DIALECTICS OF THE GREEK-AUSTRALIAN BRIDAL SHOWER

There comes a moment in the life of every Greek-Australian man when he discovers that history is neither linear nor dialectical. Instead, it is pastel. He has spent his adult life cultivating a wardrobe based upon the reassuring principles of black, navy and a slightly different navy. Then, without warning, he receives instructions from his significant other that on Sunday afternoon he must present himself at a bridal shower wearing “something sage.” He has no idea what sage is. He knows it as a herb and has possibly encountered it in lamb. Never has he previously understood it as a political demand.

The bridal shower itself remains, from the Greek-Australian male perspective, one of the more mysterious institutions produced by Western civilisation. In its original suburban manifestation, as adopted by our tribe, it was an exclusively female preserve, a species of domestic Eleusis whose mysteries were guarded with a ferocity that would have impressed the priestesses of Demeter. Behind the drawn curtains of the saloni, Bessemer cookware was unveiled with a solemnity ordinarily reserved for the revelation of divine truths, while initiates contemplated the salvific properties of non-stick surfaces and the possibility of acquiring enlightenment through matching crockpots that fit into each other like Babushka dolls. Elsewhere, games of an unmistakably Bacchic character were conducted with phallic implements whose appearance and intended use would have caused considerable embarrassment to the archaeological department of any respectable university. The proceedings were governed by an inviolable prohibition against male attendance. Pentheus, who made the elementary mistake of attempting to observe the rites of Dionysus without an invitation, provided the relevant cautionary precedent. Any Greek-Australian husband sufficiently imprudent to enter the kitchen during these ceremonies could expect a similarly comprehensive dismantling, although the principal instruments of his destruction would be his mother-in-law and a wooden spoon.

For generations, bridal showers were understood to be secret women's business, conducted beyond the knowledge and jurisdiction of men. Their proceedings were neither witnessed nor discussed, and no Greek-Australian husband of sound mind would have contemplated crossing the threshold, let alone asking for an account of the activities within. The prohibition was absolute, universally understood and, unusually for a Greek institution, entirely uncontested. Men accepted their exclusion with a unanimity seldom achieved on matters of religion, politics or the ownership of a disputed boundary fence.

The arrangement might have endured indefinitely had the advent of social media not introduced an unforeseen complication. A bridal shower could still be conducted in the complete absence of men, but its photographic record now apparently required their presence, preferably in colours suggestive of a particularly expensive selection of bathroom tiles. Consequently, the ancient prohibition was modified to permit a brief male visitation towards the conclusion of the proceedings, rather as medieval monasteries occasionally admitted distinguished lay visitors, although the monks were seldom instructed to wear dusty rose. The men, who had never agitated for admission, accepted this concession with the suspicion ordinarily reserved for unsolicited improvements to their working conditions.

Thus the Greek-Australian male found himself the beneficiary of an emancipation he had never sought, from a prohibition he had never resented, into an institution whose principal demand was that he purchase a lilac shirt. The history of human liberation contains few comparable reversals.

For several hours the men remain absent, as tradition and common-sense dictate. They arrange their Sunday according to the established masculine economy of avoidance. Some go for coffee, while others mysteriously discover an urgent obligation at Bunnings. The more experienced remain within a fifteen-minute radius because they know that history is approaching and that eventually the message will arrive on their phones: “Come now. We’re doing photos.”

And so they come. From every direction appear Greek-Australian men who have spent the afternoon happily dressed as themselves and have now been transformed into decorative accessories. One wears pale pink. Another has been placed in beige. A third, ordinarily a cousin who considers a pocket square evidence of moral decline, has somehow been persuaded into a mint-green linen shirt. They assemble beneath the balloon arch, smile obediently, are photographed from six different angles and, their historical function completed, await permission to leave.

Marx, had he lived long enough to witness this phenomenon, would surely have recognised the bridal shower as the culminating contradiction of bourgeois production. Under capitalism, he might have observed, the worker becomes alienated from the product of his labour. Under the bridal shower, the Greek man becomes alienated from the colour of his own shirt. His labour possesses no intrinsic value because he has contributed nothing to the grazing table, did not select the flowers and remains incapable of explaining why there are tiny bottles of prosecco tied with ribbons beside every place setting. His sole function is representational. He exists because the photographer has announced: “Now one with the boys.” Thus the Greek-Australian male enters the bridal shower at precisely the moment when everyone else is preparing to leave.

