Natural Monuments of Greece

http://www.geogreece.gr/fysis_en.php

a page with a map of the registered monuments of nature in Greece.

Because Greece is more than just beaches and ancient ruins.

The complete list of the emperors of Byzantium

With links to each emperor’s page in www.byzantium.xronikon.com

 

Constantine I the Great
Constantius II
Julian the Apostate
Jovian
Valentinian I
Valens
Gratian
Theodosius I the Great
Arcadius
Theodosius II
Marcian
Leo I the Thracian
Leo II
Zeno
Basiliscus
Anastasius I
Justin I (Iustinus)
Justinian I (Iustinianus)
Justin II
Tiberius II Constantine
Maurice (Mauricius )
Phocas
Heraklios
Constantine III& Heraklonas
Constans II (Pogonatos)
Constantine IV
Justinian II Rhinotmetos
Leontios
Tiberius III Apsimarus
Philippicos Bardanes
Anastasios II (Artemios)
Theodosios III
Leo III the Isaurian
Constantine V Kopronymos
Leo IV the Khazar
Constantine VI the Blind
Irene of Athens
Nikephoros I
Staurakios
Michael I Rangabes
Leo V the Armenian
Michael II the Stammerer
Theophilos
Theodora
Michael III the Drunkard
Basil I the Macedonian
Leo VI the Wise
Alexander
Constantine VII Porphyrogenetos
Romanos I Lekapenos
Romanos II Porphyrogenetos
Nikephoros II Phocas
John I Tzimiskes
Basil II Bulgaroktonos
Constantine VIII
Zoe
Romanos III Argyros
Michael IV the Paflagonian
Michael V the Caulker
Constantine IX Monomachos
Theodora
Michael VI Stratiotikos
Isaac I Komnenos
Constantine X Doukas
Romanos IV Diogenes
Michael VII Doukas
Nikephoros III Botaneiates
Alexios I Komnenos
John II Komnenos
Manuel I Komnenos
Alexios II Komnenos
Andronikos I Komnenos
Isaac II Angelos
Alexios III Angelos
Alexios IV Angelos
Alexios V Doukas Murtzuphlos
Constantine Laskaris
Theodore I Laskaris
John III Doukas Vatatzes
Theodore II Doukas Laskaris
John IV Doukas Laskaris
Michael VIII Palaiologos
Andronikos II Palaiologos
Michael IX Palaiologos
Andronikos III Palaiologos
John V Palaiologos
John VI Kantakouzenos
Andronikos IV Palaiologos
John VII Palaiologos
Manuel II Palaiologos
John VIII Palaiologos
Constantine XI Palaiologos

Greek Castles (gif)

If you are interested in the Medieval History and especially in the Byzantine History, this is a good  site:

Byzantine Chronicle  (http://www.byzantium.xronikon.com) The emphasis is on the Byzantine Emperors which are presented in a unique way. A lot of info also about the Byzantine Battles. Again, in a very good presentation. A strong element of the site,  the various maps shown with every emperor and every battle. Don't miss it.

Greek Castles

A new site for all Castles, Fortresses and Towers in Greece. Mostly Byzantine and medieval and some newer.
Excellent presentation!
www.kastra.eu

Byzantine Emperors

This is an excellent site with concise information about all Byzantine Emperors, from 330 A.D. to 1453.

It is still under construction but already very useful.

http://www.byzantium.xronikon.com

The Greek National Anthem

The Hymn to Liberty is a poem written by Dionýsios Solomós in 1823 that consists of 158 stanzas, set to music by Nikolaos Mantzaros. In 1865, the first two stanzas officially became the Greek national anthem and later also that of the Republic of Cyprus.

Rudyard Kipling created this seven-stanza English translation, which was first published in the Daily Telegraph on October 17, 1918. 

We knew thee of old,
     Oh, divinely restored,
By the light of thine eyes
     And the light of thy Sword.

From the graves of our slain
     Shall thy valour prevail
As we greet thee again —
     Hail, Liberty! Hail!

Long time didst thou dwell
     Mid the peoples that mourn,
Awaiting some voice
     That should bid thee return.

Ah, slow broke that day
     And no man dared call,
For the shadow of tyranny
     Lay over all:

And we saw thee sad-eyed,
     The tears on thy cheeks
While thy raiment was dyed
     In the blood of the Greeks.

Yet, behold now thy sons
     With impetuous breath
Go forth to the fight
     Seeking Freedom or Death.

