A Drop of History 129

The tarmac comes to the streets of Athens
When man-carriers protested the paving of Aeolou Street

It was 1905 when the tarmac debuted in the Greek capital. That year, during the second term of Spyros Merkouris as mayor, the first paving works started on Aeolou Street, spreading later to other downtown streets. Until then, the capital choked on its own dust during the summer months, while, as soon as winter set in, mud covered everything. Although the paving was a truly great work, marking the beginning of a new era, it did not go uncontested. Dimitris Lambikis writes in his book The 100 Years of the Borough of Athens: “The first to protest the new works were the coachmen, as the wheels of their vehicles skidded dangerously on the new road surface.” Opposition continued, from other professional classes. The same book goes on: “The press encyclopedists found another drawback: that tarmac would be a thermally conductive material, which would turn the climate of Athens tropical.”

Perhaps the strongest opposition came from another professional group. At the time there were dozens of carriers, whose job involved carrying well-dressed ladies to the other side of a muddy street or square on their shoulders. It made sense that they were not enthusiastic about paved streets. On the other hand, the ladies’ husbands were zealous supporters of the works, because they could not bear to see those rude carriers grope their wives’ buttocks as they carried them over.

It is interesting that the paving of the first street in the country was considered a financial scandal. Ever since, all the roadwork done in Greece, down to the present, has been burdened with that original sin. In reference to the work’s management, Lambikis stresses that there were many doubts as to whether the contractor observed fully the terms of the agreement signed with the municipality. A shrewd, scandal-hunting journalist, in fact, based his accusations on an experiment: He poked his cane into the newly-paved street and found that the layer of asphalt was only four centimetres thick, instead of the eight that the contract stipulated. Still, despite the objections and shoddy workmanship, the paving went on after Aeolou, on other streets, opening the way for the appearance of the motorcar in the Athenian citizen’s daily life.

The first motorised vehicle had appeared in our country in 1897. It was a passenger Gardner with fourteen seats, which was instantly targeted by the coachmen, who suspected that the new diabolical contraption would cost them their jobs. They capitalised on the vehicle being awfully noisy, claimed that pregnant women would risk miscarriage, and demanded the prohibition of its circulation. They succeeded. Up until 1900, the motorcar was practically unknown to the Athenians, and petrol was only sold in chemists’ as a stain removing product. The first motorised taxi entered circulation in 1901, owned by one Moraitinis. It did not have the Gardner’s fate; instead, it survived, despite the coachmen’s opposition, seeing that there were already plenty of cars in Europe and America.

By 1909, there were 37 cars in Athens; by 1915, 203; by 1925, 900, and by 1936, 35,000. However, the streets were still fairly empty and cars navigated unhindered from one end of the city to the other. Serious traffic problems arose in the capital during the 1960s, and they keep getting worse with every passing year.

If we examine it closely, ladies, there is a historical dilemma here too. A Mercedes carries you around with greater speed and comfort than a carrier, but does not grope your buttocks…

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved

A Drop of History 128

A day in the life of a Milan duke
Luxuries that would make a modern tycoon feel poor

Dmitri Merezhkovsky, a Russian philosopher and novelist (who died of starvation in Paris during World War II) describes in his book Leonardo Da Vinci the life of a Milanese duke around 1500. His account has special value because it is the result of extensive archive study during a long tour of Greece, Turkey, Europe and the Near East. It is, in fact, a historical document of everyday life among the ruling class of the early years of the European Renaissance.

So, the duke, during an ordinary stroll around the workshops neighbouring his palazzo, where all sorts of artists that he patronised worked, would listen to the hagiographers talk about their art. The wood on which they would paint had to be old beech or fig tree, and it had to be primed with a good rubbing of powdered burnt bone. The bones used for that had to be hen’s wings, capon’s spines, or ram’s ribs and shoulderblades. Otherwise, the wood would not be smooth and glossy enough for a good icon. The paints were made by the artists themselves, using ingredients they collected themselves in nature. Indispensable ingredients were egg yolk, fig sap, water, oil, and wine. There was endless variation in details. If they wanted to paint young faces, the egg had to come from a town-bred hen, and thus have a lighter yolk. The yolk of eggs laid by free range country hens was suitable to colour older and darker faces and bodies.

The duke would continue his stroll, pass through his warehouses, cowsheds and pigsties, and end up in an outbuilding named “the home of giants”, which every respectable aristocratic home had. That was where all the creatures that amused the noblemen and noblewomen of the time lived, locked up in cages. Hounds, monkeys, parrots, dwarves, hunchbacks, negroes, madmen and epileptics, all piled up together in incredible filth. They were taken out according to the masters’ mood for entertainment. Of course, it did not even cross anyone’s mind that, for instance, dwarves or negroes were human creatures too. When a negro child was taken seriously ill, the duke thought of baptising him in order for him not to die a heathen, but then considered it too great an indulgence.

Then the duke and duchess would get to table, which, on an ordinary day, would include no less than thirty people. This is how Merezhkovsky describes an ordinary ducal dinner: “They started with fresh artichokes, brought from Genoa to Milan on horseback, fat eels from Venice, carp from the fisheries of Mantua and jellied capon’s breast. Afterwards, the main course was a huge boar’s head, stuffed with chestnuts and raisins. A whole stuffed peacock followed, with its magnificent feathers stuck again on its roasted body. As soon as the cooks put it on the table, it suddenly started to flutter its wings and tail, to the delight of the table companions. That was achieved through a mechanism hidden inside the peacock’s body, which made the cooked bird act like a living one. Dessert was a huge cake, out of which jumped a dwarf covered in parrot feathers, who was promptly snatched by the servants and locked in a gilded hanging cage in order to amuse the guests with his jokes during dinner.”

There were no forks on the table, only knives. The guests ate using three fingers, although at dessert there was a sort of fork brought in, gold with a crystal handle, which only the ladies would use. There were no napkins either; the guests wiped their hands on the tablecloth. They drank a light Sicilian white wine with the first course, then red Cyprus wine flavoured with cinnamon and cloves to accompany the meats. Before the duke drank any wine, the chamberlain would dip in his cup a special amulet, made by a piece of African rhinoceros horn on a golden chain. If the wine was poisoned, the horn would blacken instantly. There were similar amulets on all salt bowls. If rhino’s horn was not to be found, they used talismans of desiccated frog or snake’s tongue instead. After dinner, the guests would listen to some poetry recitations, eating gilded oranges drenched in aromatic Malvasian wine.

That was an ordinary day in the life of a Milan duke during the early Renaissance, a time when death of starvation, both in the cities and in the ravaged countryside, was a very common fate for the poor.

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved

A Drop of History 127

Smokers: steadfast sponsors of the state
The first taxes on tobacco in Greece

Now that smokers are under merciless persecution, it is worth taking a look at the history of production and consumption of cigarettes in Greece. The first ready-made tobacco products, or rather a primitive version of modern cigarettes, appeared in our country in 1885. The reason was (what else?) the state’s decision to tax tobacco consumption for the first time. Until then, smokers bought loose tobacco and papers separately. Ten drams (32g) of tobacco cost four (drachma) cents, and the respective quantity of paper cost just one cent.

Tobacconists’ had special mortars, in which they pounded the tobacco to the customer’s liking, just like coffee shops do today, grinding coffee in the buyer’s presence. The sale of loose tobacco was prohibited in 1883, when the Harilaos Trikoupis government decided to transfer taxation from production to consumption. Until then, only tobacco cultivators were taxed, and that was calculated not according to produced quantity but according to acreage. In this way, the state added two to three hundred thousand drachmas every year to its coffers. By taxing consumption it was estimated, in the 1884 budget, that the revenues would be five million drachmas – sixteen times the previous sum.

The brilliant idea belonged to Trikoupis’ Minister of Finance, Pavlos Calligas. Presenting the budget before the parliament, he was the first to use an argument that has been a staple for all his successors ever since: “Risking our popularity, we suggest a small but indispensable tax on goods not necessary but of optional use.” With that “small but indispensable” tax, the price of tobacco immediately skyrocketed. The product was mandatorily packaged, together with paper, so that the seal of the state would go on the pack and the tax would be paid. But the price became forbidding, since the tax was set at 4 drachmas per okka (1.280kg). The ten drams of loose tobacco plus paper, from 5 cents, jumped instantly to 25, which means that the price increased fivefold, in favour of the state and to the detriment of the consumer. Does it all sound familiar?

Those were the first expensive Greek packs – not cigarettes, since, even packaged, the tobacco was still loose. As was expected, there was a fury of protests, both by smokers and tobacco merchants, the precursors of tobacco manufacturers. The press of the time is full of malicious comments against the government’s tax-promoting policy. Leader of the tobacco merchants was one Andreas Gazis, who owned a large shop on Ermou Street.

During the first years, illegal trade and smuggling of loose tobacco flourished. The state, on the other hand, started using gendarmes (like modern economic crime squads) to persecute the cultivators who sold their tobacco illegally and the merchants who sold loose tobacco to consumers. The state won the war. Smokers decided it was better to reach deeper into their pockets, while tobacco merchants realised they could make more profit under the new regime, and became manufacturers.

One year later, in 1885, the first packaged ready-rolled cigarettes appeared. They were all handmade. Thousands of workers rolled cigarettes and filled packs by hand, and their price skyrocketed again. Ten drams’ worth of tobacco in ready cigarettes cost by now 50 cents, to the delight of the merchants and the state, which saw its tax revenues increase exponentially. Within two years, the price of tobacco had risen tenfold. Reminds me of something… reminds me of something.

The first industrially made cigarettes appeared in 1918, when the first rolling machines were introduced, but, despite the vertical increase of production and the drastic reduction of the manufacturing cost, the price of cigarettes not only did not decrease, but in fact rose yet again. And that keeps happening until our days, just proving that Greek history, in certain things, like the robbing of citizens by the state itself, maintains a wonderful continuity and consistency.

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved