By Dimitris Polimeros

The National Flag of Greece consists of nine (9) horizontal parallel lines of equal width, five (5) blue and four (4) white, in succession, so that the first and the last are blue. In the upper left-hand part, a cyan square is formed, occupying the first five lines, within which there is a white Cross.

The white cross symbolizes both the Estimation and the Faith of the Greeks towards the Orthodox Christian Faith and the Greek Orthodox Church and underlines the main and decisive role played by Christianity and Orthodoxy in the creation of the modern Greek state.

The colours of the flag, blue and white, symbolise the blue of the Greek sea and the white of the foaming waves.

Another version is that cyan symbolizes the justice, loyalty and seriousness of the fighters (1821), while white symbolizes their purity and moral purity.

Herodotus also said that blue and white are the colours of the Greeks, symbolizing the homoglossion, the homothreskon, the homotropon and the omimon (common blue blood), and the Assembly of Epidaurus knew this when in 1822 it designated the flag to symbolize “God’s wisdom, Freedom and the Homeland”.

The horizontal lines are as many as the syllables of the slogan of the Greek Revolution, “FREEDOM OR DEATH”.

Another view is that they represent the number of letters in the word E-L-E-Y-TH-E-R-I-A. Finally, another opinion says that they symbolize the nine muses of Greek Mythology that inspired the entire Greek culture, from the time of Homer to Palamas, Seferis, Elytis and even today.

Deep inside us for you
a longing always lives
you symbolize the homeland
and freedom together.

Blue and white is your canopy
and you imagine in your mind
like the wave, like laughter
of the sea and the sky.

Στέλιος Σπεράντζας ( 1888-1962)