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Dr. King and the Greek classics

By Alexandros P. Mallias
January 20, 2008

This year will mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. His death on April 4, 1968, found my country in the midst of one of its darkest hours, as the one year anniversary of an oppressive military dictatorship neared.

With my fellow citizens living under military rule and deprived of the very basic freedoms, I was inspired by the people of Birmingham, Ala., of Memphis and Atlanta, who, in a most dignified way, poured into the streets, standing up for what was rightly theirs.

Across the Atlantic, the civil-rights movement reached us in the clarion voice of Martin Luther King Jr., and hope stirred in the hearts of many Greek people like myself that "We", too, "Shall Overcome."

Upon my arrival in Washington as Greece's ambassador, and influenced by what I call the current "Golden Age for the Classics" in the United States, I have gone back to the staples of my education with new appreciation — Sophocles, Plato, Homer, Heraclitus, Thucydides. And I realized that the Rev. King's speeches and homilies are fraught with references to the Greek classics.

I pored over his writings and speeches and realized his was no simple preaching. I began to sense he had a profound understanding of what we call the "classics." In his Nobel acceptance speech, he spoke of Greek literature, of Homer and the temptresses Sirens, of Orpheus — not in dry academic fashion, but as part and parcel of his understanding of the world.

As the beneficiary of a classical education, as were most young Greeks of my generation, the words of Dr. King brought to mind great orators of ancient Greece — Demosthenes, for one, who had to overcome his own particular limitations.

In his sermon "Loving Your Enemies," delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., Nov. 17, 1957, Dr. King expounded on the power and comprehensiveness of the Greek language, explaining how Greek "comes to our aid beautifully in giving us the real meaning and depth of the whole philosophy of love ... for you see the Greek language has three words for love ... eros ... a sort of aesthetic love. Plato talks about it a great deal in his dialogues, a sort of yearning of the soul for the realm of the gods. Then the Greek language talks about philia... the intimate affection between personal friends. The Greek language comes out with another word for love. It is the word agape... the understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return."

Erudite men and women have researched the education of Dr. King, concluding that he studied the ancient Greek classics at length and drew inspiration not only from the Bible, but also from ancient Greek philosophers, playwrights and political figures.

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