Words Used to Describe the Minor Diplomatic Incident My Book Provoked This Past Weekend
A McSweeney’s-style list
Words used in Greek headlines this past weekend to describe what Theodoros Daskarolis, Greece’s ambassador to Germany, did to Uwe Walter when he responded to Walter’s FAZ review of The Classical Debt with a stern letter that ascribed the review, “How many billions is Antigone worth to us?,” to a broader German agenda of refusing to grant Greek debt relief, and so provoked an explosion of Greek media indignation, thereby offering further evidence for the book’s thesis that ideological conflicts about antiquity have genuinely affected the course of the Greek debt crisis:
γροθιά, sucker-punch
χαστούκι, bitch-slap
Johanna Hanink is Associate Professor of Classics at Brown University. She is unused to creating hiccups in European interstate relations, but might be developing a taste for it.
