Kolokotronis

Theodoros Kolokotronis is one of my favorite figures from the Greek War of Independence.  A kleft, a kind of Greek bandit, he went to the Ionian Islands where he came into contact with western ideas, including those about ancient Greece.  He became a member of the Philiki Eteria, a secret society that aimed to free Greece from the Turks, and devoted himself to the liberation of Greece.  In his 50s, he returned to the Peloponnese to organize the other klefts and was  responsible for the defeat of the Turks at the Battle of Dervenakia, which allowed the Greeks to liberate the town of Naphlion.  He was a war hero.

Statue of Theodoros Kolokotronis in Naphlion.  He is shown riding his horse up Palamidi at the Turkish surrender of the city.

However, during the civil war that occurred after the revolution, he was jailed twice, once by Otto, the Bavarian king imposed on Greece by the European powers.  Local legend says Otto jailed him in Palamidi, the castle above Naphlion. There is a cell in one of the bastions of the castle, in a high room, in a cell dug down into the rock at the back of one of the large open rooms at the top.

The left most room behind the students is the open room in the back of which is a cell dug into the rock.

"Let me tell you what I wish I'd known when I was young and dreamed of glory:  you have no control.  Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story?" (Lin-Manuel Miranda) Kolotronis knew... you have to write it yourself.  His story is one of the most colorful of all the colorful stories of the revolution.  He was a character: bandit, war hero, statesman, traitor.  But my favorite part is that he claims that he taught himself to write in his last years in order that he be able to write his own story.  His memoirs are still in print, and even in translation!