The Canadian Institute in Greece announces this year’s annual event, the Paris Arnopoulos Annual Lecture 2026, which will take place on Tuesday, March 31, 2026, at 7:00 p.m., focusing on the application of Classical Greek Studies to the analysis of contemporary political and social phenomena and issues.

This year’s conference, titled “Ancient and Modern Approaches to Tyranny,” will explore issues related to Governance, Democracy, and Tyranny.

• How did Plato’s ideas influence Montesquieu’s thinking, and how can they be used to analyze modern tyrannies?
• Where do Seferis and his final poem, “On aspalathoi…” (1971), intersect with Plato and the seven-year military dictatorship in Greece?
• How can fear erode the democratic ideal?

Within this thematic framework, the speakers will examine and explore in depth the extent to which the philosophical ideas developed by the ancient Greeks could serve as an analytical tool for approaching and better understanding contemporary forms of governance, with a particular emphasis on tyrannical regimes.

Dr. Ryan Balot, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, specializing in classical political thought—and specifically in Plato’s “Laws“— democracy in Ancient Greece, and the relationship between ethics and politics, will analyze the position of the tyrant in classical Greek thought in the event’s keynote lecture. Particular emphasis is placed on Plato’s model of tyranny in “The Republic” and “Gorgias.” Within this framework, the Platonic example is complemented by an analysis of Vladimir Putin’s “visionary” despotism, as developed in Giuliano da Empoli’s book “The Kremlin’s Magician“.

Chloe Balla, Professor of Ancient Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Crete, specializing in the Sophists, the Hippocratic Collection, and the Platonic Dialogues, on the occasion of Giorgos Seferis’s final poem “On aspalathoi…”—a denunciation of the Dictatorship and, at the same time, a demand and hope for the punishment of the unjust and the tyrants—and Plato’s “Republic,” in her lecture she will explore the concept of education in Plato’s philosophical texts as a means and method of protection against tyranny.

Lambrini Rori, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Political Analysis in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, will examine the cultivation of fear as a cause of contemporary anti-democratic policies, using the example of the Greek economic crisis.