Haris Strangas

Will tweet about Football, MMA, Boxing, current affairs, politics or whatever is on my mind at the time. Greek Australian. All views are my own!

[Ancient History Hub @AncientHistorry]

Rome conquered Greece in 146 BC when they burned Corinth to the ground. And then the strangest thing in ancient history happened. The winners spent the next few centuries desperately trying to become the losers.

It actually started before the final conquest. When the general Marcellus sacked Syracuse in 211 BC, he shipped boatloads of Greek statues and paintings back to Rome, and the city went crazy for it. Suddenly every rich Roman had to have Greek art in his house. Decades later Cicero built an entire court case around prosecuting a governor named Verres for looting Greek masterpieces, and Romans ate it up.

Then came the schools. Wealthy families started buying Greek slaves specifically because they were educated, and handed them the job of raising their children. So the sons of the men who crushed Greece grew up speaking Greek, memorizing Greek poetry, and learning philosophy from Greeks. The elite eventually sent their teenagers abroad to Athens and Rhodes to finish their education, the way people today send kids to study overseas. Cicero did it. Julius Caesar did it.

Their gods were Greek gods wearing name tags. Zeus became Jupiter. Hera became Juno. Aphrodite became Venus. Ares became Mars. Same myths, same family drama, mostly just relabeled.

Their entertainment was borrowed too. The first big Roman playwrights, Plautus and Terence, basically adapted Greek comedies into Latin. Their doctors were Greek. Their architecture leaned on Greek columns, the Doric and Ionic and Corinthian orders you still see on bank buildings today.

And the art obsession left a strange fingerprint on history. Romans loved Greek bronze statues so much that they mass produced marble copies of them. A huge chunk of what people walk past in museums today and call "Greek sculpture" is actually a Roman copy. The Greek originals melted down or vanished long ago. The knockoffs are what survived.

Not everyone was thrilled. Cato the Elder spent his whole life warning that Greek culture would rot the Roman character. He sneered at Greek philosophers, distrusted Greek doctors, and wanted them kept out of the city. And then, as an old man, he quietly sat down and learned Greek anyway. Even the loudest hater caved.

The trend went all the way to the top. Virgil wrote the Aeneid, Rome's national epic, by openly modeling it on Homer. The emperor Nero competed in Greek games and toured Greece like a superfan. Hadrian was so obsessed he grew a Greek philosopher's beard and poured money into rebuilding Athens. And Marcus Aurelius, master of the entire Roman world, wrote his private journal not in Latin but in Greek, because that was the language of serious thinking.

The poet Horace nailed it in a single line: captured Greece took her savage conqueror captive. Rome won every war on the battlefield and then handed its whole soul to the people it had beaten.

[The Stat Guy @The_Stat_Guy_10]

Zlatan and Thierry Henry were so spot on talking about how Spain ... they crush your spirit and drain your soul away.

Henry said Ferran Torres has finally had his redemption moment. Zlatan was in awe of Lamine Yamal.

Complete domination by Spain.

[Homer Pavlos @HomerPavlos]

The Odyssey begins by showing an African rapper with rasta in the role of a Greek poet. We Greeks are forced to watch our Greek history and culture being disgraced and mocked across the entire world. What is Nolan's real role in doing something like this instead of casting a Greek person speaking Greek? What's the purpose of casting someone with rasta in the Greek world?

I'll tell you. Nolan and Hollywood are the real racists and enemies of the West. They hate us Greeks. The simplest confirmation comes from the fact that when a film is about African history, they don't cast white people, only Africans. When it's about Chinese or Japanese history, they cast only Asians, and they even speak only in their own language. But now that the time has come for a film based on Greek history with Greeks, not a single Greek is cast, they don't speak even a bit of Greek, and they don't even respect Homer. So, for films about European cultures, Africans, Asians, and anything else must be cast, but when it comes to African culture, whites are not allowed to play those roles.

This is the real racism of Hollywood.

Hollywood is a cancer that rots your souls and enslaves your minds and spirits. They hate you and they want to destroy you. Never forget the real enemies of the West and of your race. Those who are in universities, the academics, teaching your children how to hate their ancestors instead of honoring them. Don't do them the favor. Love the Greco-Roman world and fight those who hate you.

Never forget the traitors who took everything as a joke and contributed to the plan to destroy Western civilization.

[Haris Strangas @HStrangas]

@NolanAnalyst What an absolute crock

[Homer Pavlos @HomerPavlos]

There are some powerful secrets and symbols in the Odyssey that you can only understand if you speak Greek. The Odyssey, apart from being a literary work, also conceals a profound philosophy that most people are unaware of, not intentionally, but because this philosophy cannot be fully understood in the English language; it can only be grasped in Greek, thanks to the richness of its philology and the etymology of its words. The three most important suitors who die are Antinous, Eurymachus, and Amphinomus. In English, these names mean nothing, but in the Greek language, they carry great significance due to Homer's deliberate choice of them.

