Artistic Greetings: Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Our best wishes for a warm and joy filled Christmas!

Yannis Stavrou, Hydra Island Landscape, Oil on Canvas

(click on the image to enlarge)

More Greeting E-Cards in Greek language (click)

YANNIS STAVROU'S PAINTING EXHIBITION AT HIS ATHENS ART STUDIO. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2009

the invitation of the painting exhibition

...gaze into the past...

Yannis Stavrou presents his new art works to friends and collectors at his Studio in Paiania, Athens, Greece.
Saturday, December 5, 2009, from 12.00 to 22.00 pm.

For more information, please contact: tel +30 2106645664

--------------------

INVITATION TO ONE DAY SHOW

Yannis Stavrou invites you to his painting exhibition for friends & collectors

"...gaze into the past..."

at his art studio in Paiania on Saturday, December 5, 2009

from 12:00 to 22:00 pm

...new paintings, wine & discussion...

--------------------------

The title of the painting exhibition refers directly to the artist's theme.

"...the deep emotions come always from the past. Old sounds, smells, taste of life turn to forms and colours on the canvas through a magic power..."

The boats, the sea, the mountains, the trees give their place to scenes from urban landscapes and human figures.

Memory scenes are captured on the artist's canvas.

"...the last remains of old houses, boats, forests - characteristic signs of a whole period of the Greek environment - vanish silently and pathetically..."

On Yannis Stavrou's Paintings...

Yannis Stavrou, Red Ship, oil on paper

Glass eyes, Resurrected Gazes. On Yannis Stavrou's Paintings - Art criticism by Manos Steafanidis

"There is a glass eye that dreams of me"
Giorgos Themelis

In what terms can we discuss painting today? First of all, we have to choose between the world of shapes - the sovereignty of art - and the world of reflections. By reflections I mean the kingdom of shadows which feign existence due to the short-lived and accidental power provided by the medium itself. I’m obviously referring to the glass eye of television, juxtaposing it to the still - but not motionless - images of painting. As time goes by, I have come to realize that an irreconcilable battle has been raging in me. There are those works of art I have loved, which come from the past and rightly aspire to inhabit our future. And there is television’s overweening sorcery which pretends to authority without, however, exorcising vulgarity. This is why I said before that we have to choose. I meant to say that, in modern times, painting is above all an act of resistance of the gaze. This is a silent, and yet valid, protest against the overflow of unthinkable and thoughtless images which keep nibbling on our time and conscience. These images reach us following orders from above; I have no doubt anymore. In order to weigh us down politically and ideologically, a host of latter-day Metternichs of sold-out images have first to trivialize our aesthetics.

The question is how - and against what - can a painted canvas resist? Is this act of resistance possible, when the depicted theme is, for instance, a ship sailing away in dark waters or a city bathed in morning light, authorized to expiate it and censure it for its nocturnal life? First of all, each painting constitutes a form of visual expression which requires above all the viewer’s gaze, his mind, devotion and, if possible, his heart. This secret moment of communion, which could last from a minute to an eternity, comprises in it the elements of a holy drama. In this religious rite the presence of a divine power is not obvious but the ensuing miracle is. This is why I referred earlier to a resurrection of the gaze. Nowadays the art of painting is often used as an alibi for education or power. In certain other instances, it is recruited to serve the costly purposes of interior decoration. And why not? Has anyone ever been harmed by the squandering of beauty? Besides this, painting which respects itself knows how to carry those who trust it along paths of self-awareness to islets of maturity. It has the power, like any other art form, to make its fellow traveler a much better person and to return his time regained. And this is quite an achievement. The wisdom acquired derives from intuition and as such entails a feeling of delight which has no rival. This very pleasure of the gaze invigorates our entire being.

