IDLES OF MARCH

 

There are few things worse than being the token Greek at a Lebanese wedding, especially one where the guests, having visited the Melbourne barakia in the nineties with their Greek friends, have developed a particular aesthetic when it comes to Greek music. After establishing some sort of mahala-cred upon executing an unelaborate but eminently passable dabke and feigning complete ease at the fact that the Lebanese dances revolve around themselves clockwise, rather than the proper Greek anti-clockwise direction, the whole thing comes unstuck when the sounds of a zeimbekiko begin to blast through the decibel defying speakers.

“You are Greek. Get up and dance,” the groom (and my erstwhile friend) crows.

“Come on Greece!” the best man begins to gyrate, improvising his own moves while pushing me onto the dance floor. “Show us how it’s done uleh!”

I am trying to express the conviction that Mitropanos’ song “Roza,” is a homage to German Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg who was sadly cut down in her prime and thus possibly not the best choice for a song at a wedding. To the Master of Ceremonies who is waving a microphone directly in front of my mouth and demanding that I sing the lyrics, I attempt to explain Rosa’s belief that socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism, but all he does is bring the microphone closer and closer like a demented ice-cream.

Thankfully my ordeal is over when Fadi my Mitropano-loving friend from Zahle grabs the microphone from the MC’s hand, pushes me off the dance floor and begins to croon:

- Ταχίνι μου στεγανά και ντιπ σασμένα…

“What kind of a Greek are you?” one of the bridesmaids look at me scornfully. “Even Greek we Lebos do better!” her partner exclaims jubilantly.

Pasiphae, aunt of Medea and queen of Crete, punished King Minos for his infidelity, considered the ultimate insult, by causing him via a curse to ejaculate serpents, scorpions, and centipedes, thus killing any unlawful concubine. I find myself thinking of Paisphae, not because I am minded to wish such an excruciating fate upon my interlocutors but rather because like her, I consider them at that moment to be full of bull.

The revellers have quite forgotten me by now. Instead their attention has been captured by a Maltese work-friends who, having imbibed significant amounts of the Johnnie Walker Greek label ostentatiously placed upon the table, is on the dance floor, having a lovely time. Sensing her heightened amounts of jubilation and the fact she is unaccompanied by a partner, sundry male guests move in, as a pack, with the alpha among their number, dancing suggestively in her immediate vicinity and miming movements that hint at him guiding her into various attitudes. She being fulsome in stature, one of the guests sidles up to me and laughs, “It’s like steering a ship into harbour.”

I comment that the word govern, comes via the Latin gubernare, from the Greek κυβερνᾶν, that is to steer. Aeschylus for example describes a ruler as «ἐν πρύμνηι πόλεως οἴακα νωνῶν» that is, plying the tiller at the ship's stern. Just how good a helmsman our chief steerer is, however, is a matter for the Parliamentary Steering Committee. There are a number of entendres there of a single or duplicate nature but I am too tired to count and all I receive in response is a quote I instantaneously identity as belonging to Sir Mixalot: “Baby got back.”

Encouraged, I proceed to tell him about Sophia of Montferrat, imported to Byzantium by the Emperor Manuel II to be the wife of his son John. According to the chronicler Doukas: “The young woman was extremely well-proportioned in body. Her neck was shapely, her hair blondish with braids flowing down to her ankles like glimmering golden streams. Her shoulders were broad and her arms, bosom, and hands well proportioned. Her fingers were transparent. She was tall in stature and stood very straight -- but her face and lips and the malformation of her nose and eyes and eyebrows presented a most revolting composition. In general, she may be described in the words of the vulgar adage: "Lent from the front and Easter from behind."

“I’m actually Muslim,” he reveals, prompted by the punchline.

Oblivious to his lack of engagement, I regale him with the tale of the time that Greek revolutionary Andreas Lontos fell head over heels in love with Italian prima donna, Rita Basso. The Father of the Revolution Theodoros Kolokotronis among others was scandalised by the revealing, figure-hugging nature of her clothing, prompting him to exclaim in wonderment:

"I saw something I had never seen in all my years. Up until now I knew that women bulge at the front, in Athens I learned that they bulge at the rear."

The Maltese work-friend has managed to extricate herself from the clutches of a bawdy dance partner and appears tired and emotional. I cast my eye arοund for a drink. There is no wine on the table, the beverages on offer all being of a spirit nature. Considering the coupling of Scotch and Bourbon as an uncouth pleonasm, the only other choice is vodka, a particularly virulent concoction, that manifestly has been brewed during the Russian Potato Blight of 1846. The weather is unseasonably hot and as I am thirsty, I begin to chortle quietly to myself as I devise a hitherto Greek hero who, while on a pub crawl in Russia has too much vodka and stumbles across the border into Moldavia, inadvertently sparking off the 1821 Greek Revolution: Tipsylantis.

