In Response to Marco Rubio's Statement

On October 7, 2026, at the Pnyx in Athens, beneath the shadow of the Acropolis, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State of the United States, delivered a speech on the meaning of Greece, the character of the West, and the future of the transatlantic world. He argued that the civilization of ancient Greece gave birth to the essential qualities of the West and that the modern West, having lost confidence in itself, must rediscover the virtues that once made it great. The speech was ambitious in scope. It reached from the Persian Wars to the Apollo program, from Pericles to Donald Trump, from the Parthenon to contemporary debates over sovereignty, industry, migration, and military power. It was not merely a diplomatic address delivered during a visit to Greece. It was an attempt to explain what the West is, how it came to be, why it has declined, and how it might renew itself.

Such an argument deserves a serious response. The temptation in our age is either to celebrate or condemn speeches of this sort according to one's political preferences. Yet the importance of Rubio's remarks lies precisely in the fact that they address questions larger than ordinary politics. What is the relationship between the modern West and the civilization of ancient Greece? Can one speak of a continuous Western tradition stretching from antiquity to the present day? Are the achievements and failures of contemporary Europe and America best understood through the language of civilizational inheritance? These questions are not new. They have occupied historians, philosophers, theologians, and statesmen for centuries. Their significance extends far beyond contemporary partisan disputes.

Rubio is undoubtedly correct on one fundamental point. Few civilizations have exercised a greater influence on the historical imagination of Europe and North America than ancient Greece. For centuries, statesmen, scholars, artists, architects, and political thinkers have looked back to Athens, Sparta, and the wider Greek world in search of examples, warnings, inspirations, and ideals. The language of philosophy, democracy, history, rhetoric, tragedy, and political theory remains saturated with Greek concepts. The architecture of public buildings across Europe and the United States openly acknowledges a debt to classical forms. The writings of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, Sophocles, and Plutarch continue to be read long after the disappearance of the city-states that produced them. In this respect, Rubio's observation that Greece occupies a unique place in Western memory is difficult to dispute.

Yet historical influence is not the same thing as historical continuity. Here lies the central weakness of Rubio's argument. His speech presents the history of the West as the unfolding of a single civilizational essence first realized in ancient Greece and subsequently transmitted through Rome, Christendom, Europe, and finally the United States. This narrative possesses considerable rhetorical power. It is elegant, inspiring, and easy to understand. It is also far more orderly than the historical record itself.

The relationship between later Western societies and ancient Greece has never been straightforward. Greece was not simply inherited. It was repeatedly rediscovered, reinterpreted, and reinvented. The Romans admired Greek culture while simultaneously conquering the Greek world. Early Christianity emerged within a Hellenistic environment and absorbed numerous philosophical concepts from Greek thought, yet Christian theology also challenged many assumptions of classical paganism. Medieval scholars preserved some elements of ancient learning while neglecting or misunderstanding others. The Renaissance celebrated antiquity, but it did so in ways that would have been unrecognizable to Pericles or Aristotle. Enlightenment thinkers saw Greece through yet another lens, often emphasizing reason, liberty, and civic virtue. Nineteenth-century nationalists found different lessons in the same ancient texts. Every age constructed its own Greece.

This pattern suggests a more complicated understanding of cultural inheritance. The influence of Greece did not consist of an uninterrupted transmission of ideas from generation to generation. Rather, it consisted of repeated acts of selective appropriation. Different societies looked backward toward antiquity and discovered what they wished to discover. The Greece admired by Renaissance humanists was not identical to the Greece celebrated by Enlightenment philosophers. The Greece that inspired nineteenth-century philhellenes differed from the Greece invoked by American Founders. Even within a single historical period, competing interpretations coexisted. Greece could symbolize democracy or aristocracy, reason or heroism, civic participation or military excellence. The meaning of Greece was never fixed.

For this reason, it is misleading to speak of a continuous civilization extending seamlessly from classical Athens to modern America. Such a narrative understates the profound transformations that occurred along the way. The Christianization of Europe alone altered the moral foundations of Western civilization in ways that cannot be reduced to a mere continuation of Greek thought. Classical Greek society admired excellence, competition, glory, and achievement. Christianity introduced powerful new emphases on humility, charity, forgiveness, compassion, and the equal worth of souls before God. These were not minor adaptations. They reshaped the moral imagination of Europe.

