Η καθιέρωση και ο πρώτος εορτασμός της 25ης Μαρτίου ως Εθνικής Εορτής (απο το "Μικρό Ρωμηό")

Ο Ναός της Αγίας Ειρήνης στην οδό Αιόλου, πρώτος Καθεδρικός Ναός των Αθηνών

του Ελευθερίου Γ. Σκιαδά.

Ποτέ άλλοτε στα παγκόσμια δεδομένα οι συζητήσεις για την καθιέρωση του εορτασμού μιας Επανάστασης δεν υπήρξαν τόσο γόνιμες και παραγωγικές, όσο εκείνες που έγιναν για τον εορτασμό του εθνικού ξεσηκωμού των Ελλήνων (1821). Πρόκειται για την πιο πλούσια –ίσως– σελίδα της νεότερης ελληνικής ιστορίας, η οποία παραμένει σχεδόν ακατάγραφη, με αδημοσίευτα σπουδαία τεκμήρια. Στο επίκεντρο όσων γράφτηκαν μέχρι σήμερα βρέθηκε –όπως ήταν λογικό– η ημερομηνία του ξεσηκωμού, αλλά παραβλέφθηκαν εξίσου σημαντικές παράμετροι, όπως η κοινωνικο-πολιτική και οικονομική διάσταση που απέδιδαν στο γεγονός οι ρομαντικοί παραγωγοί της εθνικής ιδεολογίας εκείνης της εποχής.

Η Βασίλισσα Αμαλία με εθνική ενδυμασία. Νικηφόρος Λύτρας 1893.

Η ελληνική ταυτότητα

Αξιομνημόνευτη είναι η περίπτωση που γεννήθηκε πάνω στο ιδεολογικό υπόβαθρο το οποίο θεμελίωσαν ο ρομαντικός ποιητής Παναγιώτης Σούτσος και ο πολιτικός που διατύπωσε για πρώτη φορά το περιεχόμενο του όρου «Μεγάλη Ιδέα», ο Ιωάννης Κωλέττης. Η σχεδόν οκταετής διάρκεια της Ελληνικής Επανάστασης οδήγησε στη δημιουργία ενός ανεξάρτητου κράτους, του οποίου η συγκρότηση της εθνικής ταυτότητας βασιζόταν και στο στοιχείο της θρησκείας. Οι Έλληνες χριστιανοί επιδιώκουν την αποκοπή τους από τους δεσμούς του οθωμανικού παρελθόντος και στηρίζονται στα στοιχεία της γλώσσας και της Ιστορίας που παραπέμπουν στην αρχαία Ελλάδα. Πρόκειται για την κορωνίδα της εθνικής ταυτότητας που λειτουργεί και ως πηγή για την κατάκτηση «πολιτιστικής γνησιότητας».
Προτείνουν λοιπόν την 25η Μαρτίου, ημέρα του Ευαγγελισμού της Θεοτόκου, για την Εθνική Εορτή των Ελλήνων και συνοδεύουν την πρότασή τους με την αναβίωση πολιτιστικών και αθλητικών γεγονότων στα πρότυπα της αρχαιότητας. Θέλουν να καταστήσουν την Εθνική Εορτή μέγα υπερτοπικό γεγονός, με εντυπωσιακές και οικονομικές διαστάσεις. Επιλέγουν ένα δίκτυο πόλεων για την ανάπτυξη υποδομών (Αθήνα, Ύδρα, Τριπολιτσά, Μεσολόγγι) και στοχεύουν στη διεθνή προβολή της χώρας από τη Μαύρη Θάλασσα έως τις ακτές της Γαλλίας, της Αιγύπτου και της Μέσης Ανατολής. Αυτά συμβαίνουν στα 1835, τρία χρόνια πριν από τον επίσημο καθορισμό της Εθνικής μας Εορτής.

“Υπερ πατρίδος το παν”, Θεόδωρος Βρυζάκης 1858. (Σημείωση 1 κατωτέρω)

Η καθιέρωση

Οι εξελίξεις δεν επέτρεψαν την υιοθέτηση ολόκληρου του φιλόδοξου εκείνου σχεδίου. Ύστερα από παλινωδίες και μόλις στις 25 Μαρτίου 1838, δεκαεπτά χρόνια μετά το ξέσπασμα της Επανάστασης, θα πραγματοποιηθεί ο πρώτος εορτασμός που καθιερώνεται με Βασιλικό Διάταγμα του Όθωνα. Ένα Διάταγμα που δεν δημοσιεύθηκε στην Εφημερίδα της Κυβερνήσεως, όπως συνηθιζόταν τότε, αλλά στον Τύπο της εποχής. Ο διττός, εθνικός και θρησκευτικός χαρακτήρας του εορτασμού αποτυπώνεται στο επίσημο κείμενο που υπέγραψε ο βασιλιάς: «Θεωρήσαντες ότι η ημέρα της 25 Μαρτίου, λαμπρά καθ’ εαυτήν εις πάντα Έλληνα διά την εν αυτή τελουμένην εορτήν του Ευαγγελισμού της Υπεραγίας Θεοτόκου, είναι προσέτι λαμπρά και χαρμόσυνος δια την κατ’ αυτήν την ημέραν έναρξιν του υπέρ της ανεξαρτησίας αγώνος του Ελληνικού Εθνους, καθιερούμεν την ημέραν ταύτην εις το διηνεκές ως ημέραν ΕΘΝΙΚΗΣ ΕΟΡΤΗΣ».
Ακολούθησε η έκδοση ακριβέστατου προγράμματος και την παραμονή, 24 Μαρτίου 1838, όταν έδυε ο ήλιος προαναγγελλόταν ο εορτασμός με είκοσι έναν κανονιοβολισμούς.

Προσωρινά Ανάκτορα 1838. Βασιλική Τυπογραφία. Ιδιωτική Συλλογή

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Πανηγύρια και δοξολογία

Την επομένη το πρωί, 25 Μαρτίου 1838, οι είκοσι ένας νέοι κανονιοβολισμοί δίνουν το σύνθημα. Η στρατιωτική μουσική εμφανίζεται στους σκόλιους δρόμους της ανατολίτικης κωμόπολης παίζοντας τον εωθινό. Όλοι ξεκινούν για τη δοξολογία στην Αγία Ειρήνη της οδού Αιόλου, η οποία τότε εκτελούσε χρέη Καθεδρικού Ναού. Κάτοικοι της πόλης και χιλιάδες χωρικών, με κατάλευκες φουστανέλες, ασημένιες φέρμελες και σελάχια με καλογυαλισμένες πιστόλες. Κρατούν μικρές σημαίες και κλωνάρια δάφνης και τραγουδούν πατριωτικά τραγούδια.

O Βασιλιάς Όθων με εθνική ενδυμασία. Νικηφόρος Λύτρας 1892.

Ο Όθων με τη φουστανέλα του και η Αμαλία με την παραδοσιακή στολή της φθάνουν, ενώ το πλήθος ζητωκραυγάζει και τους ραίνει με άνθη. Κοντά τους οι επιζώντες αγωνιστές. Και ενόσω στην Αγία Ειρήνη ακουγόταν η δοξολογία, είκοσι πέντε νέοι κανονιοβολισμοί δίνουν τον πανηγυρικό χαρακτήρα της ημέρας.

