1. Origins and family

Constantine Paparrigopoulos, historiographer and professor of the history of Greek nation in the University of Athens, was born in Constantinople in 1815. His father, Dimitrios came from Vytina of Peloponnesus and settled in Constantinople after the Orlov Revolt. He was dealing successfully with commercial and banking activities. These activities were interrupted violently in 1821, when Dimitrios Paparrigopoulos himself, one of his sans and other members of his family were executed by the Ottomans in reprisal for the outburst of the Greek Revolution. The family tragedy forced his mother, Tarsia (nee Nikoklis), to flee with her children to Odessa, a Russian town with prosperous Greek community. There, Constantine Paparrigopoulos and his brother Peter, who later became professor in the Law School of University of Athens, studied at the famous French lyceum Richelieu.

In 1830, Paparrigopoulos moved to Greece. He didn’t follow a curriculum program, but he was student of George Gennadius, like his brother Peter. In 1834, he was appointed as a clerk in the Secretariat (ie the Ministry) of Justice and in the same year the Bavarian regency entrusted him with writing in French the minutes of the trial of Theodore Kolokotronis. He served in this position for eleven years and reached the rank of assistant judge.

In 1841 he married Mariora Afthonidis, daughter of the merchant-landowner George Afthonidis, who had been a powerful official of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. From this marriage three children were born: Dimitrios, who later became famous poet, Aglaia and Helen.

Paparrigopoulos was dismissed from his office in 1845 due to the famous resolution about “heterochthones”. The same happened to two of his brothers, who also held positions in the Ministry of Justice. The brothers “Paparrigopoulos” protested against their dismissal with a letter published in the newspapers ChronosandHelpis. The letter, which was charged with emotions using references to the execution of their father and brother, concluded as follows: “Let’s the public judge if there is a human law or any interpretation sufficient to remove the indelible stamp of Greek citizen from the forehead of the children of such a man”.¹

2. The historical writings of Paparrigopoulos

Paparrigopoulos published his first historiographical work in 1843 under the title About the emigration of Slavic tribes in Pelopponese. It was an effort to refute the arguments of the German historiographer Jakob Philip Fallmerayer over the slavificaton of Greeks during the Byzantine era². In the next year, his second book was published under the title The last year of the Greek independence, where the historiographer argued that the conquest of Korinthos by the Romans took place in 145 and not in 146 BC.

His dismissal from the Ministry of Justice forced him to devote himself to scientific pursuits and now it was the turn of the great historiographical compositions. At first, he turned to the writing of educational textbooks, especially about global history. In 1845 he published a translation-adaptation of the known textbook of the French pedagogue David Lévi Alvarès, Nouveaux éléments d’histoire générale, under the title Elements of General History according to the system of the French Lévi. The book was intended for teaching history in secondary education and its writing served his effort to be appointed as teacher in the Gymnasium of Athens. The Ministry of Education approved the use of the book as a teaching device, which drew the wrath of Gregory Papadopoulos, who held the position of teacher of History in the Gymnasium of Athens. There followed an exchange of documents between the two scholars criticizing each other. Paparrigopoulos prevailed in the controversy, which took political dimensions, while some newspapers of Athens were involved in it. As a result, in 1846 he was appointed as a teacher of History in the Gymnasium of Athens.

In the beginning of the school year 1846-1847, he announced that he would deliver extraordinary series of courses in the Gymnasium of Athens in the form of lectures on the history of Greece, from the subordination to Romans to the Revolution of 1821. Indeed, he published in French three of his introductory courses in the magazine Le moniteur grec issued in Athens.³ Later, the first two of these texts were translated in Greek for the magazine Pandora.⁴ Indeed, they constituted one of the cornerstones of the Greek national historiography by virtue of their character that was simultaneously reviewing and programmatic. It was reviewing because it outlined what had been written by Greek and foreign scholars until then, orienting himself toward the writing of a comprehensive history of the Greek nation. It was also programmatic, because wherever he noted related problems, he proposed the searching for solutions in specific directions.

