Paper Monitor
13:33 UK time, Wednesday, 2 November 2011
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
The current Greece/eurozone/probably-everybody-else economic crisis obliges every newspaper to explain things to their readers.
That even includes those papers that usually push all business and economics stuff right into the middle of the paper.
They're obliged to do things in as simple and engaging a way as possible.
So the Sun has a factbox entitled "How they have made a drachma out of a crisis". Ho ho. And there's another box - "What have the Greeks ever done for us?"
Now Greek history happens to be a bit of a pet subject of Paper Monitor. So this box is examined with interest.
The first item that catches the eye is "2500 BC: Greeks on Crete invent mazes by building the Labyrinth, with the mythical minotaur at its centre".
Now Paper Monitor hates to be a pernicket, but at that time there were no Greeks on Crete. It's the very much non-Greek Minoans that you're thinking of.
Next up: "625 BC Greeks use coins as money to trade between states".
The history of coinage is rather murky, but there are theories that it was the Lydians in western Anatolia that first used coins, or indeed cities in India.
Moving on: "490BC: Greeks invent the Marathon by sending a messenger 26 miles to report beating the Persians in war."
This is indeed the modern legend behind the Marathon, but Herodotos, a key source for the period, didn't tell it that way. He suggested the whole Athenian army did the 26 miles, with their armour. The lone runner went a much longer distance to Sparta.
Then it's: "472 BC: They invent theatre and comedy and tragedy genres." In fact, tragedy is thought to have been invented during the 6th Century BC.
The box omits Eratosthenes, who calculated the circumference of the world, as well as inventions like the crane and showers.
And it lists the Greeks' contribution from 230BC to 1800AD as "not a lot". That's missing out such items as the invention of the drydock and the reintroduction of the fork to western Europe and probably a whole host of other things.
Pedantry over.
The 
