Greeks argue over status and statue of Alexander

By Helena Smith

For a warrior king who had conquered most of the known world by the age of 33, Alexander the Great never flinched when it came to a fight. But even he might have been left powerless by a row in Greece over the location of a statue, carved in his likeness in 1972.

Seventeen years after its acquisition by the Greek culture ministry, the rendition of the military commander has been gathering dust in a basement storeroom because of fierce controversy over where to put the sculpture. Nationalist-minded politicians, on both sides of the spectrum, believe the statue "rightfully" belongs to a prominent square in the heart of ancient Athens. There, they say, the Macedonian king would not only receive maximum viewing but the reverence he deserves from a people who see themselves as his rightful descendants.

Had it not been for archaeologists, that might have happened. But the purveyors of Greece's past - a powerful lobby in this antiquities-rich country - have strongly resisted the move, saying Alexander came to the capital "as a conqueror". The row might have gone unnoticed had it not been for the recently reinvigorated intensity of the name dispute between Athens and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Since it proclaimed independence in 1991, Greece has contended that its neighbour's determination to call itself Macedonia has concealed territorial ambitions over its own province, which bears the same nomenclature. Relations between the two reached a new low last year when the ex-Yugoslav republic named its international airport and highway after Alexander the Great. They plummeted further when Athens blocked Macedonia's membership of Nato - and threatened to use its right of veto, again, to stop the ex-communist nation joining the EU.

Raising the bar further, a mayor in Skopje proposed last week that the Macedonian capital's main square be adorned with a "singing" statue of Alexander mounted on a horse.

By erecting the statue in a fountain that belted out tunes of the late Toše Proeski - the nation's most famous crooner who was killed in a car accident in Croatia in 2007 - the nation, she said, would give celebration to its two most famous sons, in a way that Greece never could.