Thucydides: The Ancient Greek Father of Scientific History

Philip Chrysopoulos
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Thucydides: The Ancient Greek Father of Scientific History
Thucydides
Bust of Thucydides, son of Olorus, in the Capitoline Museum. Credit: Alinari Wikimedia Commons CC0

No other ancient historian the likes of Thucydides has ever written a book as insightful on the mechanisms and morals of war as History of the Peloponnesian War.

The history of the armed conflict between ancient Greece’s most emblematic city-states, Athens and Sparta, as well as their allies, the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League, respectively, in the words of Thucydides is an invaluable text. Today, it is taught not only in history classes but also in political science, international relations, and philosophy university courses.

The Spartans, watching Athens achieving dominance in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean due to their intrepid naval force, declared a preemptive war to thwart their rising power.

Thucydides was an Athenian. Therefore, one would assume that his account of the Peloponnesian War was biased. That was not the case, however. Instead, he was impartial and his writing as factual as possible. For that reason, he was described by some as the “father of scientific history.”

In his only book, he goes beyond the actual war. He delves into the causes from both perspectives, dissects their motivations, questions the politics on both sides, and judges the leaders as fairly and impartially as possible.

The Peloponnesian War started in 431 BC and ended in 404 BC with the Spartans’ victory and the demise of Athens’ mighty naval force. Consequently, it marked the end of its hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean. More so, it signified the end of the Golden Age of Athens.

However, the book of the great ancient Greek historian ends abruptly in 411 BC even though he was alive when the war ended and it appears he knew of the events that took place after 400 BC. There is, however, a continuation of History of the Peloponnesian War by Xenophon called Hellenica.

A life of experience

Little is known of the life of Thucydides. Most information about his life comes from his own writings in the History of the Peloponnesian War. He was an Athenian living in the seaside neighborhood of Alimos.

It is believed he was born around 460 BC and possibly died just after 400 BC. His father was Olorus. Olorus was not considered an Athenian name but was likely one of Thracian descent. Thucydides was related to the Athenian Miltiades, a great statesman and general. He also owned gold mines in Scapte Hyle, a Thracian seaside area across from Thasos island.

Thucydides survived the 430 to 429 BC pestilence that took the life of Pericles and thousands of Athenians. In 424 BC, he was elected strategos (general) and stationed to lead the Thasos island fleet. He fought against the Spartan alliance, the Peloponnesian League, that was led by General Brasidas.

When the Peloponnesians attacked and took over Amphipolis, Thucydides was deemed by Athenians as failing to defend the city, so they brought him back to Athens to put him on trial. He was sentenced to a 20-year exile. His war experience prompted him to write about the Peloponnesian War. His exile gave him the opportunity to travel to the Peloponnese and move there freely so that he could also assess the conflict from the Peloponnesian League’s point of view.

As an Athenian, Thucydides knew very well the reasons his compatriots went to war against the Spartans. Being an exile in the Peloponnese, he gained invaluable insight into the reasons that led the Spartans and their allies to go to war with Athens.

At the time, Athens had a democratic political system and a fearsome naval force. Sparta,  on the other hand, was most powerful as a land force, with a tradition of an austere militaristic monarchy.

The first ten years of the conflict passed with the Spartans attacking by land and Athenians raiding by sea. After Thucydides lost Amphipolis to Brasidas’ army, Athenian General Cleon unsuccessfully tried to recapture it in 422 BC. Both generals were killed in battle, forcing the two sides to negotiate a treaty.

A truce that lasted six years ended when Athens launched an expedition against Syracuse, which was an ally of Sparta in Sicily. With the help of the Spartans, the Sicilians drove out the Athenians in 413 BC, destroying the largest part of their fleet.

Thucydides did not finish History of the Peloponnesian Wars. For unknown reasons, the final chapter ends abruptly in 411 BC. This is seven years before the end of the war. Nevertheless, 2,500 years later, the book remains a must-read for the academic disciplines mentioned above.

Thucydides, Herodotus, and Homer today

Thucydides was the third ancient Greek who wrote extensively about a war. Roughly fifty years before him, Herodotus wrote The Persian Wars. Three centuries prior to him, Homer wrote the Iliad, a story of the Trojan War. Both were influential works with invaluable insight into ancient Greek and world history of the time. Nonetheless, neither of those was a history book.

Homer’s Iliad was an epic story full of great heroes and capricious gods. It was the starting point of Western literature, but a history book it was certainly not. Troy was likely real, and there is a possibility it was attacked by Achaeans sometime before the Greek Dark Ages. However, there is no mention in history that Achilles, Paris, Helen, or any of the protagonists of the epic poem were real persons, as most of the protagonists are fictional characters and gods.

Herodotus’ account of the war between the ancient Greeks and the invading Persians was a history book for its time. While it provides priceless information on the two armies at war and their battles as observed by the author, who lived during that time period, most historians find it to be exaggerated and occasionally inaccurate. It is also believed the protagonists of both sides are blown out of proportion.

