The grandson of a local outlaw, or klepht, he was drawn to religion from an early age and was sent away by his parents to the Monastery of St. John The Baptist near Artotina, for his education. He became a monk at the age of seventeen and, due to his devotion to his faith and good temperament, was ordained a Greek Orthodox deacon not long afterwards.

Popular tradition has it that while at the monastery, an Ottoman Pasha visited with his troops and was impressed by Athanasios's good looks. The young Athanasios took offence to the Turk's remarks (and subsequent proposal) and the ensuing altercation resulted in the death of the Turkish official. Athanasios was forced to flee into the nearby mountains and become a klepht. Soon afterwards he adopted the pseudonym "Diakos", or Deacon.

Diakos served under a number of local klepht leaders in the region of Roumeli, distinguishing himself in various encounters with the Ottomans. He also served for a time as a mercenary in the army of Ali Pasha at Ioannina, Epirus, where he befriended Odysseas Androutsos, another klepht.

When Androutsos became the captain of a unit of armatoloi at Livadeia, Diakos served for a time as his protopallikaro (lit. "first warrior", or lieutenant). In the years leading up to the Greek War of Independence, Diakos had formed his own band of klephtes and, like many other klepht and armatoloi captains, had become a member of the Filiki Eteria.

Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Diakos and a local brigand captain and friend, Vasilis Bousgos, led a contingent of fighters to capture the town of Livadeia. On 1 April 1821, after three days of vicious house-by-house fighting, and the burning of Mir Aga's residence, including the harem, the town fell to the Greeks. Hursid Pasha sent two of his most competent commanders from Thessaly, Omer Vryonis and Kiose Mehmet, at the head of 8,000 men with orders to put down the revolt in Roumeli and then proceed to the Peloponnese and lift the siege at Tripolitsa.

Diakos and his band, reinforced by the fighters of Dimitrios Panourgias and Dyovouniotis, decided to halt the Ottoman advance into Roumeli by taking defensive positions near Thermopylae. The Greek force of 1500 men was split into three sections. Dyovouniotis was to defend the bridge at Gorgopotamos, Panourgias the heights of Halkomata, and Diakos the bridge at Alamana.

Setting out from their camp at Lianokladi, near Lamia, the Ottoman Turks soon divided their force. The main force attacked Diakos. The other attacked Dyovouniotis, whose force was quickly routed, and then Panourgias, whose men retreated when he was wounded. The majority of the Greek force having fled, the Ottomans concentrated their attack on Diakos's position at the Alamana bridge. Seeing that it was a matter of time before they were overrun by the enemy, Bousgos, who had been fighting alongside Diakos, pleaded with him to retreat to safety. Diakos chose to stay and fight with 48 men; they put up a desperate hand-to-hand struggle for a number of hours before being overwhelmed.

The severely wounded Diakos was taken before Vryonis, who offered to make him an officer in the Ottoman army if he converted from Christianity to Islam. Diakos refused the offer, replying "I was born a Greek, I shall die a Greek" ("Εγώ Ρωμιός γεννήθηκα, Ρωμιός θε να πεθάνω" transliterated as: Ego Romios yennithika, Romios the na pethano). The next day he was impaled and roasted alive. By popular tradition, as he was being roasted he said:

Look at the time Charon chose to take me, now that the branches are flowering, and the earth sends forth grass (Greek: Για δες καιρό που διάλεξε ο Χάρος να με πάρει, τώρα π' ανθίζουν τα κλαριά και βγάνει η γης χορτάρι - Ya thes kero pou dialexe o Haros na me parei, tora p' anthizoun ta klaria kai vganei i yis hortari).

This was a metaphor for the independence and freedom of Greece.

The brutal manner of Diakos's death at the hands of the Turks initially struck fear into the populace of Roumeli, but his final stand near Thermopylae, echoing the heroic defence of the Spartan King Leonidas, made him a martyr for the Greek cause.

A monument now stands at the bridge near Alamana, the site of his final battle. His birthplace, the village of Ano Mousounitsa, was later renamed Athanasios Diakos in his honour.


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasios_Diakos

The Art of Impalement
The detailed citations utilized in this article can be found in the French Grand Dictionnaire, from which we quote the following: Being roasted alive -- one of the most horrific expressions of human bestiality -- is the burning of the condemned over a fire while impaled upon a sharpened wooden stake that has been inserted into the victim in the following manner: The condemned man is made to lie down with his legs spread-eagled and his hands tied behind his back. For the executioner to not be distracted from his work, the victim is rendered motionless by having one the executioner's helpers sit on a saddle placed upon the prisoner's back.