From the graves of our slain
     Shall thy valour prevail
As we greet thee again —
     Hail, Liberty! Hail!

The Greek Fire

 A description of the Greek Fire according to Edward Gibbon in his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter LII.

In the two sieges [by the Saracens], the deliverance of Constantinople may be chiefly ascribed to the novelty, the terrors, and the real efficacy of the Greek fire. The important secret of compounding and directing this artificial flame was imparted by Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in Syria, who deserted from the service of the caliph to that of the emperor.  The skill of a chemist and engineer was equivalent to the succor of fleets and armies; and this discovery or improvement of the military art was fortunately reserved for the distressful period, when the degenerate Romans of the East were incapable of contending with the warlike enthusiasm and youthful vigor of the Saracens.
The historian who presumes to analyze this extraordinary composition should suspect his own ignorance and that of his Byzantine guides, so prone to the marvellous, so careless, and, in this instance, so jealous of the truth. From their obscure, and perhaps fallacious, hints it should seem that the principal ingredient of the Greek fire was the naphtha,  or liquid bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil,  which springs from the earth, and catches fire as soon as it comes in contact with the air. The naphtha was mingled, I know not by what methods or in what proportions, with sulphur and with the pitch that is extracted from evergreen firs.  From this mixture, which produced a thick smoke and a loud explosion, proceeded a fierce and obstinate flame, which not only rose in perpendicular ascent, but likewise burnt with equal vehemence in descent or lateral progress; instead of being extinguished, it was nourished and quickened by the element of water; and sand, urine, or vinegar, were the only remedies that could damp the fury of this powerful agent, which was justly denominated by the Greeks the liquid, or the maritime, fire.
For the annoyance of the enemy, it was employed with equal effect, by sea and land, in battles or in sieges. It was either poured from the rampart in large boilers, or launched in red-hot balls of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted round with flax and tow, which had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil; sometimes it was deposited in fire-ships, the victims and instruments of a more ample revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of copper which were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully shaped into the mouths of savage monsters, that seemed to vomit a stream of liquid and consuming fire. This important art was preserved at Constantinople, as the palladium of the state: the galleys and artillery might occasionally be lent to the allies of Rome; but the composition of the Greek fire was concealed with the most jealous scruple, and the terror of the enemies was increased and prolonged by their ignorance and surprise. In the treaties of the administration of the empire, the royal author suggests the answers and excuses that might best elude the indiscreet curiosity and importunate demands of the Barbarians. They should be told that the mystery of the Greek fire had been revealed by an angel to the first and greatest of the Constantines, with a sacred injunction, that this gift of Heaven, this peculiar blessing of the Romans, should never be communicated to any foreign nation; that the prince and the subject were alike bound to religious silence under the temporal and spiritual penalties of treason and sacrilege; and that the impious attempt would provoke the sudden and supernatural vengeance of the God of the Christians. By these precautions, the secret was confined, above four hundred years, to the Romans of the East; and at the end of the eleventh century, the Pisans, to whom every sea and every art were familiar, suffered the effects, without understanding the composition, of the Greek fire. It was at length either discovered or stolen by the Mahometans; and, in the holy wars of Syria and Egypt, they retorted an invention, contrived against themselves, on the heads of the Christians. A knight, who despised the swords and lances of the Saracens, relates, with heartfelt sincerity, his own fears, and those of his companions, at the sight and sound of the mischievous engine that discharged a torrent of the Greek fire, the feu Gregeois, as it is styled by the more early of the French writers. It came flying through the air, says Joinville, 22 like a winged long-tailed dragon, about the thickness of a hogshead, with the report of thunder and the velocity of lightning; and the darkness of the night was dispelled by this deadly illumination. The use of the Greek, or, as it might now be called, of the Saracen fire, was continued to the middle of the fourteenth century, 23 when the scientific or casual compound of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal, effected a new revolution in the art of war and the history of mankind

gnomikologikon.gr: The Greek Quotations site

A favorite of mine "ΓΝΩΜΙΚΟΛΟΓΙΚΟΝ", the site with Greek quotations, Proverbs, ancient Greek sayings etc has been transfered to a new address and obviously to a new host: www.gnomikologikon.gr

It contains also some very useful tips for the Greek grammar

Babylonia vs. Greece

An excellent piece (for a Greek, anyway) comparing ancient Greek and Messopotamian cultures

By Roger Sandall Saturday, March 21, 2009

Filed under: Culture, Big Ideas

The elite attack on ancient Greek achievement is made manifest in London, Paris, and Berlin.

