Operation Marita, (German: Unternehmen Marita)

                   

Italian troops invaded through
Albania

"FIGHT TO DEATH" 

WAS THE GREEK ANSWER

I was only six months old,
so I only know about the war from what I was told. 
Ι could not realize that my dad,
was fighting on the front line, the fascism, the absolute bad.

My first memory was recorded in my mind two years later. 

German troops invaded through
Bulgaria 

A large German flank, great than normal, much greater,         
was installed ten yards away from my home ...
and it was a real trap for our allies in the sky dome.

At three I heard about General Patton and his wins...
They were all saying "thanks to him the path to Berlin begins."

The victories of the allies forced the enemy to retreat. 
This left the ability to grab money and ancient treasures,
                                        [in which the robbers compete...

The Great War continued, and by now I was four..
My Patriots began between them a private civil war.

They were divided in two and were fighting between them,
For our history, this was no gem,
but I would say that civil war is a tradition
over the years we have become accustomed to this condition.

In ancient Greece every city state was ruled by a different king,
and a civil war for sure was started every spring.

For me in 1944 there were some funny things,
if I may speak so, amid tragedy that a war brings,
Half my family was with the leftist rebels
and were fighting the rightist relatives ,
                          [in towns mountains and dells...  

As a result I was seeing numerous guns at home
and I was thinking it was toys around me roam...               

When I cried, they calmed me in a funny way. 
Someone would empty their gun and give it to me for play.
________________________________________


Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS//
Νο: 20
______________________________________________________________



*The Battle of Greece, (also known as Operation Marita, German: Unternehmen Marita)is the common name for the invasion of Greece by Germany in April 1941. It is concomitant to the stalled Italian invasion known as the Greco-Italian War. 
It is usually distinguished from the Battle of Crete, which came after mainland Greece had been subdued. These operations were part of the greater Balkan Campaign of Germany in World War II.

At the time of the German invasion, Greece was at war with Italy, following the Italian invasion on 28 October 1940. The Greeks defeated the initial attack and the counter-attack of March 1941. 
When Operation Marita began on 6 April, the bulk of the Greek army was on the Albanian border, from which the Italians were trying to enter Greece. 
German troops invaded through Bulgaria, creating a second front. Greece had already received a small though inadequate reinforcement from British Empire forces, in anticipation of the German attack but no more help was sent after the invasion began. 
The Greek army found itself outnumbered in its effort to defend against both Italian and German troops. As a result, the Bulgarian defensive line did not receive adequate troop reinforcements and was quickly overrun by the Germans, who then outflanked the Greek forces in the Albanian borders, forcing their surrender.


 isos 

In Practice Was Cleared..

Everything changes nothing 

remains the same. Heraclitus

     ''Panta rhei'', Everything flows

 This famous aphorism, this Heraclitus thought
many facts of history in my mind brought....

Neanderthals believed that their wooden spears,
were the ultimate weapon for many years..
but when once the bronze weapons appeared,
that "everything flows", in practice was cleared..

Eastern Romans built the highest walls in the world 
                                                                               [and they believed
that the enemy was on the outside, 
                                  [their new capital Byzantium will be twirled
but when once the cannons appeared,
that "everything flows", in practice was cleared..

Germans with their V-1 and V-2 missiles 
                                   [believed they were invincible,
until the royal air force became mythical,
when in the sky of Britain appeared
and that "everything flows", in practice was cleared..

The Japenese, with their kamikaze pilots thought were unbeatable,
but the atomic bomb proved
                            [that the neutralization of this weapon was feasible,
when in the sky the Superfortress bomber Enola Gay appeared
and that "everything flows", in practice was cleared..
                       ________________


Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS//
Νο: 19
_______________________________________________________________



*Aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός aphorismos, "delimitation") is a terse saying, expressing a general truth, principle, or astute observation, and spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form

*Panta rhei, "everything flows" Πάντα ρει (panta rhei) "everything flows" either was not spoken by Heraclitus or did not survive as a quotation of his. This famous aphorism used to characterize Heraclitus' thought comes from Simplicius, a neoplatonist, and from Plato's Cratylus. The word rhei (cf. rheology) is the Greek word for "to stream", and is etymologically related to Rhea according to Plato's Cratylus.

The philosophy of Heraclitus is summed up in his cryptic utterance:
ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμβαίνουσιν, ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ.
Potamoisi toisin autoisin embainousin, hetera kai hetera hudata epirrei
"Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers."