Lenin naturally radicalises Marx. For Lenin, the pastel shirt represents the transition from spontaneous consciousness to revolutionary consciousness. At first the Greek man believes his predicament to be personal. “Why do I have to wear this?” he asks, thereby revealing the limitations of false consciousness. Only when he arrives and sees twelve other crestfallen Greek-Australian men standing beneath the same balloon arch in various shades of peach does class consciousness become possible. He looks at them. They look at him. Nobody needs to speak because the material conditions of their oppression are immediately visible.

The revolutionary potential of this moment, however, is rapidly neutralised when somebody’s aunt shouts, “Boys, closer together!” Lenin therefore identifies the aunt as the decisive instrument of bourgeois coercion. She possesses neither elected office nor formal authority, yet nobody dares resist her. One command and fourteen adult men, several of whom employ other people and spend their weekdays giving orders, shuffle obediently towards one another until their shoulders touch.

Gramsci offers a subtler interpretation because nobody physically forces the Greek-Australian man to attend. There are no police at the door and no bridal shower secret service dragging reluctant husbands from Oakleigh cafés. He comes willingly because power has already become cultural common sense. “You have to come for the photos” requires no legislation, provides no reasons and admits no right of appeal. The genius of the system lies in its capacity to make participation appear voluntary while ensuring that every Greek-Australian man instinctively understands the consequences of asking, “Do I really have to?”

Foucault, meanwhile, would be fascinated by the photographer, whose authority extends beyond the regulation of clothing to the minute administration of the human body. Heads must be tilted, shoulders aligned, hands removed from pockets and expressions adjusted to convey a degree of spontaneous happiness that the participants have been instructed to reproduce on command. “Just act natural,” the photographer announces, having spent the preceding seven minutes eliminating every recognisable manifestation of natural behaviour. Here the disciplinary ambitions of modernity achieve their most complete expression. The docile body has finally been perfected, and it is wearing linen.

Yanis Varoufakis, on the other hand, departs sharply from the orthodox Marxist tradition. The bridal shower, he argues, can no longer be understood adequately through the old categories of capital and labour because the pastel shirt has ceased to be a commodity in the conventional sense. It has become a financial instrument whose value derives neither from its material composition nor from its usefulness after the event, since the Greek man will never wear it again. Its value arises entirely from its anticipated appearance on Instagram. We have therefore entered a new economic order in which the photograph becomes the asset, the bridal shower becomes the platform and the Greek husband becomes human collateral. There is no Plan B.

At this point an uncle called Con, recently divorced, arrives wearing a black polo shirt and acid-wash jeans because nobody told him about the colour scheme, and the entire theoretical edifice begins to tremble. He stands among the lilac, blush, sage and champagne like Albania at a NATO summit. Every photograph reveals him, and every attempt to reposition him merely strengthens the subversiveness of his presence. Someone whispers that they should have told Uncle Con, while someone else insists that they did. Con remains unmoved. His divorce has conferred upon him a degree of ideological independence that Marx could theorise, Lenin could organise and Gramsci could only dream of attaining without considerable personal expense.

Varoufakis would require seventeen minutes, three diagrams and an account of the European Central Bank before explaining that the balloon arch represents techno-feudalism. Uncle Con, surveying the assembled ranks of Greek-Australian masculinity in blush, peach and eucalyptus, has a more immediate concern. “Why are all youse wearing pink, re?”

A nephew, a bank loan specialist who has spent the morning at the gym, explains that his shirt is actually puce. Con regards him with an expression of profound genealogical disappointment. Around them, the photographer is arranging the men according to a chromatic hierarchy that would have baffled Newton. A cousin is moved three places to the left because his shirt clashes with the hydrangeas. Another is instructed to remove his sunglasses from his head. Con, whose black polo shirt has survived three decades of christenings, weddings and arguments about the correct way to secure a lamb to a spit, is asked whether he might stand behind the others. He obliges. From there, he notices that somebody has left the barbecue uncovered in the rain. He considers mentioning it, then decides that certain knowledge is best allowed to perish with its custodians.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 31 October 2026

OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE PANIMIAN FEDERATION OF THOSE PARTS OF THE WATERS OUTSIDE THE MAVİ VATAN

 

It is with profound sorrow, considerable bewilderment and an urgent request for clarification from the United States State Department that the Panimian Federation of Those Parts of the Waters Outside the Mavi Vatan has received reports of the removal of Her Excellency Kimberly Guilfoyle from her position as United States Ambassador to Greece.

