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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
A joy to be an honorary Grand Marshall for today’s 28th Annual Greek Independence Day Parade of Boston! Love celebrating the community and learning more about Greek culture from Mayor of Somerville @katjballantyne, @BOSCityCouncil Clerk Geourntas, and so many others. Ευχαριστώ! pic.twitter.com/id81p9dmTp
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.
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 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.”
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.
The Greek town of Santa, Dumanli in Turkish, situated in Pontus, has been a ghost town suffering neglect ever since the Greeks were forced to flee their ancestral homes in the exchange of populations with Turkey in 1923.
Santa, surrounded by tall mountains covered in fog year-round, is located in the province of Argyroupolis situated 52km southeast of Trabzon.
It’s believed Santa became established just after 1461 when Trebizond fell to the Ottoman Turks. Christians from surrounding regions of Trebizond such as Platana, Tonya and Muzena fled to the mountains to avoid Turkish persecution and harassment.
Before 1923 it was made up of 7 settlements; Pistofanton, Zournatzanton, Tsakalanton, Ischananton. Kozlaranton, Pinetanton and Terzanton and were inhabited entirely by Greeks, approximately 6,000 in number.
Around the end of the 19th century, Santa had 15 priests, 8 churches, 7 chapels, 5 schools, 9 teachers and some 260 students.
Administratively it belonged to the vilayet of Trebizond while ecclesiastically it originally belonged to the Diocese of Argyroupolis, then later to the Exarchate of Panagia Sumela, and lastly, it was transferred to the Diocese of Rhodopolis (Livera).
Santa in Pontus lies abandoned and neglected
Santa was once a bustling town with single-story houses, a church in each neighborhood, and a fountain on each street. Many jewelry stores and shopping centers could be found.
In 1923, when the Turkey-Greece Population Exchange agreement was signed, the Greeks migrated, and the remaining residents also left for economic reasons.
Since then, the ruins bear a deserted look.
“At the beginning of 1900s, especially after the Greeks migrated from our country as a result of the exchange, [the site] was left deserted,” Huseyin Ates, the province’s culture and tourism head told Anadolu Agency recently.
He added that after the 1950s, the Turk residents in the area also left due to various reasons.
“It is an area which has fallen into silence for 50 years and has been left to its fate,” he said.
After the population exchange, the Greeks who migrated to Greece called the homes they had left behind a “secret heaven”, said Ates.
Visitors can track traces of the Pontic Greek civilization in the area, he said, stressing the importance of the site in terms of nature and culture tourism.
He said he believed the Santa ruins would become an important tourist destination along the Green Road Project — a new road that will link the site to the Black Sea coastal road.
Ates has invited nature lovers and people interested in cultural heritage to visit the site.
“We will do everything to share this historical heritage with the next generations,” he told Anadolu.
The genocide of the Greeks of Pontus
The Greeks of Pontus suffered even before the population exchange of 1923. The Young Turk movement was started in 1908; the hard nationalist party was responsible for beginning the persecution of Christian communities and the forcible Turkification of the region.
Reacting to the oppression of the Turks — the murders, deportations and the burning of villages — Pontic Greeks took to the mountains to salvage what was possible of their culture.
After the genocide of the Armenians, the Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk then began the systematic extermination of the Pontic Greeks.
On May 19, 1919, Ataturk landed in Samsun to start the second and most brutal phase of the Pontian Genocide under the guidance of German and Soviet advisers.
By the time of the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922, the number of Pontians who died had exceeded 200,000; some historians put the figure as high as 350,000.
Decorated Kostas Sarantidis meets with then Foreign Minister of Việt Nam Phạm Binh Minh in 2018. Credit: Vietnamese News Agency/VNA/VNS
Kostas Sarantidis was a Greek resistance fighter who escaped from the Nazi labor camps during the Second World War to become a national hero in Vietnam.
He was the sole foreigner who was honored with the title of Hero of the People’s Armed Forces of Vietnam.
“Kostas Sarantidis’s life is tied in with the heroic moments of the Vietnamese people,” said Vu Binh, Vietnamese Ambassador to Greece.
