Philoxenia: An Ancient Greek Method To Heal Divided People
A lesson from our ancestors on the forgotten concept of hospitality.
“Hospitality was considered to be one of the most virtuous qualities in ancient Greek culture, and philoxenia is the word to describe the value and respect extended towards a guest or visitor in your home or a stranger on the street.”
— India Doyle, Culture Trip
In our modern world, it appears we deal with endless conflict. It’s like real life wants to mirror Twitter with its acidic one-upmanship, and countless arguments. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The ancient Greeks may not have been familiar with social media or the mindless things we argue about, but they understood conflict.
While it’s called ancient Greece, it wasn’t one nation. The people were divided between countless city states with small geographic boundaries that were constantly at war. So, traveling by land required crossing many borders.
As Victor Davis Hanson explains in A War Like No Other, you couldn’t escape this problem by sea either.
Greek sailing technology was limited. This forced them to hug the coastlines, and they also had to pull their boats on land almost daily to do maintenance. So, you couldn’t…