There is much banging of drum now and a good deal of jiggling of various body parts. I part through the testosterone-filled dance floor as a veritable Moses (sotto voce as he is not too popular at the moment among the revellers) parting the Red Sea, telling myself that all I have to do is to put one foot after the other in order to make a bee-line for the conveniences. After all, the Greek word for sheep «πρόβατο» literally means “that which walks forwards.” Upon reaching my destination, I gaze up at the harsh, unrelenting glow of the light fixture and apply myself to the task at hand with all the powers of concentration I can summon, channelling the archaic bard Hesiod: «μηδ' ἄντ' ἠελίου τετραμμένος ὄρθὸς ὀμείχειν». “And do not urinate upright facing the sun.”

“I love you man,” my Muslim friend from earlier gushes and enfolds me in an embrace that I would have appreciated slightly more had he first placed his hands under the Dyson Airblade Hand Dryer.

“Straight talk now. Let’s call a spade a spade. Who is more better, more sexier than the Lebos and the Greeks?” he whoops, grabbing my posterior by way of punctuating his point.

The poet Yiannis Ritsos was wont to seek to call a fig, a fig and a kneading trough, a kneading trough (έτσι, να λέμε πια τα σύκα-σύκα και τη σκάφη-σκάφη) but did not the great philhellene Oscar Wilde confess: "I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for."?

My mind is too stepped in bad alcohol to be in a position to appreciate the full parameters of the question. If I was compelled to describe my psychological disposition, it would be mantipolar, «μαντιπόλος» ie. frenzied or inspired, this being the term used in the epic of Saint Cyprian to describe his mental state during his sojourn in Phrygia. I determine then to resort to «Ὁμηρίζειν» that is to Homerize, which in ancient Greek, meant to lie. Apparently, Aristotle made the extraordinary claim that Homer “taught other poets the proper way to lie.”

“Brother, there are three types of people in this world,” I slur finally. “Those who are Lebos, those who thank God… hang, how does it go? Those who are, those who aren’t and…

“What’s the third type bro?” he asks, his eyes wide with anticipation as my hands unconsciously create a protective cocoon around my parts privy.

“I don’t know,” I finally shrug. “I never think these things through.”

Feeling my way outside by clasping the wall, I make valiant attempts to make my way to my car. There is a shopping centre car park nearby, and some of the guests have obtained shopping trolleys in which they are entrenched and engaged upon an environmentally friendly form of drag race. In between dodging the speeding projectiles and attempting to find my own, I finally make it home, unable to explain why my head feels as if it has had a shisha bar land on it. The last thing I remember is launching into an exposition about Greco-Lebanese brotherhood with a tattooed trolley-dolly and trying to explain to him that the ancient Greeks placed a coin in their dead loved one's mouths, in order to enable them to obtain a shopping trolley in the afterlife.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 29 March 2025

 

KOLOKOTRONOCLASM

 

It is a phenomenon as old as the world itself. The Vikings knew it, which is why all their myths coalesce around Ragnarök, the last battle in which the gods would be vanquished and the world broken. The Hindus knew it, and they awaited Shiva to destroy the world in order for another to be forged in its place. The Greeks however, could not foresee the end of the usurping Olympians, though they were happy to dethrone them, desecrate their temples and trample over their statues and built triumphant new edifices proclaiming their adherence to a new set of beliefs.

Yet it was not us who invented iconoclasm, the action of attacking or assertively rejecting cherished beliefs and institutions or hallowed personages. The archetypal iconoclast can be found in the arch-heretic pharaoh Akhenaten of Egypt who had the temerity to reject the anthropomorphic gods of the Thebaid, only to worship the sun-disk as sole deity. To this end he caused his officials to carve or scratch out all references to the old gods on the temples and public buildings of his land.

The Jews of old too were iconoclastic and this was a Divine imperative. In Numbers 33:52 God commanded that they “drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, destroy all their engraved stones, destroy all their moulded images, and demolish all their high places.”

Some Orthodox icons proudly depict the smashing of ancient statues. Some statues still survive of the goddess Aphrodite, rendered suitably harmless by the large cross carved on her forehead. Yet for all that, ancient statues, particularly the good ones, were revered in Byzantium, repurposed as works of art.  According to the Patria of Constantinople, the statue of Aphrodite outside the brothels reputedly set up by Constantine the Great in Constantinople was used as a touchstone for chaste women and virgins who were under suspicion. Those whose chastity were under question would be made to approach the statue. If they were chaste, they would pass by unharmed. However, if the opposite was true, a “sudden apparition would confuse her and reluctantly and against her will, as soon as she approached…and lifting her dress in front of all, she would show her genitals before all.” Onward Christian Soldiers indeed…

When it came to Byzantium, iconoclasm arose out of feelings of insecurity and vulnerability. The adherents of aniconic Islam had swept into the traditional Byzantine territories of the East and were making conquest after conquest. This caused many to reflect upon the perceived shortcomings of their own society, ascribing Byzantine losses not to it being significantly weakened by incessant prior wars against external enemies, internal strife, and a lack of manpower (that would have been too complicated) but instead to the Byzantines veneration of icons. Perhaps the only way forward was to smash, deface or destroy the scapegoats of one’s shortcomings.

