I've had a lot of free time recently and I've been researching the history of modern Greece. I had absolutely no idea that Greece had monarchs and kingdoms. Does anyone have a little bit more info about what was going on at the time? And what caused this?
After the Greek War of Independence, Greece struggled to establish a government. Their first attempt ended with the Governor of Greece's assassination. The world powers at the time, the British Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Kingdom of France, discussed how they would handle this. They decided on a monarchy, and selected Prince Otto of Bavaria, who was not in line for his own throne, to be Greece's new ruler. That was the beginning. Here's more information: https://www.greekboston.com/culture/modern-history/founding-kingdom-greece/
The modern history of Greece is definitely turbulent and complicated. So many changes and shifts of power that it's really hard to keep up. But I'll try my best to break it down for you. Basically, after Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire there was a huge power grab, and many different countries wanted to have a say in who would rule modern Greece. I ended up being three main kingdoms until finally, a 1973 coup brought the third Kingdom to an end and established the Third Hellenic Republic which is what Greece has today.
I know a handful of common Greek traditional dances, such as the Syrtos (Kalamatianos), Zymbeiko, tsamikos, hasaposervikos, the "Never on a Sunday", the syrtaki, and a few others. Do any of these have roots in Ancient Greece?
I’m a pretty big fan of movies about ancient Greece, especially any with spartan warriors. Does anyone know what Spartan life was really like? I'm no expert here but I'd love to know if it lives up to the Hollywood ideals.
It's crazy to think that something I've come to value so much about modern Greek people is actually from the ancient Greeks. Does anyone know where, when or from whom the concept of philotimo emerged in Ancient Greece?
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