John I de la Roche

John I de la Roche

John I de la Roche (died 1280) succeeded his father, Guy I, as Duke of Athens in 1263. He was cultured and chivalrous, spoke fluent Greek, and read Herodotus. In 1275, John, with 300 knights, relieved Neopatras, which had been blockaded by a Byzantine mercenary army. It was at this battle that he said "'Great are their numbers but few among them are true men," quoting Herodotus, who said, of the Battle of Thermopylae, "the Persian are great in their numbers but true men are far and few." The next year (1276), the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus invaded Euboea and Thessaly. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of John I de la Roche has received more than 19,604 page views. His biography is available in 16 different languages on Wikipedia. John I de la Roche is the 13,108th most popular politician (down from 12,154th in 2019).