This is how I approach the painting of my friend Yannis Stavrou. He is the nostalgic advocate of a different Thessaloniki, the orderly tracker of those small treasures that lie hidden in the pockets of daily routine. I see his paintings as a challenge for an inner voyage, an opportunity for a resurrection of the gaze - a prolongation of real life. His compositions are structured around two opposite poles: tenderness and a sturdy rhythm; a sense for detail and understanding of the whole; a kind of sentimental escape to mirthful images, as Kosmas Politis would put it, and a preoccupation with form, represented in an unadorned and solid fashion. His paintings keep alive the memory of those places he fell in love with in the past or create novel seas for new journeys. Here plasticity is achieved via abstractive processes, and elsewhere a tiny light - one catalytic brushstroke - unveils a well-hidden secret. His heavy blues are electrified with orange iridescences and his reds never leave his blacks or dark greens unaccompanied. This is how it goes: what is sweet should always come out of what is bitter, and vice versa. Stavrou’s art is guided by his perseverance in striving for a self-sufficient visual language and by his grasp, empirical and therefore true, of modern Greek painting - from Papaloukas to Tsarouchis and from Spyropoulos to Tetsis - until he finds his own style, Clive Bell’s* ‘significant form’ or Cassirer* and Panofsky’s* ‘symbolic form.’ In other words a character of its own which will mark his work regardless of the period it was created. Let me not baffle you with any further technicalities. The robustness of Yannis Stavrou’s painting lies in that it can be enjoyed without the aid of theoretical crutches and critical witticisms. Such improprieties would be unfitting...

Manos Stefanidis, Art historian, Professor of the Athens University

Yannis Stavrou is a painter who touches upon the city's metaphysical tissue...

Yannis Stavrou, Acropolis 1970, oil on canvas

"...Yannis Stavrou is a painter who touches upon the city's metaphysical tissue. An offspring himself of the lucky generation, which witnessed the historical heart-rending moments of Greek urban centers, and more closely so in his city of Thessaloniki, he takes us by the hand, striding with confident strokes back to our legendary childhood evoked by his images; deep down into the bottomless hollow of Thermaikos harbour, where the massive metal shapes of ships are hovering all aloof, emerging through the midst of cracking-dawn's fog; up through the steep alleys traversing our neighborhood and past the fading reflections of its households.

The street-lamps' flickering light is cast upon windowpanes mixing with the first-born crescents of the rising sun. Our last stop finds us in the heart of the city center's morning awakening. And there, in the midst of the evocative setting of inter-war flats discerned by an artificial air of cosmopolitan facade, we spot the fine silhouette of a tram sliding through semi-darkness.

Yannis Stavrou's serene images render a lifetime's essence - an essence of matter and spirit. In his own universe, he is moulding a harmonious relationship between the "urban landscape" and infinity. In infinity's unlimited domain he dares to boldly project the nature of his feelings through the use of light. No doubt, he is aware that light expresses best a city's soul...His violet hues embellished with golden tinges render the uncompromising, "multi-ethnic" dimension of the beautiful city of Thessaloniki..."

Dr Manos G. Biris, Professor of the Architecture History in the Polytechnic School of Athens

Yannis Stavrou, forthcoming solo painting exhibition...

Yannis Stavrou, the poster of the painting exhibition

YANNIS STAVROU- SOLO PAINTING EXHIBITION
«Travel in Time»
IANOS Gallery, 7 Aristotelous St, Thessaloniki, Greece
October 20, 2009– November 14, 2009
Opening: Tuesday, October 20, at 7pm
Tel +30 2310 276447

Artistic, cultural guide to Greek landscapes through paintings, images, thoughts & literature

Greek landscapes

Greek landscapes refer to images and pictures of Greece, to art and culture, to history and myths, to civilization and contemporary thought. Greek landscapes express a holistic meaning: the profile of Greece. Art is the best way to approach the identity of the Greek landscape as art reflects the synthesis of civilization. Greek landscapes from Greek cities, Greek islands, Greece hinterland. Through pictures & paintings, poetry and literature, artists & poets, maps & links the unique Greek landscapes explore their myths...