The name Antinous means the one who opposes rational arguments, the irrational one ('anti' + 'nous' = mind/intellect). Antinous is the first to speak, the most irreverent of all, and the first to be killed. Odysseus reveals his true self, he has changed after ten years fighting at Troy and another ten struggling against the seas. The first trial he faces upon his return is a war within his own mind, his reason. That is why Homer creates Antinous as his first enemy: the one who fights against logic, according to his name. Odysseus triumphs over him.

Next comes Eurymachus. He is warlike but also two-faced. His name means the broad, great fighter ('eurys' = wide/broad + 'machites' = fighter). Eurymachus puts Odysseus in a dilemma and tries to shift the blame onto Antinous. He personifies discord and duplicity, a man without morals, capable of anything to avoid punishment. Yet Odysseus overcomes this obstacle as well, which symbolizes moral superiority. He does not yield, and his mind is not poisoned.

Third is Amphinomus. His name means the one who distorts the law ('amphi' = around/both sides + 'nomos' = law). He is the most compassionate of the suitors. Amphinomus tries twice to discourage the other suitors from murdering Telemachus. Odysseus even tries to warn Amphinomus to leave the house before the final battle. Nevertheless, Amphinomus stays and dies along with the others.

Through this, Odysseus, and by extension Homer, teaches us that in life, sacrifices are required, even when they demand that we show no compassion when the goal is more important and serves a greater purpose that will improve things overall. These are sacrifices that most people, even brave and heroic ones, cannot make.

That is why there are many people, but few are truly heroes.

Homer Pavlos

[D/R Football @DrFooootball]

OH MY WORD🤯🤯🤯

The best Free Kick routine you will ever see🤩🤩🤩

[Happy Punch @HappyPunch]

Kamaru Usman and Dricus du Plessis just faced off for the final time 👀

[SKB @seyikanbai]

“At 6 years, I was s3xually abused by my mom’s friend, then I was sent to Africa to learn discipline. At 7, I started smoking. At 8, I started dealing drugs. At 12, I was adopted.” 💔

— Dele Alli

[The Associated Press @AP]

As the latest film adaptation of "The Odyssey" heads to theaters, many Greek students are reading the original. Every year, seventh graders across Greece spend the school year studying Homer's epic line by line, debating Odysseus' choices and exploring one of the world's oldest stories.

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

Piers Morgan read the open letter Greeks wrote after learning Christopher Nolan's $250,000,000 epic “The Odyssey” cast not one Greek actor.

“Greek people did not disappear after the age of myth. Greek culture was not frozen in classical marble. Greek language was not extinguished in antiquity. We are STILL HERE!”

[Cinema Tweets @CinemaTweets1]

The more I think about I Play Rocky, the more excited I get - just because I’ll take anything that brings me closer to this film. I don’t personally agree with a lot of Sylvester Stallone’s opinions, but regardless of anyone’s personal feelings of Sly, you cannot deny the man is a visionary: he had a plan & he fulfilled it. We can all learn from that.

[Rob Dauster @RobDauster]

This was a terrific breakdown from Thierry Henry. The FOX studio crew with him, Zlatan and Rebecca Lowe has been so good this World Cup. It’s a shame they had to water it down with the “make kids pay $5k for 9U soccer” guy.

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

The first trailer for ‘I PLAY ROCKY’ has been released.

The film follows a young Sylvester Stallone & the dramatic journey it took to get ‘ROCKY’ made.

In theaters on November 20.

[Home of Fight @Home_of_Fight]

🚨🤼‍♂️ Khabib says he is in PRIME now in his wrestling skills and he's far better than he was when he retired back in 2020:

“People think my prime was between 2018 and 2020, but I wasn’t in my prime back then. I turned 32 in September 2020, and I retired in October. So I hadn’t even really begun yet. My grappling has improved tremendously since then. In 2026, it’s much better than it was in 2020.

I watch my old fights now and think, ‘How could I have made that mistake here?’ Meanwhile, people watching from the outside say, ‘Wow, what a level.’ But to me, that’s not the level. My grappling is far better now. And the guys who trained with me in both 2020 and 2026 say the same thing."

🎥 Smol Talk

[Mohi @mohithegoat]

Carlos Ulberg is an absolute SAVAGE and so mentally tuff

He could've easily quit & got a rematch at the cost of having an L on his record. Rather he goes NO, and chose to give every ounce of energy he had and pulled off one of THE greatest comebacks in title fight history

[Netflix @netflix]

“You don’t do a documentary with a guy that wins nothing.”

MOURINHO, a new three-part documentary series, premieres August 11.

[Haris Strangas @HStrangas]

https://t.co/oTgY2mZgBs

[ye @kanyewest]

Thank you Edi Rama and to all of Albania for building a stadium and welcoming me into your beautiful country