He was born in 1927 in Thessaloniki to Asia Minor refugees. In the autumn of 1943 and during the Axis occupation of Greece in World War II, he was arrested while selling smuggled tobacco and was sent on foot to Nazi forced labor camps in Germany.
He managed to escape to an area near Vienna and stole a military uniform which he used to disguise himself as a German until the end of the war.
After the end of the war, Sarantidis went to Rome and tried to be repatriated to Greece. This, however, proved impossible as he lacked any identity documents. Without any means of supporting himself, Sarantidis was lured into the French Foreign Legion by the prospect of living an adventurous life and meeting beautiful women.
Greek hero in Vietnam
After joining the legion, Sarantidis was initially moved to Algeria and landed in Indochina in 1946. While there, he and the other legionnaires were informed that the duration of their deployment would be short and that their mission would be to disarm the Japanese and restore order.
Sarantidis disliked the oppression of the local population by the French colonial troops. After two months with the Legion, he contacted Viet Minh spies and defected to them, carrying with him his rifle and a machine gun.
He was given the name Nguyễn Văn Lập and served in various posts, participating in many battles. Eventually, he rose to the rank of captain. In 1949, he was admitted to the Communist Party of Vietnam.
After the end of the war in 1954 and the division of Vietnam into northern and southern zones, Sarantidis moved to North Vietnam and retired from the army. At that time, he was married to a nurse who was accused of reactionism and was imprisoned.
Sarantidis worked as a German translator and later as a miner. He also remarried to a Vietnamese woman with whom he had three children.
From the day he was arrested in Thessaloniki until the early ’50s, Sarantidis had not communicated with his family who presumed him dead. Near the end of the war, he started to exchange letters with them and in 1965, he decided to return to Greece.
With the aid of one of his brothers, who helped the Sarantidis family attain passports, Sarantidis moved to Thessaloniki.
While in Greece, Sarantidis joined the Greek Communist Party and worked in helping Vietnam as well as promoting Greek-Vietnamese relations. Sarantidis has also been active in helping children in Vietnam who have been affected by the Agent Orange/dioxin toxicant.
Sarantidis (on the right) with the former Greek President Karolos Papoulias in Vietnam. Credit: AMNA
Sarantidis escorted the then Greek President Karolos Papoulias on his official visit to Vietnam in October 2008.
In 2010, Sarantidis was given Vietnamese citizenship and a passport. In 2013, he was named a Hero of the People’s Armed Forces. Additionally, he has been awarded several honorary titles by both the Vietnamese Party and State, including the Friendship Order in 2011, the Victory Medal, Third Class and the Resistance War Medal, Second Class.
Sarantidis passed away on June 25, 2021 in Athens. He was 94.
The original version was composed in Ancient Greek sometime before 338 CE. Credit: AMNA
The “Romance” of Alexander the Great is a unique illuminated manuscript on his life and was the most widely-read romance in the Middle Ages as it was translated into thirty languages.
The original version was composed in Ancient Greek sometime before 338 CE, when a Latin translation was made, although the exact date is unknown. It was subjected to various revisions during the Byzantine Empire, some of them recasting it into poetical form in Medieval Greek vernacular.
According to researchers, the manuscript is a romance based on the life of Alexander and gives a detailed account of the events before and during his campaign of conquest, which took him as far as India, where he also carried the ideals and values of Greek thought and science taught to him by his teacher, the Greek philosopher Aristotle.
Most of the content of the Romance is fantastical, including many miraculous tales and encounters with mythical creatures such as sirens or centaurs.
The priceless manuscript takes an almost “cinematic” approach to the life of the ancient Macedonian king, including more than 250 illuminated illustrations richly decorated in brilliant colors and gold leaf.
The codex has exceptional artistic value. Public Domain
The codex has now been fully digitized and has been sent to various exhibitions around the world.
The most richly illustrated version of Alexander the Great’s Romance
According to Christos Arabatzis, the president of the Venice Hellenic Institute‘s Supervisory Committee, Greek version is unique in the entire world, since it is the most richly illustrated version of the Alexander romance, and it also has exceptional artistic value in and of itself.
According to Byzantine expert Flora Karagianni, the Alexander Romance appears to be based on an account by the ancient historian Callisthenes who had accompanied Alexander on his campaign, which he had written shortly after Alexander’s death.