The August heat made Berlin feel like Baghdad. Inside the Pergamon Museum, and constructed specially for the travelling Babylon show, were narrow winding ways impenetrable to air conditioning. In packed discomfort hundreds of us were slowly inching past glass cases of cuneiform tablets—little panels of baked brick that seem to have been Mesopotamia’s main industrial product. One of them told of Babylon’s creation epic. Another contained a magical spell. The biggest invariably declaimed the power of kings. Craning our heads we tried hard to read the labels and tried just as hard to be impressed.

Being impressed by Mesopotamia was the point. For too long had Hellenism been uncritically exalted in the West. Now it was time for the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome to stand aside so that we could gaze upon the je ne sais quoi that was Mesopotamia. But what exactly was Babylon? Imperial majesty? Architectural folly? A voluptuary paradise? Oriental despotism incarnate? To try to answer these questions the combined museological might of the British Museum, the Musée du Louvre, and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin had assembled a display of things Babylonian under the title Babylon: Myth and Reality. Early in 2008, the exhibition had begun its travels in Paris; it was in Berlin at the time of my visit; and it was in London until last Sunday.

But if the existing Ishtar Gate made the choice of the Pergamon Museum inevitable, it was also a risky and perhaps even self-defeating decision. For as its name suggests, the main display at this establishment on Berlin’s “Museum Island” is one of Hellenism’s most astonishing artefacts, the Pergamon Altar, with over 100 yards of sculptured friezes as eye-catching as anything from the Parthenon. This is a decidedly hard act to follow: once seen never forgotten. And the altar and its frieze is the first thing visitors did see. Only after this marvel did they move along to find what Mesopotamia had to offer.

Is it conceivable that whole decades of research reveal no Persian literary endeavors to compare with the achievements of the Greeks?

Of course there were other items of interest from Babylon besides the gate. There were rigid busts thought to show this king or that. The seven-foot-high black basalt stone on which Hammurabi’s Code was written around 1750 BC is a useful reminder of the historic place of law in civilized society. A third stone, about 24 inches by 20 inches dating from Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (605–562 BC) and containing four columns of early cuneiform script, is described in the catalogue as “a masterpiece of archaizing Babylonian epigraphy”—and no doubt it is.

But what is inscribed? What royal ruminations are here set down that might claim our attention, diverting it from things Greek? We were told it "memorializes Nebuchadnezzar’s building operations in stone. After quoting his royal titles and describing his personal piety, it describes the decorating of the chapels of Marduk, Zarpanitu, and Nabu, the reconstruction of the processional boat of Marduk, the rebuilding of the Akitu house, the restoration of the Babylon temples," and so on. Peggy Lee’s disenchanted question has no doubt been overworked, yet it was difficult to emerge from those claustrophobic museum corridors without gasping “Is that all there is?” What literary evidence is there from antiquity of a polity and a culture meriting as much attention as ancient Greece?

One wonders about the motives behind the exhibition itself. Topically, they plainly had to do with current events in Iraq and at the Baghdad Museum—a concluding chapter in the British Museum’s English-language catalogue says as much. But they also go deeper than that. For much of the past 30 years admirers of classical Greece have been on the defensive, while easternizing admirers of Mesopotamia—which includes the Assyrians, the 6th century BC Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Persians who took over under Cyrus in 539 BC—have been on the attack. Darius and Co. have been talked up; Pericles and Herodotus and Co. have been talked down.

That distinguished and venerable classicist Peter Green apologised for having been too keen for freedom in his 1970 book Xerxes at Salamis. Revising it in 1996 under the new title The Greco-Persian Wars, he regretted embracing so enthusiastically “the fundamental Herodotean concept of freedom-under-law (eleutheria, isonomia) making its great and impassioned stand against Oriental Despotism.” What he called “the insistent lessons of multiculturalism” had forced all classical scholars “to take a long hard look at Greek ‘anti-barbarian’ propaganda, beginning with Aeschylus’s Persians and the whole thrust of Herodotus’s Histories.”

The Oxford University Press author of the 2003 The Greek Wars, George Cawkwell, told us in a short preface that he was proud to be part of a scholarly movement that aims “to rid ourselves of a Hellenocentric view of the Persian world.” Much of the first three pages of his introduction then proceeded to ridicule and discredit Herodotus, who showed “an astounding misapprehension” concerning the Persians, whose stories were sometimes delightful but were certainly absurd, and who, he wrote, “had no real understanding of the Persian Empire.”

