On top of a mountain, under a fir tree, in 1770, a dark-skinned baby was born. They immediately named him Theodoros. This little Thodorakis, as they called him 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 bows in the fire, burns, turns to ashes, and then rises again.

He was the expected Messiah of Greece who came to drive away the darkness of twenty centuries and to illuminate the homeland once again. This newborn was the mythical Leader, the suffering one, the versatile one, the resourceful Odysseus of Homer, the unwavering Guide of the Nation, the Founder of Modern Hellenism, the Ethnarch Theodoros Kolokotronis!