English to Indonesian Art/Literary Idioms / Maxims / Sayings Sayings

Hi
This is something Greeks will sometimes say to foreign visitors.
The idea is that they gave the light of civilisation to the world, so the world became enlightened with Greek inventions, literature etc., but that they themselves lost the light and their own candle was extinguished, so they mean that they were left with an extinguished candle with no light at all.
The Greeks often blame this on their being an Ottoman colony for hundreds of years.
Please feel free to add words as needed to make the meaning crystal clear to an ordinary Indonesian person as this seems to be very much a phenomenon of western culture.
Many thanks
Simon