From the back cover
A provocative, visually startling documentary series that explores the pervasive influence of ancient Greece on our lives today. ARCHITECTURE. Architecture is the most public of the arts, shaping the way we live. It affects us every time we walk through a door. Polyclitus said that proportion is not a matter of individual taste but depends on mathematical laws of harmony, which can only be broken at the expense of beauty. To liberate people from the slums, the modern movement had a dream of the city. The Greeks could have never imagined the car -- a symbol of private freedom that reduces a city to an historic center surrounded by a mass of suburbs. This reality of uniformity and standardization is destructive of human. TRAGEDY. In their finest tragedies, which were always public events, the Greeks have left a legacy, which challenges and shocks our modern attitudes toward calamity and disaster. For the Ancient Greeks, passion was a serious threat. It was discouraged in the family, which was for the provision of legitimate heirs. Modern media has turned the world into one vast electronic community in which we see one another but never meet. We no longer seem able to respond to terrible events. A series of alienated images comes into our living rooms through the television. This is quite different from Greek tragedy's attempts to explain, to give significance, to involve its audience.