But if Herodotus didn’t get it right, who exactly did? Obviously, some nameless Persian equivalent to Herodotus might have had “a real understanding of the Persian Empire,” but who was he and where is his narrative? What book by which contemporary Persian historian provides an alternative account of Achaemenid manners and customs, institutions and political thought, imperial policy and administration and ideals?

For much of the past 30 years admirers of classical Greece have been on the defensive, while easternizing admirers of Mesopotamia have been on the attack.

The courts of Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, not to mention Xerxes, King of Kings, employed armies of chroniclers recording royal achievements and military victories. Is it conceivable that whole decades of the recent research invoked by Peter Green and Tom Holland (author of the 2005 book Persian Fire) reveal no Persian literary endeavors to compare with the achievements of the Greeks?

Alas, that seems to be the case. Even the Oxford don so jeeringly hostile to Herodotus admits that though the evidence of past Persian glories “is ample and various, one thing is lacking. Apart from the Behistun Inscription which gives an account of the opening of the reign of Darius I, there are no literary accounts of Achaemenid history other than those written by Greeks.” Moreover, he admits, such literacy as existed in the Persian Empire was largely Greek; and such writing as took place was mainly done by Greeks.

Escaping out through the monumental Ishtar Gate into the rest of the Pergamon Museum, one was glad to be again surrounded by Hellenistic sculptures. It was like taking off from a barren desert airstrip and landing in Paris. Human faces. Faces of human scale alive with familiar emotions. In the remarkable Telephos Frieze there were youthful and elegant figures clothed in drapery, arranged with all the delicacy of civilized feeling and all the art that gifted sculptors can bestow. Gods like men and men like gods. Exploring in the nearby Graeco-Roman collection one found, instead of the heartless faces of despots, the marble statue of a young girl playing knucklebones.

The Cretan Runner

George Psychoundakis died on the 29 January, 2006, at Canea. His obituary appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 18 February 2006. I have included the whole obituary below. A brave man. George Psychoundakis was best known for his extraordinary account of clandestine life in the Resistance after the German occupation of his island in 1941; the book was translated into English by Patrick (now Sir Patrick) Leigh Fermor, and enjoyed success in Britain as The Cretan Runner. George Psychoundakis was born on November 3 1920 at the village of Asi Gonia, perched high in a mountain pass in central Crete. He was the eldest of four children, born to a family whose only possessions were a single-room house and a few sheep and goats.

Education at the village school was basic; but unlike most of his fellows George learnt to write as well as read, and gleaned what learning he could from books lent by the schoolteacher and the village priest. When the German invasion of Crete began, he was 21, a light , wiry, elfin figure who could move among the mountains with speed and agility. While the Germans imposed their rule with the utmost brutality, Psychoundakis was among the many who guided straggling Allied soldiers over the mountains to the south coast, from where they could be evacuated.

As the Resistance grew more organised, Psychoundakis became a runner, carrying messages, wireless sets, batteries and weapons between villages and secret wireless stations, always on foot, always in danger, often exhausted and hungry, over some of the most precipitous terrain in Europe. It was gruelling work, but in an interview many years later Psychoundakis made light of the hundreds of miles he covered at a run: "I felt as if I were flying, so light and easy - just like drinking a cup of coffee."

Patrick Leigh Fermor, one of a handful of SOE officers whose job it was to co-ordinate the Cretan resistance, first met Psychoundakis at the end of July 1942 in a rocky hide-out above the village of Vaphe. The messages Psychoundakis was carrying were twisted into tiny billets and hidden away in his clothes: "They were produced," wrote Leigh Fermor, "with a comic kind of conjuror's flourish, after grotesquely furtive glances over the shoulder and fingers laid on lips in a caricature of clandestine security precautions that made us all laugh." His clothes were in rags, one of his patched boots was held together with a length of wire - but his humour and cheerfulness were infectious. Humour and danger went hand in hand. Psychoundakis told how a couple of German soldiers decided to help him with an overladen donkey, whish was carrying a heavy wireless set under bags of wheat. The Germans beat the poor creature so hard that Psychoundakis was afraid they would knock off the saddle-bags but mercifully their attention was drawn to some village girls, and the soldiers started flirting with them instead. He also describes British officers with wry amusement - one had "pyjamas, a washbasin, and a thousand and two mysterious objects. He wore a row of medals on his breast, and had a rucksack full of geological books which he studied all day long."

