Death in the Center

"My obituary," said Themistocles Sophoulis, "will be a history of Greece for the past century."

O Gheros (The Old Man), as Greeks affectionately called him, was born on the Aegean Island of Samos in 1860--according to most accounts; some people declare that he was born earlier than that, but that he liked to chop a few years off his age. As an archeologist, he spent years digging amid Greece's ancient ruins, published such learned works as Hades in Antique Art and The Maidens of the Acropolis. In 1900 he turned from archeology to politics, fought the Turks' despotic rule of Samos.

After World War I, Sophoulis joined the late Eleutherios Venizelos' Liberal Party, became its leader after Venizelos' death. Under Sophoulis' vacillating hand, it rapidly declined. Through Greece's coups d'etat and minor revolutions, Sophoulis had usually tried to stick close to the middle of the road. He was an antiroyalist but he served five Greek kings; he was an anti-Communist but he was frequently supported by the Communists in Parliament; he was an anti-Fascist but during the Metaxas dictatorship (1936-41) he simply lived in retirement. After World War II, he advocated collaboration with the Communist rebels, proclaimed an amnesty when he became Premier.

In his late years The Old Man learned that collaboration with the Communists was impossible. With U.S. support and prodding, as head of a Liberal-Right wing coalition, he pursued the civil war as best he could. He was generally regarded as Greece's wisest statesman (which was not saying very much) ; he was certainly more honest and better liked by his people than most other Greek leaders.

He scoffed at all who said that he was getting old, reminded them that his father lived to be 105. But his face had turned yellow with age; he had repeated heart attacks. Greek government officials began to carry black ties in their pockets, to be ready for official mourning the minute the boss died. It was said that during one of his attacks, last year, when doctors tried to move him to the left of the bed on which he lay, The Old Man muttered: "No, please--let me die in the center."

One day last week, he was getting ready to meet Queen Frederika at Athens' Hassani airport; the Queen was his special favorite--he had once referred to her, within King Paul's hearing, with a Greek phrase that can be translated as "quite a dish." Sophoulis, as he was dressing, said to his housekeeper: "When I was ill the Queen came to see me and brought me flowers. She is so sweet." A few minutes later, death, as it must to all men, came to Themistocles Sophoulis. King Paul asked Right-Winger Constantin Tsaldaris, now Foreign Minister, to succeed the man who had lived & died in the center.

One hundred thousand Athenians watched as Sophoulis' casket was drawn to burial by an armored car. "Come to give him the last kiss," intoned Athens' Archbishop Spyridon during the funeral service. The King and Queen stepped up and kissed the casket; Frederika had tears in her eyes.

Many other Greeks wept too, less perhaps over Sophoulis than over Greece's past century.

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