50 Drachmes Rigas Féréos

Rigas Feraios — the poet, revolutionary, and early architect of Greek nationalist ideology — was executed by Ottoman authorities in Belgrade in 1798, exactly two centuries before this coin's issue. The 1998 date was deliberate, marking the bicentennial of his death. Feraios had drafted a constitution for a proposed Balkan republic and was betrayed to the Ottomans by Austrian agents while attempting to reach Greece to launch an uprising.