The quote from Heraclitus appears in Plato's Cratylus twice; in 401d as:
τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν
Ta onta ienai te panta kai menein ouden
"All entities move and nothing remains still"

*Heraclitus of Ephesus (/ˌhɛrəˈklaɪtəs/ Greek: Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος, Hērákleitos ho Ephésios; c. 535 – c. 475 BCE) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. From the lonely life he led, and still more from the riddling and paradoxical nature of his philosophy and his stress upon the needless unconsciousness of humankind, he was called "The Obscure" and the "Weeping Philosopher".

Heraclitus is famous for his insistence on ever-present change in the universe, as stated in the famous saying, "No man ever steps in the same river twice" (see panta rhei, below). He believed in the unity of opposites, stating that "the path up and down are one and the same", all existing entities being characterized by pairs of contrary properties. His cryptic utterance that "all entities come to be in accordance with this Logos" (literally, "word", "reason", or "account") has been the subject of numerous interpretations.


*Wooden spears made already 400.000 years ago. The oldest spears were found on a site in Lower Saxony.
You can see and try such spears and many other prehistoric weapons and tools at the Stone Age Workshop.
Kawiuk: Spears, as the one the man is working on, were the most common hunting weapon. A stone spearhead was fixed to the shaft with glue made


isos...

She was considered the most beautiful woman in the world

 

     

                  ...but for her they never shot an arrow

As a seafarer who has navigated
                                      [all the seas and oceans,
I lived strange experiences and strong emotions.

Those thirty years I saw and heard
                                                  [incredible things,
but a story of them,
           semicolons, questions and doubts brings...


Once while I was sailing
                             [along the coast of ancient Troy,
inevitably I was thinking
          [of the Homeric Trojan campaign to destroy
the one who had control of narrow*.                                   

My poor Helen,
  [for you they never shot an arrow...

The Trojans were holding the keys to the Black Sea
and the Greeks were tired of paying the fee....

The old stoker,
         [suddenly interrupted my thoughts,

and together we broke
                   [into history's unknown slots.




He told me...I'm a Trojan, and my ancestors 
                                                 [came back to the region,

along with Constantine the Great and the 

                                                             [first Roman legion.                   

Aeneas fleeing Troy.......   to Latium

Eight miles away from Troy
                        [is Dardanos, my hometown. 
After the fall of Troy,
                      [Aeneas would not bow down     and he sailed from my city along with                                             [other Trojan fighters.... 


They went to Italy as mentioned
           [by Virgil and many other writers.


There, they defeated the Latins and 
                                        [created an empire,
so large that without refueling today 
              [you could not cross in an airliner.

These descendants of Aeneas
                                    [and the Trojans
became masters of the world,
                             [and called Romans..

They never forgot Troy,
   [though thousands of years passed,

with plans to return home

                     with armies they massed....

The return trip was made in 330 AD..

In order not to be forced,

               [as in the Trojan war, to flee,
they founded the capital of their empire

                         [in Byzantium, a fortified position,

several miles farther from Troy,

                                [as the base of each expedition....

But in Byzantium the people were speaking Greek
and over the years... each Roman Greek will speak.

Finishing the old man,

                               [the stoker, said:

When I was born.....
Greek was the language of my bred..

Am I...    A Trojan?  A Roman? 
                                 [A Greek?  A Hellen?
Two mysteries of history,
        [I and the queen of Sparta, Helen ...

___________* *___________

*Hellen, in Greek mythology, king of Phthia was the eponymous ancestor of all true Greeks, called Hellenes in his honour.

The Hellenes consisted of the Aeolians, Dorians, Ionians, and Achaeans, traditionally descended from and named for Hellen’s sons, Aeolus and Dorus, and his grandsons (by his third son, Xuthus), Ion and Achaeus.
______________________________________________________


Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS//
Νο: 18
                                              _________________


*Helen of Troy, In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy (Greek Ἑλένη Helénē, pronounced [helénɛː]), also known as Helen of Sparta, was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and was a sister of Castor, Pollux, and Clytemnestra. In Greek myths, she was considered the most beautiful woman in the world. By marriage she was Queen of Laconia, a province within Homeric Greece, the wife of King Menelaus. Her abduction by Paris, Prince of Troy, brought about the Trojan War. Elements of her putative biography come from classical authors such as Aristophanes, Cicero, Euripides and Homer (both The Iliad and The Odyssey).

*Dardanos : Eight miles to the ancient city of Troy.