An itinerary to to the Greek landscape through Yannis Stavrou painting

Yannis Stavrou, Greek landscapes from Greek islands and Greece hinterland: "Olive Groves", "Church in Greek Countryside", "Maritime Landscape", "Hydra Island Landscape", "Olive Trees", "Attica Landscape in Springtime"

An itinerary to to the Greek landscape through the history of Greek art /painting

Landscapes by Greek painters: Papaloucas, Altamouras, Ikonomou, Maleas, Parthenis

An itinerary to to the Greek landscape through Greek poetry

As if long prepared, as if courageous, / as it becomes you who have been worthy of such a city,
approach the window with firm step, / and with emotion, but not
with the entreaties and complaints of the coward, / as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,
the exquisite instruments of the mystical troupe, / and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing

from "The God Forsakes Antony" by Konstantinos Kavafis, translated by www.ellopos.net


I I've kept a hold on my life, kept a hold on my life, traveling / among yellow trees in driving rain
on silent slopes loaded with beech leaves / no fire on their peaks; it's getting dark.

from "Epiphany" by Giorgos Sepheris, translated by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard


I found the leaves that the sun's psalm memorizes / The living land that passion joys in opening

from "Drinking The Sun of Corinth" by Odysseus Elytis, translated by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard

An itinerary to to the Greek landscape through Greekhistory / Links

The Greeks
Greeks Interactive
The Ancient Greek World Index
The Amazing Ancient World - GREECE
EAWC: Ancient Greece
The Greek World of MARY RENAULT
Greece: History
Odyssey Online
Perseus Digital Library - Perseus: Greek and Roman Materials
Internet Resources: Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece: Archaic Greece, 800-500 BC
Ancient Greek Civilizations
The Ancient Greek World - Land
Classical Atlas Project -- Home Page
Ancient Classical History
Greece Sites
Ancient Greece
Hellenistic Greece
The Geography of Ancient Greece
Articles on ancient Greece
Lectures on Ancient and Early Medieval History - Main
110Tech-Greece
The Culture and Archaeology of Ancient Greece
Mare Nostrum: The Greeks
Latin and Greek Word Elements

► THE MINOAN & MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATIONS
The Prehistoric Archaeology of the Aegean
Barbarians and Bureaucrats: Minoa, Mycenae, and the Greek Dark Ages - Contents
MAP: Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations c. 2000 B.C.
The Minoans
The Linear B Tablets and Mycenaean Organization
The First Palaces in the Aegean
Minoans: Religion
Minoan Palace
Minoans: Women in Minoan Culture
Minoans: Minoan Visual Culture
The Early Minoan Period:The Settlements
The History of Plumbing (CRETE)
The Myceneans
Mycenean Religion
The Dark Ages

► MACEDONIAN CIVILIZATION & ALEXANDER THE GREAT
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great Timeline
Chronology of the reign of Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Army of Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great on the Web
ALEXANDER THE GREAT, Project by JJP
Alexander the Great history project home page
History House: Stories: Philip of Macedon (and Pausanias)
HWC, Alexander the Great
The Search for Alexander
History House: Alexander the Great
MAP: Alexander in the East
Plutarch's ALEXANDER
Hellenistic Greece: Alexander
History of Macedonia
Kings of Ancient Macedonia

► ART & ARCHITECTURE
ART HISTORY RESOURCES: Ancient Greece and Rome
The Parthenon at Athens
Parthenon
The Acropolis Museum
Acropolis Tour
Parthenon Gallery - Acropolis Plan
Acropolis Plan
Virtual Tour of Acropolis
Acropolis of Athens - 360 Virtual Tour
A Virtual Tour of The Athenian Acropolis
Acropolis Virtual Tour
The Parthenon - Ictinus and Callicrates with Phidias
Greek Art
Classical Greek Sculpture: Home
Greek Architecture
More on Greek Architecture
Greek Kouroi
Pottery and Minor art Collection
The Collection of Sculpture
National Archaeological Museum of Athens
Archaeological Museum of Delphi

► EDUCATION
The Ancient Greek World: Schooling
Coming of Age in Ancient Greece - School


► ATHENS & DEMOCRACY
Polis
The Foundations of the Greek Polis
The Ancient City of Athens
Culture of Athens
The Delian League
Ancient Greek Government
Greek Democracy
The Development of Athenian Democracy
The Development of Athenian Democracy
Solons Reforms and Democracy
Lecture 6: The Athenian Origins of Direct Democracy
Demos: Classical Athenian Democracy
The Buildings on Acropolis
Athens
The Age of Pericles: The Athenian Empire
Thucydides: Pericles' Funeral Oration
The Second Athenian Empire: 362-338 BC
Athenian Rowdies
The Internet Classics Archive | The Athenian Constitution by Aristotle
Greek reformers
Athens in 421 BC - Project Athinai

An itinerary to to the Greek landscape through contemporary thought

"P. Kondylis"

” The late Panayiotis Kondylis, Greece’s sole real modern strategist, was the only voice that brutally and publicly demolished accepted Greek illusions about a national security model exclusively depended on the imaginary willingness of others to provide the level of protection Greece is unable to provide for herself. In his Theory of War (1997) Kondylis warned that Greek troubles with Turkey emanated from the fundamental strategic error of Greece convincing herself that Turkey perceives EU membership with the same singular fervor as that permeating Greek political and economic elites — or, that Greece’s European partners are fundamentally committed to solidarity with Greece against Turkish actions come hell or high water.

These and other erroneous premises on the part of a country that fails to stand on her own two feet, and expects other to do what she cannot fulfill in her own defense, Kondylis argued, will mathematically result in the “European-ization” of Turkey working as the ironic lever of turning Greece into a permanent satellite of the Euro-Asian, neo-Ottoman Turkish great power through a protracted process of European-Turkish negotiation in which (a) Turkey makes constant demands for preferential interpretation of accession criteria and (b) the Europeans, in wishing not to slam the door in Turkey’s face but, at the same time, unwilling to openly water down EU criteria, choose the convenient outlet of offering “incentives” to Ankara at the expense of a submissive, but wholly “European,” Greece.

Kondylis’ conception carries a frightening logic that is confirmed in practice with each passing day. “

SOURCE

Yannis Stavrou: Painting & Books...

Summer 2009

50 new bookmarks from the artworks of Yannis Stavrou have just been circulated...

at POLITEIA Bookstores, 1 Asklipiou Street, Athens, Greece

A farewell to smoking...

Yannis Stavrou, Change of Night Patrol, oil on canvas

July 30, the last day of smoking in Greece...
A farewell to the companion of our thoughts, imagination, melancholy - in nice & bad days...

Some quotes about smoking:

Smoke your pipe and be silent; there’s only wind and smoke in the world.

Irish Proverb

Tobacco, divine, rare super excellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all panaceas, potable gold and philosopher’s stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases.

Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy

A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

Rudyard Kipling, The Betrothed

My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.

Winston Churchill

I promised myself that if ever I had some money that I would savor a cigar each day after lunch and dinner. This is the only resolution of my youth that I have kept, and the only realized ambition which has not brought disillusion.

Somerset Maugham

It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake.

To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.

I make it a rule never to smoke while I' m sleeping.

Mark Twain

Man is the great deserter of being. *

Yannis Stavrou, Sunset on Acropolis, oil on canvas

*Emil Cioran, a great philosopher, a great poet...
The philosopher who touches upon the substance of the human nature.
Words are not enough. Let's enjoy some of his quotations...

• Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.-
  

- Drawn and Quartered

• Man is the great deserter of being.

- The Fall into Time

• Suffering makes you live time in detail, moment after moment. Which is to say that it exists for you: over the others, the ones who don't suffer, time flows, so that they don't live in time, in fact they never have.

- The New Gods

• From denial to denial, his existence is diminished: vaguer and more unreal than a syllogism of sighs, how could he still be a creature of flesh and blood? Anemic, he rivals the Idea itself; he has abstracted himself from his ancestors, from his friends, from every soul and himself; in his veins, once turbulent, rests a light from another world. Liberated from what he has lived, unconcerned by what he will live; he demolishes the signposts on all his roads, and wrests himself from the dials of all time. "I shall never meet myself again," he decides, happy to turn his last hatred against himself, happier still to annihilate--in his forgiveness--all beings, all things.

- A Short History of Decay

• What life is left him robs him of what reason is left him. Trifles or scourges--the passing of a fly or the cramps of the planet--horrify him equally. With his nerves on fire, he would like the Earth to be made of glass, to shatter it to smithereens; and with what thirst would fling himself toward the stars to reduce them to powder, one by one.

- A Short History of Decay

• If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.

- Tears and Saints

• The only profitable conversations are with enthusiasts who have ceased being so—with the ex-naïve…Calmed down at last, they have taken, willy-nilly, the decisive step toward knowledge— that impersonal version of disappointment.

- Drawn and Quartered

• As long as I live I shall not allow myself to forget that I shall die; I am waiting for death so that I can forget about it.

- Tears and Saints

• What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it seem to me that we exist, and consent to exist.

- Drawn and Quartered

• My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it. I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be ignorant of how unhappy they are.

- The Trouble with Being Born

• We smile, because no answer is conceivable, because the answer would be even more meaningless than the question.

- The Trouble with Being Born

• I feel I am free but I know I am not.

- The Trouble with Being Born

__________________________________

Source: Cioran.eu

The God Abandons Anthony...*

Yannis Stavrou, Nocturnal, oil on canvas

The contemporary poetry of Konstantine P. Kavafis - a poem for our dramatic days...

"The God Abandons Anthony", by Konstaninos P. Kavafis *

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don't mourn your luck that's failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive -- don't mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don't fool yourself, don't say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don't degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
And listen with deep emotion, but not
with whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen -- your final delectation -- to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

____________________________
Source: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-god-abandons-anthony/

A journey...

Yannis Stavrou, Portrait of a Young Woman, oil on canvas

"L'Invitation au Voyage", Charles Baudelaire

Imagine, ma petite,
Dear sister mine, how sweet
Were we to go and take our pleasure
Leisurely, you and I—
To lie, to love, to die
Off in that land made to your measure!
A land whose suns' moist rays,
Through the skies' misty haze,
Hold quite the same dark charms for me
As do your scheming eyes
When they, in their like wise,
Shine through your tears, perfidiously.


Mon enfant, ma soeur,
Songe à la douceur,
D'aller là-bas, vivre ensemble!
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir,
Au pays qui te ressemble!
Les soleils mouillés,
De ces ciels brouillés,
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes,
Si mystérieux,
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes.

Charles Baudelaire, from "L'Invitation au Voyage"

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination...*

Yannis Stavrou, Olive Trees in Attica, oil on canvas

Rediscovering Arthur Schopenhauer's thought...

*Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.


A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.


A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.


A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.


After your death you will be what you were before your birth.


All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.


Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.


As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.


Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!


Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.


Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.


Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.


Compassion is the basis of morality.


Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.


Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.


Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.


Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.


Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.


Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.


Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.

Contemporay Greek Painters Group Exhbition

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Yannis Stavrou participates in the following

Group Painting Exhibition / May 16 - June 13, 2009

Title: "Contemporary Greek Painters"

ARKTOS GALLERY, 5 Herodotou st, Kolonaki, Athens, Greece

Visiting hours: Monday, Wednesday, Saturday (11am-3pm) / Tuesday, Thursday, Friday (11am-8.30pm)

Tel + 30 210 7299610

Opening: Saturday, May 16, 2009, at 11am

Artists: Yannis Stavrou, Than. Totsikas, Alekos Fassianos, m. Theofylaktopoulos, V. Giokas, V. Vassilakakis, A. Georgiou, Klavdios.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld...

Yannis Stavrou, Sunday Promenade, oil on canvas

Francois de La Rochefoucauld, the best company to face our times...

Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680). Some of his famous quotes:

• A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
• Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it.
• Few are agreeable in conversation, because each thinks more of what he intends to say than of what others are saying, and listens no more when he himself has a chance to speak.
• Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.
• Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
• Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
• He who lives without folly isn’t so wise as he thinks.
• Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue.
• If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.
• It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
• Jealousy feeds upon suspicion, and it turns into fury or it ends as soon as we pass from suspicion to certainty.
• Many people despise wealth, but few know how to give it away.
• No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.
• Nothing is less sincere than our mode of asking and giving advice. He who asks seems to have a deference for the opinion of his friend, while he only aims to get approval of his own and make his friend responsible for his action. And he who gives advice repays the confidence supposed to be placed in him by a seemingly disinterested zeal, while he seldom means anything by his advice but his own interest or reputation.
• One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger.
• Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us in consequence.
• Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
• Small minds are much distressed by little things. Great minds see them all but are not upset by them.
• The defects and faults in the mind are like wounds in the body. After all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind.
• The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.
• The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it.
• The passions are the only orators that always persuade.
• The passions often engender their contraries.
• The pleasure of love is in loving.
• To establish oneself in the world, one has to do all one can to appear established.
• To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.
• We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
• We always like those who admire us; we do not always like those whom we admire.
• We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
• We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

Yannis Stavrou, "Thessaloniki", oil on canvas

The following Professor S. Miller's letter on "Macedonia" was sent to the learned journal “Arhaeology Magazine”...

