Michael T. Roussis

Eagles over the Acheron Michael T. Roussis

The major setting of "Eagles Over The Acheron" is the Ottoman Empire of the Nineteenth Century. It involves a scoundrel with an angelic smile and the sting of a scorpion, who would pat you on the leg as you sat by him, call you his ?birom? (son), offer you sweets, embrace you as you left his reception room or private quarters, and shortly after, if it suited his purpose, have you shackled, imprisoned, starved, or even killed. That scoundrel, gift-giver, gracious host, lover, seducer, hypocrite, liar, pervert, torturer, and killer, was Ali Pasa. An Albanian, fluent in Greek, because he grew up in a Greek environment in Northern Epirus, with little if any knowledge of Turkish, Ali rose from petty thief to the high rank of vizier within the Ottoman Empire. From Yiannena, the provincial capital of Epirus in northwestern Greece, he ruled much of that country and Albania. However, there was one group that was not easily subdued: the Soulliotes, part of a commonwealth of Greeks in the mountains of Acarnania in Epirus. "Eagles over the Acheron" is the story of the Soulliotes? heroic twenty year resistance to Ali Pasa?s rule, as well as the extraordinary events that led to Ali?s downfall.