Markos Botsaris - Legacy

Legacy

Many Philhellenes visiting Greece had admired Botsaris' courage and numerous poets wrote poems about him. American poet Fitz-Greene Halleck wrote a poem entitled Marco Bozzaris, Juste Olivier also wrote an award-winning poem for him, in 1825. The national poet of Greece, Dionysios Solomos, composed a poem titled "On Markos Botsaris", in which he likens the mourning over Botsaris' body to the lamentation of Hector, as described in the last book of the Iliad. His memory is still celebrated in popular ballads in Greece.

Botsaris is also widely considered to be the author of a Greek-Albanian lexicon written in Corfu in 1809, at the insistence of François Pouqueville, Napoleon Bonaparte's general consul at the court of Ali Pasha in Ioannina. The dictionary is of importance for the knowledge of the extinct Souliot dialect. However, although the book is known as the Botsaris dictionary, scholar Xhevat Lloshi has argued in several works that Botsaris couldn't have possibly written that dictionary by himself, both because of his young age, and because of a note of Pouqueville that clearly says that the dictionary was drafted under the dictation of Marko's father, uncle, and future father-in-law.

In Greek music, there are several folk songs dedicated to Botsaris, like a Tsamiko from Central Greece, named Song of Markos Botsaris (Greek: του Μάρκου Μπότσαρη), and from the Greek minority of southern Albania (Northern Epirus) (Καημένε Μάρκο Μπότσαρη). In Albanian music (Albanian: Marko Boçari) there is a polyphonic song of the 19th century titled Song of Marko Boçari from Suli (Albanian: Kënga e Marko Boçarit nga Suli) lamenting his death. Popular dramas and school plays were written soon after his death.

Botsaris was depicted on the reverse of the Greek 50 lepta coin of 1976-2001. He often adorns posters in Greek classrooms, government offices, and military barracks, as a member of the Greek pantheon of national heroes.