It rarely happens that an event goes so well with the place where it is held. Last Monday evening, when the air smelled of spring in Kifissia, I stepped into the library of Spyros Loverdos for the first time, the fund for the presentation of the book by Achilleas A. Stamatiadis “Venus Heavenly and Earthly: From the Pre-Socratic Philosophy of the Victorian Era”, Ocelotos Publications, written in English. The amazing building of the Loverdos Library is a closely guarded secret for many Athenians who have had time to visit the northern suburbs. Signed by Ernesto Ziller, it was originally intended to house the books and art of a family of Cephalonian bankers and intellectuals, surrounded by a charming garden: Spyros Loverdos (1874-1936) an economist and politician who served as a minister, was a reader’s lover and had an amazing collection of publications, manuscripts and codices . His brother Dionysios (1877–1934), also an economist, took an interest as a collector and thus created one of the most important corpus of Byzantine and post-Byzantine art in Greece. In addition to Ziller, the two brothers who founded General Bank had a special love for Konstantinos Parthenis, the father of modern Greek painting. Therefore, their library was a meeting place for intellectuals, as well as cultured people who love art.

Architecture for four decades was in desolation and oblivion, until the active and stubborn Giorgos Karabellas resurrected it. A linguist, a lover of high aesthetics, a successful professional in his field as a creative and artistic consultant, he gave new life by placing Fondazione here. He retained the identity of the building with the library’s rich wood carvings reminiscent of an altar, while endowing it with contemporary artwork, giving the space an otherworldly tone with his little “touches”. It has begun organizing arts, literature and design events with the prospect of becoming a private club by the end of 2023. In this amazing environment, which was filled with people from the very beginning, the publications of a young scientist with brilliant research were presented.

Achilleas Stamatiadis, who showed his love of literature from a young age, began studying international relations, the history of ideas, and political science at Northwestern University in Boston. He went on to study comparative literature at the Harvard GSAS program. His book, published in Greece, is a follow-up to his master’s thesis at the University of Chicago, part of which was also published in the University of Pennsylvania’s Discentes Classical Studies and is now available online at the Library’s website. Congress. The author refers to the dual meaning of the goddess Aphrodite, on the one hand, the Earthly Pandimos, associated by Plato with physical lust, and on the other hand, the Heavenly, associated with love for the Idea of ​​the Beautiful, which is also identified with the Good, Noble, Correct and Virtuous.

The author, starting from the pre-Socratic years, dwelled on Plato’s “Feast”, followed by his references to Roman, Hellenistic and Byzantine literature, ending with Marcillio Ficino (1433-1499) and “Lucretius”, a famous poem by the Victorian poet. Alfred Lord Tennyson. It is interesting that Ficino, the first translator of Plato into Latin, believed that people – and first of all the leaders of his time – fell in love wrong, that if they change in accordance with the norms established by Plato at the Symposium, then they will be able to manage them better and more profitably. for society as a whole. The book was featured by Guy Smoot, Ph.D. from Harvard, who now teaches at the Australian National University, and Kevin McGrath, a Harvard professor (who, as poet Laudandus, writes poetry for official university ceremonies) spoke about the book, with Academy researcher Michalis present on the panel Konaris, director of the Athens Center Yiannis Zervos and lawyer Mariella Markianu-Daniolou.