Of course it didn’t work. One hundred or so years later, the icons returned and they have been with us ever since, in unaltered form, standing silent vigil during that time, as our people lost the known world, remained in darkness, and then, in 1821, forged their world anew. Along the way, they found new icons, whose likenesses, in the form of statues, busts and pictures, adorn classrooms, kafeneia, public squares and textbooks. Kolokotronis, Papaflessas, Athanasios Diakos, Georgios Karaiskakis were and remain the new icons: impenetrable, unassailable, completely unsurpassable. Until now that is.

Recently, the pedestal of the statue of Theodoros Kolokotronis, the so-called “Old man of Morea” outside of the Old Greek Parliament was defaced with graffiti. The slogans spray-painted upon it in livid red angrily proclaimed: “Dead Men Cannot Rape,” and “Queer Rage.” Cries of shock and shame immediately emanated from all quarters. How dare they? How ungrateful! How indicative of the decline of a society which far from progressing is turning upon itself to consume itself!

In Victoria, Marty Sheargold was recently cancelled for permitting himself to perform a similar form of iconoclastic blasphemy against the Australian women's national football team. His transgression was flippant and in poor taste and the reaction it provoked indicates how deeply people feel the need to idolise their betters and just how beyond reproach or indeed critical analysis they want them to be. Kolokotronis and his like are no different. They occupy a plane above the reach of mere mortals. Their achievements are superhuman, so their moral virtues must also touch the Divine, lest or whole belief system come crashing down on our heads.

We know for instance that Kolokotronis could be rather blunt when in search of funds. In 1822, he wrote to Ignatios, Metropolitan of Ungro-Wallachia, a man who selflessly and single-mindedly devoted his life to raising money from Greeks Abroad, in order to fund the Greek Revolution, seeking money to repair the fortress of Nauplion. He wrote:  “You're to send it to me without fail. If you don't, I'll be at war with you, war without mercy, war without end, and I'll leave it to be carried on by my descendants." So much for friendly camaraderie.

In 1823, when Alexandros Mavrokordatos was elected head of the Legislative Body at the Assembly of Epidauros, the Bishop of Arta was sent to Kolokotronis to break the news. As he sang the praises of Mavrokordatos, Kolokotronis drew his yataghan and started waving it in his face. The horrified bishop protested that the whole Legislative Body would have no choice but to leave the Peloponnese if threats like this continued. Soon after, they did so. Soon after, Kolokotronis as Vice-President of the Executive summoned Alexander Mavrocordatos, and told him that unless he resigned his office at once he would mount him backwards on a donkey and have him chased out of the Peloponnese with whips.  Mavrokordatos, the only man in Greece who at the time wore a European frock-coat and thick rimless spectacles, a polymath and speaker of eight languages, resigned in the face of this intimidation, proving that democracy is all well and good, but being a warlord who governs by fiat, was far more persuasive.

This man was a staunch fighter for freedom. He was also a sworn enemy of whoever harmed his interests, no matter where he was from or what beliefs he espoused. Under his leadership, the massacre of Tripolitsa took place, where innocent Muslim and Jewish civilians were massacred and raped, despite promises of protection and safe conduct. Perhaps this is what the aggrieved iconoclasts are seeking to draw our attention to, with their defacement of public property.

It is a debate worth having. In his own memoirs, Kolokotronis records how sicked he was by the massacre committed by the troops under his command: "Inside the town they had begun to massacre. ... I rushed to the place ... If you wish to hurt these Albanians, I cried, "kill me rather; for, while I am a living man, whoever first makes the attempt, him will I kill the first." ... I was faithful to my word of honour ... Tripolitsa was three miles in circumference. The [Greek] host which entered it, cut down and were slaying men, women, and children from Friday till Sunday. Thirty-two thousand were reported to have been slain. One Hydriote [boasted that he had] killed ninety. About a hundred Greeks were killed; but the end came [thus]: a proclamation was issued that the slaughter must cease. ... When I entered Tripolitsa, they showed me a plane tree in the market-place where the Greeks had always been hanged. I sighed. "Alas!" I said, "how many of my own clan – of my own race – have been hanged there!" And I ordered it to be cut down. I felt some consolation then from the slaughter of the Turks. ... [Before the fall] we had formed a plan of proposing to the Turks that they should deliver Tripolitsa into our hands, and that we should, in that case, send persons into it to gather the spoils together, which were then to be apportioned and divided among the different districts for the benefit of the nation; but who would listen?"

