THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 1821 TO 1833 BY W.ALISON PHILLIPS 1897

16 THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
added about that remarkable literary movement which
produced so profound an effect on the development of
modern Greece. In the course of ages, the ancient
language of Hellas, the tongue of Plato and Demosthenes,
had become for all practical purposes extinct.
It was indeed still
the language
of the Church and
of the learned; but learning itself had become confined
to barren theological discussions, and, to the
modern Greeks, the masterpieces of the ancient literature
were quite unknown. For centuries education
had been either wholly neglected, or consisted only
in such schooling as could be obtained from monks
hardly less ignorant than those they taught. To
restore to the Hellenes their language
became the self-imposed task of several
and literature
enthusiastic
spirits, among whom Adamantios Korais stands preeminent.
Already indeed numerous schools, in which
the classic writers were taught, had been founded in
various parts of Hellas and the islands, mainly by the
generosity of wealthy Phanariots.
But as long as the
language of ancient Greece remained, to all intents
and purposes, a dead tongue,
it was impossible to restore
to the Hellenes the intellectual heritage of their
greater past,
people.
and to make it a
real power among the
Korais then set himself the deliberate task of
reconstructing for his countrymen a literary language