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Listed 25 sub titles with search on: Biographies  for wider area of: "MESSINIA Prefecture PELOPONNISOS" .


Biographies (25)

Artists

Directors

Nikos Kaloyeropoulos

CHALAZONI (Village) FILIATRA
  Born in 1952 in Chalazoni, Messinia. After his graduation from the School of Dramatic Art he worked in the theatre as an actor, writer and director. In 1976 he founded a theatrical company which toured the country. At the same time he worked in television and motion pictures.

This text is cited October 2004 from the Greek Film Center URL below


Engravers

Tassos

LEFKOCHORA (Village) MESSINI
1914 - 1985

Fighters of the 1821 revolution

Mitropetrovas

KATO MELPIA (Village) ANDANIA
1745 - 1838

Ilias Bisbinis

MILIA (Village) LEFKTRA

Ioannis Nifos

1793 - 1879

Nikitaras (Nikitas Stamatelopoulos)

NEDOUSSA (Village) KALAMATA
1787 - 1849

Papaflessas (real name Dikeos Georgios)

POLIANI (Village) THOURIA
1786 - 1825

Gritzalis

PSARI (Village) TRIFYLIA
The brothers Georgios, Dimitrios and Giannakis were important fighters of the 1821 Revolution.

Folklorists

Nikolaos Politis

KALAMATA (Town) MESSINIA
1852 - 1921
Kalamata is where Nikolaos Politis (1852-1921) the Father of Greek Folklore was born and brought up. With the showing of the folkloric wealth, the manuscripts, speeches and deeds of the people as well as with the customs, the legends and their traditions, as these were saved and passed on from one generation to the other, he proved the historic continuity of the Greeks on the basis of their heritage.

This extract is cited March 2003 from the Messenia Prefecture Tourism Promotion Commission URL below, which contains image.


Historic figures

Captain Telos Agras

GARGALIANI (Small town) MESSINIA
  In the more recent history of Gargaliani and of the whole nation, the young second lieutenant and Macedonian warrior-leader Captain Telos Agras (Sarantis Agapinos) stuck out. He was born in 1880 in Nafplio where his father, Andreas was working as a judge of a court of the first instance, who immediately registered his son in the municipal rolls of the Platamodas municipality with registration number 103/ 1880 as a citizen of his birth town and his ancestors.
  His mother was the sister of the general Ioannis Papatsonis. He was a second infantry lieutenant having studied at Army cadet. His patriotic soul could not stand the national decline, which followed after the loss in 1897 and he decided to take part in the Macedonian War enthusiastically as a chieftain of Vermio, with the nick name Captain Agras, where he tried with all his strength for the opposition to the Vulgarisation of the Greek citizens in Macedonia, something which the Bulgarian committee was doing systematically using all kinds of terrorism. In the end he died fighting for this important and sacred cause. He suffered hard for two years from privations, deprivation, dangers and malaria in the thick and untrodden reed thickets of the lake of Giannitsa, an endless disease-breeding swamp living in wet reed huts from where he was forced to leave for a while in order to recover. He became the fear of the Bulgarian guerrillas of the Lake and the protector of the Greek villages, a legend in the whole of Macedonia for his heroic achievements. Unfortunately, he attempted a friendly negotiation with the Bulgarian leaders Kasapsef and Slatan, to whom he showed trust and went unarmed, accompanied with just one companion, to a pre-arranged meeting to Vladovo. He got arrested cowardly my their men following their orders and was held up to public ridicule for a week in the Bulgarian villages of Edessa and Karatzova and he was finally hanged with his companion on a walnut tree on the road between Techovo and Vladovo. His grave is in the graveyard of Vladovo and a cenotaph on Egnatia Road in the entrance of Vladovo. He was sacrificed on the 3rd of June 1907 at the very young age of 27. Penelope Delta talks about his activities in detail in her wonderful book "The secrets of the Marsh". His such unmanly and brutal murder strengthened the anti-Bulgarian Macedonian War and caused unquenchable hatred against the Bulgarians to the whole Greek nation and he also made his name Captain Agras known throughout Greece. This national hero has been extolled with poems by the famous poet Zacharias Papantoniou and Marika Pipiza from Constantinople (Trifillian Diary 1908, pg 111).
  The village Techovo had its name changed to Karidia in memory to him and Vladovo, where he was buried is now called Agras.

This text is cited Oct 2003 from the Municipality of Gargaliani URL below


Aristodemus

MESSINI (Ancient city) ITHOMI
Messenian, offers his daughter for sacrifice, slays her, chosen king of Messenia, commands Messenians in war with Lacedaemon.