Our Federation, which represents the historic, cultural and hydrographic interests of Hellenism in those portions of the Aegean that have yet to be incorporated into the Turkish Blue Homeland, considers this development a grievous blow to Greek American relations and, more importantly, to the social calendars of several hundred distinguished compatriots.

Since her arrival, Her Excellency has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to unite the Greek nation. Shipowners, politicians, television personalities, aspiring influencers, Mr Argyros, hereditary presidents of cultural associations and individuals whose precise occupations remain a matter of considerable mystery have all found common purpose in their determination to stand within three metres of her at official functions. In a country historically divided by civil wars, ideological antagonisms and disagreements over the ownership of a plot of land overlooking a dead-end, such unanimity represents a diplomatic achievement of the highest order.

Such has been the enthusiasm of Her Excellency's Greek admirers that comparisons with the great women of antiquity have become almost inevitable. Among her more devoted admirers, she has been likened to Helen of Troy for her beauty, Aspasia for her influence upon powerful men, and Athena for her presumed wisdom in matters of state. Our Federation understands that certain particularly enthusiastic compatriots consider her to combine the attributes of all three, although the precise implications for Greek mythology and American foreign policy remain under investigation. One member of our Executive Committee has suggested that she surpasses Aphrodite herself, a proposition we have referred to our Ecclesiastical Affairs Subcommittee owing to its potentially pagan implications, given that she has been slated to be awarded the inaugural medal of the Order of St Byzas the Melon-keeper by our leading parochial hierophant.

Certain compatriots have gone further, insisting that Her Excellency possesses an essentially Hellenic temperament, citing her appreciation of Mediterranean hospitality and an indefinable quality which, upon closer examination, appears to consist principally of being photographed in Greece. Representatives of several regional associations have already advanced competing claims to her spiritual ancestry, while our Federation has commissioned a genealogical investigation into the possibility that she descends from an Ionian princess. Should this hypothesis be substantiated, we intend to invoke it in support of our maritime claims, since the discovery of a distinguished American relative is generally regarded as stronger evidence of Greek sovereignty than several centuries of continuous habitation.

Our Federation also applauds the generosity of the distinguished Greek American businessman who conveyed Her Excellency to Athens aboard his private aircraft. This noble gesture recalls the ancient Athenian institution of the leitourgia, under which wealthy citizens financed enterprises of public importance. The principal difference is that in antiquity the benefactor was expected to demonstrate his devotion to the city, whereas nowadays the city is expected to demonstrate its devotion to the benefactor. We regard this reversal as a significant advance in democratic efficiency, and have referred the matter to our Committee for the Restoration of Classical Institutions, which has already requested quotations for a presidential aircraft.

The spectacle has been especially moving among those distinguished defenders of Hellenic sovereignty who, having spent decades denouncing foreign interference in Greek affairs, have discovered that American influence becomes considerably more agreeable when exercised by an attractive woman. Our Federation regards this as an important development in the evolution of Greek political thought, provisionally designated the Guilfoyle Doctrine, according to which national independence remains inviolable except where an invitation to an ambassadorial reception is forthcoming.

We have accordingly followed with astonishment the controversy surrounding reports of Her Excellency's alleged remarks concerning Washington's ability to change Greek governments. Our Federation deplores this sudden outbreak of constitutional fastidiousness. Ever since the establishment of the modern Greek state, the Great Powers have taken a paternal interest in the composition of its governments, and it would be churlish to reject two centuries of international cooperation merely because the arrangements have occasionally dispensed with the electorate. We respectfully suggest that the matter be referred to the Council of State, subject, naturally, to Washington's approval of its composition.

Equally gratifying has been the long-awaited recognition of Greece's contribution to Western civilisation. For generations, our scholars have struggled to impress upon the Americans their intellectual indebtedness to ancient Athens. Her Excellency's expressions of appreciation for Greek hospitality have finally settled the matter. A favourable remark concerning a plate of grilled octopus has been interpreted by several commentators as an acknowledgement of Aristotle's influence upon the American Constitution, while her attendance at a social function has been hailed as the restoration of Greece to its rightful place at the centre of world affairs.

