Rigas Feraios

Rigas Feraios
Rigas Feraios. Portrait by Andreas Kriezis
Born	1757 Feres (Velestino), Ottoman Empire (now Greece)
Died	24 June 1798(1798-06-24) (aged 40–41) Belgrade, Sanjak of Smederevo, Ottoman Empire (now Serbia)
Era	Age of Enlightenment
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Modern Greek Enlightenment
Main interests	Popular sovereignty, civil liberties, constitutional state, freedom of religion, civic nationalism
Influences French Enlightenment, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Influenced Greek War of Independence

Rigas Feraios (Greek: Ρήγας Φεραίος, or Rhegas Pheraeos, pronounced [ˈriɣas fɛˈrɛɔs]) or Velestinlis (Βελεστινλής, or Velestinles, pronounced [vɛlɛstinˈlis])) ; 1757 – June 24, 1798) was a Greek writer, political thinker and revolutionary, active in the Modern Greek Enlightenment, remembered as a Greek national hero, a victim of the Balkan uprising against the Ottoman Empire and a pioneer of the Greek War of Independence.

Antonios Kyriazis (Αντώνιος Κυριαζής, pronounced [anˈdɔniɔs cirʝaˈzis]) was born in 1757 into a wealthy family in the village of Velestino in the Sanjak of Tirhala, Ottoman Empire (modern Thessaly, Greece). He was at some point nicknamed Pheraeos or Feraios, after the nearby ancient Greek city of Pherae, but he does not seem ever to have used this name himself; he is also sometimes known as Konstantinos or Constantine Rhigas (Κωνσταντίνος Ρήγας). He is often described as being of Aromanian ancestry, with his native village of Velestino being Aromanian. Rigas' family had its roots in Perivoli, another Aromanian village, but it usually overwintered in Velestino. Some scholars question whether there is good evidence for this.

Rigas was educated at the school of Ampelakia, Larissa. Later he became a teacher in the village of Kissos, and he fought the local Ottoman presence. At the age of twenty he killed an important Ottoman figure, and fled to the uplands of Mount Olympus, where he enlisted in a band of soldiers led by Spiros Zeras.