Thucydides Re-Greeked

Athenian pressmen stood open-mouthed in a little eager ring last week while a powerful, flashing-eyed old man performed the miracle of interesting them in The History of the Peloponnesian War (431 to 411 B. C.), composed by famed historian Thucydides upon the spot.

The persuasive, clear-eyed man of 62 was not a book agent. When his lips quirked into their celebrated "Mona Lisa smile," he was not attempting to convey by innuendo that the pages of Thucydides are often frank, to say the least. When he strode up and down with impatient nervous steps, the pressmen did not attribute this activity to the bombast of salesmanship. Rather they congratulated this great statesman, former Premier Eleutherios Venizelos, upon the completion of a labor no less monumental because self-imposed : his translation into modern Greek of Thucydides' great history, with an exhaustive commentary and an added political disquisition. The whole, when printed, will embrace 15 volumes. . . .

Venizelos. Observers recalled that Eleutherios Venizelos has caused scarcely a flutter in Greece since he was last Premier for a few days (TIME, Jan. 21, 1924) under the regency which preceded the Hellenic Republic, which has now given way to the dictature of General Pangalos. (TIME, Jan. 11.)

Venizelos freed the island of Crete, his birthplace, from Turkish dominion and brought it under Greek rule (1890-1909). He organized the Balkan League, which thrust Turkey back from considerable European territory in the Balkan War of 1912. After the World War, Venizelos proved himself easily the greatest diplomat among the representatives of minor powers at the Paris Peace Conference. His "enticing charm"-as one statesman expressed it-won for Greece so much added territory that the Greco-Turkish frontier is now but 20 miles from Constantinople. . .

He returned from this world triumph to find that his notoriously fickle countrymen had turned against him in his absence. Ungrateful, they voted him from power (1920).