Book Description

Born in 1818 in Andrianople (Edirne), Thrace, Koumanoudis studied Classical Philology in Munich and Berlin and came to Athens in 1845. He became Professor of Latin Philology at the University of Athens, and remained a leading figure of the Archaeological Society for 35 years; he was an equally acclaimed epigraphist, a lexicographer and poet. This volume contains the publication of two texts written during Koumanoudis’ student time in Europe. The first is the diary Koumanoudis kept during the period 1837-1845. The young student puts down his literary experiences (comments on the cities and buildings visited, analysis of artistic events attended, impressions of various readings done, etc.). It is an exemplary testimony of the experiences that Greek students of that time had in Western Europe. The second text is a treatise against Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer and his theories on the origin of modern Greeks, which Koumanoudis wrote in German during his stay in Berlin (1840-1842). This essay, in fact the only surviving part of a larger work, is one of the earliest attempts to deal critically with the thesis of Fallmerayer, and is also presented in Greek translation.