A good idea is to forward it to all of our friends - Greeks or foreigners...

January 22, 2009

Editor, Archaeology Magazine

36-36 33^rd Street

Long Island City, NY 11106

U.S.A.

Dear Sir,

I opened the January/February issue of Archaeology today and eagerly turned to “A Letter from Macedonia” only to discover that it was actually a letter from ancient Paionia – the land north of Mt. Barmous and Mt. Orbelos. Livy’s account of the creation of the Roman province of Macedonia (45.29.7 and 12) makes clear that the Paionians lived north of those mountains (which form today the geographically natural northern limits of Greece) and south of the Dardanians who were in today’s Kosovo. Strabo (7. frag 4) is even more succinct in saying that Paionia was north of Macedonia and the only connection from one to the other was (and is today) through the narrow gorge of the Axios (or Vardar) River. In other words, the land which is described by Matthew Brunwasser in his “Owning Alexander” was Paionia in antiquity.

While it is true that those people were subdued by Philip II, father of Alexander, in 359 B.C. (Diodorus Siculus 16.4.2), they were never Macedonians and never lived in Macedonia. Indeed, Demosthenes (Olynthian 1.23) tells us that they were “enslaved” by the Macedonian Philip and clearly, therefore, not Macedonians. Isokrates (5.23) makes the same point. Likewise, for example, the Egyptians who were subdued by Alexander may have been ruled by Macedonians, including the famous Cleopatra, but they were never Macedonians themselves, and Egypt was never called Macedonia (and so far as I can tell does not seek that name today).

Certainly, as Thucydides (2.99) tells us, the Macedonians had taken over “a narrow strip of Paionia extending along the Axios river from the interior to Pella and the sea”. One might therefore understand if the people in the modern republic centered at Skopje called themselves Paionians and claimed as theirs the land described by Thucydides.

But why, instead, would the modern people of ancient Paionia try to call themselves Macedonians and their land Macedonia? Mr. Brunwasser (p. 55) touches on the Greek claims “that it implies ambitions over Greek territory” and he notes that “the northern province of Greece is also called Macedonia.” Leaving aside the fact that the area of that northern province of modern Greece has been called Macedonia for more than 2,500 years (see, inter alios, Herodotus 5.17; 7.128, et alibi), more recent history shows that the Greek concerns are legitimate. For example, a map produced in Skopje in 1992 (Figure 1) shows clearly the claim that Macedonia extends from there to Mt. Olympus in the south; that is, combining the ancient regions of Paionia and Macedonia into a single entity. The same claim is explicit on a pseudo-bank note of the Republic of Macedonia which shows, as one of its monuments, the White Tower of Thessalonike, in Greece (Figure 2). There are many more examples of calendars, Christmas cards, bumper-stickers, etc., that all make the same claim.

Further, Mr. Brunwasser has reported with approval (International Herald Tribune 10/1/08) the work of the “Macedonian Institute for Strategic Research 16:9”, the name of which refers “to Acts 16:9, a verse in the New Testament in which a Macedonian man appears to the Apostle Paul begging him: ‘Come over into Macedonia, and help us.’” But where did Paul go in Macedonia? Neapolis (Kavala), Philippi, Amphipolis, Apollonia, Thessaloniki, and Veroia (Acts 16:11-17:10) all of which are in the historic Macedonia, none in Paionia. What claim is being made by an Institute based in Skopje that names itself for a trip through what was Macedonia in antiquity and what is the northern province of Greece today?

I wonder what we would conclude if a certain large island off the southeast coast of the United States started to call itself Florida, and emblazoned its currency with images of Disney World and distributed maps showing the Greater Florida.

