High up on a mountain, under a fir tree, in 1770, a tiny dark-skinned baby was born. They immediately baptized him Theodoros. This little Theodorakis, as he was called throughout his life, could be said to be the incarnation of the Phoenix, the mythical bird that dies and is reborn from its ashes.

I am that bird that approaches the fire, burns, becomes ashes, and is rejuvenated again.

He was the expected Messiah of Greece who came to dispel the darkness of twenty centuries and to illuminate the homeland once more. This newborn was the mythical Leader, the much-suffering, the much-traveled, the resourceful Odysseus of Homer, the indomitable Guide of the Nation, the Founder of Modern Hellenism, the National Leader Theodoros Kolokotronis!