own political organization (democracy in Athens, tyranny in Sparta), its currency, its cults and even its dialect.
Until 1821 (after Christ, the year of the independence of Greece), there was never a Greek state, and the internal wars were incessant from Troy onwards. Therefore, what united the Greeks was not a political flag, but an unwavering feeling of cultural belonging. It was the very idea of Hellenism that allowed different peoples to be able to say: we, the Greeks.
A thousand and a thousand years later, Europe continues to ride on the waves of the Mediterranean, but The bull that carries it on its shoulders is no longer Zeus, but an uncertain shadowmolded by the winds of history and modern contradictions. The myth yields to time, and the young Phenician today wakes up in a continent that bears her name, but fights to recognize and recognize her inhabitants.
The European Union suffers from the opposite: its geopolitical borders are precise, the currency is unique, as well as its laws, but its citizens have difficulty using the pronoun of the first plural person and each wrapped the flag of their own interests and differences.
The classic vision of Europe as the crossing of civilizations and fusion of cultures seems a distant echo. In the past land of heroes and poets, of philosophers and strategists, it is now involved in a fog of lost identities and unresolved tensions. Its ancient soul, forged in the dialogue between Athena and Ulysses, between the Oracle of Delphi and the Aristotelian logic, faces the deaf rumble of financial markets and foreign threats.
However, In the heart of the crisis, Casandra’s voice still resonates, warning about the dangers of fragmentationwhile Prometheus chain remembers the value of the sacrifice for the common good.
If Europe wants to be reborn, it must meet its essence in the myth that engendered it: not only as a geographical space but as an idea, as a dream, as a promise of union in diversity.
Maybe a new Homer must enchant peoples with their song, or a new Pitia must offer oracles that guide decisions. But what is certain is that the trip of Europe has not yet concluded: it continues to ride over the waves of time, suspended between a mythical past and a future still to write.
#Andrea #Marcolongo #Andrea #Marcolongo #Europe #uncertain #shadow
