Ioannis Dimakopoulos

Ioannis Dimakopoulos (, 1833/35–1866) was an officer of the Hellenic Army from Arcadia. He participated as a volunteer in the Cretan Revolution of 1866 and he was killed during the siege of Arkadi Monastery.

Biography

Ioannis Dimakopoulos was born in Vytina of Arcadia on 10 January 1833, or, according to another theory, on 20 March 1835. He was the son of Konstantinos Dimakopoulos, fighter of the Greek War of Independence and later officer of the Hellenic Army. His mother's name was Eleni.

During 1866, Dimakopoulos went to Crete along with other officers, under the command of colonel Panos Koronaios. They disembarked at Bali of Mylopotamos on 24 September. A few days later, he was appointed by Koronaios commander of Arkadi Monastery and leader of a small force of forty men, who had come to Crete as volunteers from the mainland Greece. On 6 November, a powerful force of Ottoman troops encircled the monastery, while the number of the defenders were about 250–300 men. Two days later began the hostilities that led to the fall of the monastery on 9 November. The bust of Ioannis Dimakopoulos in the courtyard of Arkadi Monastery. Some of the survivors said that Dimakopoulos continued to fight on with some men after the explosion of gunpowder that led to the siege of Arkadi, but that eventually on the same day he was caught as a prisoner and speared to death. According to another theory, Dimakopoulos was killed by the deadly blast.