Christian church facing the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis, photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos The May 2018 international conference in Cephalonia was brimming with wisdom and smiles. I gave a talk but I also listened and learned. I felt good being Greek, especially from the Ionian islands and, more to the point, Cephalonia, the kingdom of Odysseus, my life-long hero.  Greeks of the Ionian islands from all over the world had come together to tell their stories – of war and peace, of history, archaeology, the environment, tourism, the continuing economic strangulation of Greece, of their crushed dreams in returning home to Ithaca. The historians painted a picture of oppression and struggle. The Venetians and the British were unprincipled conquerors and colonialists.  The Venetians dominated the Ionian islands for centuries. They grabbed the islands from collapsing medieval Greece, which they (and their German and French allies) had dismembered during th...