siete de mayo

It is time for my favorite day of the year: Siete de Mayo. It is the day that the independence of Greece was finally recognized via the Treaty of London. Then, as everyone knows, the Otto of Wittelsbach, Prince of Bavaria was chosen King.

It is still just dumbfounding that despite Greece's vital role in political theory and as, arguably, the centerpiece of the world for several centuries, the Hellenistic period was brought to a close two centuries later with the establishment of Roman rule over Greek lands in 146 BC.

I was talking about this with Mike and he made the argument that Greece's loss of control truly began with the Byzantine Empire in 330 AD around Constantinople.

This got my mind spinning and made me reflect on how Byzantium remained a major cultural and military power for the next 1,123 years, until the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. On the eve of the Ottoman conquest, much of the Greek intelligentsia migrated to Italy and other parts of Europe not under Ottoman rule, playing a significant role in the Renaissance through the transmission of ancient Greek works to Western Europe. Nevertheless, the Ottoman millet system contributed to the cohesion of the Orthodox Greeks by segregating the various peoples within the empire based on religion, as the latter played an integral role in the formation of modern Greek identity.

So happy Siete de Mayo to everyone!