Όταν τελειώνει η δοξολογία, ο κόσμος ξεχύνεται στους δρόμους. Κάθε έννοια προγράμματος καταργείται. Χωρικοί της Αττικής προπορεύονται της βασιλικής άμαξας παίζοντας λαϊκά μουσικά όργανα και χορεύοντας. Κατευθύνονται όλοι στο πρόχειρο Παλάτι που δεν ήταν άλλο από το κτίριο που σώζεται μέχρι τις ημέρες μας στην πλατεία Κλαυθμώνος και στεγάζει το Μουσείον Πόλεως των Αθηνών – Ίδρυμα Βούρου-Ευταξία. Για τον λόγο αυτό ονομάστηκε πλατεία 25ης Μαρτίου, ονομασία που σκεπάστηκε αργότερα από το «Κλαυθμώνος» για τους γνωστούς λόγους.
Τα παλικάρια στήνουν χορό στην πλατεία, όπου ο Δήμος Αθηναίων είχε στήσει ένα πρόχειρο τρόπαιο. Ακούγονται πολεμικά άσματα και θούρια, ενώ από τον Πειραιά χαιρετούν τα βασιλικά πλοία ρίχνοντας τους δικούς τους κανονιοβολισμούς.

Η πρώτη σελίδα της εισήγησης του Ιωάννη Κωλέττη προς τον Όθωνα για την καθιέρωση εθνικών εορτών

Η Λέκκαινα

Μέσα στη χαρά και τον ενθουσιασμό ένα «σπαρτιάτικο» επεισόδιο συγκίνησε τον κόσμο. Ενώ τα παλικάρια χόρευαν χειροπιαστά, μια γυναίκα ηλικιωμένη με κάτασπρα μαλλιά έσπασε τον κύκλο και φώναξε στους χορευτές:

Σταματήστε, παιδιά μου. Εγώ πρέπει να αρχίσω το χορό. Εδώ που χορεύετε έδωσα για την ελευθερία το αίμα δύο αδελφών και του μοναδικού γιου μου.
Κλαίγοντας, έσυρε πρώτη το χορό η γυναίκα εκείνη, παραβαίνοντας τις συνήθειες της εποχής. Έδειχνε όμως τη χαρά των Ελλήνων που πανηγύριζαν την ελευθερία τους και την αυταπάρνηση με την οποία θυσιάστηκαν στο βωμό της πατρίδας.
Ήταν η Δέσποινα Λέκκα, η «Λέκκαινα» όπως την αποκαλούσαν. Είχε χάσει στον αγώνα τα αδέλφια της Μήτρο και Αναστάση και τον γιο της Γιώργο. Τη σκηνή διέσωσε μία από τις ξένες του Παλατιού που συνόδευαν την Αμαλία.

Παναγιώτης Σούτσος (1806-1868).

Φωταψίες

Μια βροχή που ξέσπασε το μεσημέρι δεν επέτρεψε να ολοκληρωθούν, τουλάχιστον σύμφωνα με το πρόγραμμα, οι εορτασμοί της πρώτης επετείου. Το βραδάκι όμως καθάρισε ο ουρανός και πραγματοποιήθηκε η «φωταψία» που προβλεπόταν από το πρόγραμμα του εορτασμού. Για πρώτη φορά φωταγωγήθηκαν η Ακρόπολη και ο Λυκαβηττός. Κοντά στο εκκλησάκι του Αγίου Γεωργίου, πάνω στον λόφο, ανάφθηκαν μεγάλες φωτιές που σχημάτιζαν σταυρό δημιουργώντας μια πρωτόφαντη και εντυπωσιακή εικόνα.
Ο ενθουσιασμός συνεπήρε το βασιλικό ζεύγος που βγήκε να περπατήσει στους δρόμους της πόλης. Εκεί με έκπληξη είδαν ότι οι κάτοικοι είχαν φροντίσει να φωτίσουν όλα τα σοκάκια και τα σπίτια με λαδοφάναρα.
Έτσι έκλεισε ο πρώτος εορτασμός της 25ης Μαρτίου. Και εφέτος που εορτάζουμε την Εθνική μας Επέτειο ας ακολουθήσουμε το παράδειγμα της Λέκκαινας, η οποία χόρεψε, αντί να κλάψει, στις 25 Μαρτίου 1838…

Ιωάννης Κωλέττης (1774-1847).

ΠΗΓΕΣ – ΠΑΡΑΠΟΜΠΕΣ

Είναι γνωστό πως το μεγαλύτερο μέρος των δημοσιεύσεων στην εφημερίδα μας αλλά και στον ιστότοπο www.mikros-romios.gr στηρίζεται σε αδημοσίευτες πηγές και είναι προϊόν πρωτογενούς έρευνας.

Επειδή δεν είναι δυνατόν να παρατίθενται παραπομπές, λόγω του δημοσιογραφικού χαρακτήρα των δημοσιεύσεων, οι ερευνητές που επιθυμούν να εντρυφήσουν περισσότερο στα δημοσιευόμενα θέματα μπορούν να επικοινωνούν με το Τμήμα Αρχειακών Μελετών του «Μουσείου της Πόλεως των Αθηνών - Ιδρύματος Βούρου-Ευταξία» (Tηλ: 210-3426833 και 210-3231397) ή ηλεκτρονικά (info@mikros-romios.gr), ώστε να ενημερώνονται για παραπομπές ή να συλλέγουν συμπληρωματικές πληροφορίες.


ΣΗΜΕΙΩΣΕΙΣ ΤΟΥ ΔΙΑΧΕΙΡΙΣΤΗ:

(1)  Η Ελλάς ευγνωμονούσα είναι πίνακας του Έλληνα ζωγράφου Θεόδωρου Βρυζάκη, που φιλοτεχνήθηκε το έτος 1858. Ανήκει στο αρχείο της Εθνικής Πινακοθήκης. Πρόκειται για έργο με ιδιαίτερο συμβολισμό, αφού απεικονίζει την Ελλάδα με τη μορφή νέας στεφανωμένης γυναίκας, ενδεδυμένης αρχαιοπρεπώς, εν μέσω αγωνιστών της Επανάστασης του 1821, να έχει σπάσει τις αλυσίδες της σκλαβιάς από τα πόδια της.

Το συμβολισμό εξετίμησε ο πρωθυπουργός Ανδρέας Παπανδρέου και από το 1982, όταν το Μέγαρο Μαξίμου ορίστηκε ως πρωθυπουργική έδρα, ο πίνακας κοσμούσε τον τοίχο πίσω ακριβώς από το γραφείο του πρωθυπουργού. Έτσι, ο πίνακας έγινε ιδιαίτερα γνωστός, μέσω τηλεοπτικών μεταδόσεων και φωτογραφιών από συναντήσεις του πρωθυπουργού. Μέχρι το 2009, όλοι οι πρωθυπουργοί μετά τον Ανδρέα Παπανδρέου διατήρησαν τον πίνακα στη θέση του.

