Μarinos Antipas

1872-1907

Τhe brief life of Marinos Antipas comes close to legend. The great visionary and veteran of the agrarian land reform became victim of the murderous plans of the gentry of Thessalia while he was struggling to rouse the local crofters made to live in sordid poverty, just half a century ago, in 1907.

Maris as they used to call him back in the Ferentinata of Pilaros in Kefalonia where he first saw the light of life in 1872 was more of a madman to christen two little girls in the dawn of the twentieth century with the names Epanastasi (Revolution) and Anarchia (Anarchy).

During his brief life those were the two values in which he believed; Revolution and Anarchy in the sense of a society without social classes. His entire life was a struggle against any kind of pressure and towards liberty of any kind; national and social or ethical. He stuck to his principles and insisted on them until the violent end of his life.

He was not abashed at all by the prosecutions, the imprisonments and the threats. The words that he had appealed to the local crofters who lived in poverty and decadence are typical of his ideas. «I am about to be killed but wherever that happens, I want you to come and pick my body up cause even as dead I wish to be among you».

Marinos Antipas was not a farmer neither belonged to the gentry. He was the first son of Spiros Antipas, carpenter and wood-engraver. He graduated from high school and after many financial difficulties arrived in Athens dreaming to be a lawyer. But he was not meant to graduate from the School of Law. On the contrary he comes in touch with the socialist cycles aspired by the ideas of Stavros Kallergis, he is introduced to the socialist ideas and takes part in the Central Socialist Association.

In 1897 he joins other students and goes to Crete where he fights as a volunteer for the Cretan revolution against the Turks. A heavy injury on the chest makes him return to Athens. 

Disappointed but also furious for the outcome of the Cretan Revolution as well as the entire outcome of the Greek-Turkish war in 1897 he makes himself a sharp accuser of the Palace that he considers that it is to blame for the national loans.

His active participation in the massive demonstration in the Omonoia Square on the 14th September 1897 where in a speech of his, he severely accuses the Palace’s stance, he gets arrested  and brought to the court. On the 8th January 1898 he is condemned to a year of imprisonment in the prisons of Aegina labelled as «dangerous man».

The conditions of his imprisonment are extremely cruel. The requests of the Ministry do not leave space for misunderstandings for the «dangerous» Antipas; According to the order no. 4176 «there is need of his placement in conditions of isolation and avoidance of interpersonal contact, binding in his cell, imposition of diet until bringing into line».

After his discharge from prison he completely leaves his studies and returns home. He publishes the paper «Resurrection» in Kefalonia aiming to diffuse his socialist ideas. The fist issue of the «Resurrection» is published on July 29th 1900 but once more, the ideas of Antipas come in contrast with the present «status quo» and a new series of prosecutions begin. As a result of this, the publishing of his newspaper is suspended until the 3rd of July 1904 when it comes out again until April 27th 1907 just a few days after his violent death.

In 1906 he arrives in Thessalia to work as a supervisor at the big estates of his uncle George Skiadaresis, a rich homogenous agronomist from Romania whom Antipas himself had persuaded to buy lands in this area in one of his trips to Bucharest in1903.

Therefore Antipas couldn’t have adapted himself less to the image of a typical land supervisor. He begins to show actively his interest for the miserable life of the crofters that had at any case been improved after the embodiment of Thessalia with the rest of Greece.

With the alliance of his uncle he brings the upside-down to the Thessalian plain: He gives away to the crofters expanses of land to build houses in place of the huts they had lived in until then and also allots the right to keep the 75% of the production instead of the 25% that it was until then. He adopts the days of holiday like that of Sunday even before it was constituted by the state and was to happen in 1910. He builds schools for their children and organizes Agrarian Unions. At the same time he passes by the entire Thessalian plain talking to the farmers about their rights on the land that they cultivate themselves and encourages them to demand the land distribution. His activity was culminated with the mass demonstration in Laspohori by the beginnings of 1907.

All that was too much for the gentry to accept and the land-owners that saw their authority over the land and power over the crofters to be at stake. The first attempts to hold the visionary Marinos Antipas in check through recommendations to the Gendarmerie, fail.

As having been prepared for a long time Antipas continued his action as well as the pathway that would lead to his death. The gentry assigned and bribed Ioannis Kiriakou who was supervisor at the lands of Aristeides Metaxas and partner of G. Skiadaresis. The conspiracy would be set in such way that it would appear as self-defence.

The fatal night was that of the 8th March 1907. The 35-year-old Marinos Antipas is cowardly murdered by Kiriakou with a double-barrelled shot- gun «at the back side and on the lumbar area» and passes away in the arms of his cousin Panagiotis Skiadaresis. His last words were «Equality, Fraternity, and Freedom»

The Principles though had no intention to bring in justice. In stead of that, they obtained the opposite by covering the assassin. The police officer in a telegram to the Ministry of Internal Affairs states; «Antipas was assassinated in the attempt of Kiriakou of defending himself against act of violation» In the following trial, Kiriakou is set innocent.

Despite his early death Marinos Antipas had already managed to cultivate the prosperous Thessalian plain with the seeds of revolution awakening the crofters reduced to utter poverty to claim what they were meant for on the land that they were themselves cultivating.

After his death he would be the first martyr of the agrarian uprising and the first dead man of the great uprising of Kileler that would break out in three years time after his violent and unfair assassination on 6th March 1910.

Marinos Antipas was buried to the place were he fought for. His tomb is in the Omolio village where his bust lies in the yard of the church of Saint Athanasios.

His written production is too small but there is a quotation, the beginning of his latest article titled «What I am» that reveals the beliefs of the great fighter:

" I am socialist in every sense and carry this title in faith and pride. I believe to work as my sole Pantocrator, creator of everything and I consider freedom, fraternity and equality as the coessential and inseparable triangle of happiness and peace " .

ΜΑRINOS ANTIPAS