By the 14th century, the Byzantine Empire was, if not on the verge of actual collapse, at least seriously decadent and clearly on its last legs. The hungry wolves of Europe were preparing to dine on its corpse, and as a result the Byzantine army and its allies were constantly engaged in battles and skirmishes. In this story, a widow lives in the 14th-century Byzantine village of Doxobus with her son Xenos. She forms a relationship with a village elder, and when she gives birth to the elder’s son, her son from her previous marriage is sent to live in a monastery.
Graceful Sofia falls in love with Alkis, a charming young writer. They make plans for the future; but, one day, her boss, Memas, enters the picture: a tough guy who owns a cabaret in Trouba, and wants Sofia back.
Set during the Greek civil war. A villager is forced to leave his house and property and go to Thessaloniki with his daughter and son. They find refuge in an old building with hundreds of other people. They live a miserable life as the daughter becomes a whore, and the son has to work.
During the cold spring of 1941, with Greece already under German occupation, a long-suffering squad of war-battered soldiers receives orders from the headquarters in Athens to fall back, leaving behind the Albanian Front. As the men retreat through the snow-covered landscapes of the bomb-scarred Greek countryside, the terrifying certainty that nothing will ever be the same again crushes their weary human souls.
Michalis returns to the tobacco growers of his rural village after having spent some time in the city and persuades them to form a collective, rather than suffer the poverty-inducing prices they are paid for their crops by tobacco brokers. They agree not to sell to any of the brokers and start to form a farmers' group. When one of the farmers breaks the agreement and is found dead, Michalis is accused. However, rather than expose the farmers' plight and give publicity to the brokers' greed, the motive the government gives for the killing is thi asimanton aformin, for unimportant reasons.
