Ioannis Miliadis

Ioannis Miliadis (Template:Langx) (1895 – 24 September 1975) was a Greek archaeologist. Known as an advocate of innovation and modernisation in Greek archaeology, he joined the Greek Archaeological Service in 1919, excavated widely, and was made director of the Acropolis Museum in 1940. During the Second World War, he joined the communist-led resistance to the Axis occupation of Greece and concealed artefacts and antiquities from the German occupiers. His left-wing beliefs led him to be deported to El Dabaa in Egypt in 1944, and forced to resign from the Archaeological Service in 1947.

Miladis was reinstated in 1951, and served at the Acropolis Museum until 1961. In retirement, he was made a board member of the National Theatre of Greece. He was a lifelong writer, poet and translator, often writing these works under pseudonyms. He died on 24 September 1975, at a meeting at the Ministry of Culture on the Acropolis.

Life

Ioannis Miliadis was born in Athens in 1895.Template:Sfn His father, Nikolaos Miliadis, was an officer in the Hellenic Army; his mother was Kalliopi Koufogianni.Template:Sfn The younger Miliadis studied at the Philosophical School of the University of Athens,Template:Sfn where he was a student of the archaeologist Christos Tsountas,Template:Sfn and took classes in law,Template:Sfn and carried out postgraduate study in Vienna, Berlin and Munich.Template:Sfn He became a supporter of demoticisation, and joined a youth movement affiliated to Alexandros Papanastasiou, a Venizelist, republican politician.Template:Sfn From his youth, Miliadis wrote poems, essays and translations, often under pseudonyms: one of these was "Julius Narcissus".Template:Sfn His romantic attraction to a high school friend who would later become a famous writer and philosopher, Helle Lambridis, was developed into an infatuation for her, as their correspondence of the 1920s and 1930s shows, with his one-sided feelings expressed in intensely passionate letters revealing a non-consumate romantic relationship.

Miliadis entered the Greek Archaeological Service in 1919,Template:Sfn and became an ephor (archaeological inspector) in 1925. His excavations included work at Agrinio, Thermos, Ambrakia, Nikopolis, Corfu and Lefkada.Template:Sfn Miliadis, along with Christos Karouzos and Semni Papaspyridi, became known as a leading advocate of modernisation and innovation in Greek archaeology: the three promoted the use of Demotic Greek and the incorporation of liberal and Marxist ideas into the field.Template:Sfn In March 1931, he was ephor of the island of Corfu: John Papadimitriou was posted there as his assistant.Template:Sfn

In 1940, Miliadis was made director of the Acropolis Museum, and concealed its holdings from the German occupiers during the Axis occupation of Greece.Template:Sfn The archaeological historians Dimitra Kokkinidou and Marianna Nikolaidou describe him as "a dynamic opponent of German interference".Template:Sfn On 28 October 1941, the archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos made a public address commemorating the dictator Ioannis Metaxas's defiance of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini the previous year. In it, he praised both Metaxas, who had died that January, and the exiled George II, who had made Metaxas prime minister after his own restoration in a military coup led by Georgios Kondylis.Template:Refn Miliadis, alongside Karouzos, wrote to the collaborationist prime minister, Konstantinos Logothetopoulos, criticising Marinatos's conduct.Template:Refn In the autumn of 1944, Karouzos was offered the position of director of the Archaeological Service: he declined it, and recommended Miliadis for the task.Template:Sfn

During the Axis occupation, Miliadis joined the communist-led National Liberation Front (EAM),Template:Sfn and was a founding member in 1941 of the Union of People's Democracy, a socialist political party under the umbrella of the EAM.Template:Sfn He attended the first meeting of the EAM's National Council at Template:Ill in 1944,Template:Refn temporarily leaving his post in the Archaeological Service in order to do so.Template:Sfn After the clashes of December 1944 between communist and royalist forces (the ), he was deported for his left-wing beliefs to El Dabaa in Egypt, an internment camp used for approximately 8,000–10,000 former members of the Greek resistance,Template:Refn and forced to resign from the Archaeological Service in 1947.Template:Sfn In 1948, he wrote to the German archaeologist Frank Brommer, who had been a member of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens during the Nazi occupation, refusing to assist him with his work on the Patras shield, on the grounds of the "barbaric occupation of our country by the National Socialists".Template:Sfn

Miliadis was reinstated to the Archaeological Service in 1951,Template:Sfn and returned to the directorship of the Acropolis Museum.Template:Sfn He retired in 1961.Template:Sfn In 1964, he was appointed to the board of directors of the National Theatre of Greece, following the resignation of Giorgos Seferis.Template:Refn In the same year, the archaeologist Manolis Andronikos wrote to him, saying "I saw and see in you an honest and brave representative of a militant generation that gave us some high examples of morality".Template:Sfn Miliadis died on 24 September 1975, at a meeting at the Ministry of Culture on the Acropolis of Athens.Template:Sfn