Emmanouil Pappas (Greek: Εμμανουήλ Παππάς) is a village in the Serres regional unit, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform, it has been part of the municipality of Emmanouil Pappas.[2] It is situated in the foothills of mountain Menoikio,  17km east of Serres, and 101km northeast of Thessaloniki. The former name of the village was Dovista (Δοβίστα in standard Greek or Ντουβίστα/Duvista in the local dialect). It was renamed Emmanouil Pappas in 1927, after the hero of the Greek War of Independence in Macedonia who was born there in 1773.
The village is renowned for its traditional Macedonian architecture with three-story houses and picturesque narrow streets. The main attractions are the building of the old school that was built in 1906 and has been recently restored, the main church of Saint Athanasius, built in 1805 on the same spot where an older church existed, with its magnificent wooden carved iconostasis and the chapels on the surrounding hills.
History
The foundation of the village
The exact date of the foundation of the village remains unknown, despite the efforts of various local history researchers. It is documented, however, by an Ottoman tax register known as TT3 that there existed in 1454 a small settlement with the same name, Dovista, inhabited by 27 families (which means a possible population of around 100-130 inhabitants back then). , a researcher descending from Emmanouil Papas and author of various studies on local history, has claimed in his work "Dovista, a post-Byzantine settlement: history of  region with the birthplace of the hero Emmanouil Papas as benchmark" (Δοβίστα, μια υστεροβυζαντινή παροικία: η ιστορία των Δαρνακοχωρίων με σημείο αναφοράς τη γενέτειρα του ήρωα Εμμανουήλ Παπά, 1991) that the village was founded in the mid-17th century by Greek populations of the nearby Byzantine town of Zichna (near modern Nea Zichni), who had fled to the slopes of Mount Menoikio shortly after the Ottoman conquest of the area, remained there for some centuries in order to avoid oppression and arbitrariness of Ottoman authorities and landlords that were very common during the first centuries of Ottoman rule and eventually returned to the lowlands and founded new settlements only when Ottoman administration became less harsh. This hypothesis, however, is not supported after the discovery of TT3, at least in regards to the foundation date, while it cannot be excluded that the village pre-existed the Ottoman conquest of Serres and the vicinity, which happened in 1383.
Testimonies of 19th century travellers
In the next centuries the population of the village increased significantly and during the second half of the 19th century Dovista is described by various travellers, both Greeks and non-Greeks as a thriving big Greek village with a population of nearly or over 1,000 inhabitants. For instance, Vasilios Nikolaidis wrote in 1859 on Dovista in his Francophone book  (The Turks and contemporary Turkey, vol. 1, page 164):
"Nous nous dirigeons a l' est, pendant une heure; nous foulons un sol assez egal et nous atteignons le village de Douvista, compose de cent cinquante maisons grecques."
(We head toward east, for an hour. We walk on a rather level ground and reach the village Douvista, which consists of 150 Greek houses).''[3]
The French geographer and professor of the Ottoman High School of Galata Saray in Istanbul Alexandre Synvet mentions Dovista (misspelled as "Dobitza") with 2,320 Greek inhabitants in 1878, in page 43 of his work "Les Grecs de l’Empire Ottoman. Etude Statistique et Ethnographique" (The Greeks of the Ottoman Empire. Statistical and ethnographic study).[4]
Bulgarian Metodi Kusev (Методий Кусев), Exarchist Bishop of Stara Zagora, whose descent was from Ohrid, mentioned Dovista (as "Douvischta") with 212 families and 600 Greek inhabitants in page 28 of his Francophone book Ethnographie des Vilayets d'Andrinople, de Monastir et de Salonique (Ethnography of the Vilayets of Adrianople, Monastir and Salonica, 1878).[5]
The major of the engineer corps of the Greek army Nikolaos Schinas (Νικόλαος Σχινάς) wrote in page 444 of his work "Travelling notes on Macedonia, Epirus, the new borderline and Thessaly, vol. 2" (1886) :
"To the north of it and in the same foothills of Mount Menoikio, lies in a distance of 1/2 hour the village Dovista, with around 150 Christian families, church and schools for both boys and girls".
(Αρκτικώς τούτου κείται επί των αυτών υπωρειών του Μενοικίου όρους και
εις απόστασιν 1/2 ώρας το χωρίον Ντοβίστα, έχον περί τας 150 οικογενείας
χριστιανικάς, εκκλησίαν και σχολεία αρρένων και θηλέων).[6]
The Serb Spiridon Gopčević (Спиридон Гопчевић), a leading figure of Serbian propaganda in Macedonia, mentioned Dovista (as "Duvišta") with 232 houses and 600 Greek tax-paying inhabitants (it should be noted that only adult males or widows that were family leaders due to lack of adult males were considered as tax payers by the Ottoman authorities, so the real population must have been much bigger than the number of tax payers), in page 380 of his work "Makedonien und Alt-Serbien" (Macedonia and Old Serbia, 1889)[7]
The Bulgarian historian Georgi Strezov (Георги Стрезов) whose descent was from Ohrid wrote on Dovista in page 30 of his work "Два санджака от Източна Македония" (Two Sanjaks of East Macedonia, 1889)
"Dovista, big village to the east of Serres, in the foothills of Boz Dag (Menoikio). Three hours distance (from the city), the road is good and on level ground. The inhabitants of this village are industrious and clever enough, however they don't have too much arable land and therefore they go for work to other villages. In Dovista they grow wheat, vineyards, cotton and tobacco. There is a Greek church and Greek school. 230 houses and 1,100 Darnakes inhabitants."
