The recent influx of Pontians into Greece from the Soviet Union is growing daily. Over 20,000 are expected to arrive this year. The flight of the Pontians after the 1913 Turkish massacres into the Caucasus and their later removal into Central Asia is a little known but epic chapter in the 20th century catalogue of massively displaced populations.
This otherwise beautiful and fascinating book is tragically deficient in its cartography and in fact in all the appurtenances of a serious work, having only one map, and that inadequate and wholly lacking a Table of Contents, List of Illustrations, Index, Footnotes, and even the most summary of Bibliographies.
When the eccentric Duchess of Plaisance died intestate in Athens in 1854, her American and French relatives showed little interest in her property. So a big slice of today’s central Athens and land on Mount Penteli was purchased for a pittance by Parliament. Some say it was the wisest act the legislative body ever passed. Sophie de Marbois of Philadelphia, however, would not have been pleased.
Herod Atticus – sophist, monument builder, city father, civic booster, arrogant administrator and melancholy magnate – is know today primarily as the second century A.D. Athenian responsible for raising the Odeion at the foot of the Acropolis. Ancient authors Philostratos and Pausanias paint a more complex portrait
