Siege of Tripolitsa
The Siege of Tripolitsa or the Fall of Tripolitsa to revolutionary Greek forces in the summer of 1821 marked an early victory in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire, which had begun earlier in that year. It is further notorious for the massacre of its Muslim plus Jewish population, which occurred after the city's fall to the Greek revolutionary forces; as historian of the war W. Alison Phillips noted, "the other atrocities of Greeks paled before the awful scenes which followed the storming of Tripolitza". Situated in the middle of Peloponnese, Tripolitsa was the pre-eminent town in southern Greece, as well as the administrative centre for Ottoman rule in the Peloponnese, thus making it an important target for the Greek revolutionaries. Many rich Turks and Jews lived there, together with Ottoman refugees, such as Turks and Albanians from Vardounia driven there by the outbreak of the revolt, escaping massacres in the country's southern districts, it was a potent symbol for revenge, its Greek population having been massacred by the Ottoman forces in the past: the latest of such events, a few months earlier, following the failed rebellion at Moldavia in early 1821.
The de facto commander in chief of the Greek forces, Theodoros Kolokotronis, now focused on the capital of the province. He set up fortified camps in the surrounding places, establishing several headquarters under the command of his captain Anagnostaras in the nearby villages, notably Zarachova, Piana and Stemnitsa, where local peasants provided his men with food and supplies. In addition, a fresh and compact force of Maniot troops under Petros Mavromichalis, the Bey of Mani and camped at Valtetsi so as to take part in the final assault to the Ottoman capital of Morea. Arvanites were present alongside Greek revolutionaries during the siege, in fighting and the massacre that followed; the Ottoman garrison was reinforced in May by some troops and cavalry sent by Hursid Pasha from the north, led by the Kehayabey Mustafa. The rebels' decisive victory in the Battle of Valtetsi and several other victorious clashes such as those in Doliana and Vervena, meant that the Greek revolutionaries had effective control over the majority of the areas in the Central and Southern Peloponnese.
Although the siege had been going on for several months, its progress was slow, as the Greeks were unable to maintain a tight blockade and were scattered by sorties of Turkish cavalry. While during the early stages of the siege, the Ottoman garrison could sortie and forage for supplies, after the Battle of the Trench in August this was no longer possible, the blockade became much more tight. Conditions were worsening inside the walls for scarcity of potable water. Taking advantage of this, Kolokotronis began quiet negotiations with the leaders of the besieged, aiming at an orderly capitulation, he wisely convinced the Albanian contingent led by Elmas Bey to make a separate agreement for safe passage to Argos, thereby reducing the strength of the defenders. The deal itself was guaranteed by the renowned Koliopoulos; the city was taken before the 2,500 Albanian had departed, but still they had a safe passage out of the Peloponnese a few days after the fall. Greek leaders were in constant contact with the Ottoman defenders in negotiations, but without much coordination.
The successive petitions of the remaining Ottoman defenders for a truce were, in the end, regarded by the besiegers as a temporizing ruse, in an hopeless anticipation of Ottoman reinforcements. In anticipation of the fall of the city, by September 22, about 20,000 Greeks had gathered around it. On September 23, the Greek army broke in through a blind spot in the walls, the town was overrun quickly; the fortified citadel in it surrendered three days for lack of water. In the three days following the capture of the city, Muslims alongside Jewish and Christians supporters of the Ottoman regime, inhabitants of Tripolitsa, were exterminated; the total number of Muslims killed during the sack was estimated by Thomas Gordon, who arrived in the city shortly after its fall, at 8,000. Beyond the 2,500 Albanian troops vouched for in advance. Describing the massacres that occurred following the capture of Tripolitsa, historian W. Alison Phillips noted that: For three days the miserable inhabitants were given over to lust and cruelty of a mob of savages.
