Description “We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, all have their roots in Greece.” Around the fiery philhellenic “I believe” is built the grand – in scope but also in ambition – lyrical drama Hellas by the major Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a close friend of Byron, written with passionate speed in October 1821 in Pisa, Italy, his permanent residence, and published in February 1822 in London, with the aim of mobilizing British public opinion in favor of the Greek Revolution.

Shelley eagerly listens to the news from revolutionary Greece, becoming excited, anxious, fearful, dreaming, and burning: he recounts with Homeric vividness and frenetic rhythm the events of the Greek Revolution, through the eyes of the defeated Turks, and sings with transparent lyricism the “clarity that is Greece,” the ancient as well as the new, which “is destined to follow in the footsteps of its ancestors,” even though the outcome of the Revolution is still uncertain.

The work is published in a new translation by Orpheas Apergis, and includes both the poetic Preface that Shelley did not include in the final form of the work, as well as extensive notes and an introduction, along with a detailed biographical timeline of the poet.

Contents: Translator's introduction, Hellas, lyrical drama, Appendix, Introduction by Orpheas Apergis.