Greece
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Greece’
Kipling borrowed from the Greek Independence movement to give thanks for the end of the Great War.
Kipling’s poem, published at the end of the Great War in the ‘Daily Telegraph’ on October 17, 1918, is a verse-paraphrase of the Greek National Anthem. The original was composed by Dionýsios Solomós in 1823, and ran to 158 verses.
In the populist democracy of 5th-century BC Athens, heroes fell as quickly as they rose.
After Pericles died, the Peloponnesian War with Sparta (431-404 BC) was carried on by other leaders in the radical democracy of Athens, including his nephew Alcibiades, and Nicias. Fighting a war and pleasing a people that brooked no failure in their heroes was not an easy matter.
The leader of 5th-century BC Athens lavished public money on the city and its adoring citizens, and wherever he led they followed.
The story of Pericles, the 5th-century BC Athenian leader, is one of personal magnetism and a matchless cultural legacy, and also a warning. Democracy should give us the freedom to demand more of ourselves. If we use it merely to demand more from politicians, we corrupt ourselves and them too.
Remembered as the inspiration of the famous Olympic road race, but much more important than that.
The Battle of Marathon is remembered today chiefly as the inspiration for the modern road race. But its real significance was that it kept Greece from being asset-stripped by Persia, and so helped to save Western civilization.
Socrates was placed on death row while Athens celebrated a religious festival.
The philosopher Socrates (470/469 - 399 BC) was sensationally tried for ‘corrupting youth and for impiety’, code for challenging the government of Athens. Ironically, by law his execution had to be delayed while they commemorated the abolition of human sacrifice.
Why did a kindly old priest refuse to show his respects to St Nektarios?
St Nektarios of Aegina (Anastasios Kephalas, 1846-1920), is one the most beloved saints of Greece, known for countless miracles in his lifetime and after his death. Some years ago in Lavrio, Attica, a priest undertook to build a church in the saint’s honour; but he had cancer, and the pain was so intolerable that he tore his own clothes, and often hid from visitors.