In our childhood, many of us learned the legend of the Marble King. It has been 566 years since the City had fallen to the most barbaric people the world has ever known. As a child, the scribe heard the legend from his grandparents, both of whom had embraced the same vision, which they almost realized, reaching outside Kale Grotto, just a few kilometers before Ankara.
They had fought trying to drive the Turks beyond, as far as the "Red Apple". They did not succeed because the Marble King did not lead them. Instead, as then, in 1453, division reigned. The time had not yet come for the angel to give the sword back to the Marbled hero.
And indeed the legend did not die, how could it die, the legend, the very memory of Paleologos, who, riding on his Arabic horse, fights alone with thousands of enemies, although he knows that in the end the barbarians will die? /strong>
Did another king not know the same truth, 2000 years before him, when he fell "obeying the common laws", shouting Molon Lavet , perhaps it was not the Paleologos who was resurrected in his form Diakou and fought with Omer Bryonis's meager 6,000 lads , did not the angel give him the sword again and send him to Pindos and Argyrokastro, Paleologos was not in 731 of Trebessina, was not in the P8 artillery, in the form of Sergeant Demetrius Itcios and in Istibei as a captain Zakynthos , or did he not recently reincarnate and fight in long-suffering Cyprus, betrayed, still attempting, as another Isaac and Solomon, even without a sword, to bring down the lonely symbol of the barbarians who defiled the sacred soil of the homeland?
This was the Paleologos, the figure who gave vision, will to life and light to the Greeks for centuries, centuries who did not touch him at all - how could they? They only praised him as the Greek hero deserved, "but they didn't cry for him, why should they cry, he was a brave child"!
"Ealo the Polis" . The terrible scream echoed. "The City is taken and I still live?" cried the king, and he rushed forward with sword in hand and with a few devoted companions to meet the glorious death he DESERVED , to earn a place in the pantheon of heroes of the Greek race.
Constantine, together with Francis Toledius, Theophilus Palaiologos and John Dalmatis rushed against the enemy lines. Just four heroes against thousands. The four stood with their backs to the wall and there they faced the thousands of Turks.
"They want to die or live", exclaimed Theophilos Paleologos and rushed with his sword at the surfet. These four men performed miracles. They alone strewed the ground with corpses of enemies. Enraged, indomitable, having lost all human feeling, heedless of the enemy's blows, of the wounds and of their blood that flowed from the wounds, four men alone fought with the endless verses of the enemies.
Constantine received the fatal blow He only had time to shout before he fell "is there no Christian to take my head?". The emperor did not want his head to fall into the hands of the enemies, to rot, just as later the Thieves who cut off the heads of their dead when they could not transport them so that the non-believers would not pollute them did not want it.
"The king's companions stopped seeing him in battle. He having decided to die from the moment it was known that Polis had been taken, he fell out of sight. None of those around the emperor saw his last moments. All those who besieged him perished with him, while the Turks poured forth innumerable through the giant breach and through the already stormed gates.
"Thus he expired gloriously closest to the gate of Ag. Romanou as a simple soldier Konstantinos Palaiologos, eleventh of the homonymous emperors of Constantinople, on the morning of May 29, 1453, Tuesday, the fifty-fifth day of the siege" , the chroniclers report.
History-point.gr