In the centuries that followed, this became the most widely-read romance of medieval times, spreading from Istanbul to the west and from the city of Trebizond east to Mongolia, Persia, Sumatra and China – even making its way into Islamic religious texts.
miniature illustrations depicting Alexander’s life and accomplishments. Public Domain
“For the Byzantines, especially, Alexander came to have almost mythical dimensions, fighting whole armies, mythical monsters and defeating many Roman and then Byzantine emperors… he was the model of a hero, warrior and hunter,” Karagianni said.
In the mid-14th century, Alexios III Megas Komnenos of Trebizond ordered a manuscript with the Alexander romance to be prepared for his library. This was then copied down and illustrated with four miniature illustrations depicting Alexander’s life and accomplishments, she added.
When the city of Trebizond was conquered in 1461, an unknown individual who was part of the new Turkish society there added notes to each illustration in Ottoman Turkish script.
Somehow, by some near-miraculous, still-unknown means, the manuscript resurfaced in the hands of Konstantinos Maroutsos, a Venetian merchant, in the early nineteenth century — and thanks to him, the priceless book was given back to the Greek community.
An inscribed gemstone with an ancient Greek love poem shows how the spoken language actually sounded, according to new research. Credit: Peter Komjathy/BHMAquincum Archaeological Museum and Park
Reading like the lyrics to a popular song or poem from modern times, two ancient Greek inscriptions in the form of rhyming poetry have prompted new insights into the way the language was spoken in those times.
Ultimately, it is not possible to determine exactly how any ancient language sounded when spoken. But one clue has always been the changing of spellings over time — especially in those writings and inscriptions from more ordinary people rather than professional scribes.
Classicist Tim Whitmarsh from the University of Cambridge sees patterns and tendencies in these writings that point to just how the ancient language must have sounded. “In popular texts, spelling is more likely to be adapted to the sound of the word and less likely to be tethered to some conservative idea of ‘proper’ spelling,” he states.
Ancient Greek love poem inscribed on the gemstone provides linguistic link to the past
“λέγουσιν They say
ἃ θέλουσιν What they like
λεγέτωσαν Let them say it
οὐ μέλι μοι I don’t care
σὺ φίλι με Go on, love me
συνφέρι σοι It does you good”
The jewel on which it is carved, which is in the collection of the BHM Aquincum Archaeological Museum in Budapest, Hungary is spectacular in so many respects, serving as not only a rich repository of linguistic information but a beautiful sculptural object as well.
But it is not the only artifact from the past that provides clues as to how ancient Greek sounded. Whitmarsh recently researched a number of artifacts found in areas that were once part of the Roman Empire, including nineteen other gemstones and even writing inscribed on a piece of plaster in a house in Cartagena, Spain.
Incredibly, all of these objects contain the very same popular short poem written in Greek. The researcher’s conclusions may provide the best evidence available as to how people actually spoke at the time, which is reflected in how we speak today.
“Before the Middle Ages, many poetic traditions of the ‘classical’ cultures, such as Greek and Latin in what is now Europe, and Arabic and Persian further east, used a form of verse that was entirely different from anything we know of as poetry today,” Whitmarsh explains.
Until that time, poems had been created using the rules of classical meter. This involves the meter, or rhythm, of a poem being determined by how long it takes to say the long and short syllables of the work. Whitmarsh says: “Think ‘hope’ versus ‘hop.’”
The pattern of short and long syllables is referred to as quantitative meter, setting it apart from the qualitative, stressed, meter that was common in the Middle Ages and afterward.
Stressed meter is fairly subtle in spoken English, which has very nuanced stresses, but can be heard in the verse “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” in which the initial syllables are stressed, with “twin” in “twinkle,” “li” in “little,” and “star.”
Before Whitmarsh’s research it had been settled theory that the earliest clear examples of stressed poetry were works created by the hymnist Romanos the Melodist in the mid-sixth century A.D.
Whitmarsh says, however, that the inscribed poem he has been studying, which dates back to the second or third century A.D., was recited using stressed meter, meaning people in the Greek-speaking Roman Empire actually used stressed speech centuries earlier than had been previously believed.
