1901. Eighty years after the revolution against the Ottoman Empire, the small Greek state seeks its place in the international arena, while at the same time, possibly as a consequence of this, it continues to search for its identity. The main issues in the public dialogue concern origin, continuity of the Greek nation, language, and even the name of the Greeks. Greeks? Romioi? Or Hellenes?

The two texts, by Kostis Palamas and Nikolaos Politis, published in this edition for the first time, highlight an important part of the reflections and controversies of that time. They are both significant, on the one hand because they come from two important figures in Greek history in the fields of culture and science, and on the other hand because they contribute to the study of the history of ideas.

The fact that today, two hundred years after '21 and a century after its recording, this conflict between Politis and Palamas remains an open topic of discussion in the Greek Public Sphere, demonstrates in the most characteristic way the open wounds of modern Greek identity, with the national myths and conflicting ideological elements that compose it.

Thus, this peculiar written dialogue between two leading Greek thinkers of the early 20th century emphatically reminds us that Historiography is the main path to national self-awareness.