It is not at all clear whether Kolokotronis participated in the massacre. It is likely that, as he candidly states in his memoirs, that he did not, but allowed his troops to run riot, as this was the ordinary practice during the warfare of the age. Similarly, one can assume that we would have been mystified by the moral outrage that actions of this nature would cause in the present time.

Do we do wrong, if we take down the icons of those we revere once in a while, give them a good dusting, and after the cobwebs are clear and scrutinise them anew, debate whether they are still worthy of veneration? Do we do wrong, if in accordance with Queer Theory, we seek to analyse the manner in which Kolokotronis’ deeds and character is portrayed as establishing a set of gender norms? Certainly not. Today’s heroes are tomorrow’s enemies of the people, as the ostracisers of ancient Athens knew and civilisations will discard heroes they no longer have use for and replace them with others, despite our conviction that immortality can be purchased through word or song or deed. For those who need to worship still, no amount of historical research, interrogation and conversation will convince them of their idols’ defenestration. For their brethren, who prefer a more nuanced and spherical view, continued debate and research can only serve to flesh out a more complete picture of a personality, which was just that, a human being, albeit an outstanding one, with all his foibles and accomplishments.

The slogans on the statue of Kokokotronis are suggestive of an absence of such a process of dialogue: when one departs from the realm of hagiography only to embrace daemonography. And while these questions are worth discussing over a glass of something pungent, after a particularly heavy dinner in congenial company, a single plea becomes pertinent: Please be gentle.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 22 March 2025

FROM THE BRINK: REVIVING GREEK VIA HEBREW

It is, perhaps no coincidence that Φάρος, the Greek word for lighthouse and thus a beacon to guide one to safety and ensure their survival, rhymes with Χάρος, the shady mythological figure whose job it was to guide the souls of the no longer living across the Acheron River, into the land of Hades. Sooner or later, despite the best efforts of the former, an encounter with the latter is inevitable. To exhaust the death motif to its ultimate tortuous extent, if sarcophagy describes the process by which flesh is feasted upon and is decomposed, then glossophagy denotes the manner in which one language is slowly subsumed by another.

We are living in the era of the palliative care of the Greek language in Australia. Linguists consider gradual language death to occur when the people speaking that language interact with speakers of a language of higher prestige. This group of people first becomes bilingual, then with newer generations the level of proficiency decreases, and finally no native speakers exist. One by one, despite our best efforts, Modern Greek Studies courses disappear from the tertiary syllabus and those that remain, do so on life support. We scratch our heads and wonder why after twelve years of Greek school classes, our progeny cannot construct a coherent sentence in that language that does not include the words souvlaki, Mykonos and rezili, all the while pondering why, in a community that has so many resources and numbers over a hundred thousand, only182 students studied Modern Greek at VCE level in Victoria.

Meanwhile, the lingua franca of our community, the one in which our press releases and media posts is conducted in, is now predominately English and not Greek. Beyond the pretty photos, the printed propaganda, the carefully crafted adulatory and self-congratulatory stage-managed gatherings and panegyria, this is the ugly truth of the precipice we are perched upon. We don’t like it. It makes us feel as uneasy and self-conscious as when we are forced into a situation where we have to speak Greek because we have no choice and there is no escape. Somehow, and we can’t fathom why, we feel personally responsible for the loss of a language which many of us know, but don’t really want to speak anymore, even though we all agree it is such an important part of our identities. On occasion, when we wax lyrical about the size and vitality of our community, our thought processes begin to take us down the path of trying to calculate how much time and money has gone into creating and maintaining our Greek language schools, and how better off we would have been as a community instead if we had taken those funds and allocated them towards property investments instead. But then again, we are supposed to be a nation of entrepreneurs, and we banish those thoughts within seconds.

There are many reasons for our failure, and the solutions we from time to time come up with in our fora, our conferences and our discussions, don’t seem to be working. Throwing money at the problem doesn’t work. Amalgamating Greek schools doesn’t work. Glossy calendars and photos of smiling students learning Greek dancing doesn’t work. Yet for some reason, up until now, our focus has not been on the examples of languages brought back from the brink of, or indeed, of total extinction.

The only language that has come back from the dead has been Hebrew, in Israel, after over a millenium. Dispersed far from their ancestral homelands, Jews adopted the dominant languages of the countries in which they lived, or adapted these to their purpose, while retaining Hebrew as a revered holy language. However, towards the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century, a movement began for the revival of the Hebrew language that reached its apogee after the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel. What kept the memory of Hebrew alive, was its liturgical use and the conviction of those who revered it, that even if they did not understand it, its memory was worth preserving. What ensured its revival was pure ideology and nationalism: a burning conviction that a people should speak their own tongue, one that would express their history, their aspirations an unite them. Remarkably, this endeavour worked, with Yiddish and Ladino, the erstwhile tongues of the European diaspora, now becoming endangered.