Nor can Rome be reduced to the role of a mere transmitter. Roman law, administration, citizenship, military organization, engineering, and concepts of governance profoundly influenced subsequent Western development. Indeed, many institutions commonly regarded as pillars of Western civilization owe at least as much to Rome as to Greece. The modern state, the legal traditions of continental Europe, and many concepts of public authority reflect Roman influences as strongly as Greek ones.

The tension becomes even more apparent when examining Rubio's representation of ancient Greece itself. Throughout the speech, Greece appears as the source of nearly every quality the speaker wishes to celebrate: ambition, innovation, courage, exploration, rational inquiry, excellence, competition, patriotism, and civilizational confidence. These qualities undoubtedly existed within the Greek world. Yet ancient Greece was also marked by profound contradictions.

The same civilization that produced democratic experiments in Athens also tolerated slavery on a vast scale. The same society that celebrated philosophy excluded most women from political participation. The same city-states that generated remarkable achievements in literature and art often engaged in bitter warfare against one another. The Peloponnesian War remains one of history's clearest examples of a civilization exhausting itself through internal conflict. Greek political life frequently oscillated between democracy, oligarchy, tyranny, and instability. The historical Greeks were neither saints nor villains. They were human beings whose achievements emerged alongside significant limitations and failures.

Indeed, the greatness of Greece may lie precisely in this complexity. To admire Greece does not require idealizing it. On the contrary, the enduring value of Greek civilization stems in part from its willingness to confront difficult questions about human nature, justice, power, and political life. The Greeks produced not only celebrations of greatness but also profound reflections on tragedy, hubris, and the limits of human ambition. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Thucydides examined the consequences of power with a realism that often undermined comforting narratives of civilizational superiority.

One of the most striking features of Rubio's speech is therefore not what it includes but what it omits. The Greece he describes functions less as a historical society than as a symbolic ancestor. It is a Greece purified of ambiguity, assembled from selected virtues, and presented as a model for contemporary political renewal. Such an approach is understandable in a ceremonial speech. Political rhetoric often simplifies history in order to communicate broader moral lessons. Yet simplification carries risks. When civilizations become symbols, their complexities disappear. History becomes mythology.

This tendency is closely connected to another central theme of the speech: the concept of "the West" itself. Rubio speaks repeatedly of the West as though it were a coherent historical actor extending across more than two millennia. According to his account, the West inherited Greek virtues, achieved greatness through their application, subsequently lost confidence in itself, and now faces a choice between renewal and decline.

There is an undeniable appeal to this narrative. Human beings naturally seek meaningful stories about origins, identity, and destiny. Civilizations, like individuals, often define themselves through narratives of continuity. Yet the historical reality is considerably more fragmented.

What exactly constitutes the West? Is it Greek philosophy? Roman law? Christian theology? Renaissance humanism? Enlightenment rationalism? Liberal democracy? National sovereignty? Scientific inquiry? Capitalism? No single answer commands universal acceptance. The history of Western civilization is not merely a story of inheritance. It is equally a story of disagreement.

Socrates challenged the assumptions of his fellow Athenians. Christianity challenged the moral foundations of the classical world. Medieval theologians debated the compatibility of faith and reason. The Protestant Reformation challenged the religious unity of Europe. Enlightenment thinkers challenged inherited authority and tradition. Democratic movements challenged aristocratic privilege. Modern intellectual life is filled with disputes about justice, freedom, equality, religion, and human nature.

In many respects, the defining characteristic of Western civilization has been its capacity for internal criticism. The West has repeatedly transformed itself by questioning its own assumptions. This pattern is not evidence of weakness. It is one of the principal sources of Western dynamism. A civilization capable of self-examination possesses a unique ability to adapt, innovate, and reform.

It is therefore noteworthy that Rubio's speech treats self-criticism primarily as a symptom of decline. According to his account, Western nations came to feel ashamed of their history, weakened their institutions, neglected their defense capabilities, and surrendered confidence in their own achievements. There is certainly some truth in the observation that advanced societies can become uncertain about their identity and purpose. Every civilization faces periods of doubt. Yet the distinction between healthy self-criticism and destructive self-rejection is not always clear.

