Panagiōtīs Soutsos was born in 1806 in Istanbul (Constantinople) as the younger brother of Alexandros Soutsos, with whom his life shared the same course up to adolescence and early adulthood (as described in the entry on Alexandros Soutsos): early education at home and in Chios, followed by a west-European sojourn, first in Paris (1820, where they encountered Adamantios Korais) and then in Padua (1821-25). In 1825 the brothers returned to insurgent Greece, where Panagiōtīs made his mark with the publication of his poems Άσματα πολεμιστήρια (“War songs”, 1827). A second sojourn in Paris followed (1827-30), where the brothers published Greek patriotic material while Panagiōtīs also published French versions of his verse (Odes d’un jeune Grec, suivis de six chants de guerre, 1828) in order to spur French Philhellenic sentiment. By early 1830, they returned to Greece and settled in the Greek capital of the time, Nauplion, along with the rest of their immediate family.

In 1830 Panagiōtīs was appointed Secretary of the Senate. He soon ran afoul of Kapodistrias’s authoritarian rule and was dismissed. Following the assassination of Kapodistrias (1831) Soutsos aligned himself with the constitutionalists in the ensuing civil war (1831-1832). Meanwhile, his drama Οδοιπόρος (“The Wayfarer”, 1831), a long poetic dialogue between two doomed lovers in the style of the French Romantics (especially Lamartine), established his literary fame; it was to enjoy successive reprints.

Ο Λέανδρος (“Leander”), the first novel in Modern Greek, came out in 1834. Influenced by Goethe’s Werther, and in the epistolary form, the plot again thematizes the Romantic motif of doomed love, but combines it with political statements. A great deal of criticism is levelled at “the politicians” for their insatiable ambition, incompetence and venality. The liberalism of the Soutsos brothers may reflect influences here from more left-wing (Saint-Simonian) currents – witness the novel’s occasional focus on social and gender inequality.

Panagiōtīs greeted the advent of Wittelsbach rule (Otto mounted the Greek throne in 1833) with optimism, expecting constitutional rule and a national regeneration. Unlike his brother Alexandros, he was tolerant of Otto’s absolutist tendencies and was eventually appointed State Councillor (1841). When the Athenian people and army rose up in September 1843 to demand a draft constitution, their petition to the king was authored by Panagiōtīs. Ironically, the constition that emerged barred “heterochthons” (Greeks born outside of independent Greece) from public office, and Panagiōtīs was dismissed. He resorted to journalism from then on, occasionally joining forces with his brother Alexandros.

In the subsequent years Soutsos became increasingly conservative, devoting most of his energies to the irredentist “Great Idea” (megalī idea) of Greek territorial unification and national integration. He envisaged a greater Greece united by a common linguistic standard, which in his eyes could only be Classical Greek. Its revival he advocated in a manifesto, Nea scholī tou grafomenou logou (1853, Νέα σχολή του γραφόμενου λόγου ή ανάστασις της αρχαίας ελληνικής γλώσσης εννοούμενης υπό πάντων, “New school for written speech, or: the resurrection of Ancient Greek comprehensible to all”). Panagiōtis’s commitment to the classical language was manifested in the reprints of his “Wayfarer” play, which became increasingly prone to archaism with each new edition (1842, 1851, 1864). Panagiōtis’s language views were rejected by most Greek intellectuals; his national hopes and expectations were dashed during the Crimean War; and his late writings, their potential for public impact diluted by a stylistic penchant for lyricism, proved less captivating than his early works. Beset by domestic tragedies and financial ruin, he died destitute in 1868; he was given a state funeral.