Νέος Αριστοφάνης (New Aristophanes): Ο Πόθος των Ελλήνων (The Longing of the Greeks)

This Greek hand-colored lithograph deploys the classical tradition of Aristophanic comedy to mock Ottoman occupation and Greek nationalist fervor. A caricatured Ottoman figure (left) fires a cannon labeled "ΖΗΤΟΗΕΛΛΑΣ" (Zito Hellas—Long Live Greece) toward an idealized allegorical Greece, radiating divine light and victory. The Greek flag flies from a mountainous fortification. The print exemplifies 19th-century Balkan political satire, inheriting conventions from Gillray and Daumier: exaggerated physiognomy, historical allegory, and nationalist sentiment rendered through ethnic caricature. It reflects the Greco-Turkish tensions preceding the Greco-Ottoman War (1897), using grotesque Oriental imagery—then standard in European print culture—to mobilize Greek public opinion. The work demonstrates how comics' ancestor tradition served partisan political ends.