(Довища, голямо село на И от Сяр при полите на Боздаг. Пътят 3 часа е добър и прав. Жителите на това село са доста разбудени; нямайки достатъчно земя за обработване, отиват по другите села на работа. В Довище се обработват жита, грозде, памук и тютюн. Има гръцка църква и гръцко училище. 230 къщи с 1100 жители дърнаци.)[8]
The term "Darnakes", mentioned in the above excerpt by the Bulgarian author in its slavicized form "Darnatsi/дърнаци", is a name that the inhabitants of Dovista and the neighbouring villages (the so-called "Darnakochoria", villages of the Darnakes) use as a kind of "tribal" name. According to what the renowned Serb geographer Jovan Cvijić (Јован Цвијић) wrote in page 521 of his work "Основе за географију и геологију Македоније и Старе Србије" (Basic principles of Geography and Geology of Macedonia and Old Serbia, 1906):
"It is interesting that the Greek populations between Serres and Ziliachova (modern Nea Zichni) are called Darnaci (Darnakes) by the Slavs. It seems that Macedonian Greeks have no other tribal name".
Интересантно је да Словени зову грчко становништво између Сереза и Зиљахова дарнацима; иначе изгледа да македонски Грци немају других имена осим народнога.[9]
Also the Bulgarian Vasil Kanchov (Васил Кънчов), chief inspector of the Bulgarian schools of Macedonia and Minister of Education later, who provided a detailed list of all the inhabited places of Macedonia with ethnographic and religious data in his work  (Macedonia, ethnography and statistics, 1900), wrote in page 73 in regards to Darnakes and Darnakochoria:
"The Greek villages around Serres are: Tipoliani (modern Chryso), Zili (evacuated after the Balkan wars, doesn't exist today), Tumba, Sarmusakli (modern Pendapoli), Dovista (modern Emmanouil Papas), Patriki, Soubaskioyϊ (modern Neo Souli), Vezniko (modern Aghio Pnevma) and Sokol (modern Sykia). There are few Konyar Turks in the last two. The population of these villages is called Darnakes (Darnaci). They are the remnants of an old Greek colony without Bulgarian admixture. Although the Darnakes are surrounded by Bulgarian villages, they don't know not even a single Bulgarian word and their relations with the other villages are very limited. Mixed marriages are not practised. Darnakes are industrious farmers and grow cotton, while they also have good vineyards. Based on some local traditions, Verkovich believes that Darnakes have migrated in that region from Thebes. According to Greek philologists, the name Darnakes derives from the word "dare"(δάρε) which these villagers pronounce instead of standard Greek "tora" (τώρα=now).
"Гръцки села около Сяр са Тополен, Зили, Тумба, Сармуксали, Довища, Патрик, Субаш Кьой, Везник и Сокол. В двете последни има и малко турци коняри. Населението на тия села се нарича дарнаци. Това са останки от стара гръцка колония без български примес. Дарнаците ако и да са обиколени с български села, не знаят дума българска и сношенията между тях и околните села са много ограничени. Смесени бракове не стават. Дарнаците са прилежни земеделци, работят памук и имат добри лозя. Като се основава върху някои местни предания Веркович вярва, че дарнаците са преселени от Тива. Според тълкуванието на гръцки филолози името дарнаци произлиза от думата δάρε, която тия селяни употребяват вместо τώρα (сега)"[10]
In page 177 of the same book, Kanchov mentions Dovista with 1,500 Christian Greek inhabitants (Kanchov followed the usual Bulgarian tactic of using the native language of Macedonian populations as only criterion to determine their ethnic belonging, as opposed to Ottoman authorities that used in their censuses religion for that purpose).
[11]
The Bulgarian D. M. Brancoff (pen name of Dimitar Mishev, secretary of the Bulgarian Exarchate) mentions Dovista (as "Dovichta") with 1400 Greek inhabitants in page 200 of his work "La Macédoine et sa population chrétienne" (Macedonia and its Christian population, 1903).[12]
Life and social structure in Ottoman time
During Ottoman time, the population of the village was organized according to the typical Greek communal institutions system that already existed in Byzantine time. This is documented in the "Codex" (a kind of archive held by Greek Orthodox churches in the past) of the main church of the village, dedicated to Saint Athanasius (Άγιος Αθανάσιος). In the mid 19th century there existed in Dovista a kindergarten and two separate Greek elementary schools for boys and girls. In 1885, the public assembly of the village population decided that a new school building should be erected because the old one lacked space and could barely host the continuously increasing number of pupils. The erection of the new building was to be funded by compulsory contributions of the inhabitants,that would be credited through the tobacco sales, which was already back then the main crop of the area. Τhe relevant agreement goes as follows:
Each of us villagers growing tobacco, irrespectively of whether he signs the present document or not, is obligated to leave to the merchant who buys his crop, irrespectively of its quality, ten paras for each oka and this should be noted by the purchaser in his ledger. The amount to be thus withheld by the merchant should be in hard currency, that is a lira of 108=one houndred and eight
(Έκαστος ημών των υπογεγραμμένων και μη χωρικών καλλιεργούντων καπνά υποχρεούται ν' αφήνη εις τον έμπορον τον αγοραστήν του πράγματος ημών, εις οιανδήποτε ποιότητα και αν ανήκει το πράγμα του, ανά δέκα παράδες εις εκάστην οκάν, κατά το κατάστιχον του εμπόρου, ήτοι του αγοραστού. Τα χρήματα τα οποία θα κρατεί ο έμπορος εννοούνται εις χρήματα γερά, ήτοι λίρα των 108=εκατόν οκτώ).