We particularly commend Her Excellency's contribution to the resolution of the Aegean question. Although the precise details of her position on maritime delimitation remain unknown to our Executive Committee, her appearances at official receptions have generated considerably more public excitement than forty years of conferences on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Indeed, several of our members have expressed the view that had she been present at the Fall of Constantinople, the defenders would have abandoned the walls in order to secure invitations to her farewell reception.

The Federation recalls with particular emotion the countless photographs in which prominent Greeks have stood beside Her Excellency, smiling with the serene satisfaction of men who believe that proximity to American power constitutes a personal diplomatic achievement. Several such photographs have already been framed and installed in association clubrooms, immediately beneath portraits of Kolokotronis and, where space permits, the Ecumenical Patriarch. One association president is understood to have requested that his photograph be enlarged to life size, explaining that future generations should be able to appreciate the full extent of his contribution to bilateral relations.

We have also followed with considerable concern the recent reports concerning Her Excellency's American Express account. Although our Federation operates upon the sacred principle that money should flow exclusively from government agencies into our coffers, never in the opposite direction, we are prepared to make an exception of historic proportions. We have already identified several patriotic Greek businessmen who would be delighted to settle any outstanding balance, provided that the expenditure can be recovered through the award of a modest government contract, a casino licence or the rezoning of a small portion of the Attic coastline. Our Treasurer has further advised that, should American Express prove unwilling to accept payment in the form of commemorative plaques, honorary memberships or promises of future political influence, we may be compelled to establish a charitable foundation, apply for a substantial government grant and retain ninety per cent of the proceeds for administration. A wreath-laying ceremony will also be held outside the nearest American Express office, in solemn remembrance of those who have sacrificed so much in the service of Greek-American friendship, with the wreath itself to be purchased using public funds. Our Treasurer has reminded us that the ancient Greeks understood the distinction between public and private expenditure, a distinction which their modern descendants have devoted considerable ingenuity to overcoming.

At an emergency meeting of our Executive Committee, held at a waterfront restaurant whose precise location we are unable to disclose pending clarification of the continental shelf, it was unanimously resolved that Her Excellency be proclaimed an Honorary Panimian, Protector of the Unallocated Waters and Eternal Muse of the Exclusive Economic Zone. A proposal to confer upon her the title of Mother of the Nation was deferred after several members observed that this might create constitutional difficulties with the existing Mother of the Nation, whose identity varies according to the political affiliation of the speaker.

We further call upon the Greek Government to consider naming an uninhabited islet in her honour, preferably one sufficiently distant from the Turkish coast to avoid provoking an international incident, yet sufficiently accessible by luxury yacht to accommodate an appropriate inauguration ceremony. Our Federation would be delighted to organise the proceedings, provided that the guest list is approved in advance and that its President is seated at the principal table.

Our Federation remains confident that the bonds between Greece and the United States will endure. Nevertheless, we respectfully remind Washington that the appointment of an ambassador to Athens carries responsibilities extending considerably beyond the ordinary conduct of diplomacy. The Greek political and social establishment has invested substantial resources in evening wear, cosmetic dentistry and cultivating the appearance of intimate friendship with Her Excellency. These investments deserve protection. Any future ambassadorial appointment should therefore take into consideration the emotional requirements of Greek society, particularly those of middle-aged association presidents who have already purchased new dinner jackets.

In closing, we assure Her Excellency of the undying affection of our members, particularly those who have met her, those who claim to have met her and those who possess photographs suggesting that they might conceivably have occupied the same building. We also respectfully request that Her Excellency consider attending our forthcoming annual dinner, at which she will be presented with a commemorative plaque depicting the Aegean Sea as it existed before the invention of Turkish cartography. The President wishes to emphasise that his repeated requests for an invitation to the American Embassy were motivated exclusively by considerations of national interest, and that the unfortunate incident in which he attempted to enter a private reception through the catering entrance has been grossly misrepresented.

