Although Tsakonas, a native Athenian, had visited and sailed the Cyclades as a youth with his family, he didn't have special ties to the island.

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He gained a doctorate with a dissertation on Athenian democracy.

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Georgios Barkouris, a musician from a middle-class Athenian family, worked for two decades for the national radio station.

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Now that planet-wide network of interlinked computers became a court of the people - virtual Athenian democracy.

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In a case alongside him stands a 20-inch marble statuette of a much younger Herakles, beardless, sleek and classically muscled in the late Athenian manner.

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Athenian newspapers, including pro-opposition ones, have kept an odd silence on the issue, a silence some Greeks ascribe to the power of the construction lobby.

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