The same intellectual traditions that produced criticism of Western societies also produced many of their most important reforms. Debates about slavery contributed to abolition. Criticism of political exclusion contributed to the expansion of democratic participation. Challenges to religious intolerance helped establish principles of religious liberty. The willingness to examine one's own history critically has often strengthened rather than weakened Western institutions.

This observation points toward a deeper issue. Rubio's speech places considerable emphasis on excellence, ambition, competition, and national strength. These themes are presented as essential components of the Western tradition. There is substantial historical evidence supporting that view. The pursuit of excellence occupied a central place in many forms of Greek thought. Competition played an important role in Greek athletics, politics, philosophy, and cultural life. Ambition has undeniably contributed to scientific and technological progress.

Yet Western civilization has also been shaped by competing values. The pursuit of excellence has frequently coexisted with concerns about justice. Ambition has been balanced by commitments to moral restraint. Power has been constrained through laws and institutions. Individual achievement has been complemented by concern for human dignity. Western history cannot be reduced to either competition or compassion, strength or restraint, glory or humility. Its distinctive character emerged from the tension among these values rather than from the exclusive triumph of any one of them.

This is particularly evident in the relationship between Greek and Christian traditions. Rubio presents them largely as components of a unified civilizational inheritance. To some extent this is true. Christian theology absorbed elements of Greek philosophy, while European civilization developed through the interaction of classical and Christian ideas. Yet the relationship was often characterized by creative tension rather than complete harmony.

The Homeric hero seeking immortal fame through great deeds stands in an uneasy relationship with the Christian ideal of humility before God. The classical pursuit of honor differs in important respects from Christian conceptions of charity and self-sacrifice. European civilization was shaped not because these traditions were identical but because generations of thinkers struggled to reconcile them. The resulting synthesis was one of history's most remarkable cultural achievements, but it should not be mistaken for simple continuity.

After all, Rubio's speech is not primarily a historical argument. It is a political one. The historical narrative serves a contemporary purpose. Ancient Greece becomes the starting point for a broader appeal in favor of renewed national confidence, technological competition, military strength, economic revitalization, and transatlantic cooperation. Whether one agrees with these objectives is a separate question. The point is that the speech employs history as a source of legitimacy for a particular vision of the future.

There is nothing unusual about this. Statesmen throughout history have interpreted the past in ways that support their political goals. The challenge lies in recognizing the distinction between history and memory. History seeks to understand the past in all its complexity. Memory seeks meaning. Political rhetoric invariably belongs closer to the realm of memory than to that of history.

The enduring significance of ancient Greece does not depend on the existence of a continuous civilizational essence stretching unchanged across twenty-five centuries. Greece matters because successive generations have found it worth revisiting. Its texts, ideas, and examples continue to provoke reflection about power, freedom, justice, citizenship, excellence, and human nature. The Greeks remain relevant not because they supplied definitive answers but because they posed enduring questions.

In that respect, the most authentically Greek response to Rubio's speech may be neither celebration nor condemnation but inquiry. The Greeks themselves excelled at questioning inherited assumptions. Socrates became a symbol of philosophy not because he defended conventional wisdom but because he challenged it. Thucydides remains indispensable not because he glorified power but because he examined it critically. Greek civilization endures because it cultivated habits of thought capable of interrogating even its own foundations.

The Acropolis therefore stands not merely as a monument to Western greatness but also as a reminder of intellectual humility. It testifies to extraordinary human achievement, yet it also reminds us that every civilization is incomplete. Athens itself experienced triumph and decline, confidence and uncertainty, creativity and conflict. Its legacy is not a blueprint to be copied but a conversation to be continued.

If contemporary societies seek guidance from Greece, they should remember not only the ambition of Pericles, the courage of Leonidas, or the achievements of Aristotle. They should also remember the questioning spirit that made such achievements possible. The true inheritance of Greece is not a fixed civilizational identity. It is the willingness to examine inherited beliefs, confront uncomfortable realities, and pursue truth wherever it may lead.

For that reason, the importance of Greece lies not in confirming what we already believe about ourselves. It lies in challenging us to think more deeply about who we are, where we came from, and what kind of future we wish to build. That task remains no less urgent today than it was when Athenians gathered on the Pnyx more than two thousand years ago.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio Remarks
The Pnyx
Athens, Greece
October 7, 2026
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesman/2026/10/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-remarks