Greece Reforges Rome

In 1863, the seventeen-year-old Danish Prince George arrived in Athens to become King of the Hellenes. They say he changed everything. He inherited a small, impoverished, chaotic, and feeble peninsula nation. He left behind a prosperous, stable, and powerful great power of the Near East. Over sixty years, he proved that a nation's strength does not stem from fervent fanaticism, but from pragmatic composure; not from martial aggression, but from restrained cultivation. A poet would later sing of his legacy: when lightning rends the sky and thunder rolls over Constantinople, from Libya to Batumi, wherever the bells of the Orthodox faith are heard, the glory of the Basileus illuminates all.