*Constantine the Great,   57th Emperor of the Roman Empire

Colossal marble head of Emperor
Constantine the Great, Roman, 4th century

Constantine the Great (Latin: Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus; Greek: Κωνσταντίνος ὁ Μέγας; 27 February c. 272 AD – 22 May 337 AD), also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine (in the Orthodox Church as Saint Constantine the Great, Equal-to-the-Apostles), was a Roman Emperor from 306 to 337 AD of Thracian-Illyrian ancestry. Constantine was the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, a Roman army officer, and his consort Helena. His father became Caesar, the deputy emperor in the west in 293 AD. Constantine was sent east, where he rose through the ranks to become a military tribune under the emperors Diocletian and Galerius. In 305, Constantius was raised to the rank of Augustus, senior western emperor, and Constantine was recalled west to campaign under his father in Britannia. Acclaimed as emperor by the army at Eboracum (Modern-day York) after his father's death in 306 AD, Constantine emerged victorious in a series of civil wars against the emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become sole ruler of both west and east by 324 AD.

As emperor, Constantine enacted many administrative, financial, social, and military reforms to strengthen the empire. The government was restructured and civil and military authority separated. A new gold coin, the solidus, was introduced to combat inflation. It would become the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years. The first Roman emperor to claim conversion to Christianity,[notes 4] Constantine played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan, which decreed tolerance for Christianity in the empire. He called the First Council of Nicaea in 325, at which the Nicene Creed was professed by Christians. In military matters, the Roman army was reorganised to consist of mobile field units and garrison soldiers capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions. Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths, and the Sarmatians—even resettling territories abandoned by his predecessors during the turmoil of the previous century.

The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire. He built a new imperial residence at Byzantium and renamed the city Constantinople after himself (the laudatory epithet of "New Rome" came later, and was never an official title). It would later become the capital of the Empire for over one thousand years; for which reason the later Eastern Empire would come to be known as the Byzantine Empire. His more immediate political legacy was that, in leaving the empire to his sons, he replaced Diocletian's tetrarchy with the principle of dynastic succession. His reputation flourished during the lifetime of his children and centuries after his reign. The medieval church upheld him as a paragon of virtue while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype, a point of reference, and the symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity. Beginning with the Renaissance, there were more critical appraisals of his reign due to the rediscovery of anti-Constantinian sources. Critics portrayed him as a despotic tyrant. Trends in modern and recent scholarship attempted to balance the extremes of previous scholarship.

Constantine—as the first Christian emperor—is a significant figure in the history of Christianity. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on his orders at the purported site of Jesus' tomb in Jerusalem, became the holiest place in Christendom. The Papal claim to temporal power was based on the supposed Donation of Constantine. He is venerated as a saint by Eastern Orthodox Christians, Byzantine Catholics, and Anglicans.




isos...

It's not for everyone to go to Corinth

The Isthmus of Corinth is the narrow land bridge   

which connects the Peloponnese peninsula with the

rest of the mainland of Greece. Corinth, in ancient 

times was one of the wealthiest cities of the Greek   

world. In that era lived there Lais Corinthia, the     

famous courtesan.                                                      

She was so beautiful  that painters had as standard.

 
  My American relatives visited Corinth one time,
and told me that the view was magnificent, sublime...

In the city however,
         [there was something that made them mull,
locals were talking a lot about some ancient trull,
but they could not comprehend how a slut
was in the history of a city,
                                 [[instead of being cut.

        When....  they asked my opinion about it
I told them that she was the courtesan Lais
                                      [and I know only a bit.

She was not just a slut,
              [I would say something like an escort,
a private dancer, like a geisha, a leeward port.

What I do know well is that her company
                      [had cost some four thousand bucks,

and soon made a fortune as the money
                           [was in incessant process of flux..
                                  ___________________

I never understood my ancient ancestors
                                               [and their practices,
also the role of ancient prostitutes and actresses.

But also nor my newer fellows,
and my sorrow is permanent,
                        [never mellows.

They always have a reason
                                    [to be divided,
as from an evil fate, they are guided.

Note that during the war of independence,
                                          (which lasted eight years),
we had two civil wars
      [inside what was the rebellious region's frontiers.
                         ________________________

Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS//
Νο: 46
_______________________________________________________________

     *Corinth, in ancient times was one of the wealthiest cities of the Greek world. The trade provide great riches and life there was very accurate to the point of the whole stay is accessible only to very rich.

