If modern Greece has an intellectual Founding Father it is without doubt Adamándios Koraḯs (Coray) (1748–1833), a textual scholar of international renown and a liberal ideologue with a deep influence on the attitudes of independent Greece. The statement above, then, made at the time when the movement for Greek independence was taking root among the Greeks of the Diaspora, deserves serious attention. This book as a whole constitutes an effort to understand how modern Greek poetry has attempted to bridge the gap between itself and its ultimate poetic ancestor and model, Homer. It is far from surprising that Koraḯs' nationalist pamphlet, Martial Trumpet-Blast (1803), has for its frontispiece a picture of Hellas as a woman in torn clothes — a Turk standing by with drawn sword — with a rag of parchment beneath her feet labelled ‘homer’. Indeed, the picture bears the caption Ὤμοι ἐγὼ πανάποτμος ἐπεὶ μʼ ἕλε δούλιον ἦμαρ, a cento of two Iliadic lines: ‘Alas for me most wretched, for the day of slavery is upon me.’

The first poetic programme to bridge the gap between the moderns and the ancients that Koraïs felt so acutely was in fact inspired by his political and linguistic example.