Neither sex nor age was spared. Women and children were tortured before being put to death. So great was the slaughter that Kolokotronis himself says that, from the gate to the citadel his horse's hoofs never touched the ground, his path of triumph was carpeted with corpses. At the end of two days, the wretched remnant of the Mussulmans were deliberately collected, to the number of some two thousand souls, of every age and sex, but principally women and children, were led out to a ravine in the neighboring mountains and there butchered like cattle. Kolokotronis says in his memoirs: Inside the town they had begun to massacre.... I rushed to the palace... If you wish to hurt these Albanians, I cried, "kill me rather. I was faithful to my word of honor... Tripolitsa
Xiphos
The xiphos is a double-edged, one-handed Iron Age straight shortsword used by the ancient Greeks. It was a secondary battlefield weapon for the Greek armies after the javelin; the classic blade was about 45–60 cm long, although the Spartans started to use blades as short as 30 cm around the era of the Greco-Persian Wars. The xiphos sometimes has a midrib, is diamond or lenticular in cross-section, it was hung from a baldric under the left arm. The xiphos was used only when the spear was broken, taken by the enemy, or discarded for close combat. Few xiphoi seem to have survived. Stone's Glossary has the xiphos being a name used by Homer for a sword; the entry in the book says that the sword had a double-edged blade widest at about two-thirds of its length from the point, ending in a long point. The name xiphos means something in the way of "penetrating light" according to researcher and swordsmith Peter Johnsson; the xiphos' leaf-shaped design lent itself to both thrusting. The design has most been in existence since the appearance of the first swords.
Blades in bronze and iron are suitable for a leaf shape due to the softness of the metals in comparison to steel. Bronze swords are cast and are thus more formed into a leaf shape than iron swords, which need to be forged; the early xiphos was a bronze sword, in the classical period, would have been made of iron. The early Celtic La Tène short sword, contemporary with the xiphos, had a identical blade design as the xiphos; the leaf-shaped short swords were not limited to Greece, as mentioned, but can be found throughout Europe in the late Bronze Age under various names. Bronze leaf-shaped swords from as early as the late second millennium still survive; the Urnfield culture is associated with the use of the leaf shaped bronze short sword. It is thought that iron swords had replaced bronze swords by the early La Tène culture about 500BC. During the Halstatt culture a mixture of bronze and iron swords seem to have existed side by side. Iron tends to become oxidized over the years, few iron swords have survived, in contrast to bronze swords that age well.
Thus, much is known regarding the sword during the Bronze Age but less so in the early Iron Age. Bronze thrusting swords from the second millennium still exist in excellent condition; the word is attested in Mycenaean Greek Linear B form as, qi-si-pe-e. A relation to Arabic saifun and Egyptian sēfet has been suggested, although this does not explain the presence of a labiovelar in Mycenaean. One suggestion connects Ossetic äxsirf "sickle", which would point to a virtual Indo-European *kwsibhro-. Gladius Iron Age sword Kopis Makhaira Notes References
Greeks
The Greeks or Hellenes are an ethnic group native to Greece, southern Albania, Turkey, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. They form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world. Greek colonies and communities have been established on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea, but the Greek people have always been centered on the Aegean and Ionian seas, where the Greek language has been spoken since the Bronze Age; until the early 20th century, Greeks were distributed between the Greek peninsula, the western coast of Asia Minor, the Black Sea coast, Cappadocia in central Anatolia, the Balkans and Constantinople. Many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization; the cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Alexandria and Constantinople at various periods. Most ethnic Greeks live nowadays within the borders of Cyprus.
The Greek genocide and population exchange between Greece and Turkey nearly ended the three millennia-old Greek presence in Asia Minor. Other longstanding Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to the Caucasus and southern Russia and Ukraine and in the Greek diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church. Greeks have influenced and contributed to culture, exploration, philosophy, architecture, mathematics and technology, business and sports, both and contemporarily; the Greeks speak the Greek language, which forms its own unique branch within the Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic. They are part of a group of classical ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an "archetypal diaspora people"; the Proto-Greeks arrived at the area now called Greece, in the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. The sequence of migrations into the Greek mainland during the 2nd millennium BC has to be reconstructed on the basis of the ancient Greek dialects, as they presented themselves centuries and are therefore subject to some uncertainties.