While the Jewish experience is unique and cannot be compared to our own, there are lessons and parallels to our own history that can provide inspiration as we try to drag our language back from the brink: Firstly, sheer willpower and the absolute belief that speaking the tongue is necessary. In the eighteenth century, Saint Kosmos the Aetolian traversed western Greece, exhorting, cajoling, pleading with and demanding that the local inhabitants speak Greek to each other and their offspring, instead of Vlach, Arvantic and the other idioms that they had adopted. That this is a slow and painful process is beyond doubt. When Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who wrote the first modern Hebrew dictionary and was responsible for creating much of its vocabulary began his attempts to convince his compatriots to speak solely in Hebrew, only four families could do so. Yet in the fullness of time both of these visionaries had their dreams for language revival fulfilled.

There are flaws in seeking to follow this approach to the letter. Both revivals are a corollary to a national project that is pertinent to the people who reside in the countries created by those projects. Significant state resources over a long period of time have been allocated so as to ensure public knowledge of Greek and Hebrew in those countries. In Australia, however, the dominant class does not share our linguistic history and the experience of the diaspora is different. Of the 99,956 Australians who identified as Jews in the 2021 Australian census, 10,844 or just one ninth stated that they spoke Hebrew. In contrast, in the same census, of the 424,750 Australians identifying as Greek, 229,643 or approximately one half stated they spoke Greek, the extent of their fluency being unknown.

There are also other differences. While the Greek identity has been centred largely around Greece and its language throughout its historical discourse (and of course, the Greek language has been spoken continuously within its homeland for the past four millenia and in its peripheries), the Jewish identity developed by necessity in a centrifugal fashion with more diverse points of reference. Nonetheless, the fact remains that sheer willpower, an almost missionary zeal facilitated the revival of a defunct tongue. It is this imperative for re-genesis, that could provide a source of inspiration for our own community. Before we do so, however, we would have to face the elephant in the room. For all our lip service to the key role of Greek civilisation in humanity, we have already adopted the language of those we subconsciously accept are of higher prestige. The inhabitants of Israel chose to embrace a language that gave them prestige. Our relationship with our identity in this country, is a more ambiguous one. Regardless, the Hebrew experience also teaches us something else that is value: the contexts in which, if language loss is to occur, a selection of ingredients can be preserved, to form the seeds of revival in the future.

There are other languages which, although never extinct, have had their decline arrested: Welsh, Hawaiian and Basque to name but a few. In this case, such a revival came as a consequence of state intervention and language policy. Once upon a time, our community was heavily invested in language policy in this country, but as the definition of multiculturalism has evolved over time, this no longer seems to be of priority. Perhaps it is time this changed.

Whatever the future may hold, we cannot, like the Bourbons before us, continue on as before, having forgotten nothing and learnt nothing. If we are serious about language retention, let us study the success stories and learn from them, drawing upon the strengths of our own cultural memory. The time is now.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 15 March 2025

ΚΡΙΜΣS ΑΓΑΙΝΣΤ ΑΛΦΑΒΣΤS

 Some things get my goat like no others. One of the major ones, are persons who misspell their parents’ names on their tombstones. Tombstones are civilisation’s lame attempt at a final stab at eternity. The person buried beneath them may no longer be gone but their name is supposed to endure, at least for a little while, so one may as well get it right. For some reason however, many Greek-Australians are oblivious to the fact that the consonantal cluster ΚΣ can ably be represented by a letter known as Ξ, and that ΠΣ can more efficiently be rendered by the letter Ψ. Similarly, the progeny of many a dead Greek appear blissfully unaware of the fact that the letter, not the watch brand, Omega, according to one tradition, was invented by lyric poet Simonides of Ceos and its use became established in Ionia by the sixth century.

In 403BC, at the urging of Eucleides, the Athenians voted to replace the old Attic alphabet with the Ionian one, making the omega official. Someone obviously forgot to inform the Greeks of Melbourne, many of whom universally employ O instead of Ω, and criminally on occasion, Φ. Given that they probably don’t use this alphabet anywhere else, possibly what we are witnessing is the emergence of a unique script which in the future, archaeologists shall term Tomb Script. The ancient, endangered script of the Chams, a linguistic minority of South East Vietnam and Cambodia, is so integral to their identity, they must learn it before they can go to the afterlife. We on the other hand, don’t learn ours, so that our progenitors may stay with us forever.

