PERHAPS no one thought of George Papadopoulos as a humorist; yet some of his pronouncements inevitably raised a smile. Richard Nixon, he once said, was a communist, and most members of the United States Congress were communists too.

As a dictator he bore some resemblance to Benito Mussolini, who foolishly tried to create a new Roman empire for Italy. The equally nationalistic Mr Papadopoulos believed that the prestige associated with ancient Greece could be regained by decree. He banned “decadent” long hair for men and mini skirts for women. “Greece is risen” was one of his slogans. Among his grandiose, but unfulfilled, plans was to rebuild the Colossus of Rhodes, a statue that was among the seven wonders of the ancient world.

His view of Greece's place in the world was delivered in long speeches, later collected in seven volumes under the title of “Our Creed”, but now of interest only to collectors of political curiosities. Mr Papadopoulos professed to admire the writers of the classical world. His “leisure interests”, he said, were hunting and reading ancient Greek authors. But he drew the line at Aristophanes, whose plays satirising government were banned.

Yet his absurdities made him seem less dangerous than he really was. As the strutting Mussolini had once been viewed, George Papadopoulos was seen as a character. Perhaps, some thought, he could be persuaded to stop imprisoning and torturing his opponents and make Greece the splendid place of his ambitions. This seemed to be the view of the Nixon government. The president was content to ignore the claim that he was a communist, putting it down to a probable mistranslation, and sent his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, who was of Greek descent, to Athens to say that America supported Mr Papadopoulos and his junta.

Vanishing democracy

America was, and perhaps still is, half in love with Greece. The founding fathers of the United States briefly considered making Greek its official language. The bit Americans love is that some 2,500 years ago Greece invented democracy. Unfortunately, there has not been much democracy since. For centuries Greece was ruled by the Turks. In recent times its has endured a succession of undemocratic events: a dictatorship in the 1930s, occupation by Italy and Germany in the second world war, followed by a civil war. By 1967 Greece seemed to have thrown off most of its old ways, and had a democratic government, albeit a weak one. But, to the alarm of some in the West, it looked as though a leftish, anti-American government was likely to be elected.

It is unclear whether America's intelligence service, the CIA, had a hand in the coup that installed Mr Papadopoulos and his military friends: historians are divided on the matter. He had been attached to a Greek army intelligence unit that had links with the CIA. So there is material for a conspiracy theory. And, as Mr Nixon later demonstrated when he sent a note to the junta expressing “warm love”, he did not find the coup too upsetting.

Mr Papadopoulos, who had been a colonel in the Greek army, took on a succession of jobs after the coup, including prime minister and president, and, after King Constantine was deposed (accused of plotting a counter-coup), made himself regent. It was a giddy elevation for the son of a schoolmaster from a southern village which was “desperately poor and with a hangdog air when you get past its whitewash and its ornamental pots of basil,” wrote David Holden in “Greece Without Columns”. George Papadopoulos's partners in the coup had been men of humble background who believed that Greece's elite were responsible for the country's weak state.

Mr Papadopoulos's six years of power produced mixed blessings for America and its western friends. With the cold war at its chilliest, his anti-communism was acceptable, even though it verged on parody. The country provided an important base for NATO in one of its potentially most vulnerable areas of responsibility. But Greece was an unstable ally, with students, the bane of dictators everywhere, ever ready to take to the streets. The junta's lasting injury to peace in the Mediterranean was its bid for Cyprus, where the president, Archbishop Makarios, was failing to show due respect to Athens. In 1974 Turkey seized part of the island to “protect” Turkish Cypriots. Greece and Turkey have been arguing about Cyprus's partition ever since.

By the time of the Turkish invasion Mr Papadopoulos had lost power. He had been talking about restoring democracy. His chief of police, Dimitrios Ioannides, believed him, put him under house arrest and took over. But Turkey was threatening war and the army did not want to fight. Civilian politicians resumed office. In 1975, members of the junta were put on trial accused of treason. Mr Papadopoulos and two others were sentenced to death but their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. Mr Papadopoulos refused to acknowledge the authority of the court and, unlike his fellow conspirators, who were freed early, never asked for clemency. He died unrepentant, seemingly in accordance with his creed.