of truth" is admittedly only an expedient; for it is still to speak of truth in an objectifying way over and against the way it itself comes to presence and history "is." The transformation of the essence of truth likewise supports that domain in which the historically observable nexuses of Western history are grounded. That is why the historical state of the world we call the modern age, following historiographical chronology, is also founded on the event of the Romanizing of Greece. The "Renaissance" of the ancient world accompanying the outset of the modern period is unequivocal proof of this. A more remote, but by no means indifferent, consequence of the Romanizing of Greece and of the Roman rebirth of antiquity is the fact that we today still see the Greek world with Roman eyes—and indeed not solely within historiographical research into ancient Greece but also, and this is the only decisive thing, within the historical metaphysical dialogue of the modern world with that of the ancients. The metaphysics of Nietzsche, whom we like to consider the modern rediscoverer of ancient Greece, sees the Greek "world" exclusively in a Roman way, i.e., in a way at once modern and un-Greek. Similarly, we still think the Greek πόλις and the "political" in a totally un-Greek fashion. We think the "political" as Romans, i.e., imperially. The essence of the Greek πόλις will never be grasped within the horizon of the political as understood in the Roman way. As soon as we consider the simple unavoidable essential domains, which are for a historiographer naturally of no consequence, since they are inconspicuous and noiseless, then, but only then, do we see that our usual basic ideas, i.e., Roman, Christian, modern ones, miserably fail to grasp the primordial essence of ancient Greece.
Recapitulation
2) Reconsideration of the essence of the "false" and of the hiding and "dis-hiding" of ψεῦδος. The rule of the Roman imperial "high command" and the breadth of the distinction between ψεῦδος and falsum.
We are considering the essence of ψεῦδος, a word usually rendered "false." But for what purpose are we "busying" ourselves with the false, supposing we are "busy" here at all? Indeed we desire the true, and it is difficult enough to try to find it and preserve it. We want the "positive." Why then all this brain-racking over the negative? These are all legitimate questions.
But in our meditation it is not the false itself we are pursuing. We are reflecting "only" on the essence of the false. And the essence of