ΖΗΤΩ Η ΕΛΛΑΣ. ΖΗΤΩ Η ΚΙΜΠΕΡΛΥ. ΖΗΤΩ ΤΑ ΥΔΑΤΑ ΠΟΥ ΜΑΣ ΑΠΕΜΕΙΝΑΝ.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 24 October 2026

MARCO RUBIO AND THE GREECE HE INVENTED

 

Had Marco Rubio visited ancient Athens, he would probably have been greatly impressed by Alcibiades. Ambitious, intelligent, charismatic and incurably competitive, the Athenian statesman embodied many of the virtues extolled by the American Secretary of State in his address at the Pnyx. The two might have enjoyed a lengthy discussion about the projection of power and the importance of resoluteness in international affairs. Their conversation might  however have become rather less congenial upon reaching the Sicilian Expedition, of which Alcibiades was an enthusiastic advocate. This is because Greek history has an inconvenient tendency to undermine the certainties of those who invoke it.

Rubio recently chose the site of the ancient Athenian Assembly to present a magnificent genealogy of Western civilisation. According to his account, that civilisation was born in Athens, came of age in Rome, was baptised in Christianity, forged in medieval Europe, endowed with the English genius for liberty and reborn in America. This itinerary displays an admirable geographical consistency, inasmuch as every road leads, apparently inevitably, to Washington. Greek antiquity thus becomes the glorious prologue to a historical narrative whose ultimate meaning is revealed in the exercise of American power.

Cultural inheritance, of course, transcends national boundaries. Americans are perfectly entitled to recognise Greek influences upon their political thought, just as Greeks may acknowledge the contributions of other civilisations to their own. Difficulties arise however, when cultural influence is transformed into historical succession, and then in turn, into political legitimacy. The engagement of America's founders with Plutarch and the classical philosophical tradition suggests a genuine intellectual affinity. To proceed from this observation to the proposition that contemporary American geopolitics constitutes the authentic fulfilment of the Greek spirit, however, requires a leap of logic for which history provides remarkably little assistance.

Almost entirely absent from this genealogy are the Greeks themselves. Between Pericles and Philadelphia stand centuries of Greek intellectual and cultural production. Byzantium was Roman in its political identity, Greek in its language and much of its intellectual expression, and Christian in its religious constitution. It developed through sustained encounters with the Persians, the Egpytians, the Islamic world, the Slavs and the Armenians. There followed the centuries of Ottoman rule, the establishment of the modern Greek state, the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the tragedy of Cyprus, experiences that continue to inform Greek historical consciousness and geopolitical sensitivities. Such a history sits rather awkwardly within the neat division between East and West upon which Rubio's Manichaean account depends.

Even the ancient Greek civilisation that Rubio places at the fountainhead of the West emerged through continuous interaction with other peoples.  Herodotus, with his inexhaustible curiosity about the customs, beliefs and accomplishments of foreign peoples, exemplifies an intellectual tradition whose creativity was nourished by encounters with difference. Seen in this light, Rubio's suggestion that the Greeks pursued knowledge while other civilisations remained inward-looking presupposes a rather peculiar history of humanity, one in which the rest of the world apparently waited for the Greeks to discover human curiosity on its behalf.

The transformation of Greek antiquity into an exclusively Western inheritance recalls an older European habit. During the nineteenth century, admiration for classical Greece frequently coexisted with the conviction that modern Greeks were inadequate custodians of their own ancestral civilisation. Antiquity was proclaimed the spiritual property of Europe, while living Greeks were expected to conform to the expectations of their foreign admirers. Something of the same asymmetry can be discerned in Rubio's address. Greece’s primary function is to supply historical prestige, while America reserves for itself the authority to determine its contemporary political significance.

There is, nevertheless, an element of historical truth in Rubio's interpretation. The ancient Greeks celebrated ambition, competition, courage and excellence, recognising in rivalry a creative force within their political and cultural life. The weakness of his approach lies in elevating these qualities into the defining essence of Greek civilisation, while setting aside an equally important intellectual tradition devoted to examining their consequences.

Aristotle associated virtue with practical wisdom, while the tragedians explored the limits of human ambition. Hubris encompassed the arrogant conduct of those who sought to humiliate others through demonstrations of their own superiority. The ethical problem of power consequently extended to the treatment of those subjected to its exercise. Even Achilles, whom Rubio invokes as an exemplar of heroic glory, acquires another moral dimension when, confronted by Priam, he recognises in his enemy a fellow human being capable of suffering.