The construction was completed in 1906. It is a neoclassical building which still decorates the place near the church of Saint Athanasius, bearing the inscription "ΕΚΠΑΙΔΕΥΤΗΡΙΑ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ ΟΡΘΟΔΟΞΟΥ ΚΟΙΝΟΤΗΤΟΣ ΔΟΒΙΣΤΗΣ 1906" (School of the Greek Orthodox community of Dovista). It was restored in the middle of the first decade of 2000 and today the ground floor serves as museum about the life and activity of the hero Emmanouel Pappas, while the first floor hosts occasionally Municipal Council meetings and other events. The decision to build a new school building was certainly associated with a significant spiritual and cultural flowering that occurred at the same time, which also led to the founding of various associations with social and educational activities and national guidelines. In late 19th-early 20th century, there existed in the village three such associations: the "Fraternity of Saint Demetrius" (Αδελφότης Αγίου Δημητρίου), which built a homonymous church in 1862, the "Progressive Fraternity Dovista" (Φιλοπρόοδος Αδελφότης Δοβίστα), founded in 1883 and the "Music-Gymnastics Society Virtue" (Μουσικογυμναστικός Σύλλογος Αρετή), founded in 1910. In the first years after the liberation of the area from Ottoman yoke and its incorporation to the Greek state, there was also founded the "Music-Gymnastics Club Emmanouil Papas" (Μουσικογυμναστικός Σύλλογος Εμμανουήλ Παπάς), whose board published a short-lived magazine titled "Emmanouil Papas" in 1932.
Greek War of Independence (1821)

The people of the village participated in all national struggles of modern Greek history. The leader of the Greek revolution in Chalkidiki Emmanouel Pappas was born at Dovista in 1773. Many villagers were initiated into the secret revolutionary plans by Emmanouel Papas and were ready to fight in the battles of the oncoming revolution. According to local tradition, the Pappas' family house was used for storing weapons and ammunition which were first landed at the harbor of Tsayezi (close to modern Nea Kerdyllia and ancient Amphipolis) on the Strymonian Gulf and then transported to Dovista through the (drained since 1938) lake of Tachinos (named after the nearby village of Achinos), whose northernmost shores were lying in a distance of around 16–17km from Dovista. With the outbreak of the revolution, a big number of recruited fellow villagers of Pappas followed him to Chalkidiki. Many of them were killed in the battles there, while the survivors followed Pappas in his departure from Mount Athos after the Ottoman repression of the revolution in Macedonia and continued the struggle in southern Greece, fighting under the commands of Emmanouel Papas' son Ioannis, who later fell in the battle of Maniaki, alongside Papaflessas.[13]
Macedonian Struggle
The people of Emmanouil Pappas were present in the Macedonian Struggle as well, since many of them were initiated by the Hellenic Macedonian Committee (Ελληνομακεδονικόν Κομιτάτο) and took an active part, either as members of guerilla bands (andartes or "Makedonomachoi"-literally "Macedonian fighters" ), or  transporting weapons and ammunition (following the known from 1821 route Tsayezi-Dovista through lake Tachinos) or serving in other posts. The presence of people from Dovista in armed bands that were active even as far as the soil of modern Bulgaria is documented in a telegram, sent on October 12, 1878, by the consul of Greece in Serres Ioannis Papakostopoulos to the Prime Minister Theodoros Deligiannis:
"In Kiz-Dervent, in the region of Razlog, eight insurgents, mostly from the Greek villages and with a Greek from Dovista as their leader, a village in a distance of two hours from Serres, seized the straits, attacked and robbed a company of 30 Turkish men, women and children. They only killed a Bey among them who resisted and didn't harass at all the women. They picked out 10 loads of spoils and took them on horses that belonged to the robbed company."
(Εν Κιζ Δερβενίω, εν τω διαμερίσματι Ραζλοκίω, οκτώ λησταντάρται κατά μέγα μέρος εκ των ελληνικών χωρίων, και υπό αρχηγόν Έλληνα τινά εκ Δοβίστης, χωρίον δύο ώρας εντεύθεν απέχοντος, καταλαβόντες τα στενά του δερβενίου προσέβαλον και ελήστευσαν συνοδείαν 30 Τούρκων ανδρών και γυναικοπαίδων. Εφόνευσαν μόνον έναν βέην μεταξύ αυτών αντιστάντα, ουδόλως δε ηνώχλησαν τας γυναίκας. Δέκα φορτία λαφύρων, ληφθέντων κατ' εκλογήν, απήγαγον επί ίππων ανηκόντων εις την ληστευθείσαν συνοδείαν).''[14]

Some years later, around 1904, the first agents of the Hellenic Macedonian Committee appeared in Dovista, usually disguised as pedlars, who came in contact with the inhabitants of the village and tried to ascertain what were their beliefs and ethnic sentiments. Thus, under the guidance of the Greek consulate of Serres, an action committee was set up in the village with president the physician Parrisios Panou and members Christos Ravanis, Georgios Birbilis, Constantinos Dikos, Ioannis Michalakis and Georgios Besios. Main task of this committee was the transportation οf weapons and ammunition from the Strymonian Gulf, the hosting of members of Greek guerrilla bands in various houses of the village whenever it was necessary and also to provide info to the Greek consulate of Serres about suspicious movements in neighbouring Bulgarian villages. Other inhabitants of the village who assisted the committee were Vasilios Psitis, Athanasios Pyrgos, Ioannis Spandonis, Nikolaos Tsiapos, Theodosis Gontotsios and Georgios Pantotis, who were engaged in storing the weapons, while Christos Sitis, Christos Chatzieleftheriou and Evangelos Chatzieleftheriou served as messengers and were also responsible for the distribution of weapons in the neighbouring villages. Of the above-mentioned, Pyrgos, Spandonis and Pantotis constructed rifle cartridges. Also Michalis Tsiapos joined the guerrilla band of Kapetan Doukas, after having killed a Turk from the neighbouring village of Sokol (modern Sykia) for insulting the Christian faith.On June 13, 1905, a Greek band consisting of 8 men was arrested by an Ottoman detachment, along with 9 Gras rifles and 400 cartridges, according to a telegram of the British consul of Serres Ioannis Theodoridis to the British General Consul of Salonica Robert Graves.[15] According to narrations of elderly inhabitants, some days before their arrest the guerrillas were hiding in the nearby hill of Saint Demetrius, and their rifles were hidden in the belfry of the homonymous church. However, their presence was noticed by bypassing inhabitants of the neighbouring Bulgarian village Moukliani (Мъклен/Mklen in Bulgarian), 8km to the north, on the slopes of Mount Menoikio, who denounced them to the Ottoman authorities. So, when the guerrillas went to the village for provisions they were suddenly surrounded by Ottoman soldiers. Whenever they went to the village, they were dressed in local costumes in order to avoid to arouse suspicions. However, their brand new costumes didn't seem to fit with their answer to the inquiries of the Ottoman soldiers that they were workers in a local tobacco warehouse. They were arrested and after cruel tortures revealed the truth.[16]