Whitmarsh says this written evidence must not have popped up all of a sudden. “This way of speaking must have been bubbling around in the oral tradition,” he notes. “Romanos wrote hymns using the stressed accent not to innovate spectacularly, but to plug in to the way normal people were speaking. This is a rare glimpse of how people actually sounded.”
The strikingly modernistic poem — which speaks to the universal human experience of loving someone whom perhaps they shouldn’t — is evidence of a cultural crossover from human experience to the written word.
And its attraction is likewise universal. “From Spain to Iraq, everyone wants this little gemstone and its poem,” Whitmarsh says.
This same Ancient Greek poem remained consistent through time and was copied verbatim across the Roman Empire from west to east, north to south. The Oxford University classicist says that the exquisite poem appears to have appealed to a literate, yet not high-status, demographic.
The “gemstones” in this jewelry are actually only glass paste. Added to that fact is that the language of the poem is vernacular, including no adjectives or nouns.
“It’s about as simple as you can get,” Whitmarsh explains, adding “It’s a kind of playground chat that starts in the middle of a conversation and has an easily reproducible rhythm that sounds like the main verse of Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Good.’”
Like the Greek world that inspired so much of Roman thought and material culture, the Empire’s vast breadth and wealth engendered the production of such jewelry. The Ancient Greek poem inscribed on it was surely one that was known by all educated people at the time.
“The Roman Empire produced wealth and opportunity that people had never had before and the chance to buy into culture and to travel and network in a way never before possible,” Whitmarsh points out. “This object spread like wildfire because the empire was an information superhighway.”
Athens and other Greek cities are becoming hubs of technology. Credit: Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons
Technology giants, such as Amazon, Google, Digital Realty, and Microsoft have strengthened their presence in Greece in 2023 by investing in data centers, making the country a hub of innovation.
Investments in Greece are driven by the strategic geographical position of Greece, which is a hub connecting Europe with Africa, the Middle East, and, by extension, Asia, as well as economic and political stability after the ten-year economic crisis.
Furthermore, the improvement of infrastructure and especially the high-quality human resources of Greece are a key element that has put Greece on the radar of large companies.
Greek businesses are also making an effort to adapt their operations to new technological developments. According to a recent survey by Ernst and Young Greece, in the last five years, 86 percent of companies that participated in the survey have implemented at least one transformation project. At the same time, more than half of the companies in the survey (54 percent) said that they had completed more than two.
The technology giants that invest in Greece
Digital Realty
Digital Realty is a real estate investment trust that owns, operates and invests in carrier-neutral data centers across the world. The company acquired Lamda Hellix SA, Greece’s largest carrier and cloud-neutral colocation provider, in 2021. This acquisition gave Digital Realty a significant presence in the Greek data center market, with multiple data center campuses across the country.
Digital Realty’s presence in Greece includes data centers Athens 1, Athens 2 and the state-of-the-art Athens 3, which is the largest data center in the country, capable of supporting up to 6.8 MW.
Athens 4 whose construction has begun will have a similar capacity to Athens 3. At the same time, Athens 5 is in the planning process. In addition, investment has begun in Heraklion, Crete for the Heraklion 1 data center, the first phase of which is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.
Amazon Web Services
Greece is among the 26 countries outside the US where Local Zones will be installed. Local Zones are a type of AWS infrastructure that places computing power, data storage, databases, and other services closer to major urban, industrial, and technology centers. They enable AWS customers to develop applications that require very fast sub-ten millisecond responses.
The company has already announced the creation of a Local Zone in Athens. At the same time, AWS has announced the Smart Island pilot program in Naxos with the primary objective of developing solutions that will respond to challenges related to infrastructure management and, service provision.
Recently, AWS also announced the opening of the first European Outpost Testing Lab (OTL) in Greece. AWS Outposts are a set of fully managed compute and storage solutions that allow users to operate AWS infrastructure within their premises.
Through this program, customers, partners and internal teams of the company will have remote access to AWS Outposts databases and servers, and will be able to perform short-term tests at no charge. The new AWS Outpost Testing Lab of Greece is the fifth in the world and the first to be created in Europe.
Google
The company has announced it will create the first Cloud Region in Greece, specifically in Athens, with the ultimate goal of accelerating the digital transformation of the country.
