Page 432 - Beholding Liberty!

ΙΙΙ.10
Heroes of the stylus
THE CONQUEST OF LIBERTY was not achieved only through the power of firearms. In parallel with the combats in the battlefields, a fight was also conducted on an ideological level, equally important, as much for the enhancement of the patriotic feeling of the Greeks, as for promoting their demand for Independence to the international public opinion.
This fight was fought by the «heroes of the stylus», Greek writ- ers primarily of the Diaspora, who also rendered an important service by their pen, publishing texts, praising and publisizing the Struggle, in Greece and abroad, in the Greek language and in foreign translations. With political pamphlets of national uprising content and treatises of patriotic character, by writ- ers such as Nikolaos Skouphos, Adamantios Korais, Minas Mi- noidis, Neofytos Talantiou, and with literary works by writers such as Evanthia Kairi, Alexandros Batalis, Angeliki Palli, and, of course, with the poems to the glory of Freedom by Andreas Kalvos and Dionysios Solomos, the Greek scholars carried out their own beneficial fight for the vindication of the demand of the Greeks for Freedom.
432 BEHOLDING LIBERTY!
ΙΙΙ.10.1
[Nikolaos Skouphos] (attributed)
Treatise on Patriotism addressed to the inhabitants of the Ionian Seven Islands
Dedicated by E.F. Second edition. 1817 [1828].
Philadelphia [Nafplio]: By the Greek Printing House
Library of the Hellenic Parliament
AN ANONYMOUS WORK, INITIALED E.F., at- tributed, among others, to Ioannis Kapodistrias, but most likely by Nikolaos Skouphos, whose name appears in the relevant text (on the unnumbered page 2). A letter of dedication to the inhabitants of the Ionian Islands is followed by the essay on patriotism.
This is a falsely dated book, actually printed in 1828, in Nafplio. The first edition of the essay was published in 1815, not in Phila- delphia, as stated, but in Munich. The essay was later reissued in Neophytos Doukas’ Pedagogy (Aegina 1835, second edition) and reprinted in 1847 in Athens.
It was written by Nikolaos Skoufos, originally from Smyrna, who studied and worked in Germany. The ideas he put forth in this essay reflect the ideological milieu of the French Revolution and are representative of the nationalist discourse on the eve of the Greek Revolution, which continued unabated during the revolu- tionary period.