On July 14, 1907, a Greek band consisting mainly of inhabitants of Dovista and the other Greek villages of the vicinity and with Andreas Makoulis from Stenimaka (Στενήμαχος/Stenimachos in Greek) as chief, which was hosted in Dovista, in the house of the notable Nasios Mamiakas, was accidentally discovered (because of a quarrel between its members that ended up with the whole band pursuing with shots an undisciplined guerrilla who was bound but managed to escape running to the tobacco fields) by two strong detachments of Ottoman mounted gendarmes, that passed outside the village on their way to Serres, in order to participate in a battle against another Greek band there, that of Kapetan Mitrousis, which was trapped in the belfry of the church of Aghia Evangelistria and fought an uneven battle against the whole Ottoman military forces of the town and the nearby villages.
The guerrillas abandoned hastily the village and moved to Mount Menoikio, hoping to escape through its inaccessible gorges and ravines. Τhey tried to make their way through a narrow gorge called "Ayiasma", however, they were soon surrounded from all sides, since the Ottoman detachments were assisted by armed inhabitants of the nearby Turkish village of Sokol and by the gendarmes of the Bulgarian village Mukliani, 7–8km to the north and on the slopes of Mount Menoikio. Those were accompanied by many armed inhabitants of the above-mentioned village, who were at odds with the people of Dovista and the other Greek villages of the vicinity. In the long-lasting battle that followed until sunset, all Greek guerrillas were killed save one, who managed to return to the village in the night. He found shelter in a house and next day he was sent away, disguised as woman. Andreas Makoulis was heavily injured and captured alive by the Ottomans. They took him at their headquarters in the nearby village of Sarmousakli (modern Pendapoli) in order to interrogate him if he would recover, however he died the next day. The Turkish losses were around 25 dead who were buried in the neighbouring Turkish village Sokol.
The names of the guerrillas of Andreas Makoulis' band were: Andreas Makoulis, chief of the band, from Stenimaka of Eastern Rumelia (modern Asenovgrad in Bulgaria); Theodosis Godotsios or Bouboumis from Dovista, second in command (he was arrested by the Turks before the battle and imprisoned in Pontus. He was released few years later, with the general amnesty that was proclaimed by the Young Turks; Evangelos Chatzieleftheriou, from Dovista; Vasilios Psitis, from Dovista; Anastasios Abliamis, from Dovista; Nikolaos Tsiapos, from Dovista; Nikolaos Achiniotis, from Achinos, Serres; Sotirios Siosios, from Subaskioy (modern Neo Souli, Serres); Chrysafis Patramanis (the only survivor), from Subaskioy; Ioannis Stenimachiotis, from Stenimaka;
Ilias Karlikioylis, from Karlikioy (modern Chionochori, Serres); Christos Frastanlis, from Frastani (modern Oreini, Serres); Andonis Nouskalis, from Kato Nuska (modern Dafnoudi, Serres).
In the following days, all notables and 120 other inhabitants of Dovista were arrested by the Ottoman authorities and brought to Serres for interrogation. 80 of them were sent to the prisons of Yedi Kule in Thessaloniki, where they remained for three months. Eventually, only those that hosted the guerrillas in their homes were found guilty: Konstantinos Dikos (mukhtar of the village), Fotios Mamiakas,  Athanasios Mamiakas, Sotirios Palaskas, Vasilios Agorastos and the priest Dimitrios Papaoikonomou. Some were sentenced to death and others to life imprisonment and all were jailed in the White Tower. During the Young Turks revolution they were released, after the intervention of the Greek consul of Thessaloniki.
Balkan Wars
During the First Balkan War Emmanouil Pappas and the whole territory of modern Serres regional unit to the east of Strymonas river was captured by the Bulgarian army on November 6, 1912. A small Bulgarian garrison was installed in the village but it left just few days before the decisive Greek victory in the battle of Kilkis-Lahanas of the Second Balkan War, which marked the liberation of East Macedonia after 550 years of foreign rule. Thus, Emmanouil Pappas became part of Greece on June 29 (Julian calendar, which was used in Greece until 1923)/July 11 (Gregorian calendar), 1913. During the Bulgarian occupation of the village (known to local historical memory as "Proti Voulgaria", literary "First Bulgaria") that lasted 8 months, the inhabitants suffered harsh persecutions and oppression by the Bulgarian authorities who employed a Bulgarization policy. People from Emmanouil Pappas participated in the fierce clashes  between Bulgarian troops and irregular Greeks (members of old bands and other armed civilians from the city and the Greek villages around) that took place during the last two or three days before the retreating Bulgarians set on fire the city of Serres and fled to Bulgaria upon the arrival of the Greek army. Their casualties were 8 dead:
1)Daniil Daniil, 2)Christos Katsaros, 3)Dimitrios Kartsios, 4)Ioannis Tounas, 5)Lascaris Tsiakiris, 6)Dimitrios Chatzieleftheriou 7)Eleftherios Chatzieleftheriou, 8) Athanasios Psaltis.[17] The testimony of the Bulgarian officer Ivan Kirpikov to the international commission of the Carnegie endowment which conducted an inquiry on the war crimes committed in the Balkan Wars, is indicative of the severity of those clashes and the participation of people from Emmanouil Pappas and other Darnakochoria.[18] There is no doubt that those peasants wearing "the peculiar Greek costume of the villages that were considered as centers of Greek propaganda", according to the Bulgarian officer, were from Emmanouil Pappas and the other Darnakochoria, who were approaching the railway station through the railway line that passes by the village of Chryso.
