She must have had a strong personality and a beautiful woman. Duchess Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun. Keep in mind that, as legend has it, the bandit Davelis dug an underground passage from his cave shelter to Sophie’s villa and usually visited her in the evenings.

Duchess Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun was born in 1785 in the United States and lived in Greece during the first decades of the newly formed Greek state. Her husband was a supporter of Napoleon, son of the finance minister and Duke of Piacenza, a city in northern Italy, hence the title of Duchess. The man who impressed the Duchess was Kapodistriaswhom he met in 1826 in Paris. In 1829, after her divorce from the duke, Sophie settled in Nafplion, the first capital of the Greek state, of which Kapodistrias was governor. She herself actively participated in the French philhellenic movement and in 1834 moved to Attica. Her house has survived to this day. We all know where her villa is, if you think that Piacenza is Greek for… Placentia. The reason is, of course, Duchess Placencia. She lived in the area of ​​Penteli, where her tomb is located, and even today there are buildings that remind us of her presence (for example, the Castle of Rhododaphne or the Tower of Duchess Placencia).

The duchess had a personal relationship with Kapodistrias. However, the rumors about these relationships do not have conclusive evidence, but, as Mr. Giorgos Koudas, Associate Professor of Urban Folklore at the School of Philosophy of Athens, says, “they move in a dichotomy: initial admiration for the Duchess of Kapodistria, and then a break in relations and unquenchable hatred.” However, when admiration is followed by insatiable hatred, it predisposes us to the idea of ​​a passionate woman.

On the other hand, more evidence of Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun’s love passions exists in stories about her relationship with Spyros Bibisis, a notorious local bandit. “Most of the legends speak of the kidnapping of the Duchess by Beebisis, the trip he made to Penteli, and the subsequent establishment of a relationship after she petitioned for pardon for the captive kidnapper Bibisis. The third narrators in their stories focus on the pure love between a rich and powerful woman and a young and handsome bandit, which arose in the idyllic environment of the then green Penteli region,” says Mr. Kuzas.

As for her relationship with the bandit Davelis, as a university student explains, the main core of the stories centers on an alleged underground tunnel (an underground tunnel connecting buildings is a common theme in many urban legends) that Davelis dug out of the ground. the cave is his hideout at Penteli in the duchess’s villa. This is a cycle of legends accompanying the bandit Davelis, whose actions were widely recognized among the people, and to a large extent, episodes from his life (real or fictional) were widely circulated orally.

“Fixed capital”

Similar stories were heard yesterday at a conference hosted by the University of Athens, with a clear time reference to today’s Valentine’s Day celebration. The conference was titled “Glykypikron amachanon ὀrpeton, Love in the Timelessness of Greek Literature”, and according to Vassilios P. Vertoudakis, Associate Professor of Ancient Greek Philology at EKPA and Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the conference, the goal was “to show how the changes in religion, in the political and state structure of the Greeks, the transition from one historical period to another is reflected in the ethics of love and, consequently, in the literary depiction of love. Love has been a key chapter in Greek literature from its inception until very recently.” He himself, in his preface, mentioned the author of the letter named Aristenetus, who must have lived in the 5th century AD. As he comments, “The era to which Aristenetos belongs, that is, the so-called late antiquity, is a critical transitional period in which a new Western attitude towards human sexuality is being formed. Heterosexuality becomes the only legitimate expression of sexual desire. Homoeroticism will be taboo for centuries to come.”