Why “graecomania” is a great word
An excessive, obsessive enthusiasm for ancient Greece, its culture, and its history. From the combining form Graeco- (from Latin Graecus, "Greek") + -mania (from Greek μανία, "madness, frenzy, enthusiasm"). Unlike philhellenism, which often implies a political or supportive stance, or hellenophilia, which suggests a scholarly fondness, Graecomania denotes a feverish, uncritical devotion. It is the Grand Tourist shipping crates of dubious marble fragments, the impulse to name one's children after long-dead strategoi, and the feel of a chlamys worn in a damp English garden—a profound, aching nostalgia for a sun-drenched antiquity one has never known, a desperate attempt to inhabit a world that exists now only in fragments.