World War I-the Bulgarian hostageship
The inhabitants of Emmanouil Pappas could not enjoy their freedom for a long time because their village, like the rest of Eastern Macedonia fell during World War I again under Bulgarian occupation ( a period known in local historical memory as "Thefteri Voulgaria"-literally "Second Bulgaria") after the events of the National Schism in 1916. Bulgarian rule is much harsher this time. The Bulgarians, being confident that the region will remain in their possession after the war, are engaged in an orgy of repression and persecution of the native Greek populations, in order to force them either to be Bulgarized or to leave their homeland. Thus, many Greek civilians residing in  Bulgarian-occupied areas decide to flee to the territory to the west of Strymonas river that still remained under Greek rule. Greek schools are shut down and replaced by Bulgarian ones while the Greek language is banned in the churches and Holy Service is held only in Bulgarian, by Bulgarian priests.[19] However, the most inhumane measure is the so-called "hostageship", the displacement of Greek civilians aged 17–60 years to different regions of Bulgaria and the present-day Republic of Macedonia (which was then also under Bulgarian occupation), where they are forced to perform hard labour and die by the thousands, due to the unacceptable living conditions, malnutrition, exhaustion, diseases etc. A committee of the American Red Army that came in Eastern Macedonia to provide humanitarian aid when the war ended, estimated that the total number of displaced to Bulgaria (and other Bulgarian-occupied areas) Greek civilians from Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace during the Bulgarian occupation of these areas during World War I was nearly 200,000, of whom around 60,000 died and never came back, while many of those who returned were in such wretched health condition that had become incapable of any work.[20][21][22][23][24][25] Among these 200,000 hostages or "ta dourdouvakia", as they are known in local tradition (Greek corruption of the Bulgarian phrase трудов войник/troudov voinik=labour soldier, as they were called by the Bulgarians), there were about 200 inhabitants of Emmanouil Pappas, of whom 110 died in Kicevo (today Republic of Macedonia) and  Karnobat (Bulgaria). Their names are written in the memorial in honour of the fallen in the wars, in the central square of the village.
The above-mentioned report of the Committee of the American Red Cross also mentions that humanitarian aid (food, clothing, etc.) was distributed in Dovista and the neighbouring villages.[26]
Another not so known aspect of the history of the village during World War I, is that apart from the Bulgarian garrison there was installed and Turkish force too, which had set up a temporary hospital (in the school building) with Austrian military doctors, according to the memoirs of the German Air Force Lieutenant Georg Wilhelm Heydemarck.[27]
Interwar period
During the interwar period a significant economic and cultural growth took place in the village of Emmanouil Pappas, especially in the 1920s and until the aftermath of the great financial crash of 1929 reached Greece. The enormously high prices which US and European companies offered for Greek tobacco at that time brought to most inhabitants an economic prosperity, landmarks of which are a few neoclassical houses that were built then and survived until today. The village became an important center of tobacco production and  processing with several tobacco houses, which employed over 400 workers, most of whom came from Serres and other villages. A lot of various shops opened for the needs of this newly emerged working class and there was also set up a private power plant, which electrified the houses and streets of the village. At the same time there was a remarkable intellectual blossoming and there  were founded several clubs that developed a significant cultural activity, such as presenting theatrical plays and the publishing of a magazine, already mentioned in a previous chapter. In the same period also was formed for first time a footbal team in the village, by the "Music-Gymnastics Association Emmanouil Papas".
In the Asia Minor Campaign, the inhabitants of the village of military age were recruited in the Greek Army and 11 of them were among the thousands of other Greeks who paid with their lives the Asia Minor disaster.
World War 2 and Civil War
Postwar era
Folklore
Customs and traditions
Music tradition
Language
Sample of rare words of ancient Greek origin from the vocabulary of the Darnakochoria dialect
Historical population

Notable people descending from Emmanouil Papas
Emmanouel Pappas (1773-1821), leader of the Greek War of Independence in Macedonia.
Stergios Mourgos (1933-), retired professor of Quantitative Economics of City University of New York, former director of the Greek National Tourist Organization in New York and former consul of Greece in New York.
Andonis Malliaris (1944-), author and publisher.
Stergios Tsiallas (1948-), Dr. of Nuclear Physics and researcher of the National Centre of Scientific Research "Demokritos".
Vasilis Karanasios (1950-), Professor of Chemistry and researcher of the Waterloo University in Canada.
Christos Giouzelis, (1962-2017), basketball coach and former basketball player.
Nikos Oikonomou (1973-), basketball coach and former basketball player.
Panayiotis Kokoras (1974-), internationally award-winning composer and computer music innovator.
