Contemporary uses and misuses of the “classical”

What if the defining gesture of the Homeric hero wasn’t the raising of a sword but the shedding of a tear? Starting off from a conversation about Matteo Nucci’s Le lacrime degli eroi [Tears of the heroes], this event will foreground an ancient Greek world where the tear is not a sign of weakness, but a form of knowledge, a way to recognize loss, build community and resist the limits of action. From Achilles’ collapse under the weight of grief to Odysseus’ perfectly timed outbursts, tears indicate the points where eros, memory and morality intersect. In this context, desire means exposure and masculinity is tied to emotional risk rather than stoicism and toughness. The usual conflict between violence and cunning is reformulated as a juxtaposition between different “emotional economies”, two different modes of survival, persuasion and memory. From there, the discussion will expand into the present and examine how the “classical” is mobilized in today’s society as cultural capital, aesthetic alibi, political language, tourist brand, or even as a scientific field, one that occasionally forgets its own commitments. What is won and what is lost when antiquity is utilized to validate status, culture or identity? In a city like Athens, which constantly lives between monumental classicism and social vulnerability, Matteo Nucci and writer and archaeology professor Dimitris Plantzos pose what seems to be a simple question: Are the heroes’ tears an embarrassment to Greek culture or are they one of the most radical inventions of its past and essential resources of its present?