This is not so with Thucydides and his History of the Peloponnesian War. As Julia Kindt, Chair of the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney, wrote about Thucydides’ take on the Peloponnesian War:

“As a high-ranking Athenian military commander (or “strategos”), Thucydides brought to the project firsthand experience of the war, as well as an acute understanding of the complex power politics behind events on the battlefield. His analysis of the immediate and underlying causes of the war and his insight into the considerations and motivations of those fighting it remain one of the most brilliant pieces of political history to date.

His sharp analysis of the kind of forces that stir popular sentiments and drive collective decision making still resonates in the modern world.”

The lesson emerging from that war is that, essentially, there is no real winner in such a war. The outcome of the Peloponnesian War was the weakening of two ancient Greek superpowers that eventually led to the ultimate demise of both.

The name of Thucydides and the mutually destructive Peloponnesian War appears once again in modern times in a 2017 book entitled Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

Writer Graham Allison, the director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, parallels the possibility of war between today’s superpowers, the United States and China, with the Peloponnesian War as analyzed by Thucydides. Allison refers to the potential catastrophic results of such conflict for both sides.

The dilemma here is whether two states can avoid catastrophic war when a rising power such as China begins to challenge the dominant state’s—in this case that of the US—control. For Thucydides, the answer is a resounding “no.” Indeed, this is a lesson taught roughly 2,500 years ago by a brilliant teacher.

Rare Dolphin With Thumbs Discovered in Greece

Abdul Moeed
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Rare Dolphin With Thumbs Discovered in Greece
Rare Dolphin With Thumbs Photographed in Greece
A rare dolphin with thumbs was photographed in Greece. Credit: Alexandros Frantzis / Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute

A rare dolphin with thumb-like flippers has been discovered in the Gulf of Corinth in Greece. Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute researchers came across this unique dolphin twice last summer while conducting boat surveys along the Greek coast.

Despite its flippers’ unusual shape, the dolphin kept up with its group, engaging in swimming, leaping, bow-riding, and playing with fellow dolphins, as reported by Alexandros Frantzis, the scientific coordinator and president of the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute.

“It was the very first time we saw this surprising flipper morphology in 30 years of surveys in the open sea and also in studies while monitoring all the stranded dolphins along the coasts of Greece for 30 years,” shared Frantzis, who captured the images of the dolphin with thumbs, in an email to Live Science.

Around 1,300 striped dolphins in the Gulf of Corinth

The Gulf of Corinth is nestled between the Greek mainland and the Peloponnese peninsula. Within its waters, there exists a distinctive community of dolphins, including common dolphins (Delphinus delphis), Risso’s dolphins (Grampus griseus), and striped dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba).

The dolphin with the unique thumbs was identified as a striped dolphin, according to Frantzis.

Approximately 1,300 striped dolphins inhabit the Gulf of Corinth, forming an isolated group separate from the broader Mediterranean population. Frantzis suggests the distinctive flipper might be a result of rare and irregular genes emerging from continuous interbreeding within this specific population.

Dolphin’s unique flipper is likely tied to genetic makeup

Lisa Noelle Cooper, an associate professor specializing in mammalian anatomy and neurobiology at Northeast Ohio Medical University, agrees that the dolphin’s unique flipper is likely due to its genetic makeup.

“I’ve never seen a flipper of a cetacean that had this shape,” Cooper told Live Science in an email. “Given that the defect is in both the left and right flippers, it is probably the result of an altered genetic program that sculpts the flipper during development as a calf.”

Cetaceans, which include marine mammals such as whales, dolphins, and porpoises, have developed unique front limbs featuring more phalanges or finger bones compared to other mammals.

Bruna Farina, a doctoral student focusing on paleobiology and macroevolution at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, said that these bones form hand-like structures encased in a soft-tissue flipper, resembling a human hand.

Dolphins have thumbs, even though they are not as noticeable as humans and are hidden by their flippers, as explained by Farina in an email to Live Science.

The End of Humanity According to Ancient Greek Mythology

Anna Wichmann
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The End of Humanity According to Ancient Greek Mythology
end of the world
The End of the Humanity According to Ancient Greek Mythology. Credit: Stefans02 / Flickr / CC BY-2.0

According to ancient Greek mythology, there are five ages known as “The Ages of Man,” during which time humanity reaches its peak and then comes to an end.

Hesiod, the Ancient Greek poet, is the most important source for information regarding the Ages of Man.

In his poem entitled “Works and Days,” the poet, who is considered one of the most important early ancient Greek authors along with Homer, outlines the five periods of human history.

“Works and Days” was written around 700 BC and functions as both lessons on life as a farmer and agriculture, and as a mythological source for both the story of Prometheus and Pandora and the Myth of the Five Ages of Man.

The poem is now considered an important source of information regarding the agrarian lifestyle of Greeks at the time, as well as some moral values held by the society, as Hesiod offers advice about living a good life in the work.

Hesiod outlines the five ages of humankind. The five periods—The Golden, Silver, Bronze, Heroic, and Iron Ages—describe the progression of humankind through the lens of Greek mythology.

All ages, apart from one, are named after metals. The metals decrease in value as time progresses, but they increase in hardness and durability.

