Page 314 - Beholding Liberty!

314 BEHOLDING LIBERTY!
II.8.A.5
Excerpt from a letter of P. Mavromichalis, P. Krevvatas and Ch. Peroukas to Th. Kolokotronis, in which his feat at Dervenakia is praised and he is paralleled to Leonidas
(Myloi of Nafplio, 28 July 1822)
Archives of the Greek Regeneration, vol. 15ab, no 48 [pp. 41-42] Library of the Hellenic Parliament
A COMMON PRACTICE of praising the he- roes of the Revolution is their parallelism to heroes of the antiquity, such as Leonidas and Miltiades. In the letter the heroic deeds of Kolokotronis at Der- venakia are described as follows: «Indeed you ap-
II.8.Α.6
Remember Marathon
peared as another Leonidas, who fought a terrible war at Thermopylae with three hundred men only; he at Thermopylae, your braveness at Dervenakia with eight hundred men confronted thousands of enemies».
signed: Lith. par A.J. et C.D. (bottom left) Lith. de C.de Lasteyrie. (bottom right)
inscribed (caption): Souvenez vous de Marathon (low centre)
illustration in Vues de la Grèce Moderne, Lithographiées par A.J., Accompagnées d’un Texte Descriptif, Par E.L.
Paris, A l’Imprimerie Lithographique de C. DE LASTEYRIE, dirigée par R. L. Brégeaut, rue de Bac, Nο 58, au fond du passage Ste.- Marie. Chez DONDEY-DUPRÉ PÈRE ET FILS, Imp.-Lib., rue St.-Louis, Nο 46, et rue de Richelieu, Nο 67, vis-à-vis
la Bibliothèque du Roi. [Chez] TEUTTEL ET WURTZ, Libraires, rue de Bourbon, Nο 17. Et chez les principaux Libraires
de France et de l’Étranger. IMPRIMERIE DE DONDEY-DUPRÉ. M DCCC XXIV.
Hellenic Parliament Art Collection, inv. n. 892
ONE OF TEN FINE ENGRAVINGS made after drawings by Alexis Victor Joly (1798-1814), which comprise an album of views of Greece
printed in 1824. Each engraving is accompanied by text by an anonymous author (Emilie de L.), which is why the book is known under the name of A.V. Joly. The majority of the other images are variations on the aquatint illustrations in a book by the British writer and painter William Haygarth (1784-1825), an account of his travels to Greece in 1810-11 – in the company of Lord Byron and John Cam Hobhouse – a kind of travel journal in verse (Greece, a Poem, in three parts; with notes, classical illustrations, and sketches of the scenery, London, W. Bulmer for G. and W. Nicol, 1814).
Titled Remember Marathon, this original image shows Miltiades pointing out the historic Battle of Marathon, which repulsed Asian despotism, to the armed modern Greek. In the dialogue, the Greek fighter is identified as a Souliote, while the archaic helmeted elderly figure turns out to be a ghost – the spirit of the victorious general of Marathon. The didactic quality of the image is ev- ident, drawing a parallel with the modern Greek War of Independence.