According to data from AlphaBeta Economics, by 2030, this project is estimated to contribute a total of $2.2 billion to the national GDP, while supporting the creation of more than 19,400 new jobs.
As the company points out, 2023 was an important year for Google in Greece and Artificial Intelligence. Google Bard “learned” Greek by providing new ways to creatively interact with Bard. Also, the Immersive View service on Google Maps has been updated with additions of Greek monuments, such as the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, the Theater of Dionysus, Hadrian’s Gate and the Temple of Olympian Zeus.
The Grow Greece with Google program launched in 2020 has resulted in the training of over 275,000 professionals and small and medium enterprises in Greece so far. In 2021, a year after its launch in the US and New Zealand, Android Earthquake Alerts began its pilot operation in Greece as well. In 2023, Google expanded its flood forecasting system to Greece.
NTT DATA
The Japanese technology giant has strengthened its presence in Greece stating that its goal for the Greek branch is to achieve a growth rate of 15 percent in 2023 through the service of international organizations.
The company is considering regional expansion beyond Athens, in cities such as Thessaloniki, Patras, Crete and Ioannina. NTT’s investments in the country are estimated to reach 25 million euros by 2026.
The NTT Group is a global leader in providing technology and business solutions with revenues of $108 billion and more than 330,000 employees in more than 80 countries. It invests more than $3.6 billion in research and development.
Microsoft
Microsoft will create a complex of three Data Centers in Attica, putting the country on Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure map – the largest in the world – thus ensuring access to business-level “low latency” Cloud services.
At the same time, to support Greek citizens in their professional and personal goals, Microsoft will train a workforce of 100,000 citizens in digital skills by 2025.
The tech giant started its operations in Greece in 1992. In 2020, it launched the GRforGrowth initiative, a major technological commitment to private citizens, the public sector, and businesses of all sizes in Greece for technology and new resources that create additional growth opportunities.
Huawei
The Chinese technological giant Huawei has made a strategic decision to strengthen its presence in Europe by entering cloud services, while in Greece it focuses on infrastructure modernization, education, innovation and sustainability initiatives.
The company says is ready to introduce next-generation solutions with AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms in Data Center infrastructures, integrating photovoltaic systems with energy storage that promise resource savings, uninterrupted operation, scalability, security and efficiency.
This move, as the company estimates, not only strengthens Greece’s digital capabilities but also strengthens competition, pushing developments and cost efficiencies in the field of solutions and services offered.
Cisco
The American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate has established an international innovation and digital skills development center in Thessaloniki. This center focuses on developing and deploying new technologies, as well as training the Greek workforce in digital skills.
In 2023 it implemented an initiative which highlighted Rhodes as a hybrid work destination. It hosted 17 fully remote Cisco employees, from all over Europe, promoting Rhodes as a “smart” digital island and integrated destination for attracting remote workers.
Also in 2023, the ONEX group and Cisco announced their joint planning for the strategic development plan of the first “smart” shipyard in our country, but also in the wider region of the Eastern Mediterranean, with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on which foresees the collaboration of ONEX and CISCO in order to accelerate the digital transformation of the Elefsina Shipyards.
Cisco continued the digital skills development program in Greece named Cisco Networking Academy. The training of students that exceed 4,500 includes a wide range of courses, preparing participants for the challenges of their professional careers.
2023 marked, among other things, for Cisco, another year of operation of the International Center for Digital Transformation and Digital Skills in Thessaloniki, a multi-disciplinary innovation hub, attracting more than 13,500 visitors and delivering more than 20 digital transformation pilot projects to its customers and partners.
Tcreated housands of jobs in Greece
These investments are expected to create thousands of jobs in Greece and make the country a major hub for data center operations in Europe.
The Greek government has also recognized the importance of the data center industry and is taking steps to further support its growth. In 2022, the government announced a €1 billion investment plan for the development of the data center industry. This plan includes tax breaks, subsidies, and funding for research and development.
The growth of the data center industry in Greece is a significant development for the country’s economy and its role in the global digital economy. These investments are expected to create jobs, attract foreign investment, and improve Greece’s connectivity with the rest of the world.