The Five Ages of Man and end of humanity according to ancient Greek mythology

The Golden Age includes the time of the rule of Cronus, the youngest Titan and father of Zeus, over Mt. Olympus. During this time, the “golden” race of man, who were not actually golden but were extremely noble, were created by the immortals of Olympus and were permitted to live among the gods.

During this period, human beings lived to a very old age and did not have to toil or labor for food and comfort as all was provided for them by the gods. When they died, Hesiod said that the souls of the golden men lived on as “guardians” of humankind, something that Plato reaffirms in “Cratylus,” in which he describes these guardians as protectors or mortals.

The Silver Age refers to the period after the fall of Cronus and the rule of his son Zeus over the gods. It is during this period that humankind began to decline from its pinnacle in the Golden Age. Men, who lived to the age 100 during the period, stopped worshiping the Olympian gods and were constantly fighting amongst themselves. Disgusted by their behavior, Zeus eventually destroyed them all.

According to Hesiod, despite the fact that these men were not as noble as their predecessors, their souls lived on in the underworld as “blessed spirits.”

During the following period, the Bronze Age, humans were warlike, and subsequently became extremely tough. After destroying the men from the Silver Age, Zeus created the Bronze Age men out of ash trees.

All of their goods, including tool, weapons, and even homes, were made of bronze, and these men were always at war.

This violence led to their downfall, as they wiped each other out in battle. Their souls are said to reside in the “dark house of Hades.” Anything that remained was washed away in the flood of Deucalion when Zeus decided to flood the earth and chose Deucalion and his wife Pyrra as the only two survivors.

The couple built an arc and eventually went on to repopulate the earth by throwing the “bones of their mother” behind them, which they correctly assumed referred to stones and mother Earth. The rocks Deucalion threw became men while those thrown by Pyrra became women.

The following age, the Heroic Age, is the only one which was not named after a metal, and it is the lone period that is described as improving upon the one which came before it.

During this era, the most famous heroes of Greek mythology included Jason, Perseus, Odysseus, Achilles, Antigone, and Theseus to name a few. The period spans from the arrival of the Greeks in Thessaly until the end of the Trojan war.

Hesiod claims that this race of humankind went to Elysium, where only the noble and heroic went, after they died.

At the time of Hesiod, the Iron Age, mankind must undertake great labor to survive. They live in a time of great suffering during which humans have forgotten the gods and social contracts, such as the sacred relationship between the guest and the host, which have been cast aside.

Hesiod paints a very pessimistic picture of his contemporary age during which there is “no help against evil,” and that the gods will not come to humankind’s help in the event of their destruction. This is akin to a description of the Greek poet’s imagining of the end of the world.

Hesiod’s description of the history and development of the human race was extremely influential in antiquity, and the Roman poet Ovid, who lived from 43 BC to around 16 or 17 AD, later reinterpreted the Five Ages of Man, but reduced them to four.

In his work the Metamorphoses, which outlines a series of myths that involve transformation and evolution, Ovid describes four periods of human history but does not include the Heroic Age, which is present in Hesiod’s work.

Much like Hesiod, Ovid considers the Golden age the pinnacle of mankind, during which peace and justice were widespread, and men did not go to war but only tended to the land.

In the Silver Age, Zeus created seasons, and mankind developed more complex agricultural knowledge and began to learn about art and architecture.

Much like in the work of Hesiod, men during the Bronze Age were warlike and constantly engaging in battle with each other. Unlike in the earlier Greek work, however, these human beings were still dedicated to worshiping the gods.

In the Iron Age, during which men mastered many arts and methods of exploration, human beings lost core moral values, such as honesty and loyalty.

China’s Santorini Resembles the Greek Cosmopolitan Island

Tasos Kokkinidis
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China’s Santorini Resembles the Greek Cosmopolitan Island
Sanrotini greek island
The real Santorini Island in Greece. Credit: Dimitra Damian/Greek Reporter

For Chinese that don’t have an opportunity to visit Santorini in Greece, there is the Dream Land in Dali, in Southwest China’s Yunnan province that resembles the cosmopolitan Greek island.

The resort is built on the side of the Cangshan mountain range, which overlooks a lake and consists of tourist inns, boutique hotels, cultural businesses, holiday apartments, and small winding streets planted with flowers and plants.

@travelnotes328

This is Santorini in Dali,China. Romance with your beloved #scenery #travel #china #tiktok #nature #fyp #beauty

♬ 原聲 – Ellin – Ellin

It covers an area of 3700 acres, with a construction area of about one million square meters and a total investment of 8 billion yuan.

It is loosely based on Greece’s Santorini – those Chinese who loathe it call it ‘Fake Santorini’. But anyone who has visited Greece’s Santorini knows it is far from authentic.

Not surprisingly, Dali is the focus and destination for a lot of social media influencers as well as for those in search of iconic wedding photographs.

Tourists from China love Santorini

Thousands of tourists from China make their way to Santorini each year to admire the natural beauty of the island, and its ancient treasures or for …a dream wedding.

China Santorini
A dream wedding on Santorini. Credit: Rivios Thanos Photography

As couples tie the knot overlooking the traditional style houses of the famous island and the sparkling blue waters of the sea below, they have found that their destination weddings are a dream come true.

The island provides a vast variety of options for couples with different types of ceremonies, both civil and religious.