The Christian tradition, which Rubio incorporates into his narrative of Western ascendancy, introduces further complications. Christianity elevated humility, compassion for the vulnerable and a profound suspicion of worldly glory. Rubio's disparagement of societies supposedly preoccupied with the welfare of their less capable members sits uneasily beside this inheritance. The encounter between Hellenism and Christianity proved intellectually fertile precisely because it involved conflict, accommodation and the reappraisal of established values. To present their relationship as an uninterrupted progression towards power is to overlook much of the spiritual complexity that gave it meaning.

The contradictions inherent in this selective reading of Greek civilisation are perhaps nowhere more striking than in the history of Athenian democracy itself. A city that grounded its political identity in the liberty of its citizens simultaneously constructed an empire serviced by slaves and sustained by the subjugation of other Greek communities. In the celebrated Melian Dialogue, Thucydides captures with chilling clarity the moment at which power claims exemption from moral restraint and liberty ceases to be a universal principle, becoming instead the privilege of those sufficiently powerful to enjoy it. “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

The modern American conception of international leadership offers some intriguing parallels with this Athenian experience. The belief that American institutions and values possess universal significance can transform the expansion of American influence into a moral obligation, while resistance by other societies is interpreted as a threat to international order. In Rubio's address, the celebration of national sovereignty coexists with the assumption that American strategic primacy is an indispensable condition of Western security. This raises a question that the interlocutors of Thucydides would have readily understood: to what extent can a great power invoke the liberty of nations while regarding its own supremacy as essential to their preservation?

When Rubio turns from antiquity to contemporary Greece, the birthplace of democracy acquires a rather more practical function. It emerges as an exemplary ally, an energy hub and an indispensable component of the Western defence architecture. Such cooperation undoubtedly serves Greek interests as well, given Athens' desire to secure American support in confronting the challenges of its region. Yet the shared invocation of democracy and classical heritage can obscure a fundamental reality. The two countries possess vastly different degrees of international influence, and their strategic priorities coincide only insofar as their respective interests permit. American policy towards Turkey offers a particularly instructive example, since Washington's determination to retain Ankara within the Western alliance may conflict with Greek objectives. The quality of an alliance, after all, may be measured partly by the freedom of its members to disagree.

Rubio's reference to the Greek War of Independence and the American philhellene Daniel Webster provides a historical illustration of the complicated relationship between national independence and the protection afforded by powerful states. American public sympathy for the Greek revolutionaries was genuine, although it produced no corresponding official American intervention. The establishment of an independent Greek state, by contrast, was decisively shaped by the intervention of the European Great Powers, whose involvement helped secure liberation from Ottoman rule while simultaneously imposing limitations upon Greek autonomy. Greek political leaders exploited rivalries among these powers, seeking support and opportunities for diplomatic manoeuvre. From its inception, therefore, the modern Greek state has confronted a persistent dilemma: how to obtain the protection of the powerful while retaining the capacity to determine its own future.

he experience of postwar Greece exposes the limitations of this purported civilisational kinship with particular force. Under the Truman Doctrine, the United States acquired a decisive influence over Greek political life, while anti-communism furnished the justification for a security apparatus that subjected substantial sections of the population to exclusion, surveillance and persecution. The crisis of July 1965, which brought down George Papandreou's democratically elected government, revealed the extent to which Greek parliamentary politics had become entangled with the calculations of the American embassy, the Palace and the country's military establishment. Washington was no disinterested spectator of the ensuing struggle for power. The dictatorship that followed in 1967, and the subsequent American accommodation with its rulers, exposed an even more profound contradiction. The country celebrated as the birthplace of democracy could remain indispensable to American strategic interests even when its democratic institutions had been extinguished. The significance extends beyond an accusation of hypocrisy. It reveals a fundamental asymmetry in the relationship Rubio celebrates: Greek antiquity could be invoked to confer moral legitimacy upon American leadership, while the political aspirations of living Greeks remained subject to the calculations of that leadership. For those whose experience of American power was shaped by the Civil War, the postwar security state and the dictatorship, the proposition that America represents the historical fulfilment of Greek democratic civilisation must have a distinctly bitter resonance.

