Abstract

Tradition should be conceived as the inheritance of all the thoughts, values, techniques, customs, languages, and arts of a people that are stored in its cultural memory. As cultures have always changed with unavoidable contact with other groups, the popular usage of “traditional” or “historical” as the alleged contrary of “modern” is misleading, suggesting something purely national versus impure contamination—or something old, dying, or dead versus something innovative and vital. Tradition, however, is, like all history, an ongoing process of transmission and transformation, from the earliest recorded times to the present day. This is best researched in the case of the Classical Tradition of Greece and Rome, which has left its imprint on modern European culture, enriched by the classical traditions of non-European peoples. Here again, globalization continues and intensifies long-standing developments in a dialogue of giving and receiving.