Recent research showed that Santorini is the second-best honeymoon destination worldwide, after Bali, considering factors such as affordability and romantic dining options.

Santorini’s enduring popularity

Santorini is an immensely popular tourist destination, and not without good reason. The island offers visitors a fantastic range of beaches, excellent cuisine, and of course, stunning views.

After centuries of volcanic activity, the island has beaches with red sand, others with black sand, and others with pebbles. In fact, Santorini has the most atypical Greek beaches because of its geology.

Red Beach is the island’s most famous, with red sand and a huge, imposing red hill in the background. Then there is the pebbled Kamari Beach and Perissa Beach with black sands and calm waters. However, due to the mountainous terrain, access to the Santorini beaches is not as easy as it is on Mykonos.

Visitors to Santorini can also expect great cuisine. Locals grow many vegetables, and the island is known for its great wines. The rocky, sloped, volcanic terrain is ideal for vineyards and local wines are famous the world over. So, the food in Santorini is fresh and light Mediterranean, overall. And the service is warm and friendly.

 

 

Lawrence Durrell’s Odyssey of Greek Islands a Travel Masterpiece

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Lawrence Durrell’s Odyssey of Greek Islands a Travel Masterpiece
Durrell Greek islands
A typical street on the island of Kythnos. Credit: Kathy S, CC BY 2.5/Wikipedia Commons

The Greek Islands by Lawrence Durrell written in 1978 remains one of the most exciting travel guidebooks of all time. Durrell’s book is a marvelous launching place for learning about Greece’s history, its unique islands, and its lovely people.

by Patrick Garner

Lawrence Durrell was one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and a philhellene, following the 19th century’s Lord Byron in Greece’s literary inspiration. He was known for his wildly popular novels like The Alexandria Quartet and for his travel writing, which focused on Greece and Sicily.

Durrell’s travel masterpiece, The Greek Islands, was written from his copious notes taken during his years living on Corfu. The book, still in print, was last revised in 2002. Written in his usual warm, almost poetic prose, The Greek Islands specifically describes 53 different islands.

Born near Tibet in 1912 of English parents, he left India for England at age 11 and never properly adapted to life there. He later explained his reaction, saying, “English life is really like an autopsy. It is so, so dreary.” 12 years later, he moved to Corfu, which he then adopted as his physical and spiritual home.

Life in Greece was a revelation; colors were pure, the sky endless, the food simple, and the people open. In The Greek Islands he writes that he was, “… electrified by Greek light, intoxicated by the white dancing candescence of the sun on a sea with blue sky pouring onto it.”

He settled in the village of Kalami on the island of Corfu, Greece, in 1935. As a young man—and having found a small house overlooking the sea which he called the White House—Durrell persuaded his mother, siblings, and wife, Nancy Myers, to join him to escape the English winter.

Like so many travelers before him, he felt he had come home. Life on Corfu kicked off his writing career. At the same time, he reached out to other writing luminaries. During that period, Durrell stumbled across Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and wrote Miller a fan letter. Thus began a forty-five-year friendship based on their love of literature and their personal and artistic setbacks. Another luminary, the famous poet T.S. Eliot at Faber and Faber in London, became his friend and publisher.

While on Corfu, he bought a small sloop which he named the Van Norden after a character in Miller’s book. He and his wife Nancy made frequent trips from Corfu to islands throughout the Cyclades and beyond. These adventures later inspired his book, The Greek Islands, giving his descriptions an unusual authenticity.

After alternating for six years between Corfu and Athens, Durrell fled Greece in 1941, days ahead of the invading Nazi army. He and his wife initially settled in Cairo along with their baby daughter. At the end of the war, “liberated from my Egyptian prison,” Durrell returned to Greece.

The sailing trip to 53 Greek islands

The format of his travel masterpiece, The Greek Islands, imagines a long sailing trip. We join Durrell on his ancient sloop, beginning our travels where he had lived on Corfu. We then launch to the nearby Ionian islands, including Paxos, Antipaxos, Lefkas, and Odysseus’ former kingdom, Ithaca.

From there, we traverse to the southern Aegean, mooring our boat at ports on Crete, Cythera, and of course, Santorini. Then, we cross to the southern Sporades. We tie up first in Rhodes, where Durrell was once stationed after the war. After lingering a bit to enjoy the local pleasures, we cross blue waters to Casos, Tilos, Symi, Cos, Leros, Patmos, Icaria, and others. We then continue north to the islands of Samos and Chios.

From there, Durrell once again hoists his sails and points us into the northern Aegean. We arrive and hike through Lesbos and Lemnos, circle ancient Samothrace, Thasos and Skiathos, finally touring Skyros.

And we can hardly neglect the Cyclades. With Durrell as guide, we celebrate Dionysus’ old stomping grounds on Naxos, then visit Paros, stop at the glitzy Mykonos (which was far from glitzy in 1976), then visit gloomy Delos, its sister Rhenia, Tinos, Andros, and Syros. We’re not through yet, as Durrell insists we see Kythnos, Kea, Milos, Ios, and a half dozen other volcanic islands that each has houses, old temples, and charming ruins tucked away everywhere.

