Modern-day Odyssey ends

Athens – Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras headed to the Greek island of Ithaca yesterday in a gesture laden with classical symbolism as the country emerged from nine years of crisis and international financial bailouts.

“Ithaca will once again be identified with the end of a modern-day Odyssey [that was] very difficult for the Greek people,” he said after arriving on the island.

In Homer’s epic poem, Odysseus returned home to Ithaca from the Trojan war after a 10year voyage lost at sea.

Tsipras is due to give a state address from the island, a day after Greece ended its third bailout deal with international creditors who have bankrolled the country in return for tough reforms and austerity monitored by their inspectors since 2010.

Former prime minister George Papandreou, who applied for the first bailout from Greece’s eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund in 2010, also drew on the Odyssey analogy.

“We are on a difficult path, a new odyssey,” Papandreou said at the time.

Austerity and turmoil followed, shrinking the economy by a quarter and pushing a third of the population into poverty. Another two bailouts followed in 2012 and 2015. In all, the €288 billion (R4.7 trillion) Greece has borrowed is the largest bailout in history, saddling it with debt the equivalent of 180% of its annual economic output. – Reuters