Το 2009 ο Γιώργος Παπανδρέου στη θέση του έβαλε το έργο «Ατέρμονο Πεδίο – Δελφοί» του Ελληνοαμερικάνου εικαστικού Θεόδωρου Στάμου, ο οποίος θεωρείται από τους κορυφαίους εκπροσώπους τού αφηρημένου εξπρεσιονισμού. Το «Ατέρμονο Πεδίο – Δελφοί» παρέμεινε στο πρωθυπουργικό γραφείο και κατά τα περάσματα από το Μέγαρο Μαξίμου των Λουκά Παπαδήμου και Παναγιώτη Πικραμμένου.

Τον Ιούνιο του 2012, με την ανάληψη της πρωθυπουργίας από τον Αντώνη Σαμαρά, το έργο του Θεόδωρου Βρυζάκη επέστρεψε και πάλι στο Μέγαρο Μαξίμου. 

 

Τον Ιανουάριο του 2015, ο πρωθυπουργός Αλέξης Τσίπρας έβαλε στη θέση του τον πίνακα του εικαστικού Δημοσθένη Κοκκινίδη «Αντίθεση» (1980).

(2)

ΧΡΟΝΙΑ ΜΑΣ ΠΟΛΛΑ 

A Historian For Our Time (R. D. Kaplan)

Thucydides may have been the more trustworthy historian, but Herodotus would have been more fun to share a wineskin with—and is a better guide to the god-filled geopolitics of the current era.

Robert D. Kaplan

January/February 2007 Issue (The Atlantic)

Twenty-five hundred years ago, the greater Middle East constituted a world where circular boats, covered with skins, plied the Tigris; where Egyptians shaved their eyebrows in mourning for a beloved pet cat; and where Libyan tribesmen wore their hair long on one side and shorn on the other, and smeared their bodies with vermilion.

“Custom is king of all,” Herodotus, the fifth-century B.C. Greek traveler observes, quoting Pindar. He tells of the Massagetae, a people who lived east of the Caspian Sea in what is now Turkmenistan, among whom, when a man grows old, “his relatives come together and kill him, and sheep and goats along with him, and stew all the meat together and have a banquet of it.” There was a similar custom among the nearby Issedones, who would clean and gild the skull of the deceased for use as a sacred image. The breadth and complexity of Herodotus’s History sums up the romantic allure with which the word antiquity has been invested.

But Herodotus is now urgently useful for reasons that rise above mere entertainment and exotica. The state of the academy, the moral choices we face in our foreign policy, and in particular the fact that we must learn to think differently about parts of the world like the Middle East all argue for a better acquaintance with this ancient historian.

In the academy, specialization has become both a necessity and a curse. Too much narrow expertise is the inverse of wisdom. But the explosion of facts that need to be categorized demands a growing number of parochial subdivisions within any given field. We must fight against the tendency to become, as the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset feared we all would, “learned ignoramuses.”

Among the beneficiaries of this dilemma has been Herodotus’s near-contemporary Thucydides (460–400 B.C.), the Athenian general and historian of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides’ almost mathematical approach to history, extracts clean philosophical principles from the complex reality of what was (by the geographical horizons of antiquity) a world war. By reducing history to war, diplomacy, politics, economics, and little else, Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War boasts a formula that is appealing to specialists who, while mindful of the conceit of the term political science, are also leery of the sort of subjective, real-life experiences and captivating anecdotes that are problematic because their worth is difficult to measure. I do not mean to suggest that The Peloponnesian War is without riveting stories; it is jammed with them. I say only that, relative to the standards of its time, there is a structured self-editing mechanism at work in Thucydides—yet another reason why he is especially pleasing to modern academic sensibilities, and why he has become the favored Greek among today’s policy elites.

And not just today’s elites. Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century, the historian Lord Macaulay in the nineteenth century, and Secretary of State George C. Marshall following World War II all stressed the primacy of Thucydides. Indeed, The Peloponnesian War may well be the seminal work on international relations, even as Thucydides is venerated in the West as the founder of enlightened pragmatism in political discourse. He embodies Greek classical values, in which beauty—whether in sculpture or in philosophy—is a consequence of artistic and emotional discipline that leads to proportion, discrimination, and perspective. Accordingly, nothing is worse than excess—of decoration, or of ardor.

And yet, as Thucydides would have been the first to note, reality cannot be reduced to neat equations, whether moral or analytical. The world as it exists often rejects rationality, spare narratives, even truth. If we have learned anything during this age of speedier and increasingly numerous interactions between peoples with different historical experiences, it is that facts matter less than perceptions, especially perceptions informed by raw emotions. It is what people believe that is crucial, not what they actually know. What is needed, therefore, beyond guiding philosophical principles, is a vivid appreciation of just what’s out there, in the form of the myths, passions, and irrationalities that in any age are central to decision making and, in a larger sense, to the human spirit itself. Romance, rather than being antithetical to realism, is a necessary component of it.

This leads us to Herodotus, the historian of the war between the Greeks and the Persians, which preceded the war among the Greek city-states that Thucydides chronicled. Thucydides wrote some decades after Herodotus. Rather than recount, in the manner of his predecessor, stories of remote events based on secondhand and thirdhand sources—accounts that have, as a consequence, transmogrified into myths—Thucydides tends to write about contemporary history through firsthand sources. As a historian, then, Thucydides is more trustworthy. He is also more limited. Thucydides gives us a distilled rendition of the facts, Herodotus a sparkling impression of what lies just beyond them.

Herodotus evinces a receptivity (it would bear full flower in Shakespeare) to the province of the heart and the attendant salience of human intrigues. He illustrates how self-interest is calculated within a disfiguring whirlwind of passion. Atossa, a wife of Persia’s King Darius, appeals to her husband’s male vanity in bed, while begging him to invade Greece. She does this as a favor to the Greek doctor who has cured a growth on her breast, and who wants to revisit his homeland. Anyone who has studied the private lives of the Ceausescus in Romania, the Milosevices in the former Yugoslavia, the Gamsakhurdias in Georgia, and the family of Saddam Hussein in Iraq (not only his deranged sons but the sons-in-law he murdered) knows how central such matters are to international politics.

Obviously, Thucydides knows this, too. Fear, honor (am­bition), and interest are the pillars through which his own history works. But it is Herodotus who more colorfully brings these obsessions to life.

Herodotus’s subject is Greece and Persia and their respective “barbarian” penumbrae in the Near East and North Africa—the vast, exotic tapestry of what the ancient Greeks referred to as the oikoumene, the “inhabited quarter” of the world. According to the late historian Marshall G. S. Hodgson, this is a world that, particularly under the relative peace, tolerance, and sovereignty of the Achaemenid Persian Empire and later empires, provided a sturdy base for the eventual emergence of the great confessional religions. We are vividly acquainted with it thanks to Herodotus. Thucydides might have given a better memorial lecture, but Herodotus—whose curiosity extended beyond politics to natural history, geography, and comparative anthropology (including sexual mores)—would likely have been more fun to share a wineskin with. Herodotus fills the same need that great novels do: he allows us to see the world whole.