On our return trip, we swing by Salamis, Aegina, Poros, Hydra, and Spetsae. Along the way, we’ve learned about Greek history, flowers, and the numerous festivals unique to each island. The one island he purposely omits is Cyprus: then and now, encouraging visits to an island torn apart by politics is difficult.

The Greek Islands could be used today as a guidebook for touring the Greek Mediterranean. Since its original publication 45 years ago, some of the islands have lost a bit of their quaintness. But many have not. And Durrell’s book is a marvelous launching place for learning about Greece’s history, its unique islands, and its lovely people.

Patrick Garner is the author of three novels about Greek gods in the contemporary world. He is also the creator and narrator of the breakout podcast, Garner’s Greek Mythology with listeners in 134 countries.

The Greek Hero Who Rescued 10 Trapped Hikers After Taiwan Earthquake

Tasos Kokkinidis
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The Greek Hero Who Rescued 10 Trapped Hikers After Taiwan Earthquake
Greek Taiwan earthquake
Dimitris Belbas leads trapped hikers to safety. Credit: Facebook/ Tadpole Shen

Dimitris Belbas, a Greek tourist in Taiwan, saved 10 hikers from a gorge after the recent earthquake, according to a report in Taiwan News.

Belbas was hiking on a trail at the landmark Taroko Gorge with his family when the earthquake struck on April 3.

Greek man helps hikers after Taiwan earthquake

Speaking to Greek TV on Monday Belbas said that a total of 11 people, including him and his two family members, were trapped.

He described how rocks began to fall and landslides occurred, closing the passages through the canyon. When he stopped and made sure everyone was okay, he looked for stranded hikers. He located a family of five with three children and three more women whom he eventually led to safety.

“I have experienced the 1981 earthquake in Athens, but I have never experienced an earthquake like the one in Taiwan before.

“It was like a war scene, there were explosions from the landslides, commotion, and dust that reduced vision and made breathing difficult(…) It was a horrifying experience,” he emphasized.

Belbas had rescue experience and set up lead ropes to help hikers pass through trail sections piled with rocks.

The people he had helped rescue expressed their gratitude by hugging him, and some shed tears, the report in Taiwan News notes. They were brought to Silks Place Taroko and airlifted from the area.

Greek Taiwan earthquake
Credit: Facebook/ Tadpole Shen

Hundreds remain stranded

Over the weekend more than 600 people remained stranded in various locations, three days after the island’s strongest earthquake in 25 years.

Four people remain missing on the same Shakadang Trail in Taroko national park, famed for its rugged mountainous terrain. Search and recovery work was set to resume after being called off on Friday afternoon because of aftershocks.

At least 12 people were killed by the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck on Wednesday morning off Taiwan’s east coast, and 10 others were still missing.

More than 600 people – including about 450 at a hotel in the Taroko park – remained stranded, cut off by rockslides and other damage in different areas. However, many were known to be safe as rescuers deployed helicopters, drones and smaller teams with dogs to reach them.

On Friday, rescuers freed nine people trapped in a winding cave popular with tourists called the Tunnel of Nine Turns in the island’s mountainous east, while locating two others who were feared dead.

“I kept praying and praying,” said a woman evacuated from the cave, adding that the earthquake had sounded like “a bomb”.

Among the four missing on Shakadang Trail were a family of five. The two bodies found on Friday were a man and a woman but they had not yet been identified, according to Taiwanese media reports.

In the city of Hualien, authorities allowed residents to enter a building with a crumbling facade in 15-minute intervals so they could retrieve their belongings.

The Day Greeks Battled French, Turks Over the Venus de Milo Statue

Philip Chrysopoulos
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The Day Greeks Battled French, Turks Over the Venus de Milo Statue
The Venus de Milo
The Venus de Milo is an ancient Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic period. Credit: Bradley N. Weber/CC BY 2.0

On this day in 1820, a Greek farmer discovered the Aphrodite of Milo, better known as the Venus de Milo, one of the most representative statues of the Hellenistic period of Greek sculpture, and one of the most famous sculptures of ancient Greece.

Created sometime between 130 BC and 100 AD, it is believed that it represents Aphrodite (called Venus in Roman mythology), the goddess of love and beauty.

The statue was found half-buried, in two pieces, on April 8, 1820, when a Milos island farmer named Giorgos (or Theodoros) Kentrotas was digging in ancient ruins in his field to find some stones he needed for his farm.

Yet, instead of ordinary stones, Kentrotas found a statue that turned out to be one of the most famous statues in the world — the Venus de Milo, or Aphrodite of Milos.

Nearby in the same area, French naval officers were conducting excavations for ancient artifacts. When the pickax of the Greek farmer hit something unusual and he dug out a piece of a marble statue, two French navy sailors who were participating in the excavations took notice.

Kentrotas sensed that his discovery was valuable, and tried to cover the marble statue piece with dirt again, fearing that the French would grab it or would make him sell it to them for much less money than it was worth.

However, the French were not fooled by the farmer and they gathered around his digging spot — urging him to dig further. Kentrotas complied and kept digging until the entire sculpture was revealed.