At the same time, the harshness of everyday life was ever-present. Near starvation at one point with another SOE officer, Jack Smith-Hughes, Psychoundakis described how they picked broken snail shells off blades of grass and ate them, pretending that each was more delicious than the last. A bed of springy branches in a dry cave was a luxury: George spent many a night freezing on a rain-soaked mountainside, listening out for German search-parties, knowing what they would do if he were caught. Tales of torture, burning villages and summary executions were all too familiar. On the one occasion he visited England, in 1955, Psychoundakis was awarded the King's Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom. yet at the end of the war, the Greek authorities had taken a very different view of the man who had done so much for the Cretan resistance. Psychoundakis's paperwork was not in order, so he was arrested and imprisoned as a deserter.

Months of bitterness, misery and humiliation followed in the jails of Piraeus and Macedonia. In the end he was released, though there was little comfort for him at home. His family's flock had been stolen during the Occupation, they were poorer than ever, and Psychoundakis was now the chief bread-winner. When Leigh Fermor caught up with him for a few days in Crete in 1951, he was working as a charcoal burner. He told Leigh Fermor, who recorded their meeting in the introduction to The Cretan Runner, that while in prison he had begun to write down everything he could remember about the Occupation. On his release he got a job building roads, and lived in a little cave in the hills. Here he continued his writing by the light of an oil-lamp. Leigh Fermor asked if he could see the results. "Without a word he dived into his knap-sack, fished out five thick exercise books tied in a bundle, and handed them over." As he read them, Leigh Fermor recognised Psychoundakis's manuscript as a unique document and made up his mind to translate it. At a time when dozens of books by ex-officers were filling the bookshops, this was one of the first to reveal the occupation from the point of view of the local inhabitant - and the fact that it was written with such truthfulness and honesty made it all the more impressive. The book appeared first in English, translated by Leigh Fermor, in 1955. It was published in Hungarian in 1981, and in Greek in 1986.

Psychoundakis's resilient sense of humour never failed, though bouts of bad luck continued to dog his life. With the money he earned from The Cretan Runner he bought some grazing land, and became immediately embroiled in a dispute with neighbours - "but if I'd bought land by the sea, I'd be a rich man now!" In later years he looked after the German cemetery in Canea. A German War Graves Commissioner came to see it one day, and was impressed by how well Psychoundakis looked after it- though he was surprised that he spoke no German. "Well, there's not much opportunity to learn it here," said Psychoundakis. "All the Germans I look after are dead."

He never stopped reading and writing. After The Cretan Runner he wrote a book on the island's legends and customs, Eagle's Nest in Crete, and translated Hesiod's Georgic Works and Days. His most ambitious project was the translation of The Odyssey from other prose translations into Cretan verse, based on the pattern of The Erotokritos. This celebrated 17th-century Cretan epic, composed in rhyming couplets of 15 syllables, rivals Homer in length - though Psychoundakis's father, despite being illiterate, could recite it word-perfect. When he had finished, Patrick Leigh Fermor asked what he was going to do next: "He looked surprised at the question, and answered, "Oh, The Iliad." For his translations of Homer, Psychoundakis was honoured by the Academy of Athens.

George Psychoundakis is survived by his wife Sofia, their son and two daughters.

Patrick Leigh Fermor writes:

George was a one-off, as they say. Nobody was remotely like him. Touchstone and Ariel spring to mind, and there is a dash of Kim. It was the oddity, independence, charm, curiosity and imagination that gave him the cover-name of "Changeling" in our dispatches from Crete. It seemed strange that someone so inventive could, when he took pen in hand, be so truthful, and it was puzzling that the war-like but unlettered mountain-world could give birth to anyone so gifted. His pluck, flair and defiance of fatigue and danger were of the greatest help in many contingencies, particularly in rushing signals from cave after cave arranging the departure of General Kreipe. He was happiest when writing. His last work was a poetic dialogue with Charon who, in modern Greek folklore, is not only the ferryman of the Styx, but also Death himself. We never lost touch.

Greek Quotations-ΓΝΩΜΙΚΟΛΟΓΙΚΟΝ

Greek Quotations - ΓΝΩΜΙΚΟΛΟΓΙΚΟΝ

This is a great site in Greek with Greek quotations, proverbs etc.

The only site of its kind in Greek, I think.