Herodotus was born a Persian subject sometime between 490 and 484 B.C. in Halicarnassus, in southwestern Asia Minor. He died in the Greek colony of Thurii, in southern Italy, around 425 B.C. In Thurii, he wrote much of The History. (The title of Herotodus’s work is variously translated as The History or The Histories. In this essay, all direct quotes are from David Grene’s 1987 translation, but I have also drawn on material from the introductions to translations by A. R. Burn and Tom Griffith.) Herotodus’s life shows how ancient Greece was much larger than Greece itself. On book jackets he is portrayed as old and therefore wise, befitting his reputation as the “father of history.” Yet he did his wide-ranging traveling in his twenties and thirties. He is derided as the “father of lies,” because of the fantastic stories he appears to credulously record. This criticism is as much a misunderstanding as a calumny. The word history comes from the Greek istoreo, which means “to inquire.” The kinds of narratives that arise from such inquiries, or researches, are those originally associated with Herodotus. Because of Herodotus, history is, in spirit, a verb: “to find out for yourself.”

Herodotus sees himself as a preserver of the memory of civilizations that in some cases had been, and in other cases would yet be, obliterated—in an epoch when record keeping was virtually nonexistent—so he divorces himself from the urge to judge men and events. He knows that nothing is more important than preserving what people said and believed: the myths, the fables, and even the lies that they lived by. Because human beings cannot function without their illusions, the vital truth, he suggests, lies in causation—the strands of perceptions and misperceptions that lead people to take the actions they do.

Above all, he is an indefatigable traveler and inquirer:

I sailed to Tyre in Phoenicia, having learned that there was there a specially holy shrine of Heracles; I saw it indeed, very richly decorated and with many dedicatory offerings … I talked with the priests of the god there and asked them how long it was since the shrine was established … they said that the shrine had been founded at the same time as Tyre was settled and that people had lived in Tyre for twenty-three hundred years. I saw in Tyre, also, another temple … called after Heracles of Thasos; and so I went to Thasos. 

His History is filled with detailed descriptions of places that to ancient Greeks—as well as to contemporary Americans—are dimly known back-of-beyonds.

He writes about the Scythians who live on the far side of the Cimmerian Bosporus, where it is so cold that to make mud in the winter you have to light a fire; about the sturgeon that swim in the rivers nearby and can be pickled, and the great mounds of salt that form where these rivers enter the Pontus Euxinus (Black Sea). Lurid descriptions of cannibalism and brutality abound in The History, like the Persian tradition of occasionally burying children alive as gifts to the “so-called god of the underworld.”

Herodotus writes at a time when the concept of the end justifying the means indicates something far baser than the shrewd moral equivocations Machiavelli would later contemplate. To wit, Darius sets up the weaker members of his own army to be annihilated by the Scythians for the sake of a tactical diversion. The fact that Saddam Hussein treated his own forces similarly is evidence of just what a throwback to the ancient world the Iraqi dictator was—and, conversely, how in certain instances, the ancient world is still part of our own.

The old inheres in the new: Herodotus describes the Spartan warriors, who subsist on twice-daily porridge and diluted wine, defeating the Persians, whose general staff ate lavishly upon tables of silver and gold. One can’t help but think of the dining facilities, laden with steak and lobster, of the American troops in Iraq, and the meager fare of the insurgents who often run rings around them.

But exotic—and, by our standards, morally repug­nant—stories form only the substructure of Herodotus’s work. As for the superstructure, here again is Hodgson, whose multivolume masterpiece on the civilization of Islam covers roughly the same geographical terrain:

Herodotus wrote his history, he said, to preserve the memory of the great deeds done by the Greeks and the Persians: unrepeatable deeds that have an enduring claim to our respect. Those deeds cannot be imitated, though they may be emulated and in some sense perhaps surpassed. But even now we dare call no man great whose deeds cannot somehow measure up to theirs.

The essence of Herodotus’s History, then, is that the more hideous and intractable are the ways of humankind, the more glorious are the heroes who rise above such circumstances. To focus on the worst is not to give oneself up to fate, but to take a necessary step before calculating the possibilities of overcoming it. Artabanus, Xerxes’ uncle, tells the Persian king, “He is the best of men who, when he is laying his plans, dreads and reflects on everything that can happen [to] him but is bold when he is in the thick of the action.”

In modern times, this message has achieved its highest artistic expression in a work that, even more than Hodgson’s, can be likened to that of Herodotus: The River War: An Historical Account of the Re-Conquest of the Soudan (1899), which Winston Churchill wrote when he was in his mid-twenties. The young Churchill, like Herodotus, mixes landscape description with geo­political analysis, philosophical ruminations with the arcana of weapons maintenance, and on-the-spot interviews with disquisitions on rainfall, soil fertility, and the behavior of nomadic tribes. Churchill understands that while tribalism is not the highest good, it provides cohesion in places that would otherwise unravel. Like Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century, and the Prussian master strategist Helmuth von Moltke in the nineteenth (whose own travel writing about the Turkish Near East evinces many of the hard-nosed qualities of The History and The River War), Churchill knows that the truest political and military insights arise from the most uncomfortable of ground-level impressions: few places start out as a clean slate. In considering their actions, wise policy makers work near the limits of what is possible, because all situations have the potential for better and worse outcomes.

Likewise, Herodotus’s History, if it is about anything, is about understanding the complexities of fate: moira in Greek, “the dealer-out of portions.” This occurs against the background of a monumental struggle between Greece’s relatively enlightened European civilization and Persia’s less-enlightened Asiatic one. This Herodotean world resembles our own in its emphasis on the eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and the Iranian plateau. It’s a world where successful leaders have an understanding of cultural context and a knack for seeing just what’s out there—and where unsuccessful leaders have neither. As Artabanus warns Darius to no avail: Do not make war against the Scythians—a swiftly mobile and nomadic people without cities or sown land, who offer no focal point of attack for a large, well-equipped army.

To manage the demons of fate and uncertainty, one first has to respect their awesome, mystical power. Solon, the Athenian, advises Croesus, the arrogant and wealthy king of Lydia, to call himself lucky, not blessed, no matter how much money he has; as long as he is alive, anything might still happen to him. So it passes that all of Croesus’s wealth and power are lost in a war against the Persian ruler Cyrus. As Croesus lies on a pyre, fettered in chains, waiting to be devoured by fire, in lamentation he calls out, “Solon!”

Or take Xerxes. Atop a hill, surveying his navy sailing into the Hellespont, and his army on the adjoining shores and plains, he declares himself a happy man, but then bursts into tears. “For pity stole over me,” he explains, “as I made my meditation on the shortness of the life of man; here are all these thousands, and not a one of them will be alive a hundred years from now.” Again, it is Artabanus who tells the king sagely, “Life gives us greater occasion for pity than this,” for as short as life is, there are disasters that make it seem long, and make us wish we were dead. And in fact Xerxes will lose both his navy and army in the course of his invasion of Greece.

Fate is like a brute force of nature against which the individual sometimes struggles in vain. As Polycrates, the benevolent tyrant of Samos, grows richer, he is advised to part with the thing he values most, so as to protect himself against a vengeful god. He goes out in a boat and throws away his gold ring. A few days later a man catches a fish that he gives as a gift to the Samian king. When Polycrates’ servants cut up the fish, they find the ring. The thing the king valued most is now back. And it transpires that the king is soon lured to the mainland of Asia Minor by the false promises of the Persian governor of Lydia, who puts him to death by crucifixion.

