1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rhankavēs, Alexandros Rhizos

RHANKAVĒS (commonly also Rhangabe), ALEXANDROS RHIZOS (1810–1892), Greek savant, poet and statesman, was born at Constantinople of a Phanariot family on the 25th of December 1810. He was educated at Odessa and the military school at Munich. Having served as an officer of artillery in the Bavarian army, he returned to Greece, where he held several high educational and administrative appointments. He subsequently became ambassador at Washington (1867), Paris (1868), and Berlin (1874–1886), and was one of the Greek plenipotentiaries at the congress of 1878. After his recall he lived at Athens, where he died on the 29th of June 1892. He was the chief representative of a school of literary men whose object was to restore as far as possible the ancient classical language. Of his various works, Hellenic Antiquities (1842–1855, of great value for epigraphical purposes), Archaeologia (1865–1866), an illustrated Archaeological Lexicon (1888–1891), and a History of Modern Greek Literature (1877) are of the most interest to scholars. He Wrote also the following dramatic pieces: The Marriage of Kutrules (comedy), Dukas (tragedy), the Thirty Tyrants, The Eve (of the Greek revolution); the romances, The Prince of Morea, Leila, and The Notary of Argostoli; and translated portions of Dante, Schiller, Lessing, oethe and Shakespeare.

A complete edition of his philological works in nineteen volumes was published at Athens (1874–1890), and his Ἀπομνημονεύματα (Memoirs) appeared posthumously in 1894–1895.