It would, admittedly, be convenient to attribute exclusively to Rubio the tendency to employ antiquity as a means of validating contemporary political aspirations. Greeks themselves are frequently accomplished practitioners of precisely this form of historical selectivity. We invoke democracy while tolerating authoritarian practices, extol dialogue while treating disagreement as a threat, and search among our ancestors for certificates of collective superiority. Criticism of the American appropriation of Greek antiquity acquires greater credibility when accompanied by a willingness to scrutinise our own uses of history.

Alcibiades would probably have recognised in Rubio an admirer of his virtues. The Athenians, however, also discovered their cost. Perhaps therein lies the most important distinction between invoking Greek history and learning from it. The former supplies the powerful with illustrious ancestors. The latter obliges them to consider whether they themselves embody the very excesses against which Greek civilisation left us its most formidable warnings.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 17 October 2026

MINOTAURING IN SYDNEY

 François Sicard's Theseus Defeating the Minotaur, standing somewhat incongruously within Sydney's Archibald Fountain, appears at first glance to commemorate one of the defining triumphs of Greek mythology. A victorious Theseus stands naked above the creature he has just slain, one hand gripping the Minotaur's horns as the defeated body collapses beneath him in its final agonies. Sicard leaves little doubt where the viewer's sympathies are intended to lie. The hero's body is complete, idealised and emphatically masculine, his exposed genitals proclaiming the civilised virility that nineteenth century classicism habitually associated with moral superiority. Beneath him, the Minotaur possesses no corresponding sexual identity. His body, although overwhelmingly human, has been stripped of every visible marker of manhood. Only the great curling horns remain in parody of his emasculation, reducing him entirely to animality, as though his humanity has already been extinguished before Theseus delivers the final blow.

The longer the eye lingers upon the composition, the less persuasive Sicard's moral certainties become. The defeated creature gradually begins to attract a sympathy that the sculptor almost certainly intended for the triumphant hero standing above him. Such a reversal owes less to sentiment than to language itself. Greek mythology has preserved this episode almost exclusively through the eyes of kings and heroes, with the consequence that the fallen creature survives in memory under the title bestowed upon him by those who imprisoned him. We know him as the Minotaur, Minos' Bull, Minos' Beast, names that define ownership rather than identity. Ancient tradition, however, preserves another name entirely: Asterion, or Asterios, "he who belongs to the stars." There is a cruel irony in the circumstance that a being whose very name evokes the heavens should spend his entire existence imprisoned beneath the earth, wandering a labyrinth from which neither sunlight nor starlight could penetrate. The transformation from Asterion to Minotaur is therefore far more than a change of nomenclature. It is the first act of his dehumanisation, where an innocent child is subsumed into the identity imposed by his captor, remembered thereafter only as an extension of Minos himself. Before mythology has even begun to explain who Asterion is, it has already denied him the right to exist as himself.

From the outset, he is the unwilling victim of the transgressions of others. Minos breaks his oath to Poseidon after refusing to sacrifice the magnificent white bull sent by the sea god. Poseidon, however, never directs his vengeance against the oath breaker. Instead, he elects to punish Minos through the person whom the king regards as his own. Pasiphaë, despite being the daughter of Helios himself, is a mere woman and thus enjoys no protection from divine caprice. Seized by an irresistible passion imposed upon her by Poseidon, she couples with the very bull her husband had refused to sacrifice, conceiving Asterion. Euripides' Cretans strips away any suggestion that she acted willingly. Confronted by Minos' accusations, she responds with devastating irony. What conceivable attraction, she asks, could a bull possibly have possessed? Was it his handsome robes, the fire in his eyes or the colour of his beard? The true offence belongs to Minos alone. Yet neither Minos nor Poseidon must endure its consequences.

The consequences instead descend upon the only participant in the entire catastrophe whose innocence is beyond dispute. Conceived through an act intended not to punish him but to wound Minos, born illegitimate, the bastard child of divine vengeance rather than human desire, Asterion enters the world already carrying upon his own body the visible consequences of another man's impiety. Greek mythology, however, displays remarkably little interest in that injustice. His hybrid form rapidly ceases to be understood as the consequence of Poseidon's punishment and becomes instead the explanation for Asterion himself, so that before he has performed a single voluntary act, exercised the slightest degree of moral agency or revealed virtue, cruelty, pity or malice through conduct rather than appearance, the verdict has already been delivered. The bull's head no longer signifies what has happened to him. It becomes sufficient evidence of what he is presumed to be.