Fate can also be misinterpreted. Cambyses, king of Persia, has a dream that he is toppled and killed by a man named Smerdis, so he kills his brother of that name. But it is another Smerdis, a Median tribesman, who rises against him. Leaping on his horse to travel to Susa to make war against this Median, Cambyses accidentally pierces his thigh with his own sword. This happens in a place called Ecbatana, in Syria. An oracle had told him he would die in Ecbatana. Cambyses had thought that would be the Median town of that name, where he would die peacefully as an old man. But having misread all the signs, the Persian king dies of a self-inflicted wound in this faraway town.

Of course, fate can be conquered, but it takes all the force of the human spirit. That may be the decisive lesson bequeathed by Herodotus. When the Athenians ask the oracle at Delphi what will happen if they stand and fight against the Persians, the oracle replies:

Wretched ones, why sit you here? Flee and begone to remotest ends of earth, leaving your homes …
Many a fortress besides, and not yours alone shall he ruin …
Get you gone out of the shrine! Blanket your soul with your sorrows.

Rather than give in to this terrible fate, the Athenians consult the oracle a second time. “Give us a better oracle about our fatherland,” they say. “Be moved to pity … or we will never go away from your shrine but remain right here till we die.” Then the priestess gives a different, more obscure answer:

A wall of wood, which alone shall abide unsacked by the foemen;
Well shall it serve yourselves and your children …
Do not abide the charge of horse and foot that come on you,
A mighty host from the landward side, but withdraw before it.
Turn your back in retreat; on another day you shall face them.
Salamis, isle divine, you shall slay many children of women …

The Athenians convince themselves that if this oracle had meant ruin for them, it would have said “O cruel Salamis” rather than “Salamis, isle divine.” Thus, they prepare for a great sea battle at Salamis with their wooden wall of ships, and go on to save Greece. The story shows that even the Delphic oracle can be challenged by men determined toward a different fate. But to state such a fact rarely suffices; without a gripping narrative to back it up, a moral principle is a mere declaration. That is the significance of The History.

Take the story of the Three Hundred Spartans at Thermopylae, who are prepared to stand fast in the face of annihilation by the Persians. Leonidas, king of Sparta, was ambitious, not to live but to leave a great name. For there had been a prophecy that either Sparta would be destroyed by the barbarians or a Spartan king would be killed. Herodotus sets up Leonidas for glory in the way that he introduces him, in biblical form, “Leonidas … the son of Anaxandrides, the son of Leon, the son of Eurycratides, the son of Anaxandrus, the son of Eurycrates, the son of Polydorus,” and so on.

True heroism requires a moral basis. Herodotus gives us stories that reveal the vast difference between the values of the Greeks and those of the Persians. After honoring Xerxes’ campaign with generous gifts, Pythius the Lydian asks the Persian king a lone favor: that of his five sons, who all intend to fight with Xerxes against the Greeks, the eldest be released from service so that he may be the caretaker of his father’s possessions. The request fills Xerxes with anger. He orders his men to cut the eldest son of Pythius in half “and to set the two halves of the body on each side of the road … and the army should march between them.” There are no limits to this Persian monarch’s cruelty and presumptuousness: he even orders that the sea itself be scourged, for delivering up a storm that destroyed a bridge he had built.

Contrast such behavior with that of Pausanias, king of Sparta, who defeats the Persian army at Plataea. Because the Persians cut off and impaled the head of Leonidas at Thermopylae, Pausanias is urged by a fellow Spartan to do likewise to the body of Mardonius, the Persian general. Pausanias refuses, explaining:

Such actions are more fit for barbarians than Greeks, and even in them we find it a matter of offense. For conduct such as this, God forbid that I should find favor with … any who approve such acts! It is enough for me to please the men of Sparta by decent action and decent words.

While Herodotus leads us to a majestic and, I would argue, morally based worldview, what sets his History apart from other works, both ancient and modern, is his powerful evocation of just what human beings are capable of believing, and how deeply they do indeed believe, for the sake of their own salvation. It is a belief made tangible by the fact that the ancients, living without science and technology, saw and heard differently—more vividly—than we do.

Take the story of Phidippides, a professional runner sent from Athens to Sparta as a herald to plead for help against the Persians. Phidippides tells the Athenians that on Mount Parthenium, en route to Sparta, he saw the god Pan, who bade him ask his countrymen: “Why do you pay no heed to Pan, who is a good friend to the people of Athens, has been many times serviceable to you, and will be so again?” The Athenians are convinced that Phidippides has told the truth, and so, as Herodotus recounts,

when the Athenian fortunes had again settled for the good, they set up a shrine of Pan under the Acropolis and propitiated the god himself with sacrifices and torch races, in accord with the message he had sent them.

This is more than just a charming story; it may well be the truth as the Athenians related it to Herodotus. The runner probably believed he saw Pan. He did see Pan. A vision of the god was likely, given his fatigue, the pantheon inherent in his belief system, and the wonder-filled fear of the physical elements that has since been lost to human beings. The ancient world was “settled so sparsely that nature was not yet eclipsed by man,” Boris Pasternak wrote in Doctor Zhivago. “Nature hit you in the eye so plainly and grabbed you so fiercely and so tangibly by the scruff of the neck that perhaps it really was still full of gods.” If rationalism and secularism have taken us so far that we can no longer imagine what Phidippides saw, then we are incapable of understanding—and consequently defending ourselves against—many of the religious movements that reverse the Enlightenment and affect today’s geopolitics.

Indeed, Xerxes’ decision to invade Greece—after getting so much conflicting advice on the matter—may have come not from any rational analysis but from a dream. Herodotus is not credulous. As he writes, and repeats in different words throughout his work, “I must tell what is said, but I am not at all bound to believe it, and this comment of mine holds about my whole History.”

Writing about Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, D. H. Lawrence suggests that the story is deeper than metaphysics or ordinary symbolism. The same goes for many of Herodotus’s accounts. The Persian army that disappears in an Ethiopian sandstorm. The lions that kill all the camels in a Persian encampment, leaving the other animals and human beings alone. A prisoner’s chopped-off hands, left clinging to the gates of the Temple of Demeter the Lawgiver on the island of Aegina. Here are images and cultural revelations in brushstrokes of the most glittering oils. The Trausi, a Thracian tribe, who surround a newborn baby and lament for it, for all the ill it must endure, even as they bury their dead with “joy and delight.” The blind Egyptian pharaoh, who is told by an oracle that he will be cured by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who has known only her husband: after trying the piss of one of his wives after another, he is cured only by that of his last wife; and he kills them all except for her. The Babylonian women, who must go to the temple of Aphrodite “and sit there and be lain with by a strange man”; beautiful women depart the temple quickly enough, but the ugly ones sometimes wait years, veritable prisoners of the temple, before a man agrees to lie with them.

It would be naive to think that our world is not, in its own way, just as fantastic, just as unreasonable. Given the adversaries we have fought, and are likely to fight still; given the mirages that cloud our own judgment about distant places about which we think we know much, but in fact know little; given all of that, the dreamlike delusions and psychoses revealed in the stories of Herodotus provide a richer insight into what we are up against than does much contemporary analysis. Coping with the world of the coming decades will require an arresting imagination. Leaders who cannot mentally escape their own narrow slots of existence will fail. Herodotus will be as valuable as Thucydides.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Robert D. Kaplan is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and the author of In Europe’s Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond. He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. 

