Morality and Female Authority

Abstract

By the second half of the nineteenth century, Greece society saw little change between the year of independence and mid-century, while irredentist politics had blocked any other vision of internal development, as the Hellenic world blocked any Helladico (Greek) concept of thought. Within such a framework, when the first liberal slogans reached Athens in 1848 from the revolutionary capitals of Europe, they were transformed from a matter of interest only to the Greek elite into a constant feature of social discourse.¹ The 400th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in May 1453 gave Greeks a further chance to express their irredentist feelings. In the same year, Greek nationalists fomented revolt in Epirus and Thessaly and sent some thousands of volunteers across the borders to support the rebels. ‘Empire or Death!’, the message from Spyros Karaiskakis, son of the hero of the War of Independence Georgios Karaiskakis, seemed to be the key in order to open ‘the cage of the Greek borders which enclose the country’ as a song of this period put it. At last the glorious future seemed close at hand.² But, in fact, Greek efforts to assist Russia in the Crimean War ended in disillusion.³ In May 1854, English and French forces landed in Piraeus, the port of Athens, thus preventing Greece from stirring up trouble across the frontier. And it was not until February 1857, a year after the war had ended, that the allies withdrew from Piraeus.⁴