From that moment onwards, Asterion undergoes a progressive narrative dispossession. The surviving tradition preserves with meticulous care the motives of Minos, the violated innocence of Pasiphaë, the ingenuity of Daedalus and the heroism of Theseus, yet almost never pauses to consider Asterion as a consciousness in his own right. Ancient authors repeatedly describe his body whilst displaying remarkably little curiosity about his mind, reducing him to what one modern scholar has aptly called "a prisoned body and a dynastic embarrassment" rather than a fully agentic character. His appearance therefore ceases merely to distinguish him physically and begins instead to replace biography, motive and interiority altogether. From that moment onwards, Asterion undergoes a progressive narrative dispossession. The surviving tradition preserves with meticulous care the motives of Minos, the violated innocence of Pasiphaë, the ingenuity of Daedalus and the heroism of Theseus, yet almost never pauses to consider Asterion as a consciousness in his own right. Ancient authors repeatedly describe his body whilst displaying remarkably little curiosity about his mind, reducing him to what one modern scholar has aptly called "a prisoned body and a dynastic embarrassment" rather than a fully agentic character. His appearance therefore ceases merely to distinguish him physically and begins instead to replace biography, motive and interiority altogether. Once that substitution has taken place, Asterion can no longer exist within the narrative as a son, a brother or even a child. He has become an identity constructed almost entirely from his usefulness to others. The next stage of the myth is therefore not simply to imprison him but to preserve that construction.

The labyrinth nevertheless serves a purpose that extends well beyond concealment. Hiding Asterion from public view removes the visible evidence of Minos' shame, yet concealment alone cannot restore the king's authority. So long as the being beneath the palace continues to be recognised as an abandoned child, sympathy remains capable of attaching itself to the victim rather than to the ruler. Asterion must therefore become something other than a child. He must become the monster whose imprisonment appears not merely understandable but necessary. The labyrinth provides the conditions under which that transformation can occur. Removed from family, companionship, language, education and every ordinary relationship through which human beings acquire identity, he is progressively deprived of those qualities by which others might continue to recognise him as one of themselves. When the ancient sources finally encounter the creature within the labyrinth, they describe a beast whose savagery appears self-evident, yet display almost no curiosity concerning the decades of abandonment that preceded it. Brutality is treated as the cause of his imprisonment when it is equally possible to regard it as one of its consequences. The myth thereby completes one of its most subtle inversions. It presents the humanity Asterion has lost as though it had never existed.

Theseus therefore inherits rather than creates Asterion's monstrosity. Long before he descends into the labyrinth, the essential work has already been accomplished. By the time the Athenian prince confronts him, scarcely anything remains except the monstrous identity that others have patiently constructed. The death within the labyrinth therefore represents less the destruction of a beast than the final obliteration of a human being whom the narrative has progressively rendered incapable of being perceived as such.

François Sicard's sculpture faithfully perpetuates that tradition. Standing before the bronze in Sydney, the spectator is invited to celebrate the triumph of civilisation over savagery, reason over appetite and humanity over brute instinct, yet the composition depends upon precisely the same assumptions that have shaped the myth from the beginning. The defeated figure possesses no history beyond his monstrosity, no identity beyond the name imposed upon him by the man who imprisoned him and no claim upon our sympathy except that which gradually forces itself upon us despite the sculptor's intentions. Sicard does not simply represent an ancient story. He inherits an ancient judgement.

Perhaps that is why Sicard's sculpture becomes increasingly difficult to behold the longer one remains before it. The bronze appears to commemorate the triumph of civilisation over monstrosity, yet it preserves without question the very assumptions that first made such a triumph possible. The creature lying beneath Theseus is denied even in death the humanity that had been progressively stripped from him throughout his life, his body continuing to speak more loudly than his name, his birth, his innocence or his suffering. The spectator is invited to admire the hero whilst overlooking the long sequence of dispossessions that rendered heroism possible in the first place, for Theseus does not confront Asterion as he was born, but as kings, gods, imprisonment and memory have patiently remade him. Standing before the monument, one gradually realises that the greatest violence in the story was never the stroke of the hero's sword. It was the slow destruction of a human identity until nothing remained but a monster, and the still more unsettling realisation that, almost three millennia later, we continue to participate in that destruction every time we call him the Minotaur.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 10 October 2026