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DELPHI FORUM: Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt’s Conversation with Tom Ellis

US Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt in conversation with English Kathimerini Editor in Chief Tom Ellis at the 2019 Delphi Economic Forum.

Delphi Economic Forum
March 1, 2019

Ambassador Pyatt:  First of all, thank you Tom for doing this.  We have a little bit of a road show now.  I feel like we’re one of those Las Vegas acts.  But it really is an enormous pleasure for me to be back here at Delphi.  I want to start with huge congratulations to Symeon and to the organizers for what I think has become a very important institution on the Greek political calendar.
As I was getting ready for today – and this is my third one of these – and over three Delphi Forums there have been millions of words and thousands of Tweets and many, many cups of coffee, but I was trying to reflect how this feels different compared to 2017 or 2018.
I just wanted to set the table with a couple of reflections on that.  And as I tried to crystallize my thoughts, I think the most important point is that Greece is back.  Greece is back as a foreign policy actor in the region.  The most visible manifestation of that, of course, is the Prespes Agreement and the opportunities that that has opened up for further progress in setting all of the countries of the Western Balkans on their path towards the Euro-Atlantic community, but also in terms of unlocking the untapped economic potential, especially of connectivity between Thessaloniki and the larger Balkan neighborhood, to restore Thessaloniki’s historic role as this cosmopolitan crossroads, the gateway for commerce, for energy, for connectivity and technology between the Balkans and the rest of the world — extremely important.
But that’s far from the only manifestation of this.  Greece is back in terms of the East Med.  You see that in the thriving Greece-Israel relationship, the very successful Greece-Israel-Cyprus Trilateral, and I’ll have a little bit more to say about that later.
You see it in terms of Greece’s role as an energy hub — probably one of the issues that has seen the most dramatic evolution during my three years here with the completion of the TAP Pipeline, the commencement of work on the IGB Pipeline, the completion of the expansion of Revithoussa’s terminal and the ability that that has created to take deliveries of American and other LNG.
Most importantly, all of these projects will also help not only to deepen energy security in Greece, but also to unlock the Balkan energy island for all of the countries to the north of Greece that are 100 percent dependent today on Gazprom and Russia’s use of energy as a political weapon.  Greece is the key to unlocking that situation.
And then Greece’s increasingly important role in regional security.  Our counter-terrorism cooperation is as close as it’s ever been.  Greece cooperates closely with the United States in terms of our NATO platforms, the work we do together at Souda Bay, the way in which Greece and America work together on maritime domain awareness and security in the Eastern Med and the Aegean — at a moment when great power competition has returned to the Eastern Med in a way that we have not seen for more than two decades.
So all of this plays into the vision that I talked about here at Delphi I think the first time that I was doing one of these conversations, and that’s the role of Greece as a pillar of regional stability.  But I think that vision today is more valid than ever before.  We have work to do on the economic side, and Tom and I will talk about that.
The flip side of Greece being back is that America is back.  You saw that at the Thessaloniki international Fair which I think will be remembered as a real watershed moment in the U.S.-Greece relationship, and especially our relationship with Northern Greece.
You saw that in the launch of the Strategic Dialogue by Secretary of State Pompeo and Foreign Minister Katrougalos in December and the active efforts that both governments are making to sustain that momentum, continue working in those lanes.
And then you see it in the promulgation of a new American policy for the Eastern Mediterranean which is one of the projects that Wess Mitchell, our former Assistant Secretary of State, really prioritized, and — among other things — has set the stage for American participation in the 3+1 as we call it: the trilateral Greece, Israel, Cyprus, now with an American chair.
Then finally you see it in the very robust American presence at the Delphi Forum this year, and I’m extremely proud that we have so many colleagues from Washington.  I’m not sure there’s anybody left on Dupont Circle today.  It’s fantastic to have such a strong presence of the American policy community and the transatlantic policy community here at Delphi.
So Tom, that’s the big think, and now you can go to the small one.

Tom Ellis:  Usually we hear of these big ideas and presentations with [inaudible].  Let’s get down to the real things.  You talk about investment, the need for investment, U.S. investment.  American companies are companies that cannot follow the government’s rulings, unlike the encouragement of, or the decision actually as of the Chinese government, the Russian government, other governments, they will make their own decisions.  But can you point or explain or show us some specific cases of American firms that are interested, are involved, are invested, will invest?  In real tangible terms what US interests involving as far as the economy of Greece is concerned.
Ambassador Pyatt:  Let me answer that two ways.  First of all concretely, we can point to a number of specific successes, but what I would emphasize is how much the atmospherics have changed.  When I was getting ready for this job three years ago, and as Ambassadors Designate do, I asked the US Chamber of Commerce to arrange a roundtable for me with American companies interested in Greece.  Nobody came.  Zero companies.  Nobody wanted to look at Greece because they were worried about Grexit.  They were worried about the risk that the banking system was going to implode.  They were worried about uncertainty as to whether or not the SYRIZA government would comply with its conditionality obligations.
Today — we had, at the Thessaloniki Fair, thanks in large part to our partners at the American Chamber of Commerce, and I’m glad Simos is here, more than 50 top American companies, all of whom spent a considerable sum of money to be present in Greece because they saw the opportunities here, they saw the opportunities that TIF represented to talk to not just a market of 10 million in Greece, but a larger market of 30 million.  I think that’s a theme that we will continue to emphasize.
We have specific successes we can point to like the ONEX investment in the Syros shipyard; like Hyatt and Marriott expanding their presence here; Avis, Lime Scooters in a small way.
The other point I will make, especially since we’re in Central Greece, I should add this.  I had the opportunity last week — exactly a week ago I was in Lamia and Karpenisi along with Governor Bakoyannis.   I was incredibly inspired, encouraged by the team effort that Governor Bakoyannis put together, and it really crossed political lines.  There were PASOK individuals, there were people from New Democracy, but it was a team of 30- and 40-somethings who were focused on how to get things done.  Governor Bakoyannis also took me, while we were in Lamia, to see a couple of companies that were successful, both in the agro-food sector.
One of these companies was actually founded just a few years ago.  It was founded at the peak of the crisis, but it’s now growing and investing and expanding.  Actually it’s a natural partner for the work that the embassy has been doing to encourage Greek entrepreneurship, to support the startup sector.  I always say the biggest secret story of the Greek economic crisis is how underneath that crisis the Greek startup sector has surged forward.  I know Bloomberg and others have now reported on the thousands of companies, Greek startups, that have registered.  That reflects both the enormous potential, the human capital that this country possesses, but also the fact that in the aftermath of the crisis the old business structures are being replaced and they’re being replaced from the grassroots including in a lot of cases not in Athens but from Thessaloniki or Lamia or in other cities, in Patra where you’ve got a thriving startup community.
These are stories that I think we all need to do a better job of getting out because that’s what will attract American investment interests.

