Greek-American Relations from Monroe to Truman

7. Brigands, Philhellenes, and Currants

brigands, philhellenes, and currants 113 7 Brigands, Philhellenes, and Currants I suppose that ancient Greece and modern Greece compared, furnish the most extravagant contrast to be found in history. George I, an infant of eighteen, and a scraggy nest of foreign office-holders, sit in the palaces of Themistocles, Pericles, and the illustrious scholars and generals of the Golden Age of Greece. The fleets that were the wonder of the world when the Parthenon was new, are a beggarly handful of fishing-smacks now, and the manly people that performed such miracles of valor at Marathon are only a tribe of unconsidered slaves to-day. —Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad I feel particularly happy in having been chosen to carry the fraternal salutations of the Greeks and of their King to a people I respect and to arrive at an epoch when I can congratulate America on the new consolidation and growth of her glorious unity. I shall be especially so if it be granted to me to draw still more closely together the sympathetic ties which unite our two countries. Both of them daughters of the liberty and the bravery of their people. They are made from mutual regard and esteem. She is the elder who has resounded through all antiquity, who, in her efforts to rise again worthy of her past, holds forth her hand to the younger born, great and powerful among nations. —Alexander R. Rangabe to the State Department, June 13, 1867 In the early-morning hours of Monday, April 11, 1870, a party of two British nobles and their wives, together with the secretaries of the British and Italian legations, and an escort of Greek gendarmes left Athens in two carriages for an excursion to the ancient site of Marathon. After a two- or three-hour tour of the battlefield, the sightseers set out for home. When the party reached the bridge of Pikermes, approximately twelve to fourteen miles from the city, a band of twenty-one klephtes dressed in the “Albanian costume” and armed with revolvers and muskets emerged 113 114 greek-american relations from monroe to truman from the brush along the road. After surrounding the procession and killing two of the guards, the outlaws took their foreign prisoners and proceeded northward.1 To expedite their retreat, the brigands soon released their female captives and sent them back to Athens with a ransom note requesting £32,000 and amnesty. Furthermore , the captors warned the Hellenic government that any attempt to rescue the remaining hostages could endanger their lives. As the frightful drama played on, and with the demands of the bandits now accompanied by impatient threats, the Athens ministry, with the consent of the British and Italian ministers, made a risky gambit. The government decided to send troops to intercept the brigands before they escaped into Thessaly. Sadly, those in charge botched the rescue operation, resulting in the death of seven of the brigands and their four captive foreigners.2 In England, news of the tragedy produced a bitter denunciation of the Hellenic kingdom. The London journals declared Greece to be a “country whose political system is anarchy, and whose staple industry is brigandage,” to be “the home of ruffians, and the den of assassins.”3 According to one historian, “The unreasoning prejudice in favor of Greece that had been so strong in 1821 had given way to an equally unreasoning prejudice against her.”4 The “massacre” at Marathon proved especially disconcerting to American philhellenes, who continued to look at modern Greece through the romantic prism of its ancient glory. In December 1870 the New York Times published a scathing editorial that excoriated the “descendants of the heroes of antiquity” for not being able to put a “stop to the habits of robbery that have become the chronic scourge of the soil which bore Lycurgus and Miltiades.” The editor lamented that “beautiful, but most unfortunate Greece” had fast become “a byword and reproach, not for bad government only, but for unpunished crime.”5 The failure of the Hellenic kingdom in these years to realize its territorial aspirations , coupled with its inability to pay its debts, administer its affairs, and provide security for its citizens, caused many observers to doubt whether the modern Greeks were worthy successors of the rich tradition once held by their ancestors. As Greek inability to meet U.S. expectations became manifest, American philhellenic sentiment began to wane. Ironically, at the same time, Greek admiration for the United States increased...