The Centenary of Athens University

Extract

The celebration of the Centenary of the ‘ National and Capodistrian University,’ to give it the full title which it has borne officially since 1911, was held for eight days in April, and passed off amidst the hospitality for which Greece is proverbial. The present writer, one of the few delegates who was also present at the seventy-fifth anniversary in 1912, when that eminent historian and admirable organiser, the late Sp. P. Lampros, was Rector, could not but compare the dimensions of modern Athens and modern Greece with those of the smaller capital and the restricted kingdom, then on the eve of the first Balkan War. In the expansion of Greece, both scientifically and politically, the University has played a great part. It has produced eminent scholars and apostles of the ‘ Great Idea,’ men who have laboured for the advancement of Greek learning and the creation of greater Greece.