In a 1967 article in the newspaper Avgi, the martyrdom of Athanasios Diakos is delineated: The condemned was tied hand and foot, and forced to lie face down. Two sturdy executioners sat on him, while a third forced a wooden stake into his anus, something like the wooden spits we use to roast our Paschal lamb over the coals. A forth man, using a wooden or an iron hammer, pounded it in until the point exited from from the head, between the shoulder blades, or wherever its direction took it. If, perchance, the stake exited from the left side of the body, the tortured victim expired within a short space of time.

Were it to exit from the right side, however, he could live for as long as three to four days. Athanasios Diakos (of fond memory) lived this horrific pain and suffering for three whole days and would have lived longer were it not for an irregular who, out of pity, shot him in the head and put him out of his misery. Let us see how the folklorist describes this event: "They took Diakos and skewered him on a spit/They stood him upright and he laughed".

The French Guer in his 1774 book, Customs and Habits of the Turks, relates what has heretofore been described, but with certain variations. The terror of the stake spread throughout Hellas and became commonplace soon after the uprisings of the Greeks against their Turkish overlords. During the period 1805 -1806, Turkish forces would stage surprise raids in Central Peloponnesus against the Klephts (guerilla fighters). These expeditions had the desired results. The Turks would show up with thousands of pre-cut stakes, and would hold public impalements. In order to terrorize the people, they would scatter the remains of their victims near much frequented places, having first painted the horrific results of their depravity a bright red to make sure they would be easily seen. As Amvosios Frantzis relates, this created so much panic in the villages, that many villagers would help hunt down the Klephts in order to prevent having to suffer such a horrible death themselves. Anagnostis Kontakis writes: "It got to the point where the father would turn in the son". This is how the defeat of the Klephts in the Morea came about.

During the rule of the Albanian overlord of Ioannina Ali Pasha, impalement became the everyday means by which dissent was suppressed and the populace was kept in a state of abject terror. A folk song of the period describes how, "Ali Pasha came with eighteen thousand troops. They carried with them lots of axes and sharp knives. Ali kept them busy cutting impalement stakes". Paralyzed with fear, Ali Pasha would make the relatives of the victims turn the spit upon which their very own kin were impaled. To avoid suffering this kind of an execrable death, they were forced to grill their own family members.

The Turks reacted to the revolutionary uprising of 1821 by glutting themselves upon the use of impalement as the primary means by which they attempted to terrorize the Greek people. There are many first-hand accounts, by both Greek and foreign sources, attesting to this brutal and inhuman way of suppressing dissent. A typical case in point is the impalement of one Giorgios Paksinos, whom, according to the English Counsel of Patras, "The Turks first smeared with tar and other oils, and then roasted alive over an open fire".

However, those who raised this craft to the level of an "art" -- one that was practiced up until recent times -- were the Turks:

1. The martyrdom of excoriation was suffered by the soldiers of the Venetian guard in 1470, when they fought against the forces of Mohammed II in Chalkida.
2. After leading the failed uprising of revolted farmers in 1611, the Metropolitan of Larissa - Trikki Dionysios the philosopher, was publicly skinned alive in Ioannina's main square by Osman Pasha's specially trained executioners. They stuffed the skin with ashes and dressed it in the Primate's sacerdotal vestments. Then, to the accompaniment of flutes, cymbals, and drums, they carried it as an effigy through the main roads of the city.
3. The Cretan guerrilla leader, I.Daskalakis (Daskaloyiannis), after leading a failed insurrection against the Turks, was skinned alive.
4. Excoriation as a "science" reaches its apogee with Ali Pasha. The English Smart Hugles, relates how "they would excoriate the head, making sure that the skin would fall in folds to the victim's neck, and then leave him in this horrific condition until he expired".
5. During Hellas' struggle for freedom against the Turks, the excoriated heads of captured freedom fighters would be stuffed with grain and sent to Constantinople to be displayed at the gates of the Sultan's palace (the Seraglio).

As one can see from these few examples, during the centuries-long occupation of Hellas by the Turks, excoriation was practiced with diabolical skill, as well as with pathological variability and imagination.

The Turks reacted to the revolutionary uprising of 1821 by glutting themselves upon the use of impalement as the primary means by which they attempted to terrorize the Greek people. There are many first-hand accounts, by both Greek and foreign sources, attesting to this brutal and inhuman way of suppressing dissent. A typical case in point is the impalement of one Giorgios Paksinos, whom, according to the English Counsel of Patras, "The Turks first smeared with tar and other oils, and then roasted alive over an open fire".

Folklorists have sung of the elegance with which the Turks used their skills in this field of endeavor:

"They took and lowered him into an oubliette
Where they skinned him cheek and jowl
Then gave him a mirror to look at his face"
(About Daskaloyianni)

"O Bishop dear, why did you rouse your people to war?
And now your skin has been sent to the High Porte
Where chickens feed upon it as if it were grain
While gypsies sing and play the drum and tambourine
To wake the Turk so he can celebrate his Ramadan"
(About Bishop Dionysios)