The fragments of the sculpture were moved to Kentrotas’ sheepfold, while the French had already begun to communicate with consuls and ambassadors back in their offices in Constantinople and Smyrna.

Olivier Voutier: The French naval officer who discovered Venus de Milo

Olivier Voutier was the French naval officer who was heading the excavations for antiquities on Milos. He had studied archaeology, so when he saw the jaw-dropping discovery, he informed his compatriots that he did not have enough money to buy the statue.

Colonel Olivier Voutier
Colonel Olivier Voutier. Credit: Public Domain.

Along with the Venus de Milo, the French discovered two dedication plaques and a base plinth with an inscription of the name of the sculptor.

The missing arms of the statue were not found, however, and Voutier’s sketch made at the scene shows Venus without arms.

After the discovery, the French started negotiating the buying price for the statue. The initial price offered was 400 piasters, known in Greece at the time as grosi (γρόσι), the currency used by the Ottoman Empire until 1844.

However, negotiations became complicated as other parties became involved in the negotiations, making Kentrotas’ opinion secondary. The Ottomans and French Admiral Jules Dumont d’Urville entered the negotiations, which resulted in the delay of the transfer of the statue to France.

200 Greeks Killed Trying to Keep Statue in Greece

According to Greek historian Dimitris Fotiadis, the islanders found out about the discovery and transaction of Kentrotas with the French and reacted with justifiable anger. The residents of Milos took action to try to stop the French from loading the Aphrodite of Milos onto the French ship.

In the skirmish that ensued, the French soldiers shot at the angry islanders and killed several of them. The French finally managed to put the statue on board and leave for Piraeus — but hundreds of Milos residents followed the ship in their own small boats.

When the French ship docked at the port of Piraeus, the Milos islanders and other Greeks who had been informed of the struggle to keep the statue gathered at Piraeus. This time the Greeks’ mission was to stop the ship from leaving for France — and to take their statue back.

Fotiadis wrote that at least one thousand Greeks who were at the port clashed with the French ship’s crew, as well as Ottoman soldiers who had been sent there to protect the French.

More than 200 Greeks were killed in the fight and finally, the statue of Aphrodite of Milos sailed for France on March 1, 1821, just twenty days before modern Greece declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire. The statue was presented to King Louis XVIII.

Later, the King handed the priceless Greek statue over to the Louvre Museum.

In 1960, a commission of Turkish archaeologists presented a petition to André Malraux demanding the return of the Venus de Milo.

This request was based on a report by the jurist Ahmed Rechim, who accused the French of having stolen the statue and said that it belonged to the Ottoman Empire. Malraux declared the idea “cultural blackmail” and refused to return it.

She still stands today on display at the Louvre, in mute testimony of the wholesale looting of Greek art and artifacts over the centuries.

Greek Americans Celebrate Independence Day in Boston, Chicago Parades

Tasos Kokkinidis
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Greek Americans Celebrate Independence Day in Boston, Chicago Parades
Greek Parades Boston Chicago
The New England Evzones lead the parade in Boston. Credit: Maria Kechri/Consulate General of Greece in Boston

Thousands of Greek Americans and philhellenes celebrated National Independence Day in Boston and Chicago by attending the annual parades on Sunday.

The parade in Boston commemorating Greece’s march to freedom which began on March 25th, 1821 began at 1 o’clock just below the Prudential skyscraper. It crossed Boylston Street which is Boston’s main street and ended at the city’s National Garden across from the Four Seasons Hotel, where the VIP podium was located.

Parading were 75 departments, 9 universities, and chariots, of which the most prominent was the Boston Euboean Association which was dedicated to the great medical inventor and benefactor of mankind George Papanicolaou.

Other chariots included the Pamakedonian with Alexander the Great, the Federation with the motto for the return of the stolen Parthenon statues from the English which was the motto of this year’s parade, and the Greek Evangelical community which decorated the monument with the Amazons.

After the end of the parade which lasted one hour and forty-five minutes, the cultural event took place at the Boston National Garden where dance groups danced Greek dances.

The New England Evzones and local Greek dance troupes performed dances from all over Greece, as attendees indulged in authentic Greek food which was provided by Greek street trucks and vendors.

New England is home to over 200,000 Greek Americans and this year’s parade ws presented by various local organizations working to amplify Greek community in Boston such as the Federation of Hellenic-American Societies of New England (FHASNE).

“After a short hiatus due to inclement weather, we are proud that the Annual Greek Independence Day Parade of Boston is returning this year,” Vasilios “Bill” Kafkas, President of FHANSE said before the parade. “We warmly welcome people from all walks of life to attend the parade and celebrate with us.”

Boston, Chicago parades celebrate Greek Independence

Despite the rain, Chicago celebrated Greek Independence with a parade in Greektown on Sunday, March 26.

Presented by The Federation of Hellenic-American Organizations (ENOSIS), and sponsored by Greektown Special Service Area #16, the Greek heritage parade has been established as one of the biggest annual events in the Chicago Greek community since its founding in the 1960s.

Hundreds lined up on Halsted Street for the parade celebration, saw colorful traditional costumes, and experienced traditional Greek music, and dance troupe performances.

It is estimated that approximately 150,000 people of Greek ancestry live in the greater Chicago area.