Certainly there was no doubt of the underlying point of “Macedonia” in the mind of U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius on December 26, 1944, when he wrote:

“The Department [of State] has noted with considerable apprehension increasing propaganda rumors and semi-official statements in favor of an autonomous Macedonia, emanating principally from Bulgaria, but also from Yugoslav Partisan and other sources, with the implication that Greek territory would be included in the projected state. This government considers talk of Macedonian ”nation”, Macedonian “Fatherland”, or Macedonian “national consciousness” to be unjustified demagoguery representing no ethnic nor political reality, and sees in its present revival a possible cloak for aggressive intentions against Greece.”

[Source: U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations vol viii, Washington, D.C., Circular Airgram (868.014/26Dec1944)]

Mr. Brunwasser (a resident of Bulgaria), however, goes on to state, with apparent distain, that Greece claims “Alexander III of Macedon (Alexander the Great) . . . as Greek.”

This attitude mystifies me. What is there to “claim”? Alexander’s great-great-great grandfather, Alexander I, was certified as Greek at Olympia and, in the words of the father of history “I happen to know that [the forefathers of Alexander] are Greek” (Herodotus 5.22). Alexander’s father, Philip, won several equestrian victories at Olympia and Delphi (Plutarch, Alexander 4.9; Moralia 105A), the two most Hellenic of all the sanctuaries in ancient Greece where non-Greeks were not allowed to compete. If Philip was Greek, wasn’t his son also Greek?

When Euripides – who died and was buried in Macedonia (Thucydides apud Pal. Anth. 7.45; Pausanias 1.2.2; Diodorus Siculus 13.103) – wrote his play Archelaos in honor of the great-uncle of Alexander, did he write it in Slavic? When he wrote the Bacchai while at the court of Archelaos did he not write it in Greek even as it has survived to us? Or should we imagine that Euripides was a “Macedonian” who wrote in Slavic (at a date when that language is not attested) which was translated into Greek?

What was the language of instruction when Aristotle taught Alexander? What language was carried by Alexander with him on his expedition to the East? Why do we have ancient inscriptions in Greek in settlements established by Alexander as far away as Afghanistan, and none in Slavic? Why did Greek become the lingua franca in Alexander’s empire if he was actually a “Macedonian”? Why was the New Testament written in Greek rather than Slavic?

On page 57 of the so-called “Letter from Macedonia” there is a photograph of the author standing “before a bronze statue of Alexander the Great in the city of Prilep.” The statue is patently modern, but the question is whether the real historic Alexander could have read the Slavic inscription beneath his feet. Given the known historic posterity of Slavic to Greek, the answer is obvious.

While Mr. Brunwasser’s reporting of the archaeological work in Paionia is welcome, his adoption and promotion of the modern political stance of its people about the use of the name Macedonia is not only unwelcome, it is a disservice to the readers of Archaeology who are, I imagine, interested in historic fact. But then, the decision to propagate this historical nonsense by Archaeology – a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America - is a disservice to its own reputation.

Let it be said once more: the region of ancient Paionia was a part of the Macedonian empire. So were Ephesos and Tyre and Palestine and Memphis and Babylon and Taxila and dozens more. They may thus have become “Macedonian” temporarily, but none was ever “Macedonia”.

Allow me to end this exegesis by making a suggestion to resolve the question of the modern use of the name “Macedonia.” Greece should annex Paionia – that is what Philip II did in 359 B.C. And that would appear to be acceptable to the modern residents of that area since they claim to be Greek by appropriating the name Macedonia and its most famous man. Then the modern people of this new Greek province could work on learning to speak and read and write Greek, hopefully even as well as Alexander did.

Sincerely,

Stephen G. Miller

Professor Emeritus, University of California,

Berkeley

PS: For a more complete examination of the ancient evidence regarding Paionia, see I. L. Merker, “The Ancient Kingdom of Paionia,” Balkan Studies 6 (1965) 35-54

cc: C. Brian Rose, President, Archaeological Institute of America

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State of the United States of America

Dora Bakoyiannis, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece

Antonis Samaras, Minister of Culture of Greece

Olli Rehn, European Commissioner for Enlargement

Erik Meijer, Member, European Parliament