See also
List of settlements in the Serres regional unit


The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought by the Delian League led by Athens against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. In the first phase, the Archidamian War, Sparta launched repeated invasions of Attica, while Athens took advantage of its naval supremacy to raid the coast of the Peloponnese and attempt to suppress signs of unrest in its empire. This period of the war was concluded in 421 BC, with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. That treaty, however, was soon undermined by renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. In 415 BC, Athens dispatched a massive expeditionary force to attack Syracuse, Sicily; the attack failed disastrously, with the destruction of the entire force in 413 BC. This ushered in the final phase of the war, generally referred to either as the Decelean War, or the Ionian War. In this phase, Sparta, now receiving support from the Achaemenid Empire, supported rebellions in Athens's subject states in the Aegean Sea and Ionia, undermining Athens's empire, and, eventually, depriving the city of naval supremacy. The destruction of Athens's fleet in the Battle of Aegospotami effectively ended the war, and Athens surrendered in the following year. Corinth and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved, but Sparta refused.
The term "Peloponnesian War " was never used by Thucydides, by far its major historian: that the term is all but universally used today is a reflection of the Athens-centric sympathies of modern historians. As prominent historian J. B. Bury remarks, the Peloponnesians would have considered it the "Attic War".[1]
The Peloponnesian War reshaped the ancient Greek world. On the level of international relations, Athens, the strongest city-state in Greece prior to the war's beginning, was reduced to a state of near-complete subjection, while Sparta became established as the leading power of Greece. The economic costs of the war were felt all across Greece; poverty became widespread in the Peloponnese, while Athens found itself completely devastated, and never regained its pre-war prosperity.[2][3] The war also wrought subtler changes to Greek society; the conflict between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta, each of which supported friendly political factions within other states, made civil war a common occurrence in the Greek world.
Ancient Greek warfare, meanwhile, originally a limited and formalized form of conflict, was transformed into an all-out struggle between city-states, complete with atrocities on a large scale. Shattering religious and cultural taboos, devastating vast swathes of countryside, and destroying whole cities, the Peloponnesian War marked the dramatic end to the fifth century BC and the golden age of Greece.[4]
Prelude
As the preeminent Athenian historian, Thucydides, wrote in his influential History of the Peloponnesian War, "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable."[5] Indeed, the nearly fifty years of Greek history that preceded the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War had been marked by the development of Athens as a major power in the Mediterranean world. Its empire began as a small group of city-states, called the Delian League—from the island of Delos, on which they kept their treasury—that came together to ensure that the Greco-Persian Wars were truly over. After defeating the Second Persian invasion of Greece in the year 480 BC, Athens led the coalition of Greek city-states that continued the Greco-Persian Wars with attacks on Persian territories in the Aegean and Ionia. What then ensued was a period, referred to as the Pentecontaetia (the name given by Thucydides), in which Athens increasingly became in fact an empire,[6] carrying out an aggressive war against Persia and increasingly dominating other city-states. Athens proceeded to bring under its control all of Greece except for Sparta and its allies, ushering in a period which is known to history as the Athenian Empire.  By the middle of the century, the Persians had been driven from the Aegean and forced to cede control of a vast range of territories to Athens. At the same time, Athens greatly increased its own power; a number of its formerly independent allies were reduced, over the course of the century, to the status of tribute-paying subject states of the Delian League. This tribute was used to support a powerful fleet and, after the middle of the century, to fund massive public works programs in Athens, causing resentment.[7]
Friction between Athens and the Peloponnesian states, including Sparta, began early in the Pentecontaetia; in the wake of the departure of the Persians from Greece, Sparta attempted to prevent the reconstruction of the walls of Athens (without the walls, Athens would have been defenseless against a land attack and subject to Spartan control), but was rebuffed.[8] According to Thucydides, although the Spartans took no action at this time, they "secretly felt aggrieved".[9]
Conflict between the states flared up again in 465 BC, when a helot revolt broke out in Sparta. The Spartans summoned forces from all of their allies, including Athens, to help them suppress the revolt. Athens sent out a sizable contingent (4,000 hoplites), but upon its arrival, this force was dismissed by the Spartans, while those of all the other allies were permitted to remain. According to Thucydides, the Spartans acted in this way out of fear that the Athenians would switch sides and support the helots; the offended Athenians repudiated their alliance with Sparta.[10] When the rebellious helots were finally forced to surrender and permitted to evacuate the state, the Athenians settled them at the strategic city of Naupaktos on the Gulf of Corinth.[11]
In 459 BC, Athens took advantage of a war between its neighbors Megara and Corinth, both Spartan allies, to conclude an alliance with Megara, giving the Athenians a critical foothold on the Isthmus of Corinth. A fifteen-year conflict, commonly known as the First Peloponnesian War, ensued, in which Athens fought intermittently against Sparta, Corinth, Aegina, and a number of other states. For a time during this conflict, Athens controlled not only Megara but also Boeotia; at its end, however, in the face of a massive Spartan invasion of Attica, the Athenians ceded the lands they had won on the Greek mainland, and Athens and Sparta recognized each other's right to control their respective alliance systems.[12] The war was officially ended by the Thirty Years' Peace, signed in the winter of 446/5 BC.[13]
Breakdown of the peace

The Thirty Years' Peace was first tested in 440 BC, when Athens's powerful ally Samos rebelled from its alliance with Athens. The rebels quickly secured the support of a Persian satrap, and Athens found itself facing the prospect of revolts throughout the empire. The Spartans, whose intervention would have been the trigger for a massive war to determine the fate of the empire, called a congress of their allies to discuss the possibility of war with Athens. Sparta's powerful ally Corinth was notably opposed to intervention, and the congress voted against war with Athens. The Athenians crushed the revolt, and peace was maintained.[14]
The more immediate events that led to war involved Athens and Corinth. After suffering a defeat at the hands of their colony of Korkyra, a sea power that was not allied to either Sparta or Athens, Corinth began to build an allied naval force. Alarmed, Corcyra sought an alliance with Athens, which after debate and input from both Corcyra and Corinth, decided to swear a defensive alliance with Corcyra. At the Battle of Sybota, a small contingent of Athenian ships played a critical role in preventing a Corinthian fleet from capturing Corcyra. In order to uphold the Thirty Years' Peace, however, the Athenians were instructed not to intervene in the battle unless it was clear that Corinth was going to press onward to invade Corcyra. However, the Athenian warships participated in the battle nevertheless, and the arrival of additional Athenian triremes was enough to dissuade the Corinthians from exploiting their victory, thus sparing much of the routed Korkyrean and Athenian fleet.[15]
Following this, Athens instructed Potidaea in the peninsula of Chalkidiki, a tributary ally of Athens but a colony of Corinth, to tear down its walls, send hostages to Athens, dismiss the Corinthian magistrates from office, and refuse the magistrates that the city would send in the future.[16] The Corinthians, outraged by these actions, encouraged Potidaea to revolt and assured them that they would ally with them should they revolt from Athens. During the subsequent Battle of Potidaea, the Corinthians unofficially aided Potidaea by sneaking contingents of men into the besieged city to help defend it. This was a direct violation of the Thirty Years' Peace, which had (among other things) stipulated that the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League would respect each other's autonomy and internal affairs.

