2023-07-09 21:41:00
He is the man who introduced robotic technology to Greek industry, one of the first in Europe with a PhD in Artificial Intelligence (since the 70s). But for Sakos Economopoulos, the real magnum opus is neither his studies nor international distinctions, nor the achievements of his business activity but his collection of rare publications that make up a unique library, most of which (7,000 volumes) he donated to Laskaridis Foundation. The library, located in Piraeus, is available to the public and scholars.
“It’s been many years since I started collecting old editions of works by ancient Greek authors. I started by buying here and there an old book and without realizing it, little by little, I was taken over by the peculiar passion or fantasy of the collector to acquire everything that catches his interest. I managed to collect almost all the old editions of the Greek authors from the time of Homer to the Fall of the City. With the fall of Constantinople, the so-called activity of Hellenism stops. And by diabolical coincidence, it is also the beginnings of printing, in the 1450s.”
As Sakos Oikonomopoulos recounts how “books flooded his house from the toilets to the ceilings”, the process seems normal. This is how he lives, this is the air he breathes. He speaks enthusiastically, but without arrogance, about “this adventurous journey, full of surprises and agony” that ended with the creation of his own Bibliotheca Graeca (p.s. the name comes from the monumental 14-volume work of Johann Albert Fabricius, of the 18th century .). Its collection includes original editions of all the major publishers and printers of the 15th and 16th centuries, and most editions of all ancient texts made from Ireland to Aegina and from Madrid to St. Petersburg, in more than 200 cities in Europe . Because, as he explains, “the passion for the Greek book spread throughout Europe and not only in its metropolises”.
Homer
Sakos Oikonomopoulos, born in Thessaloniki in 1953, places his relationship with the book in high school: “the first emotional load was Homer”. However, he does not forget his experience when, in the fourth year of high school, going to play table tennis at the HAN facilities in Thessaloniki, he passed through the half-open door of the fraternity’s library. He remembers with great clarity: “I was impressed by the image of the walls with the shelves full of books, I pushed the door and entered. In front of the sight that I saw, the smell of the place, the silence of the readers and the prevailing excitement, I felt as if I had emerged into a new world, like Alice in Wonderland. I pulled down the thickest book I noticed on the shelves, a black leather-bound volume titled Exercises in Geometry. It was the famous synaxary of 2,000 exercises that had been composed by the monk of the Jesuit order Gabriel Marie that became the most important aid for the students whose goal was to enter the Polytechnic”. He also studied at the NTUA in the School of Electrical Engineering. In ’76 he went to France. He attended courses in the specialty of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence. He did a master’s degree and continued with a PhD on image analysis in robotics applications under the direction of the internationally renowned French academic Lucien Malavard.
Robotics
He worked at the OECD, as an IT consultant, followed an academic and business career, in Paris, Lausanne, Brussels. In 1987 he returned to Greece and founded the company Zenon SA. with the aim of introducing robotics in Greek industry and developing innovative products in cutting-edge technologies. In 2006 he resigned from his executive duties. From 2008 until today he devoted his time to enriching his library, documenting and cataloging it. He wrote two related books, “The Treasure of Greek Literature” (2017) and the philosophical dictionary “From Thales to Milesius to Plethon Gemistos” (2022). Two years ago he also published an essay of social concern entitled “The Trojan War is not over” (Estia).
“My whole life is a series of coincidences,” he says. “You become a collector without realizing it. The collector collects objects, be it stamps, be it books, be it cars. From then on, what relationship he forms, especially mental, spiritual, whatever, with the object he collects is a personal narrative”.
I managed to collect almost all the old editions of the Greek authors from the time of Homer to the Fall of the City.
For decades now, Sakos Oikonomopoulos has been struggling with tens of meters of libraries that overwhelm two apartments (in Skoufa) and a house in Patmos.
– Was it also an economic investment?
– Huge. Millions of euros. I was lucky enough to be able to do it with the money from my job.
– The most expensive piece of the collection?
– The first edition of Aristotle. The Pentateuch, published between 1495 and 1498. Five volumes that include all of Aristotle except rhetoric and poetics. It is estimated at around one million euros.
– What is the oldest book in the collection?
– The 1472 edition in Mantua of the work “Categories” by Aristotle. The first dated Greek edition is the Grammar of Konstantinos Laskaris published in 1476 in Milan with typographical elements of the Cretan Dimitrios Damilas. Copies of it, as far as I know, are owned by the National Library and Gennadeios. “You know, collectors are secretive,” says Mr. Economopoulos at the end of our conversation. “I am an extrovert. I maintain a website, bibliotheca-graeca.gr, with 40,000 photos of the books. I recorded everything I bought, from the beginning, in a special program on the computer. Everything alone. No assistants. The landscape never ends. You see a crack and another world opens up there.” He does not fail to note: “Now I am working on mathematics… I continue, unfortunately… It is a disease. Psychosis”.
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