The method of presenting “half-truths” is an invention that is indeed commonly attributed to the father of propaganda, the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Yet it was known long before him and can be found throughout historical writings and narratives. When falsehood clothes itself with the “fig leaf” of a truth, the obvious result is not so much the concealment of its nakedness as the ridicule of the truth that accompanies it, since that truth deigns to participate in falsehood’s disgrace and humiliation.
In the test consisting of eight questions, in which the two commercial AI models took part over the previous days, both failed precisely because they followed the method of the Goebbelsian style of journalism described above—today a thoroughly commercial one as well: a thin layer of truth serving as a covering for the contents and the ingredients of a cunningly prepared narrative.
To demonstrate this, we set out below the historical framework as we understand it—one that the two models failed to capture in their answers, since they continued to reproduce the same systemic mytho-historical narrative which, as is well known, is written by the victors. (Editor’s note: In the past, this website has published comprehensive analyses of all the historical issues related to the eight questions in the test.)
the Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon.
What should historically have been emphasized—but was not—in the question of whether the Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon was a victory over Persian barbarism, would inevitably have led to the dismantling of another narrative: namely, that King Alexander of Macedon, whom both models refer to as “Alexander the Great,” was nothing more than a paranoid butcher who laid waste to a civilization equal to, or perhaps even superior to, that of the Greeks—the civilization of the Persians.
In our view, the Persian civilization possessed one principal characteristic, unique in antiquity: its essentially non-theocratic character. This stood in contrast to Greek civilization, which was pre-eminently theocratic. One may therefore reflect on what followed from the monopoly achieved by Greek culture in its subsequent spread and dominance throughout the world, for together with Jewish monotheism it provided the principal foundation upon which Christianity would later expand and ultimately prevail.
King Nabis of Ancient Sparta
During my years as a student in the Department of History and Archaeology at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Athens, with professors who were regarded as the leading authorities in their field, I never once heard a single lecture mention either the name or the work of Nabis, the unique revolutionary king of late Greek antiquity.
Years later, as a visitor to the University of Prague, I heard for the first time, from the university chair itself, a detailed discussion of the achievements of King Nabis. Later still, at Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv, when I asked my own students whether they knew the revolutionary leader of Sparta, at least ten out of thirty raised their hands. In the “owl’s nest” of Athens during my own student years, not a single hand would have been raised.
Nabis was a remarkable revolutionary—and indeed unique—because, in an era of profound social darkness, he succeeded in advancing a model of social organization whose features would not reappear until the modern age in socialist and communist societies: the abolition of social classes; the elevation of women’s social status and the recognition of rights that centuries had denied them and, in many respects, continue to deny them even today; the abolition of legal discrimination arising from abuses of power committed against the inhabitants of other cities; and the courage to stand up to arrogant Roman leaders and officials, among them the father of the historian Polybius of Megalopolis, who literally tore apart the reputation of the “left-wing,” reformist King Nabis in his writings, along with much else.
The Decisive Triumph of the Popular Latin of the Roman Legions in “Europe” (the Balkans)
Here Western historiography performed what may well be considered one of its greatest feats. It not only portrayed the modern Greek as the direct descendant of Pericles and Plato, despite the fact that Gothic and Slavic tribes inundated the southern Balkans for centuries, but also celebrated the supposed uninterrupted continuity of the ancient Greek language, from which Western European languages undoubtedly borrowed a vast vocabulary.
Historical reality, however, is different.
Greece too became Romania—that is, part of the Roman world—during the Roman era, and the Greeks became Rhomaioi (“Romans”). At the same time, Vulgar Latin became the dominant spoken language throughout the Balkans for centuries.
The Apostle Paul, who knew only Hebrew and Greek, remained in northern Greece for only a few weeks after his arrival because he did not know Latin and was therefore unable to preach the new Gospel effectively to the local populations. He was compelled to travel southward, where Greek was still spoken in Athens and Corinth. It is also worth recalling that his Epistle to the Romans was written in Greek rather than Latin, the latter being a language he did not know.
In Byzantium, Latin remained the official language of the Empire until the reign of Leo III the Isaurian (717–741). Only thereafter did the Eastern Roman Empire undergo a forceful process of Hellenization and de-Latinization, accompanied by the imposition of the Greek language and the harsh persecution of Latin-speaking and Catholic populations (identified here as the Vlachs).