Aristodemus (Aristodemos), a Messenian, who appears as one of the chief heroes in the first Messenian war. In the sixth year of that war the Messenians sent to Delphi to consult the oracle, and the ambassador Tisis brought back the answer, that the preservation of the Messenian senian state demanded that a maiden of the house of the Aepytids should be sacrificed to the gods of the lower world. When the daughter of Lyciscus was drawn by lot, the seer Epebolus declared that she was a supposititious child, and not a daughter of Lyciscus. Hereupon Lyciscus left his country and went over to the Lacedaemonians. As, however, the oracle had added, that if, for some reason, the maiden chosen by lot could not be sacrificed, another might be chosen in her stead, Aristodemus, a gallant warrior, who likewise belonged to the house of the Aepytids, came forward and offered to sacrifice his own daughter for the deliverance of his country. A young Messenian, however, who loved the maiden, opposed the intention of her father, and declared that he as her betrothed had more power over her than her father. When this reason was not listened to, his love for the maiden drove him to despair, and in order to save her life, he declared that she was with child by him. Aristodemus, enraged at this assertion, murdered his daughter and opened her body to refute the calumny. The seer Epebolus, who was present, now demanded the sacrifice of another maiden, as the daughter of Aristodemus had not been sacrificed to the gods, but murdered by her father. But king Euphaes persuaded the Messenians, who, in their indignation, wanted to kill the lover, who had been the cause of the death of Aristodemus' daughter, that the command of the oracle was fulfilled, and as he was supported by the Aepytids, the people accepted his counsel (Paus. iv. 9.2-6.) When the news of the oracle and the manner of its fulfilment became known at Sparta, the Lacedaemonians were desponding, and for five years they abstained from attacking the Messenians, until at last some favourable signs in the sacrifices encouraged them to undertake a fresh campaign against Ithome. A battle was fought, in which king Euphaes lost his life, and as he left no heir to the throne, Aristodemus was elected king by the Messenians, notwithstanding the opposition of some, who declared him unworthy on account of the murder of his daughter. This happened about B. C. 729. Aristodemus shewed himself worthy of the confidence placed in him: he continued the war against the Lacedaemonians, and in B. C. 724 he gained a great victory over them. The Lacedaemonians now endeavoured to effect by fraud what they had been unable to accomplish in the field, and their success convinced Aristodemus that his country was devoted to destruction. In his despair he put an end to his life on the tomb of his daughter, and a short time after, B. C. 722, the Messenians were obliged to recognize the supremacy of the Lacedaemonians (Paus. iv. 10-13).

This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks


Playwrights

Poets

Polydouri Maria

KALAMATA (Town) MESSINIA
1902 - 1930

Katsaros Michalis

KYPARISSIA (Small town) MESSINIA
1919
Poet of the Postwar Generation, he participated in the National Resistance. He wrote the famous "Against the Sadduceans" to accuse any attempt to undermine the revolutionary spirit.

Alcaeus, 3rd-2nd cent. BC

MESSINI (Ancient city) ITHOMI
Messenian poet who wrote songs about the fight for freedom, inspired by the struggles of the Messenians against Phoelippus the Macedonian.

Alcaeus (Alkaios), of Messene, the author of a number of epigrams in the Greek anthology, from some of which his date may be easily fixed. He was contemporary with Philip III., king of Macedonia, and son of Demetrius, against whom several of his epigrams are pointed, apparently from patriotic feelings. One of these epigrams, however, gave even more offence to the Roman general, Flamininus, than to Philip, on account of the author's ascribing the victory of Cynoscephalae to the Aetolians as much as to the Romans. Philip contented himself with writing an epigram in reply to that of Alcaeus, in which he gave the Messenian a very broad hint of the fate he might expect if he fell into his hands. (Plut. Flamin. 9.) This reply has singularly enough led Salmasius to suppose that Alcaeus was actually crucified. In another epigram, in praise of Flamininus, the mention of the Roman general's name, Titus, led Tzetzes (Proleg. in Lycophron) into the error of imagining the existence of an epigrammatist named Alcaeus under the emperor Titus. Those epigrams of Alcaeus which bear internal evidence of their date, were written between the years 219 and U196 B. C.
Of the twenty-two epigrams in the Greek Anthology which bear the name of "Alcaeus", two have the word "Mytilenaeus" added to it; but Jacobs seems to be perfectly right in taking this to be the addition of some ignorant copyist. Others bear the name of "Alcaeus Messenius", and some of Alcaeus alone. But in the last class there are several which must, from internal evidence, have been written by Alcaeus of Messene, and, in fact, there seems no reason to doubt his being the author of the whole twenty-two.
  There are mentioned as contemporaries of Alcaeus, two other persons of the same name, one of them an Epicurean philosopher, who was expelled from Rome by a decree of the senate about 173 or 154 B. C. (Perizon. ad Aelian. V. H. ix. 22; Athen. xii. p. 547, a.; Suidas, s. v. Epikouros): the other is incidentally spoken of by Polybius as being accustomed to ridicule the grammarian Isocrates (Polyb. xxxii. 6; B. C. 160). It is just possible that these two persons, of whom nothing further is known, may have been identical with each other, and with the epigrammatist.

