Lost Worlds of Ancient and Modern Greece: Gilbert Bagnani: The Adventures of a Young Italo-Canadian Archaeologist in Greece, 1921-1924

by D.J. Ian Begg

By day, young Gilbert Bagnani studied archaeology in Greece, but by night he socialised with the elite of Athenian society. Secretly writing for the Morning Post in London, he witnessed both antebellum Athens in 1921 and the catastrophic collapse of Christian civilisation in western Anatolia in 1922. While there have been many accounts by refugees of the disastrous flight from Smyrna, few have been written from the perspective of the west side of the Aegean. The flood of a million refugees to Greece brought in its wake a military coup in Athens, the exile of the Greek royal family and the execution or imprisonment of politicians, whom Gilbert knew.

Gilbert's weekly letters to his mother in Rome reveal his Odyssey-like adventures on a voyage of discovery through the origins of western civilisation. As an archaeologist in Greece, he travelled through time seeing history repeat itself: Minoan Knossos, Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Smyrna were all violently destroyed, but the survivors escaped to the new worlds of Mycenaean Greece, Renaissance Venice and modern Greece.

At Smyrna in the twentieth century, history was written not only by the victors but was also recorded by the victims. At the same time, however, the twentieth century itself was so filled with reports of ethnic cleansings on such a scale that the reports brutalized the humanity of the supposedly civilized people reading about them, and the tragedy of Smyrna disappeared from public awareness between the cataclysmic upheavals of the First and Second World Wars.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Greece, Archaeology, Travel

380 pages, Hardcover

Published October 31, 2020

Reviews

[Samwise Chamberlain]

A little disappointed by this book. I wasn't expecting Indiana Jones but a rich undergraduate hobnobbing with the gentry isn't exactly my idea of an adventure. It is nice for a firsthand account of Greece before it was destroyed by WWI, but that takes a backseat to political intrigue and gossip mostly involving folks you've never heard of. I guess this is a good reminder that the beginnings of archaeology came from rich people with nothing much to do except to maybe grind an ideological axe or two.

The actual destruction of Smyrna is not given firsthand, nor any actual fighting. This is due to avoidance of dangerous areas and the fact that our protagonist was on one of numerous vacations from his college activities. The other two extracurriculars that allegedly gave this snob an air of the secret agent were: writing articles for a conservative British newspaper and actively spying for Mussolini... So yeah. Nothing to applaud.

[Jackmelis]

The blend of archaeology, history, and personal experiences offers a unique perspective on significant events in the region from you can know about Wash Dishes. I'm intrigued by the portrayal of Smyrna's tragedy and its impact on both individuals and society during that tumultuous period.

[Rachel]

I am giving this book 4 stars because it is a beautiful book but unfortunately it is rather dull. This is basically the rather dull journals of a bright archaeologist that's been padded to create a book