Chicago’s Greektown, the dining and nightlife district on the city’s Near West Side, is the undisputed cultural hub for the third-largest population of Greeks living in the USA.

Greektown’s bars and restaurants, serving some of the best Greek food in the country, lie roughly between Van Buren and Madison Streets, along Halsted Street, west of the Loop.

Wolfgang Schaeuble’s Memoir Delves Into the Greek Debt Crisis

Tasos Kokkinidis
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Wolfgang Schaeuble’s Memoir Delves Into the Greek Debt Crisis
Schaeuble Memoir Greek crisis
Wolfgang Schaeuble became a renowned and often reviled figure in countries such as Greece during the financial crisis. Credit:  Kuebi, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

The memoir by Wolfgang Schaeuble, one of the key figures of the 2009-2018 Greek debt crisis who died in December 2023, is hitting bookstores in Germany on Monday.

The memoir, titled Memories. My Life in Politics, delves into the Greek crisis and its protagonists. Greek politicians of the period are subjected to the sarcastic narrative of the former German finance minister, who seems to have known how hated he had become among the Greeks, who accused him of championing austerity, resulting in an unprecedented drop in living standards and a meteoric rise in unemployment.

For a time, Schaeuble seemed ready to allow Greece to crash out of the euro before making any compromises.

In 2017, after he left the finance ministry, he said he felt vindicated by the results of often painful reforms carried out in exchange for EU loans in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Cyprus.

In an interview with the Financial Times (FT) he insisted the goal was never to impose austerity on Europe. The goal instead was “a predictable, reliable finance policy that built up trust and generated growth,” he told the British newspaper.

“I would argue with anyone; even more strongly now after eight years, that this policy generates more sustainable growth than any other,” he said.

The Kathimerini newspaper presented the memoir and the contents relating to Greece on Sunday.

Schaeuble considered asking Greece to leave the Eurozone

In his critique of the “usual blame game that the Greeks knew how to play so successfully,”  Schaeuble asks the rhetorical question: “Who likes to admit that he lived beyond his means?”

He points out, however, that the book by the former finance minister, Giorgos Papakonstantinou, Game Over, is a “relentless self-criticism of the way the Greek government secured a membership in the euro.”

“The fact that I became a scapegoat didn’t bother me, [and] one has to put up with that in politics, even inelegant parallels with the Nazis that were drawn from the history closet,” he recalls. “The social media hate was counterbalanced by an outpouring of acceptance and support through letters and emails.”

“The smear campaign, however, hit an unforgivable low in the spring of 2017, when an extremist group attacked then-interim Prime Minister Loukas Papademos and the IMF office in Paris with booby-trapped packages, injuring an employee. A bomb sent to me was detected in time at the ministry’s screening point and deactivated,” Schaeuble writes.

He adds: “My doubts (regarding Greece’s reform readiness) pushed me to consider alternative scenarios early on. As early as 2010, I did not rule out the possibility of a member leaving the Eurozone, as a last resort.”

“Would a temporary exit from the euro, to devalue the national currency and boost competitiveness, be a feasible path? Wouldn’t such a horror ending be better than a horror without an ending, since a single shock would be easier to deal with than years of austerity programs?” Schaeuble asks.

He recounts his first meeting with Evangelos Venizelos as finance minister in June 2011.

“I invited him to Berlin, not to the ministry, but in a relaxed atmosphere and as a token of appreciation to the award-winning restaurant (including two Michelin stars) of Tim Raue, to express my doubts to him…What I told him seemed to kill his appetite. He ate almost nothing when I explained my stance on both alternative considerations,” he says.

He clarified that Greece wanted to remain in the Eurozone at all costs and also refused the temporary exit from the monetary union during which it would be generously supported by the EU in return for reforms.

George Papandreou, Greece’s prime minister at the time, announced a referendum
on the €130 billion eurozone bail-out for Greece.

Describing the difficult situation for Papandreou in Cannes in November 2011, he recounts the pressures from Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, as well as Christine Lagarde and Mario Draghi, to dictate the text for the referendum to put before the Greek voters the dilemma of either accepting the aid program or deciding to leave the euro.

“The possibility of Greece leaving the monetary union was never discussed with such clarity as during the dramatic hours of Cannes,” Schaeuble says.

Meeting Tsipras during the Greek debt crisis

Schaeuble further wrote: “I had known Tsipras since 2013 as the leader of the opposition. I was interested in this man of an up-and-coming movement who was blowing the whistle on European politics. How did he think he could solve the crisis? Although nobody wanted to welcome him at that time in Berlin, I invited him to the Ministry of Finance to exchange views.”

“In a conversation that lasted an hour, he tried to explain to me that the austerity policy was wrong, he explained to me with disarming directness that he would promise during the upcoming election campaign to keep the country in the euro at all costs, but without, an austerity program.”

“I answered him with the same directness that I wish him not to win the election for his own sake because the promise that will ensure him electoral success cannot be kept in any way,” Schaeuble reveals. “Greece could not remain a member of the Eurozone without the necessary obligations. Tsipras knew this too. But my answer did not impress him.”

“From this discussion, however, I was impressed by his ruthless intention to advance a position, however weak it was.”