Tom Ellis:  One big issue that you’ve dealt with is energy.  You talked about Greece becoming a hub, although sometimes we think we are the center of the world and we are “the” hub.  But anyway.  We do have LNG from the US.  Can you be a little more detailed in your analysis as far as IGB, TAP and also given the latest with Exxon-Mobil in the Cyprus EEZ and the possibility of LNG again, or building the East Med Pipeline.  What’s the prospect there?  And how does the US view that?  We have an idea from the European Union, but how does the US view it.
Ambassador Pyatt:  A couple of things.  First of all, I should emphasize the longstanding American support for strengthening diversity of sources and routes for energy in Europe.  If you look at the European energy market today, maybe aside from Poland, Greece is probably the most dynamic national marketplace where you are seeing real progress in terms of achieving energy independence.  We have Ambassador Morningstar here this weekend.  Dick Morningstar has been working on the Southern Gas Corridor for more than 20 years.
This year the TAP Pipeline, the last leg of the Southern Corridor, will be completed.  It’s completed because of work which began under the New Democracy government and was sustained under a SYRIZA government.  In fact the SYRIZA government, which today has been playing an active role in convincing the Italian government, also on the left, to do their part of the work to make sure that TAP is finished on time.  So TAP is extremely important.
I would also note the upstream possibilities in Greece.  The fact that you have Exxon-Mobil not only conducting exploration off of Cyprus, but Exxon-Mobil has a partnership with Total and HelPe for exploration south of Crete.  We’re very hopeful that Minister Stathakis will complete the last bit of paperwork associated with that, and I would encourage everybody to ask him that question when he’s here later this weekend.  But that is moving ahead as well.
On East Med I’ll say three things.  First of all, at a strategic level it’s an extremely important project that the United States strongly supports.  It complements everything that we’ve been doing with the 3+1, our support for the flourishing Greece-Israel relationship.
The market is going to decide whether the pipeline is constructed.  Obviously the discoveries that Exxon-Mobil announced yesterday will have a positive impact on those market calculations, but certainly at the political level, as Ambassador Friedman, my counterpart in Jerusalem made clear when he participated in the last Greece-Israel-Cyprus Trilateral, the United States is all in.

Tom Ellis:  Because until recently, remember a few years back the U.S. was in an, I’ll say off the record, sometimes on, supporting more the possibility that the pipeline would go from Turkey.
Ambassador Pyatt:  Our support —

Tom Ellis:  — companies do their decision, but still you could feel from the State Department and elsewhere that that’s the shortest, cheapest, you know what I’m saying.  But it’s not the case anymore maybe because developments in Turkey itself have changed the equation.
Ambassador Pyatt:  And the 3+1.  The deepening of the Greece-Israel relationship is a very important factor here.  The fact that you had a member of the Israeli Cabinet speaking to us last night at Delphi is an important signifier.
I would also — the other project which we haven’t talked about, and I should, is the FSRU in Alexandroupolis.  Again, particularly important to unlocking that Balkan energy island and expanding opportunities for exports into Greece of LNG.  We’re very hopeful that the FSRU also will move ahead.  GasTrade, the consortium lead, had a successful market test a few weeks ago, and we will continue to work hard to support that as well — which is interesting because it fits, it nests within several other projects in Alexandroupolis.  The port privatization in which we have American company interest, the privatization of the Egnatia where we don’t have American interest, but others are.  And perhaps most importantly, the strategic importance of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in the context of the larger U.S. strategy for the Balkans and the larger Black Sea region.

Tom Ellis:  You mentioned the 3+1, Greece, Cyprus, Israel, and the U.S. seems to be getting more involved.  There is some preparation for another summit.  We, as Greeks, are used to these summits.  The Prime Ministers of three countries.  The next one will be in Crete.  March, April.  Is there a possibility that Secretary Pompeo might participate?  Are we at a point where there was some thought about that?  I’m not sure if —
Ambassador Pyatt:  This was a part of the conversation between Secretary Pompeo and Minister Katrougalos in December, and my boss, the Secretary of State, made clear that he intends to participate in the 3+1.  It’s a logistics question now in terms of figuring out where and when we make it happen.  But I’m very confident — the policy is clear, and it’s just a matter of working the mechanics.

Tom Ellis:  Okay, that’s kind of newsy.  It’s nice to know that [inaudible] through the discussions we did something newsy.
You always talk about the strategic relationship, alliance partnership.  Can we be a little bit more specific?  To be honest, I hear a lot of friends, not politicians, you know ordinary people who like on a certain level the fact that Greece has a good relationship with the U.S.  It’s a little bit surprising in a positive way, but as such [imaudible] with the [inaudible] government.  But I think that’s a part of maturization or maturity [inaudible] in Greece.
But can we view it in more specifics.  What are the benefits for Greece, according to you of course, through that or from that strategic alliance on defense and other areas?  I mean it’s one thing to say, I remember in 2005 Condi Rice first mentioned strategic relationship with Petros Molyviatis, then Foreign Minister.  And we were all happy in a way, but then tried to analyze it and we didn’t know in specific, tangible terms what it means.  What does it mean, strategic initiative?
Ambassador Pyatt:  Tom, I think first and foremost that’s a question you have to put to the Greek government.  What I will say is the following.  First of all, every American who comes to Greece appreciates the complicated strategic geography of its neighborhood, and if there’s one thing that I’ve learned through 30 years as an American diplomat, it’s that geography trumps philosophy.  Geography matters.
Greece lives in a complicated neighborhood vis-à-vis your large neighbor to the east; but also a complicated neighborhood vis-à-vis North Africa and the Magreb, the refugee problem; vis-à-vis the Eastern Med, which as I said— I’m always struck when Admiral Foggo talks about this, about how when he was a young naval officer cruising around the Mediterranean, it was basically a lake cruise for the US Navy.  Now you have an aggressive Russian naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, a Russian base at Tartous, the expansion of the Russian footprint in Crimea, in occupied Crimea, and leveraging that to project power and influence into the wider neighborhood.  But Russia is not the only part of the story.
So in this complicated region we, the United States, view Greece as a pillar of stability.  That was the phrase that Secretary Pompeo used when he was with Minister Katrougalos.  I think, and here again I don’t want to speak for the Greek government, but I think Greek people that I engage with see the United States presence as reassuring.  That’s why when I was in Alexandroupolis a few months ago talking to the Mayor, he was extremely enthusiastic about the fact that we were rotating American helicopter forces through Alexandroupolis.  Not because he was a big fan of NATO but because he saw the American presence as reassuring.  Sending a confidence-building message to investors, to the international community, at a moment in time when there are other reasons which encourage anxiety.