    * The title, Then came the saying "it's not for everyone to go to Corinth", (''Ού παντός πλείν είς Κόρινθον''). As was next with leftades gathered at Corinth and prosferan love women with fee, from ordinary prostitutes, who frequented in groves, buying or chamaitypeia, as the eminent courtesans that interaction with them cost a fortune.






Lais of Corinth,
Limewood, 34.6 × 26.8 cm,
Kunstmuseum Basel
 
She was so beautiful that painters had as standard.
The Aristainetos writes that "the breasts were like clams.
She had relationships with the most prominent and

ploysiwteroys Greeks who flocked in Corinth to meet

(with the biblical meaning of the verb).

Among the "clients" was the student of Socrates Aristippos





  
* Lais of Corinth, by Hans Holbein the Younger portrays the famous Lais of Corinth, a courtesan of ancient Greece who charged a high price for her favours.

It has been suggested that Holbein is also referring to the Lais who was the lover of Apelles, the great painter of antiquity (Holbein was called "Apelles" in humanist circles).
 
The model, the same used for Holbein's Darmstadt Madonna and for his Venus and Amor (right), has been identified as Magdalena Offenburg, who may have been Holbein's mistress.








Venus and Amor, 1524. Holbein's Lais was painted a year or two after Venus and Amor and, in effect, acts as its companion piece, though Holbein does not appear to have originally planned the second painting.
According to some commentators, the portrayal of the sitter as a hetaera or courtesan may contain a coded message by Holbein about his relationship with her.
Art historian Peter Claussen, however, dismisses this interpretation as "pure nonsense".
Both paintings employ the same colours and depict the same costume and drapery. Holbein adopts the style of Leonardo and the Lombard muralists, whose work he may have studied during a visit to Italy.
He uses Leonardo's sfumato (smoky) technique to blend the skin tones, as well as the device of the parapet to set the subject back from the viewer.

_______________________________________________________

* The Isthmus of Corinth, Α narrow land bridge which connects the Peloponnese peninsula with the rest of the mainland of Greece, near the city of Corinth. The word "isthmus" comes from the Ancient Greek word for "neck" and refers to the narrowness of the land.
The Isthmus was known in the ancient world as the landmark separating Peloponnese from mainland of Greece. In the first century CE the geographer Strabo noted a pillar on the Isthmus of Corinth, which bore two inscriptions.

One towards the East, i.e. towards Megara in Attica reading: "Here is not Peloponnesus, but Ionia" (τάδ᾽ οὐχὶ Πελοπόννησος, ἀλλ᾽ Ἰωνία) and the one towards the West, i.e. towards the Peloponnese: "Here is Peloponnesus, not Ionia" (τάδ᾽ ἐστὶ Πελοπόννησος, οὐκ Ἰωνία); Plutarch ascribed the erection of the stele to the Attic hero Theseus, on his way to Athens.

To the west of the Isthmus is the Gulf of Corinth, to the east the Saronic Gulf. Since 1893 the Corinth Canal has run through the 6.3 km wide isthmus, effectively making the Peloponnese an island. Today, two road bridges, two railway bridges and two submersible bridges at both ends of the canal connect the mainland side of the isthmus with the Peloponnese side. Also a military emergency bridge is located at the west end of the canal.

The idea for a shortcut to save boats sailing all round the Peloponnese was long considered by the Ancient Greeks. The first attempt to build a canal there was carried out by the tyrant Periander in the 7th century BC.

He abandoned the project owing to technical difficulties, and instead constructed a simpler and less costly overland stone ramp, named Diolkos, as a portage road. Remnants of Diolkos still exist today next to the modern canal.

When the Romans took control of Greece, a number of different solutions were tried. Julius Caesar foresaw the advantages of a link for his newly built Colonia Laus Iulia Corinthiensis. By the reign of Tiberius, engineers tried to dig a canal, but were defeated by lack of modern equipment.

Instead they built an Ancient Egyptian device: boats were rolled across the isthmus on logs, as the Egyptians had rolled blocks of granite to make their pyramids. This was in use by AD 32. In AD 67, the philhellene Roman emperor Nero ordered 6,000 slaves to dig a canal with spades. According to Pliny the Elder, the work advanced four stadia (about 5/8 kilometers). The following year Nero died, and his successor Galba abandoned the project as being too expensive.

In the modern era, the idea was first seriously proposed in 1830, soon after Greece's independence from the Ottoman Empire, and was brought to completion in 1893 after eleven years' work.

isos...