Paparrigopoulos had been teaching in the Gymnasium of Athens for almost four years. In 1849 he issued the first volume of the Handbook of General History, which was devoted to the ancient history. With this book he intended to replace the Elements of General History, which had provoked so many reactions. This time, the Greek historiographer used the writings of German colleagues as a basis, mainly those of Friedrich Christoph Schlosser, who was to exert a strong influence on him in the entire course of his scientific career. Eventually, in 1853 he published one more volume of the Handbook of General History devoted to the medieval history. On the contrary, the third volume, which was to deal with modern history, was never completed, because the historiographer’s attention focused on the writing of a history of the Greek nation from the Antiquity to the Modern Times.

His efforts bore fruits with the publication in 1853 of the History of the Greek nation from the ancient times until today for teaching the children, which was a textbook for Gymnasium. Meanwhile, he succeeded also in occupying a position in the University of Athens thanks to the great assistance of his family friend and protector, Constantine Schinas, formerly professor of History in the same university and then ambassador of Greece in Munich, whose intercession helped Paparrigopoulos in being awarded a PhD thesis in absentia by the University of Munich, because of his important historiographical work. Finally, he was appointed in 1851 as temporary professor of the History of ancient nations i.e. the seat that had been declared vacant after Schinas’ departure.⁵

Paparrigopoulos was promoted to full professor in 1857 and later served as rector of the university. With the exception of the summer semester of the academic year 1851-1852 and despite some slight variations in the titles of his lessons, the historiographer taught in the university only one lesson; that one with which he was identified both as scientist and writer that is the History of the Greek nation: ancient, medieval and modern.

2.1. The History of the Greek nation

In the following years, the writing of the monumental five-volume work of the historiographer History of the Greek nation from the ancient times to the modern ones, elaborated for the interest of the majority(Athens, 1860-1874)⁶ prevailed and constituted the leading text of Greek historicism. The publication of the History of Paparrigopoulos met with many reactions that had to do mainly with its popularizing character, as it was stated in the subtitle. There were reactions against the historiographer’s ideas too. On the one hand, prominent followers of Korais’ tradition, like Stefan Koumanoudis, criticized him for the way he treated the Ancient Macedonian and Byzantine period⁷ i.e. integrating them in the general body of the history of the Greek nation and insisting on their “Hellenic” character.⁸ On the other hand, there were many people - forced by provincial and personal motives i.e. intending to underline their own or their fellow countrymen’s contribution to the Revolution of 1821 or to praise certain historians- who charged Paparrigopoulos with ignorance and partiality in presenting the facts that led to the creation of the Greek state.⁹

Between 1885 and 1888, Paparrigopoulos published a revised version of his five-volume History preserving its popularizing character. He published also innumerable articles in newspapers and magazines of the country, the most noticeable of which were those articles in the columns of the magazine Pandora.

3. The political activity of Paparrigopoulos

Paparrigopoulos inaugurated a tradition of active presence of professional historians (and professors in history) in politics – a tradition that mainly Syridon Lampros and Paul Karolidis would continue.¹⁰ In two cases, he was actively involved in the political journalism: in 1847 he published the Ethniki (National) and in 1858 the Hellene (The Greek). They were short-lived ventures intending to support his political friends, who were in difficult political position: Ioannis Koletis in the first case and king Othon in the second one.

As he was very sensitive concerning the image of Greece in the international public opinion, he participated in the editorial board of the Spectateurdel'Orient, the famous magazine-forum for the Greek positions on the Eastern Question issued in French during the Crimean war. His participation as a president both in the paramilitary organization “National Defence” and in the semi-official organ of the Greek cultural propaganda, the “Association for the Propagation of the Greek Letters”¹¹, and his active role in the foundation and operation of the Literary Association “Parnassus” must be noted too.

However, he would underline that he fulfilled “his duty toward the fatherland” mainly with two acts: a) the publication of the Histoire de la civilisation hellénique (Paris 1878) –the french translation of the concise version of the five-volume History, known as Epiloque-¹² and b) his effort to influence the famous cartographer Kiepert so as to map Macedonia in such a way that would serve the Greek national assertions in the Congress of Berlin.¹³ Paparrigopoulos passed away in 1891 in Athens having gained a prominent place in the pantheon of Greek scholars of the 19^th century.