Alphabetic liberties are taken on a daily basis in our community. From the undertaker who uses a V to write the word Vεκρώσιμη on his premises in Bell Street, thus burying the Greek alphabet as well as his clients for good measure, to the church in the western suburbs that proudly uses the equally and fittingly western Greek alphabet to inscribe upon its entrance: IERA ARXIEΠΙΣΚΟΠΗ, with linguists contending that the said R should be pronounced as it is in English, giving the Greek an Irish tinge, in our hands the alphabet is a pliable instrument, with every single letter being as negotiable as a cheque before the banking reforms of 1908.

Nonetheless, it cannot be disputed that the Greek alphabet forms a major part of our identity. We are inordinately proud of the fact that the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is represented by the letter π regardless of the fact that the Babylonians were the first to make a written approximation of it centuries before Archimedes’ calculations. We are also extremely proud of the fact that we “gave” our alphabet both to what ended up being the Latin West and the Slavic East, forgetting that we adapted it from the Phoenicians, according to Herodotus. This, we have difficulty in accepting, except for the Cretans of Melbourne, who still use the Linear B script (the Cretans of Sydney prefer Linear A) and the Cypriots who still use the ancient Cypriot syllabary with an extra two ideoglyphs to represent koumbaroi and shetalies,  leaning more likely to the more facile and elegant solution of the polymath Patriarch Photius who attempted to explain away the reason why the ancients referred to our alphabet as  Φοινικήια γράμματα in the following way:

 

“The Lydians and Ionians [report] that letters came from Phoinix the son of Agenor who invented them. But the Cretans report differently that they were developed from writing on the leaves of palm trees (phoinikes).

Skamon, in the second book of his Inventions, says that they were named for Aktaion’s daughter Phoinike. The story goes that he had no male children, but that he had daughters Aglauros, Erse, and Pandrosos. Phoinike died still a virgin. For this reason, Aktaion named the letters "Phoenician" for her, because he wished to give some honour to his daughter.” We did after all, invent everything, including invention itself.

 

Type the words “Ancient Macedonian alphabet,” in Google and a number of Glagolithic and Cyrillic Scripts emerge upon the page. This is of course nonsense, for the ancient Macedonians used the Greek script, but substituting the letter X for Ξ, which is why Social Media Warriors and Defenders of the Faith who secretly lust after Colin Farrell gush over a historical figure they refer to in writing as ΜΕΓΑ ΑΛΕΧΑΝΔΡΟ, pronounced in like fashion to the object of Lady Gaga’s lament:  “Don't call my name, don't call my name Alejandro…”

 

It is this history of license and abuse which cause me to recall possibly the best verse of poetry ever written, by Greek-Australian poet Tina Giannoukos, in “Bull Days:” “The mellifluous alphabet of pain...” It is a pain intensified by another insidious phenomenon: that of the reckless and insensitive abuse of the Greek alphabet by foreigners, especially Westerners. This is not by any means a new phenomenon. College fraternities have appropriated Greek letters for their so-called “Greek Organisations” as far back as the foundation of the Phi Beta Kappa society at the College of William and Mary in 1776. At least those initials stand for the ancient Greek phrase Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης, signifying: “Love of wisdom, the guide of life.” The Chi Phi fraternity at Princeton I am reliably informed by initiated members of the Tierra Del Fuegan chapter of AHEPA, stands for Χέστηκε η Φοράδα στο Αλώνι, which is demotic Greek for when one is up a particular creek, sans paddle. Mysteriously, while we are rightfully enraged when our Slavic cousins appropriate our identity, we seem not to mind when frat prats have the temerity to autoidentify as Greek. This is something, I humbly submit, the international copyright experts employed by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs should look into, and perchance, pursue compensation.

 

I am by persuasion, as anti-Goebbelsian as the next socio-economic entity, but I freely admit I can go the full Savanarola and seek to stoke the pyre of my rage by consigning to it such excremental publications as the prurient Sαlly Griffyη who dares to entitle her “book” on Stone Circles and Sacred Paths: Sαcrεδ joψrηeyξ. Such crimes against alphabets must only be dealt with by condign punishment: the suspension of one’s year four pen license and re-education through labour, self-criticism and failing that, immolation by barbeque.  Similarly, when American property developer Phil South begins to advise you that ΩΗΑΤ ΩΕ ΛΣΑςΣ ΒΣΗΙΝΔ ΦΣ...and the words begin to become as garbled as the time in 1992 when theia Maritsa had a stroke after her daughter brought home a boyfriend who she mistook for an Indian even though he hailed from Rhodes, your rage must be tempered with sympathy, as you recall your Aussie neighbour who goes about his business with the word ΦΡΕΕ emblazoned upon his arm and you recall that in the mid to late nineties when personal computers were still a prestige novelty, countless younger members of Greek-Australian organisations were convinced that if you composed a newsletter in Times New Roman English, highlighted the text and transposed it into Symbol font, the text would magically translate itself into Greek, although you would still have to add the accents in ballpoint pen, Kilometrico for choice. Here then, we transcend the mundane and enter the realms of faith. Just as how Marx never fully explains how the State will wither away, so too are we never to know just how Symbol will convert any alphabet into Greek. You just have to believe.