Drop dead gorgeous

956 AD Eastern half of the Roman Empire

    Drop dead gorgeous, green eyes, long hair curled,
        Theaphano, the most beautiful woman in the world ..

        Romanus, the son of the emperor Constantine the seventh,
        fell in love again, this time it was the eleventh ...

        Theophano was a Greek name...
        (Recent centuries in the Empire the Greek language formal became).
        ____________________


Troubadours praised the beauty of the bride in the whole territory.       956 AD
Unfortunately this is a drama, not a love story.

Soon her beauty dominated the palace. 
Soon everyone suspected that she was hiding ambition and malice ...

The emperor was assassinated by unknown poison.                              959 AD

Only you had motive, there was no other reason,
said unto her, Romanus the successor,
who in a few hours would be crowned new Emperor ..


                              TWO YEARS LATER

Glorious general Phokas re conquers Saracen Emirate of Crete...
The triumphal procession passes in front of the street,
and already Theophano devises new scam (how to cheat).

Like all men around her, General Nikephoros Phokas soon fell in love. 

Soon Theophano poised her husband, another one rid of.                   963 AD

Violent Fhokas becomes emperor and then,
unrivaled beauty, gorgeous Theophano, is a bride again...



                              SIX YEARS LATER


Her beauty had begun to leave,
when that fateful Christmas Eve
she first met her one great love....
General John I Tzimiskes...
    [a nightmare or a gift from heaven above?   

Soon the two lovers organized a kind of coup
and murdering Phokas accomplished what they                                                           [pursue.     969 AD

After a while Tzimiskes became the new                                                                          [emperor....

He never loved Theophano, to him it was an                                                                   [adventure.

To calm the people who blamed them both for the                                                                      [murder,

Theophano was sent to exile on his own order ...


                              A FEW YEARS LATER

   But the beautiful and equally intelligent had a hidden player..
      Her son, the conqueror, known with the name "the Bulgar-slayer"..

      Soon he became emperor and made sure
      his criminal mother, no justice for the people, a detour.
      ______________________________________________




Though the western half of the Roman Empire crumbled    
and fell in 476, the eastern half survived for 1,000 more     
years, spawning a rich tradition of art, literature and          
learning and serving as a military buffer between the states
of Europe and the threat of invasion from Asia.                   
The eastern Empire finally fell in 1453, after an Ottoman   
army stormed Constantinople of Constantine XI.              
_____________________________________________________




Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS//
Νο: 16

* The language of the Byzantine Greeks since the age of Constantine had been Greek, although Latin was the language of the administration. From the reign of Emperor Heraclius (reigned 610–641), Greek was the predominant language amongst the populace and also replaced Latin in administration. At first the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character, but following the loss of the non-Greek speaking provinces it came to be dominated by the Byzantine Greeks. Over time, the relationship between them and the West, particularly with Latin Europe, deteriorated.
Relations were further damaged by a schism between the Catholic West and Orthodox East that led to the Byzantine Greeks being labeled as heretics. Throughout the later centuries of the Byzantine Empire and particularly following the coronation of Charlemagne (reigned as king of the Franks 768–814) in Rome in 800, the Byzantine Greeks were not considered by Western Europeans as heirs of the Roman Empire, but rather as part of an Eastern kingdom made up of Greek peoples. However the Byzantine Empire could claim to be the Roman Empire, continuing the unbroken line of succession of the Roman emperors.



*The story   is based on the Kostas Kyriazis book "Theophano" 

*The Greek historical fiction writer Kostas Kyriazis (b. 1920) wrote a biography called Theophano (1963), followed by the 1964 Basil Bulgaroktonus on her son. As depicted in these books, Theophano was indeed guilty of all the killings attributed to her in her lifetime, and the heritage of a mother who killed both his father and his stepfather caused her son Basil to distrust women and avoid marriage himself.

*Basil II  (Greek: Βασίλειος Β΄, Basileios II; 958 – 15 December 1025) was a Byzantine Emperor from the Macedonian dynasty who reigned from 10 January 976 to 15 December 1025. He was known in his time as Basil the Porphyrogenitus and Basil the Young to distinguish him from his supposed ancestor, Basil I the Macedonian.

