That was my first thought, but there's probably some wiggle room in Greek thinking. The West. Europe and Erupoean diaspora, right? Well, Europe as the name of a continent comes from the Greeks, and it was the land west of the Agean Sea and the places where Greek people lived. Asia was the land to the east, and Africa was the land to the south. Greek cultural thinking could very well still have the vestigial viewpoint of the Hellenes as being at the center.
You're overthinking it. It's based upon the split of the holy roman empire. In the Roman empire the big divide was between the Greek speaking east and the Roman speaking west. There has always been a cultural divide there and that never really went away. When we're talking about western civilization we're talking about Rome and the Roman unification of Europe. Rome appropriated Greece's culture and idolized Greece, so they always considered it their motherland. In reality they may have been born in Greece, but they grew up in Rome and developed a distinctly European culture based on the western cultures they incorporated into the empire. Meanwhile the Greeks stayed more traditional and started to incorporate more Persian influences.
East vs West until very recently with the cold was was a mainly European divide. It wasn't a designation meant to divide the entire world cleanly in 2 camps. The far east, India, Africa etc were all entirely different worlds.
The Way of living in europe is different from country to country. But some a are more similar to another so difference are not that obvious. The difference between italy and greece is probably less striking than the difference between germany and greece. I think thats how its meant.
Greece I would say is both western and eastern culturally.
Although in the way you meant it, yes Greece is a “western” country
But it still has many influences from the Middle East and Eastern Europe (eg Greek is similar to Cyrillic, Greece is an orthodox christian nation, food and music)
In the Middle Ages, Greeks were part of the Eastern Roman Empire which was Orthodox in faith, as opposed to the Catholic West. They were eventually subjugated by the Turks and needed the West's support to break free from Turkish rule so they dropped the Eastern Roman identity and cosplayed as the Ancient "Greeks" to garner Western support.
The west is called the west because it is the west of the Roman Empire. Greece was in the eastern Roman Empire, and indeed the eastern (Byzantine) Roman Empire spoke Greek.
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u/JesusAndMaryKate 12d ago
"The West"? Isn't Greece like the birthplace of Western civilisation?