 

It is for this reason therefore, that try as I might, and egged on by my Neos Kosmos guru, as polymathic as the Patriarch Photius who is his namesake, Fotios Kapetopoulos, I can experience no frenzy and fit into no pique, at the revelation that the divine Queen B’s premier offering to world scholarship “HOMECOMING: A film by Beyoncé (I’ve come to Netflix relatively late in life) is rendered in the promotional material as HΘΜΣCΘΜΙΝG, because I suspect that it either critically treats an imminent delivery of Hommus, or rather, showcases her musical stylings within the context of “black Greek life,” which I understand, refers to African American fraternities and sororities who are federated in an umbrella organisation which has been known as the National Pan-Hellenic Council as far back as 1930, decades before our own Australian Hellenic Council was but a glint in founder Costa Vertzayias’ eye.

 

And it is for this reason that I eagerly await the arrival of the latest version of the filmic medium’s treatment of the Homeric Epic that is being touted as ΤΗΣ ΘΔΨSSΣΨ, which was exactly the same exclamation that I emitted whilst moved to ecstasy the last time I beheld Efi Thodi in concert in Trikala, way back in 2006, when I was still being weaned off the Symbol font. That is to say, I am not so much flattered as confused, for while Odysseus is most definitely described as πολυμήχανος by our Blind Bard, there is nothing in the versions of the text that I have read that refer to Odysseus having ever founded a college fraternity, and I am dying to know more, for I am in the process of preparing my doctored dissertation on Greek-Australian Brotherhoods as frathouses, where according to Grimm’s law in linguistics, the Proto-Indo-European "p" sound evolved into an "f" sound. And after all, we Greeks are not the only victims of Alphabet appropriation. My Russian friends are heartily sick of the letter Я being usurped as either an R or an A, whenever anyone wants to reheat the frozen leftovers of the Cold War. Я is supposed to be pronounced “ya,” which means that yiayia in Russian would be ЯЯ, efficient, cool and eminently inscribable upon a tombstone at a fraction of the cost, to boot. Be thus not dismayed and rejoice,  MY FRIENDS. WE SHALL MAKE GREEK GREAT ΑΓΑΙΝ.

 ΔΕΑΝ ΚΑΛΨΜΝΙΦΨ

Φιrστ ΡθβλισΗεδ ον ΣατθrδαΥ 11 ΜαrcH 2025 

LOOKING FOR THEMIS

 

“I rule in favour the plaintiff,” the judge pronounced. I barely suppressed a whoop of triumph. Being a relatively newly minted lawyer, this was the first case I had undertaken without supervision and my opponent, a compatriot, was a seasoned veteran, prone to provide such sage advice as “Never try to out-bullshit a bullshitter” (which considering the size of his ample posterior, was an eminently proportionate caution) and: “No matter what the outcome of this case, I still get to send my kids to a private school,” an aphorism whose wisdom, only decades later, with offspring of my own that demand to be educated, I have finally come to appreciate. Nonetheless, at that moment, I was eminently enamoured of myself. I had been suave, I had been debonair. I had enunciated my consonants with flair. I had established a rapport with the judge and had gently in cross-examination led the defendant down a path of logical obstacles and contradictions to his testimony. Now was my winter of discontent turned glorious summer by a combination of diligence and over-emphasis. The path of my legal career appeared before me like a wnding, twisty-turny thing….

My client a diminutive elderly man with spare white hair and a luxuriously groomed moustache drooping down from his sunken cheeks glared at the judge with his yellow flecked eyes and shrugged his shoulders.

“It means you’ve won Mr Prapalapopoulopou….. I’m I pronouncing it correctly?” the judge continued.

The old man stuck his thumbs in his blue serge suit that looked as if it had last seen use at his daughter’s wedding some twenty years ago and was emitting an acute odour of expired mothballs and said nothing.

“Aren’t you happy? You should be happy that you’ve won?” the judge asked. Turning to me, he directed: “Mr Kalimniou, perhaps you might like to explain to your client that he has won,” before dismissing us.

-Νικήσατε, I said to my client gently. Αυτό σας λέει.

-Να τον χέσω τον τζάτζη και τους νόμους του και εσείς τους δικηγόρους και τη δικαιοσύνη σας (I excrete upon the judge and his laws and upon you lawyers and your justice) he spat and stormed outside the courtroom.