Tom Ellis:  Speaking of anxiety in other regions, how do you assess Turkish policy these days towards Greece?  And also the development we have here in our domestic politics with the new Defense Minister.  A lot of key people think that Mr. Apostolakis is somebody who can work better with the Turks, but I’m just wondering what your assessment is and for the CBMs that they seem to be working on.  You mentioned your previous presence here.  Three years, was it, or two years?  You mentioned your anxiety about hostility of how should I call it, hot incident in the Aegean or an accident?  Are we in a better place in this?
Ambassador Pyatt:  I think we are.  Let me start with Minister Apostolakis, who I would emphasize has the highest respect from his counterparts in the Pentagon.  There was a very good letter that was just sent from Acting Secretary of Defense Shanahan just the other day following up their conversations at the last NATO Defense Ministerial.  He’s also highly regarded as a soldier by his counterparts, General Scaparotti, General Dunford, Admiral Foggo.  That counts for a lot.  But there’s also tremendous appreciation in Washington for the efforts that Minister Apostolakis has made to open a clear channel of communications with Minister Akar.  And at the end of the day, these are two NATO allies and for the United States, a paramount objective is to ensure that Greece and Turkey are NATO allies in fact and are able to behave as such.
You talked about two years ago.  What I remember was one year ago, and this morning, this very morning [a year ago] about 2:00 o’clock on the Friday morning of the Delphi Forum, I got a knock on my door and it was my guys informing me that two Greek soldiers had been taken on the Turkish border — so a reminder that it wasn’t that long ago when there were a lot of points of irritation.  You have the collisions of vessels, the activities of the Turkish Coast Guard vessel.  It’s a very positive development that Minister Apostolakis is so strongly focused on this.  I also appreciate the fact that the Foreign Ministers and Secretary General Paraskevopoulos are working on the CBMs agenda, again.
I remember when I was getting ready for this job I had lunch with Ambassador Ries, and Charlie gave me a RAND paper on Aegean CBMs and said why don’t you take this and keep it on your shelf.  There may be an opportunity to work on it at some point.  I’ve still got it on the shelf, Charlie.  But we are hopeful that the process that the Prime Minister and President Erdogan agreed to last month in Ankara will make it possible to revive some of those conversations as well.
Then I think also extremely, extremely important, both the imagery but also the practical impact of the Prime Minister’s trip to Istanbul, his visit to the Halki Seminary.  The United States, American policy has been very clear on our support for the Ecumenical Patriarch, the important role that the church plays and that the Patriarch plays as part of the West.  Reopening Halki is part of strengthening the Ecumenical Patriarch’s hand in the existential battle that is now underway between the Church of Constantinople and the Moscow church, and Patriarch Kirill.  So very, very important as well.

Tom Ellis:  This is about Greece and US, but just the Greek analysis of your assessment on the President of Turkey.  It’s a big issue for the world, not only Greece.  The European Union, the US, should we trust Mr. Erdogan in that [inaudible] all the other things you mentioned, from Cyprus to the Balkans to he seems to be building a lot of mosques in the area we’re told to respect Islam.  He is doing it.  So there might be some other ideology behind it.  So how are you assessing —
Ambassador Pyatt:  Let me just say two things.  In the context of American strategy in Southeastern Europe, Greece and the United States see eye to eye. In fact we probably see closer eye to eye than we, the United States, do with almost any other NATO partner in terms of our shared interest in seeing that Turkey remains anchored in the West, in working through the difficult issues that both of our governments have.  We are in a difficult moment still in the U.S.-Turkish relationship.
I would also note that I am very pleased that David Satterfield, one of our most senior and most respected ambassadors, has been nominated to serve in Ankara.  He has a more difficult job than I do, just like John Bass had a more difficult job than I did, and it’s been a long time without an American Ambassador there.

Tom Ellis:  And a last point on Turkey, [inaudible].  Are you worried about things developing to the [inaudible].  Because last time you talked about the Aegean, about the islands, [inaudible], which is real, but it’s also theoretical.  In the case of Cyprus we, it seems and hope, we’re talking about a lot of money if there’s gas, and the more there is the more money there is.  And Turkey is a big country with energy needs.  And actually I was recently with a Turkish diplomat talking about it and he said openly that they’re not going to let this thing go away because there’s a lot of gas it seems.  He didn’t specify what he will do or what his country will do.
So are you worried about, you have Exxon-Mobil there which is an American company.  How are you dealing with —
Ambassador Pyatt:  I think we have time.  It’s going to be a long process for Exxon-Mobil now to follow up its preliminary findings to determine the full scope of the resources that are available, and then to decide — and they have yet to decide whether to invest the billions of dollars that will be required to both extract the gas and then bring it to market.  They have to decide is there enough gas to justify an LNG facility in Cyprus?  Do they take it to Egypt?  Do they plug it into the East Med?  And that in turn is affected by global market trends.
So this is an issue that’s going to unfold over a matter of years and decades, not weeks.  In the meantime we welcome the fact that President Anastasiades has endorsed the concept of an escrow fund or a sovereign fund that would ensure that the revenues, if they ever come, from any off-shore exploration, will be equitably shared with the communities.
I come back to my point about Greek-Turkey relations, our support for the dialogue that’s underway, and our interest in seeing that all of these matters are managed professionally and in a way that reinforces regional stability.

Tom Ellis:  Moving away from Turkey, the Balkans.  You mentioned the Prespes Agreement.  Can you assess the situation in the Balkans?  The role of Greece, given what has happened with the agreement.
Ambassador Pyatt:  I think the two things that are most impressive to me, one is —and I had the opportunity to spend some time with Foreign Minister Dimitrov earlier this morning — one thing that’s impressive to me is the appetite among the countries of the Western Balkans for Greece’s engagement.  Again, Greece is back, and for understandable reasons, through the better part of a decade Greece was preoccupied with its internal financial and economic situation, and didn’t have the bandwidth for an actively engaged foreign policy in the Western Balkans.  Moving forward, the United States and Greece have exactly congruent interests.  We wish to see all of the countries of the Western Balkans continue on the path towards the Euro-Atlantic community, continue to move towards European standards of reform.  It’s a long and difficult process.  I’m highly confident that somebody from Athens or Thessaloniki is better positioned to help with that process than a bureaucrat sitting in Brussels.  So I think we, the United States, see Greece as a preferred partner for the US in working with Europe and working with European institutions on all of this.
I also think, and I probably spent — Charlie will correct me if I’m misstating —I think I’ve spent more time in Thessaloniki and Northern Greece than any American Ambassador in several generations.  And a lot of that time has been spent with Greek companies.  A lot of my energy has been spent pushing back on the malign influence of Russia and the negative effect that Russia has had on issues like the church, on transparency.  But I am also struck among my friends in the business community, I spoke to Thanasis earlier this morning and he’ll be speaking later in the conference.  I think everybody in Thessaloniki in the business community recognizes that it has been too long that there’s been an artificial barrier between Greece and its northern neighbors.  And the Prespes Agreement is what demolished that artificial barrier and creates the opportunity for Greek businesses to begin thinking regionally.
And I come back to TIF.  Again, the reason that Simos and I were successful in marketing the Thessaloniki International Fair is precisely because we were able to present it as an opportunity not just to address the market in Thessaloniki or the market in Greece, but in the wider region.  And I think especially for Thessaloniki, that’s key to future prosperity.

Tom Ellis:  Thank you.  Now that you mention Prespes, the Prespes guy from our side seems to be here.
Ambassador Pyatt:  Dimitrov and Kotzias.  I think they can both speak better than I can to the economic benefits of their agreement.

Tom Ellis:  Thank you very much.  I have to be honest, I was worried a little bit when you mentioned that someone came and knocked at your hotel door at 2:00 o’clock in the morning, you know, [inaudible] really worried.  But it was the Turkish army, the soldiers.
Thank you very much, I appreciate it.  And I apologize to the organizers.  I’m told we went a few minutes overtime.
Ambassador Pyatt:  Thanks, Tom.  I look forward to doing it again.

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