There were at least two migrations, the first being the Ionians and Aeolians, which resulted in Mycenaean Greece by the 16th century BC, the second, the Dorian invasion, around the 11th century BC, displacing the Arcadocypriot dialects, which descended from the Mycenaean period. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age and the Doric at the Bronze Age collapse. An alternative hypothesis has been put forth by linguist Vladimir Georgiev, who places Proto-Greek speakers in northwestern Greece by the Early Helladic period, i.e. towards the end of the European Neolithic. Linguists Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson in a 2003 paper using computational methods on Swadesh lists have arrived at a somewhat earlier estimate, around 5000 BC for Greco-Armenian split and the emergence of Greek as a separate linguistic lineage around 4000 BC. In c. 1600 BC, the Mycenaean Greeks borrowed from the Minoan civilization its syllabic writing system and developed their own syllabic script known as Linear B, providing the first and oldest written evidence of Greek.
The Mycenaeans penetrated the Aegean Sea and, by the 15th century BC, had reached Rhodes, Crete and the shores of Asia Minor. Around 1200 BC, the Dorians, another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus. Traditionally, historians have believed that the Dorian invasion caused the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, but it is the main attack was made by seafaring raiders who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean around 1180 BC; the Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages, but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece was discernible. The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as a glorious era of heroes, closeness of the gods and material wealth; the Homeric Epics were and accepted as part of the Greek past and it was not until the time of Euhemerism that scholars began to question Homer's historicity. As part of the Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of antiquity.
The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC. According to some scholars, the foundational event was the Olympic Games in 776 BC, when the idea of a common Hellenism among the Greek tribes was first translated into a shared cultural experience and Hellenism was a matter of common culture; the works of Homer and Hesiod were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos and mythology. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period; the classical period of Greek civilization covers a time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BC. It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in eras; the Classical period is described as the "Golden Age" of Greek civilization, and
Dionysios Solomos
Dionysios Solomos was a Greek poet from Zakynthos, but his grandfather was from Candia and moved to Zakynthos after the conquest by the Othomans in 1669. He is best known for writing the Hymn to Liberty, of which the first two stanzas, set to music by Nikolaos Mantzaros, became the Greek and Cypriot national anthem in 1865, he was the central figure of the Heptanese School of poetry, is considered the national poet of Greece—not only because he wrote the national anthem, but because he contributed to the preservation of earlier poetic tradition and highlighted its usefulness to modern literature. Other notable poems include Ἐλεύθεροι Πολιορκημένοι and others. A characteristic of his work is that no poem except the Hymn to Liberty was completed, nothing was published during his lifetime. Born at Zakynthos in 1798, Dionysios Solomos was the illegitimate child of a wealthy count, Nikolaos Solomos, his housekeeper, Angeliki Nikli. Nikolaos Solomos was of Cretan origin; the Italian version of the family name is recorded as: Salamon, Salomon and Salomone.
It is possible. Count Nikolaos Solomos was married to Marnetta Kakni, who died in 1802. From that marriage, he had two children: Elena. Since 1796, Nikolaos Solomos had a parallel relationship with his housekeeper Angeliki Nikli, who gave birth to one more son apart from Dionysios, Dimitrios, his father married Dionysios' mother a day before he died on 27 February 1807, making the young Dionysios legitimate and a co-heir to the count's estate, along with his half-brother. The poet spent his childhood years on Zakynthos until 1808, under the supervision of his Italian tutor, abbot Santo Rossi. After his father's death, count Dionysios Messalas gained Solomos' custody, whereas his mother married Manolis Leontarakis on 15 August 1807. In 1808, Messalas sent Solomos to Italy in order to study law, as was customary with Ionian nobility, but also because of Dionysios' mother's new marriage. Solomos went to Italy with his tutor, who returned to Cremona, he was enrolled at the Lyceum of St. Catherine in Venice, but he had adjustment difficulties because of the school's strict discipline.