Since then, he realized that he would hardly find a field of compromise with the former president of SYRIZA and that the crisis would come back as a “farce,” as he characteristically writes.

Varoufakis “caused so much damage”

Schaeuble Memoir Greek crisis
Schaeuble listens to Varoufakis in 2015. Credit: AMNA

In his memoir, Schaeuble dedicates a separate sub-chapter to Yanis Varoufakis. “This crisis was largely caused by the man who, during the change of government, took over as Greece’s finance minister to implement the plan,” he writes.

The darkest moment in his relationship with Varoufakis, according to Schaeuble, is “when we learned that he was secretly recording our negotiations in the Eurogroup to make copies and release them to the public. It remains open which was more infuriating: the breach of trust in itself, or the interpretation that he had a ‘moral duty’ because he then had to answer to Parliament and the media?”

Schaeuble refers to Lagarde’s distaste for the incident and the need to return dialogue between adults in the room, noting that he has never read a more “devastating” verdict on a colleague than that of Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the former head of the Eurogroup, on Varoufakis.

“Never has a finance minister caused so much damage to his country in such a short time.”

The Greek 2015 referendum and the third bailout

In the opinion of the former German finance minister, Tsipras’s strategic goal in the referendum of July 2015 was to ensure a marginal “no,” which would, on the one hand, give him a strong argument in the negotiations in Brussels and, on the other hand, a way out to explain his retreat to the Greek public.

However, the overwhelming result of the referendum in favor of “no” took him by surprise since he was no longer able to get out of the predicament without losing his credibility.

After the referendum, an intergovernmental meeting was held in the chancellery. During that time, he argued again for a time-out for Greece from the Eurozone.

Surprisingly, the Social Democrat Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel seemed to agree with him, while the then Foreign Minister and current President of the country, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, also a member of the Social Democrats, remained silent.

“That’s why I confronted Merkel, who responded to my comments that this would only be possible in consultation with [French President] François Hollande, and he disagrees. She was not going to sacrifice the Franco-German relationship.”

“When the time-out was then discussed, 15 of the 19 finance ministers were in favor, while apart from [Greek Finance Minister] Tsakalotos, Chapin, the Italian Pier Carlo Padoan and the Cypriot Haris Georgiadis disagreed.”

At the EU summit that followed the Greek referendum, when Tsipras eventually agreed to a third bailout for Greece, participants found themselves at the end of the meeting in a  “comatose” state, Schaeuble says.

“This is consensus building through fatigue. Merkel is an expert at this,” he added.

Schaeuble also hails Tsipras’ eventual conversion by accepting the program. “It was a courageous step and Tsipras subsequently achieved remarkable things, which allowed the next government to stabilize Greece on this basis. That deserves recognition.”

Fossils in Greece Suggest Human Ancestors Evolved in Europe, Not Africa

Tasos Kokkinidis
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Fossils in Greece Suggest Human Ancestors Evolved in Europe, Not Africa
Greece fossils human anscestors
This upper mandible was found in Nikiti in northern Greece. Credit: New Scientist/David Begun

A recent analysis of fossils recovered in the 1990s in the village of Nikiti in northern Greece supports the controversial idea that apes, the ancestors of humans, evolved in Southeastern Europe instead of Africa.

The 8 or 9-million-year-old fossils had first been linked to the extinct ape called Ouranopithecus.

However, a team led by David Begun from the University of Toronto’s Department of Anthropology has recently analyzed the remains and determined that they likely belonged to a male animal from a potentially new species.

By inspecting the upper and lower jaw of the ancient European ape, the team suggested that humanity’s forebears may have evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa, potentially upending a scientific consensus that has stood since Darwin’s day.

In 1871, Darwin proposed that all hominins, including both modern and extinct humans, descended from a group in Africa. This is the most widely accepted theory today.

Fossils in Greece belong to human ancestors

On the other hand, Darwin also speculated that hominins could also have originated in Europe, where fossils of large apes had already been discovered. The new analysis supports this theory.

While Begun does not believe the ape in Greece was a hominin, he speculates that it could represent the group from which hominins directly evolved.

The research team led by Begun had determined in 2017 that a 7.2-million-year-old ape called Graecopithecus, which also lived in what is now Greece, could be a hominin.

In this case, the 8-million to 9-million-year-old Nikiti ape would have directly preceded the first hominin, Graecopithecus, before hominins migrated to Africa seven million years ago.

According to a report in the journal New Scientist, Begun foresees that this new concept will be rejected by many experts who believe in African hominin origins, but he hopes that the new scenario will at least be considered.

Begun points out that Southeastern Europe was once occupied by the ancestors of animals such as the giraffe and rhino. “It’s widely agreed that this was the found fauna of most of what we see in Africa today,” he told New Scientist. “If the antelopes and giraffes could get into Africa 7 million years ago, why not the apes?”

Not all anthropologists agree with Begun and his team’s conclusions. As noted by New Scientist, the Nikiti ape may be completely unrelated to hominins. It may have evolved similar features independently, developing teeth to eat similar foods or chew similarly to early hominins.

Related: Homo Sapiens May Not Have Been the First Species to Use Fire

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