Solomos needs explaining to the English-speaking reader. Not only because it is the anniversary of George Gordon, Lord Byron’s death at Missolonghi and Solomos is conventionally placed in a bracket with the great Scotsman; but because Solomos, universally admired in Greece, is almost as generally unknown abroad.
The sun shone at Missolonghi on Monday, January 5, 1824. By morning the crowds of citizens and soldiers — men and women of every age — were thick along the shore, waiting for the man they reckoned their ‘delivering angel’, watching for his arrival. And then at eleven, with all eyes on it, a Speziot boat crossed the lagoon, came alongside the quay, and George Gordon Noel Byron stepped ashore.
About a hundred kilometres inland from the west coast port of Igoumenitsa lies the lake-side city of Ioafinina, as colourful and fascinating as they come. A city with a history that has left it with a certain atmosphere that clings to its old walls like the morning mist over the lake.