The early years of his long reign were dominated by civil war against powerful generals from the Anatolian aristocracy. Following their submission, Basil oversaw the stabilization and expansion of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire, and above all, the final and complete subjugation of Bulgaria, the Empire's foremost European foe, after a prolonged struggle. For this he was nicknamed by later authors as "the Bulgar-slayer" (Greek: Βουλγαροκτόνος, Boulgaroktonos), by which he is popularly known. At his death, the Empire stretched from Southern Italy to the Caucasus and from the Danube to the borders of Palestine, its greatest territorial extent since the Muslim conquests four centuries earlier.

isos...

Come and take it

 Molon labe (come and take it)

* In college football, the Michigan State
Spartans football team wore alternate 
jersey featuring the phrase (Molon labe) 
their 2011 rivalry game with 
the Michigan Wolverines.

               An Ancient Ultimatum

  We Greeks are patient to a fault,
     but to your ultimatums we say no, it must halt
     as we have shown in the centuries of our history..

     In the Second World War, four years before the American victory,
     we answered no, in the ultimatum of the Germans, and we fought.

Leonidas monument 
at Thermopylae

                                              

   We Greeks in such moments have only one thought,
     the "Molon labe” meaning "come and take them".
     The Molon labe of Spartans to barbarians, is our eternal gem....

     For the sacrifice of the brave three hundred
     and of their king Leonidas, humanity often wondered,
     why since the Greeks knew they would be killed, just hand it over?
     Leonidas like a king had the option not to fight the Persians moreover.


  We Greeks, if we were saying that the commands 
                                                                     [of our ancestors are voided,
     the sacrifice of seven hundred thousand Greeks could be avoided,
     during the Second World War, but this historic phrase
     for twenty five centuries in our hearts stays..
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Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS//
Νο: 15
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* "Molon labe" is the motto of
United States Special Operations
Command Central (SOCCENT). __________________________________________________

                                         



* The expression "Come and take it" 
was a slogan in the Texas Revolution.

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* The words ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ as they are inscribed on the marble of the Leonidas Monument at Thermopylae

Molon labe (Greek: μολὼν λαβέ), meaning "come and take them", is a classical expression of defiance. When the Persian armies demanded that the Greeks surrender their weapons at the Battle of Thermopylae, King Leonidas I responded with this phrase. It is an exemplary use of a laconic phrase.
The phrase was reportedly the defiant response of King Leonidas I of Sparta to Xerxes I of Persia when Xerxes demanded that the Greeks lay down their arms and surrender. This was at the onset of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC). Instead, the Greeks held Thermopylae for three days. Although the Greek contingent was defeated, they inflicted serious damage on the Persian army. Most importantly, this delayed the Persians' progress to Athens, providing sufficient time for the city's evacuation to the island of Salamis. Though a tactical defeat, Thermopylae served as a strategic and moral victory, inspiring the Greek forces to crush the Persians at the Battle of Salamis later the same year and the Battle of Plataea one year later.

The source for this quotation is Plutarch, Apophthegmata Laconica, 51.11. This work by Plutarch is included among the Moralia, a collection of works attributed to him but outside the collection of his most famous works, the Parallel Lives.

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* Replica of the Gonzalez Flag at the Texas State Capitol
Molon labe has been repeated by many later generals and politicians in order to express an army's or nation's determination not to surrender. The motto ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ is on the emblem of the Greek First Army Corps, and is also the motto of United States Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT). The expression "Come and take it" was a slogan in the Texas Revolution.

In the struggle for the independence of Cyprus , Molon labe has been used once again in Greek history, on 3 March 1957 during a battle in Cyprus between members of the EOKA organization and the British Army. After someone had betrayed his location, the British forces surrounded the secret hideout of the second-in-command of EOKA, Grigoris Afxentiou, near the Machairas Monastery. Inside the hideout were Afxentiou and four of his followers. Realizing he was outnumbered, Afxentiou ordered them to surrender themselves whilst he barricaded himself for a fight to the death. The British asked Afxentiou to come out and surrender. He replied with the phrase Molon labe, imitating the ancient Spartans. Unable to get him out, and after sustaining casualties, the British set fire to the hideout, and he was burnt alive. The British buried his body in the yard of the central jail of Lefkosia, where it lies today.

In the United States of America, both the original Greek phrase and its English translation are often heard from pro Second Amendment activists as a defense of the right to keep and bear arms. It began to appear on web sites in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the Second Amendment or firearms freedom context, the phrase expresses the notion that the person uttering the phrase is a strong believer in these ideals and will not surrender their firearms to anyone, especially to governmental authority. Challenge coins similar to those used by military service members have been created with the Molon Labe text and firearm images.
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