Hastily I gathered the papers of my file as I set out after him, as my colleague, still ensconced in his seat at the bar table guffawed: “Ha, typical! That’s how the old shifty Greeks are my friend. They create a fuss so that they use it as a pretext not to pay you. If you want my advice, stay away from the Greeks. Gone are the days when you can make money from a Greek. And when they come to your office they smell of garlic and χωριατίλα. Its not a good image. Instead, what you need to do is find yourself some corporate clients. Solid payers, not like these pensioner γύφτοι…”

Outside, the elderly gentleman was pacing up and down, visibly irritated. Slowly, I approached him and offered to buy him a coffee. At my offer, he softened.

“You buy me a coffee, my son? I should buy you a coffee.”

We sat down and he took out his komboloi and began to flick it with his fingers, the amber beads clacking as they hit each other again and again. He slurped his coffee with a sense of urgency that can only be found in those who have been denied sustenance at some stage in their lives and fear that those times will inevitably come again.

“This is some profession you have chosen for yourself,” the old man observed as I went through some final details with him. “Like marionettes in a puppet show, each being controlled by invisible strings. Actually no, like that cricket that these Australians are so crazy about. That was not a courtroom. That was not justice. That was a game of cricket that you people played, with assigned roles. Your turn to bat, your turn to bowl, well played sir, wow you hit a six but nothing to do with people’s lives. We, are completely ignored.”

I looked at him thoughtfully.

“Listen,” he said, grasping my arm tightly. “I came to this country when I was eighteen years old. An orphan with three sisters back in Greece to look after. I came here so that I could make enough money to be able to feed them and provide for their dowries. The things I saw and experienced, you will never be able to know or understand. The injustice of being denied a place in the sun, simply because you are destitute and here in Australia, to be laughed at and considered a second-class citizen every time you open your mouth. Oh, I’ve seen things. In the cane fields in Queensland, in the farms up in the Mallee and in down here business. Do you know what it is when you don’t have enough money to buy milk for your kids and the landlord is telling you that if you don’t pay the rent he will through you and your family out onto the street? That was how I lived my life. But as hard as people were with me, I was always honest and gentle in my dealings with others. I never asked and I never took a cent more from anyone in business. If someone needed help, to the best of my ability, I helped them. And I never told a lie or gossip about anyone. That is who I am, at the core of my being.”

I had heard these stories from so many people of that generation and my countenance must have betrayed my thoughts. “This is important,” the old man increased his grip on my arm and looked me straight in the eyes. “I’m telling you thing so you can learn. I am a man of honour. I wanted the judge to know this. I wanted to look into the judge’s eyes, the way I am looking into yours now and tell him what is in my heart. I wanted him to understand who I am, where I am coming from, what kind of character I have, as a man to a man. Most of all, I wanted him to understand that I am not the type of person that takes others to court, for him to know that for me it is a terrible thing. That I had no other choice but to take my best friend’s son, my best friend who was like my brother ever since I arrived in this country so many decades ago….I had no choice. The κοροϊδία was too great. It wasn’t about the money. I needed the judge to understand this. He needed to know that I’m not a greedy person. It was about the betrayal. He was like a son to me. It was not right what he did, it was the αδικία.... He didn’t let me say anything about this. None of you allowed me to speak what needed to be spoken.”

There were tears in his eyes and I felt uncomfortable that such a proud and dignified man was weeping in my presence. “What I wanted to tell the judge that in memory of my ancestors, no one ever took anyone to court. But what could I do? If I am to remain destitute in my old age, so be it, but it wasn’t right what that boy did, I merely wanted the judge to understand it wasn’t right. I wanted him to know that I agonised over my decision, that I gave the boy so many chances to make things right and for him to make the boy understand that as well, but…. I was denied justice. The judge was not at all interested in me, or my story. He was not concerned about getting to know me or my motivation. Instead, it was all about the money. The money, the money, the money, as if there is nothing else important in this world, as if people and their relationships count for nothing. So yes, I’ve won. What exactly? Humiliation and the loss of my friend’s esteem up there in heaven. English justice.”

Carefully, he removed a painstakingly ironed, monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped one eye after another. “You know once I was told that the English word Justice comes from the Latin word Ius which means law. But the Greek word δικαιοσύνη means fairness. There is a big difference. A lot of truth is hidden in words. But of course, for the ancient Greeks, there was a goddess of Justice, Themis. Justice is part of our religion. And I also remember hearing that in the Byzantine conception of Justice, she is not blind. Instead, she sees all, for context is everything.”

He stood up and reached out his hand. As I extended mine, I felt something cold and hard pressing against my palm. “I wish you every success in your career,” he farewelled me. “But take this komboloi as a memento of our meeting, and remember an old man who tried to teach you the difference between law and justice.” That was decades ago and yet I have carried it into each of my court appearances, ever since.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 1 March 2025