This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks


Nikitas Nifakis

MILIA (Village) LEFKTRA
1748 - 1818

Homer

PYLOS (Ancient city) MESSINIA
Editor’s Information:
Biography, reports and essays on Homer can be found at his birthplace the island of Ios, one of the places that claim the honour of his origin and where is his tomb. There are also other places among the claimants, which are mentioned in an epigram (Gell. III, 11), including the island of Ios: the island of Chios, Smyrna, Rhodes, Colophon, Salamis in Cyprus, Argos, Athens, Cyme in Aeolis, Pylos and Ithaca.

Related to the place

Lyciscus

ITHOMI (Acropolis) MESSINIA
Lyciscus (Lukiskos). A Messenian, descended from Aepytus. In the first Messenian war, the Messenians, having consulted the Delphic oracle, were told that to save their country, they must offer by night, to the gods below, an unstained virgin of the blood of the Aepytidae. The lot fell on the daughter of Lyciscus; but Epebolus, the seer, pronounced her to be unfit for the sacrifice, as being no daughter of Lyciscus at all, but a supposititious child. Meanwhile, Lyciscus, in alarm, took the maiden with him and withdrew to Sparta. Here she died; and several years after, as he was visiting her tomb, to which he often resorted, he was seized by some Arcadian horsemen, carried back to Ithome, and put upon his trial for treason. His defence was, that he had fled, not as being hostile to his country or indifferent to her fate, but in the full belief of what Epebolus had declared. This being unexpectedly confirmed by the priestess of Hera, who confessed that she was herself the mother of the girl, Lyciscus was acquitted. (Paus. iv. 9, 12.)

This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2006 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks


Kolokotronis Theodoros

MILIA (Village) LEFKTRA
In Milia they took to and staied there for three years his mother, his sister, his brother Nikos and he (7 year-old) when his father died. After Milia they went to Alonistena. He staied in Alonistena with his mother when he was 10 year-old, coming back from Milia of Mani. After Alonistena he came in Akovo where the 1787 nominated him war lord and married Katerina Karoussou from Leontari. (Following URL information in Greek only)

Sculptors

Damophon, 2nd cent.BC

MESSINI (Ancient city) ITHOMI
Messenian sculptor.

Damophon, a sculptor of Messene, was the only Messenian artist of any note. (Paus. iv. 31.8.) His time is doubtful. Heyne and Winckelmann place him a little later than Phidias; Quatremere de Quincy from B. C. 340 to B. C. 300. Sillig (Catal. Art. s. v. Demophon) argues, from the fact that he adorned Messene and Megalopolis with his chief works, that he lived about the time when Messene was restored and Megalopolis was built. (B. C. 372-370.) Pausanias mentions the following works of Damophon: At Aegius in Achaia, a statue of Lucina, of wood, except the face, hands, and toes, which were of Pentelic marble, and were, no doubt, the only parts uncovered: also, statues of Hygeia and Asclepius in the shrine of Eileithyia and Asclepius, bearing the artist's name in an iambic line on the base: at Messene, a statue of the Mother of the Gods, in Parian marble, one of Artemis Laphria, and several marble statues in the temple of Asclepius: at Megalopolis, wooden statues of Hermes and Aphrodite, with faces, hands, and toes of marbie, and a great monolith group of Despoena (i. e. Cora) and Demeter, seated on a throne, which is fully described by Pausanias. He also repaired Phidias's colossal statue of Zeus at Olympia, the ivory plates of which had become loose. (Paus. iv. 31.5, 6, 8, viii. 31.3, 5, 37.2.)

This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks


Writers

Kougeas Socrates

DOLI (Village) AVIA
1876 - 1966
Philologist, University teacher and member of the Academy.

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