Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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Like so many Greek kids in the Diaspora, I attended Greek School for a while. The March 25th Celebration always entailed a few kids in Foustanellas and Amalias, and the obligatory poem.
On the short list was always the “Thourios Ymnos” of Rigas Feraios, where he wrote that “one hour or freedom is better than forty years of slavery.”
Stirring words, and Feraios wrote many. He fought in the mountains, and worked as a writer, merchant, and revolutionary agitator in the wide Balkan Diaspora forming in the states neighboring the Ottoman Empire. He had done it all.
I always had a fondness for Feraios, a man of both letters and action. One who was both radical and tolerant, wishing to replace the Sultan’s tyranny with a restored Byzantine “Republic” that would have a place for all of its ethnicities — including the Turks.
He's pretty damned interesting.
On the short list was always the “Thourios Ymnos” of Rigas Feraios, where he wrote that “one hour or freedom is better than forty years of slavery.”
Stirring words, and Feraios wrote many. He fought in the mountains, and worked as a writer, merchant, and revolutionary agitator in the wide Balkan Diaspora forming in the states neighboring the Ottoman Empire. He had done it all.
I always had a fondness for Feraios, a man of both letters and action. One who was both radical and tolerant, wishing to replace the Sultan’s tyranny with a restored Byzantine “Republic” that would have a place for all of its ethnicities — including the Turks.
Rigas Feraios: On the Trail of the Protomartyr of Greek Independence - GreekReporter.com
Rigas Feraios was a Greek revolutionary who fought in the mountains and worked as a writer, merchant, and agitator in the wide Balkan Diaspora
greekreporter.com
He's pretty damned interesting.