For that reason, Rossi took Solomos with him to Cremona, where he finished his high-school studies in 1815. In November 1815, Solomos was enrolled at Pavia University's Faculty of Law, from which he graduated in 1817. Given the interest the young poet showed in the flourishing Italian literature and being a perfect speaker of Italian, he started writing poems in Italian. One of the most important first poems written in Italian during that period of time was the Ode per la prima messa and La distruzione di Gerusalemme. In the meantime, he novelists; as a result, he was accepted in the Italian literary circles and evolved into a revered poet of the Italian language. After 10 years of studies Solomos returned to Zakynthos in 1818 with a solid background in literature. On Zakynthos, which at that time was well known for its flourishing literary culture, the poet acquainted himself with people interested in literature. Antonios Matesis, Georgios Tertsetis, Dionysios Tagiapieras and Nikolaos Lountzis were some of Solomos' most well-known friends.
They used to amused themselves by making up poems. They satirized a Zakynthian doctor, Roidis, they liked to improvise poems on a given rhyme and topic. His improvised Italian poems during that period of time were published in 1822, under the title Rime Improvvisate. Along with the Italian poems, Solomos made his first attempts to write in Greek; this was a difficult task for the young poet, since his education was classical and in Italian, but because there did not exist any poetic works written in the demotic dialect that could have served as models. However, the fact that his education in Greek was minimal kept him free of any scholarly influences, that might have led him to write in katharevousa, a "purist" language formulated as a simpler form of ancient Greek. Instead he wrote in the language of the common people of his native island. In order to ameliorate his language skills, he started studying methodically demotic songs, the works of pre-solomian poets and popular and Cretan literature that at that time constituted the best samples of the use of the demotic dialect in modern Greek literature.
The result was the first extensive body of literature written in the demotic dialect, a move whose influence on subsequent writers cannot be overstated. Poems dating to that period of time are I Xanthoula — The little blond girl, I Agnoristi — The Unrecognizable, Ta dyo aderfia — The two brothers and I trelli mana — The mad mother. Solomos' encounter with Spyridon Trikoupis in 1822 was a turning-point in his writing; when Trikoupis visited Zakynthos in 1822, invited by Lord Guilford, Solomos' fame on the island was widespread and Trikoupis wished to meet him. During their second meeting, Solomos read to him the Ode to the first mass. Impress
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, as described in the New Testament. Its adherents, known as Christians, believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and savior of all people, whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament. Depending on the specific denomination of Christianity, practices may include baptism, prayer, confirmation, burial rites, marriage rites and the religious education of children. Most denominations hold regular group worship services. Christianity developed during the 1st century CE as a Jewish Christian sect of Second Temple Judaism, it soon attracted Gentile God-fearers, which lead to a departure from Jewish customs, the establishment of Christianity as an independent religion. During the first centuries of its existence Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, to Ethiopia and some parts of Asia. Constantine the Great decriminalized it via the Edict of Milan; the First Council of Nicaea established a uniform set of beliefs across the Roman Empire.
By 380, the Roman Empire designated Christianity as the state religion. The period of the first seven ecumenical councils is sometimes referred to as the Great Church, the united full communion of the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, before their schisms. Oriental Orthodoxy split after the Council of Chalcedon over differences in Christology; the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church separated in the East–West Schism over the authority of the Pope. In 1521, Protestants split from the Catholic Church in the Protestant Reformation over Papal primacy, the nature of salvation, other ecclesiological and theological disputes. Following the Age of Discovery, Christianity was spread into the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, the rest of the world via missionary work and colonization. There are 2.3 billion Christians in the world, or 31.4% of the global population. Today, the four largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodoxy.
Christianity and Christian ethics have played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization around Europe during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. In the New Testament, the names by which the disciples were known among themselves were "brethren", "the faithful", "elect", "saints" and "believers". Early Jewish Christians referred to themselves as'The Way' coming from Isaiah 40:3, "prepare the way of the Lord." According to Acts 11:26, the term "Christian" was first used in reference to Jesus's disciples in the city of Antioch, meaning "followers of Christ," by the non-Jewish inhabitants of Antioch. The earliest recorded use of the term "Christianity" was by Ignatius of Antioch, in around 100 AD. While Christians worldwide share basic convcitions, there are differences of interpretations and opinions of the Bible and sacred traditions on which Christianity is based. Concise doctrinal statements or confessions of religious beliefs are known as creeds, they began as baptismal formulae and were expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith.
The Apostles' Creed is the most accepted statement of the articles of Christian faith. It is used by a number of Christian denominations for both liturgical and catechetical purposes, most visibly by liturgical churches of Western Christian tradition, including the Latin Church of the Catholic Church, Lutheranism and Western Rite Orthodoxy, it is used by Presbyterians and Congregationalists. This particular creed was developed between the 9th centuries, its central doctrines are those of God the Creator. Each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period; the creed was used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the churches of Rome. Its main points include: Belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the Holy Spirit The death, descent into hell and ascension of Christ The holiness of the Church and the communion of saints Christ's second coming, the Day of Judgement and salvation of the faithful; the Nicene Creed was formulated in response to Arianism, at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in 325 and 381 and ratified as the universal creed of Christendom by the First Council of Ephesus in 431.
The Chalcedonian Definition, or Creed of Chalcedon, developed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, though rejected by the Oriental Orthodox churches, taught Christ "to be acknowledged in two natures, unchangeably, inseparably": one divine and one human, that both natures, while perfect in themselves, are also united into one person. The Athanasian Creed, received in the Western Church as having the same status as the Nicene and Chalcedonian, says: "We worship one God in Trinity, Trinity in Unity. Many evangelical Protestants reject creeds as definitive statements of faith while agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creeds. Most Baptists do not use creeds "in that they have not sought to establish binding
Nikolaos Mantzaros
Nikolaos Chalikiopoulos Mantzaros was an Italian-Greek composer born in Corfu and the major representative of the so-called Ionian School of music. Mantzaros was of noble Italian descent, coming from one of the most important and wealthy Venetian families of the "Libro d'Oro" di Corfu and therefore he never considered himself a "professional composer". Recent research and performances have led to a re-evaluation of Mantzaros as a significant composer and music theorist, he was taught music in his native city by the brothers Stefano and Gerolamo Pojago, Stefano Moretti from Ancona and cavalliere Barbati a Neapolitan. Mantzaros presented his first compositions in 1815 in the theatre of San Giacomo of Corfu. From 1819 onwards he was visiting Italy, among others, he met the veteran Neapolitan composer Niccolo Antonio Zingarelli, his compositions include incidental music, vocal works in Italian and demotic Greek, sacred music for the Catholic Rite and the Orthodox Church, band music, instrumental music etc.
Mantzaros composed the music for the first concert aria in Greek in 1827, the Aria Greca. Mantzaros was an important music theorist and teacher. From 1841 and until his death he was the Artistic Director of the Philharmonic Society of Corfu, his most popular composition remains the musical setting for the poem of Dionysios Solomos' Ýmnos eis tīn Eleutherían, which Mantzaros added to Solomos' poem in 1828. The first and second stanzas were adopted in 1864 as the Royal Anthem of Greece and on 28 June 1865 as the Greek national anthem. However, recent research and performances have proved that Mantzaros had broader activities as a significant composer and music theorist, which go beyond the established perception of him as the mere composer of the National Anthem. Mantzaros-Solomos: The Hymn to the Liberty Music of the Ionian School. N. Mantzaros, N. Lambelet, P. Carrer. The'Nikolaos Mantzaros Chamber Music Ensemble' performing arrangements from piano Sinfonias by Mantzaros. Nikolaos Halikiopoulos Mantzaros: Early Works for voice and orchestra Don Crepuscolo performed by Christophoros Stamboglis, George Petrou and Armonia Atenea in the CD Georg Friedrich Haendel, Alessando Severo / Niccolo Manzaro, Don Crepuscolo Niccolo Calichiopulo Manzaro - Fedele Fenaroli, Partimenti for String Instruments performed by Ionian String Quartet Andonios Liveralis Ionian School Partimenti for String Quarte by Mantzaros on YouTube Sinfonia-Ouverture No5 by Mantzaros on YouTube Full version of the Hymn to Liberty on YouTube Kostas Kardamis,"From popular to esoteric: Nikolaos Mantzaros and the development of his career as composer", Nineteenth-Century Music Review 8 from Cambridge Journals Online
Greece
Cyprus
Greece
