"In northwestern Greece there is the village of Souli or Kakosouli, consisting of one big village, called Kakosouli, and of other smaller around, which are Kiafa, Navarikos, Samoniva, Tzagari, Koukouli, Paliochori, Aloupochori, Romanates and others. The area of these villages was inhabited by warrior Greeks [Γραικοί, in the text], who held a 18 years war against all Albania, which [Albania] was led by the tireless leader (Satrap) Ali Pasha from Tepelen, and finally they dispersed by a treaty to Corfu and other places, and now [Souli] is deserted. (Source: Papacharissis Athanasios, complete edition of the "Geography of Albania and Epirus" by Kosmas Thesprotos and Athanasios Psalidas. Epirotic Studies Society, 2nd edition, Ioannina 1964. p. 62. In Greek.)"

""The Suliotes were not Greeks but Albanian Christians. They always used the Albanian language at home; but being borderers, all the men and many of the women could speak Greek. Most of the places at Suli and in the neighbourhood had two names, one Greek and the other Albanian." (William Martin Leake, Researches in Greece, σελ. 414: )"

"The Suliotes are villainous Romans & speak little Illyric. (Source: Lord Byron to John Hobhouse, Nov. 2, 1811, p. 55)"

"The towns of the Adriatic coast were often Italian; some Balkan towns were distinctly Greek or Turkish. Most striking of all were those cosmopolitan trading centres where no one ethnic group predominated. One of many examples that might be cited was Salonika, present-day Thessaloniki, an Ottoman port of Greek provenance where Jews slightly outnumbered Christians and Muslims. Each religious community could, in turn, be subdivided into sects and linguistic sub-groups: there were Judesmo-speaking Sephardic Jews as well as Ashkenzim, Christian Greeks, Bulgarians and Macedonians - some speaking Greek, some Vlach, some a Slavic language - and myriad kinds of Muslim: Sufis, Bektashis and Mevlevis as well as Naqshbandis and Ma'min, who were converts from Judaism."

"It was in fact more plausible for the Turks to portray the Greeks as a fifth column, since the Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos strongly favoured Greek intervention on the side of the Entente powers and, although King Constantine resisted until finally driven to abdicate in June 1917, the presence of an Anglo-French force at Salonika from October 1915 cast doubt on the credibility of Greek neutrality. Viewed from Salonika, the First World War was the Third Balkan War, with Bulgaria joining Germany and Austria in the rout of Serbia; indeed, it was to shore up the disintegrating Serbian position that the Entente powers had sent their troops to Salonika. It was too late. The Anglo-French force remained penned in, unable, despite Greece's belated entry into the war, to prevent the German-Bulgarian defeat of Romania in 1917. Yet the final phase of the war saw a collapse as complete as that suffered by the Germans on the Western Front. An offensive on the Salonika Front forced Bulgaria to sue for peace on September 25,1918; six days later the British marched into Damascus, having defeated the Turkish army in Syria. On October 30 the Turks surrendered."

"THESSALONIKI (Salonika) Greece's second city is named after a daughter of , Thessaloniki, who was married to Kassandros. This shortlived monarch was without descendants, so he gave Thessaloniki's name to the capital (founded 315 B.C.) to remind posterity of his family's royal descent."

"The Aegean sea washes Greece on two sides: first, the side that faces towards the east and stretches from Sunium, towards the north as far as the Thermaean Gulf and Thessaloniceia, a Macedonian city...; and secondly, the side that faces towards the south, I mean the Macedonian country, extending from Thessaloniceia as far as the Strymon."

"Salonique à tout prix!"

"When Paul came to Thessaloniki around AD 50, the town embraced him and Silas along with their message about Jesus Christ. However, the friendly welcome quickly wore out as some individuals began rising up against them."

"Here we notice that in acts the term "Hellenes" (or "Greeks") is used with noteworthy propriety: the people of Thessalonica, of Berea, of Ephesus, of Iconium. and of Syrian Antioch are spoken of as Hellenes. Those were all cities which had no claim to be Roman, except in the general way of being parts of the Roman provinces Macedonia, Galatia, and Syria. They were counted Greek cities, and reckoned themselves as such."

"If we consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterise the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence were the vast accomplishments, and the brilliant fancy of Cicero; the withering fire of Juvenal; the plastic imagination of Dante; the humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of Butler; the supreme and universal excellence of Shakspeare? All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling."

"While many of the world's richest people live in London, four of its boroughs rank among the twenty poorest in England, and 27 percent of the city's population live in poverty. London's polarized economic landscape is typical of "superstar" cities. Other leading cities of Europe—Oslo, Amsterdam, Athens, Budapest, Madrid, Prague, Riga, Stockholm, Tallinn, Vienna, Vilnius—also suffer widening gaps between the top and the bottom of the social hierarchy."

"A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art."

"Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,—wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,—there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens."

"Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence, native to famous wits."

"Athens, of a part of whose political life Thucydides tells the story, must ever be an object of the highest interest to every political student, because in what has come down to us of her history and of her literature, we have so complete and so minute a picture of all the features of her public life, not only historians and biographers, but the philosophers, the orators, the poets, have combined to analyse the springs of her actions and to reveal her to us as she really was. And there was that in the Athenian character that made such a revelation the easier; for with all their faults—and they were many—they were a people deserving the praise which Pericles bestowed on them when he said: "Our social march is free, not only in regard to public affairs, but also in regard to intolerance of each other's diversity of daily pursuits. For we are not angry with our neighbour for what he may do to please himself; nor do we ever put on those sour looks which, though they do no positive damage, are not the less sure to offend.""

"How they love freedom on this soil!"

"Let there be light! Said Liberty, And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose!"

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone - Greece with its immortal glories - is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation."