Christopoulos, Athanasios

Christopoulos, Athanasios 

Born May 1772 in Kastoria; died Jan. 29, 1847, in Bucharest. Greek writer and scholar.

To escape the Turks, Christopoulos’ family moved from Greece to Bucharest, where he subsequently spent most of his life. He studied medicine and law at the universities of Budapest and Padua.

Christopoulos’ most important work is the collection Lyrics (Vienna, 1811; Athens, 1887), which is in the Anacreontic tradition. The new meters, rich rhythms, and melodiousness of the poems brought the collection enormous popularity in Greece and earned Christopoulos a place among the founders of modern Greek literature. His other works include studies on the art of poetry and textbooks on grammar. He attempted to compile a dictionary of the Greek language. Christopoulos also wrote on the history and philosophy of ancient Greece and translated various works of Homer and Herodotus.