A further source of provocation was an Athenian decree, issued in 433/2 BC, imposing stringent trade sanctions on Megarian citizens (once more a Spartan ally after the conclusion of the First Peloponnesian War). It was alleged that the Megarians had desecrated the Hiera Orgas. These sanctions, known as the Megarian decree, were largely ignored by Thucydides, but some modern economic historians have noted that forbidding Megara to trade with the prosperous Athenian empire would have been disastrous for the Megarans, and have accordingly considered the decree to be a contributing factor in bringing about the war.[17] Historians that attribute responsibility for the war to Athens cite this event as the main cause for blame.[18]
At the request of the Corinthians, the Spartans summoned members of the Peloponnesian League to Sparta in 432 BC, especially those who had grievances with Athens to make their complaints to the Spartan assembly. This debate was attended by members of the league and an uninvited delegation from Athens, which also asked to speak, and became the scene of a debate between the Athenians and the Corinthians. Thucydides reports that the Corinthians condemned Sparta's inactivity up to that point, warning the Spartans that if they continued to remain passive while the Athenians were energetically active, they would soon find themselves outflanked and without allies.[19] The Athenians, in response, reminded the Spartans of their record of military success and opposition to Persia, and warned them of the dangers of confronting such a powerful state, ultimately encouraging Sparta to seek arbitration as provided by the Thirty Years' Peace.[20] Undeterred, a majority of the Spartan assembly voted to declare that the Athenians had broken the peace, essentially declaring war.[21]
The "Archidamian War"

Sparta and its allies, with the exception of Corinth, were almost exclusively land-based powers, able to summon large land armies which were very nearly unbeatable (thanks to the legendary Spartan forces). The Athenian Empire, although based in the peninsula of Attica, spread out across the islands of the Aegean Sea; Athens drew its immense wealth from tribute paid from these islands. Athens maintained its empire through naval power. Thus, the two powers were relatively unable to fight decisive battles.
The Spartan strategy during the first war, known as the Archidamian War (431–421 BC) after Sparta's king Archidamus II, was to invade the land surrounding Athens. While this invasion deprived Athenians of the productive land around their city, Athens itself was able to maintain access to the sea, and did not suffer much. Many of the citizens of Attica abandoned their farms and moved inside the Long Walls, which connected Athens to its port of Piraeus. At the end of the first year of the war, Pericles gave his famous Funeral Oration (431 BC).
The Spartans also occupied Attica for periods of only three weeks at a time; in the tradition of earlier hoplite warfare the soldiers were expected to go home to participate in the harvest. Moreover, Spartan slaves, known as helots, needed to be kept under control, and could not be left unsupervised for long periods of time. The longest Spartan invasion, in 430 BC, lasted just forty days.
The Athenian strategy was initially guided by the strategos, or general, Pericles, who advised the Athenians to avoid open battle with the far more numerous and better trained Spartan hoplites, relying instead on the fleet. The Athenian fleet, the most dominant in Greece, went on the offensive, winning a victory at Naupactus. In 430 BC an outbreak of a plague hit Athens. The plague ravaged the densely packed city, and in the long run, was a significant cause of its final defeat. The plague wiped out over 30,000 citizens, sailors and soldiers, including Pericles and his sons. Roughly one-third to two-thirds of the Athenian population died. Athenian manpower was correspondingly drastically reduced and even foreign mercenaries refused to hire themselves out to a city riddled with plague. The fear of plague was so widespread that the Spartan invasion of Attica was abandoned, their troops being unwilling to risk contact with the diseased enemy.
After the death of Pericles, the Athenians turned somewhat against his conservative, defensive strategy and to the more aggressive strategy of bringing the war to Sparta and its allies. Rising to particular importance in Athenian democracy at this time was Cleon, a leader of the hawkish elements of the Athenian democracy. Led militarily by a clever new general Demosthenes (not to be confused with the later Athenian orator Demosthenes), the Athenians managed some successes as they continued their naval raids on the Peloponnese. Athens stretched their military activities into Boeotia and Aetolia, quelled the Mytilenean revolt and began fortifying posts around the Peloponnese. One of these posts was near Pylos on a tiny island called Sphacteria, where the course of the first war turned in Athens's favour. The post off Pylos struck Sparta where it was weakest: its dependence on the helots, who tended the fields while its citizens trained to become soldiers. The helots made the Spartan system possible, but now the post off Pylos began attracting helot runaways. In addition, the fear of a general revolt of helots emboldened by the nearby Athenian presence drove the Spartans to action. Demosthenes, however, outmanoeuvred the Spartans in the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC and trapped a group of Spartan soldiers on Sphacteria as he waited for them to surrender. Weeks later, though, Demosthenes proved unable to finish off the Spartans. After boasting that he could put an end to the affair in the Assembly, the inexperienced Cleon won a great victory at the Battle of Sphacteria. The Athenians captured 300 Spartan hoplites. The hostages gave the Athenians a bargaining chip.
After these battles, the Spartan general Brasidas raised an army of allies and helots and marched the length of Greece to the Athenian colony of Amphipolis in Thrace, which controlled several nearby silver mines; their product supplied much of the Athenian war fund. Thucydides was dispatched with a force which arrived too late to stop Brasidas capturing Amphipolis; Thucydides was exiled for this, and, as a result, had the conversations with both sides of the war which inspired him to record its history. Both Brasidas and Cleon were killed in Athenian efforts to retake Amphipolis (see Battle of Amphipolis). The Spartans and Athenians agreed to exchange the hostages for the towns captured by Brasidas, and signed a truce.
Peace of Nicias

With the death of Cleon and Brasidas, zealous war hawks for both nations, the Peace of Nicias was able to last for some six years. However, it was a time of constant skirmishing in and around the Peloponnese. While the Spartans refrained from action themselves, some of their allies began to talk of revolt. They were supported in this by Argos, a powerful state within the Peloponnese that had remained independent of Lacedaemon. With the support of the Athenians, the Argives succeeded in forging a coalition of democratic states within the Peloponnese, including the powerful states of Mantinea and Elis. Early Spartan attempts to break up the coalition failed, and the leadership of the Spartan king Agis was called into question. Emboldened, the Argives and their allies, with the support of a small Athenian force under Alcibiades, moved to seize the city of Tegea, near Sparta.
The Battle of Mantinea was the largest land battle fought within Greece during the Peloponnesian War. The Lacedaemonians, with their neighbors the Tegeans, faced the combined armies of Argos, Athens, Mantinea, and Arcadia. In the battle, the allied coalition scored early successes, but failed to capitalize on them, which allowed the Spartan elite forces to defeat the forces opposite them. The result was a complete victory for the Spartans, which rescued their city from the brink of strategic defeat. The democratic alliance was broken up, and most of its members were reincorporated into the Peloponnesian League. With its victory at Mantinea, Sparta pulled itself back from the brink of utter defeat, and re-established its hegemony throughout the Peloponnese.
Sicilian Expedition

In the 17th year of the war, word came to Athens that one of their distant allies in Sicily was under attack from Syracuse. The people of Syracuse were ethnically Dorian (as were the Spartans), while the Athenians, and their ally in Sicilia, were Ionian. The Athenians felt obliged to assist their ally.
The Athenians did not act solely from altruism: rallied on by Alcibiades, the leader of the expedition, they held visions of conquering all of Sicily. Syracuse, the principal city of Sicily, was not much smaller than Athens, and conquering all of Sicily would have brought Athens an immense amount of resources. In the final stages of the preparations for departure, the hermai (religious statues) of Athens were mutilated by unknown persons, and Alcibiades was charged with religious crimes. Alcibiades demanded that he be put on trial at once, so that he might defend himself before the expedition. The Athenians however allowed Alcibiades to go on the expedition without being tried (many believed in order to better plot against him). After arriving in Sicily, Alcibiades was recalled to Athens for trial. Fearing that he would be unjustly condemned, Alcibiades defected to Sparta and Nicias was placed in charge of the mission. After his defection, Alcibiades claimed to the Spartans that the Athenians planned to use Sicily as a springboard for the conquest of all of Italy and Carthage, and to use the resources and soldiers from these new conquests to conquer the Peloponnese.

The Athenian force consisted of over 100 ships and some 5,000 infantry and light-armored troops. Cavalry was limited to about 30 horses, which proved to be no match for the large and highly trained Syracusan cavalry. Upon landing in Sicily, several cities immediately joined the Athenian cause. Instead of attacking at once, Nicias procrastinated and the campaigning season of 415 BC ended with Syracuse scarcely damaged. With winter approaching, the Athenians were then forced to withdraw into their quarters, and they spent the winter gathering allies and preparing to destroy Syracuse. The delay allowed the Syracusans to send for help from Sparta, who sent their general Gylippus to Sicily with reinforcements. Upon arriving, he raised up a force from several Sicilian cities, and went to the relief of Syracuse. He took command of the Syracusan troops, and in a series of battles defeated the Athenian forces, and prevented them from invading the city.
Nicias then sent word to Athens asking for reinforcements. Demosthenes was chosen and led another fleet to Sicily, joining his forces with those of Nicias. More battles ensued and again, the Syracusans and their allies defeated the Athenians. Demosthenes argued for a retreat to Athens, but Nicias at first refused. After additional setbacks, Nicias seemed to agree to a retreat until a bad omen, in the form of a lunar eclipse, delayed any withdrawal. The delay was costly and forced the Athenians into a major sea battle in the Great Harbor of Syracuse. The Athenians were thoroughly defeated. Nicias and Demosthenes marched their remaining forces inland in search of friendly allies. The Syracusan cavalry rode them down mercilessly, eventually killing or enslaving all who were left of the mighty Athenian fleet.
The Second War
The Lacedaemonians were not content with simply sending aid to Sicily; they also resolved to take the war to the Athenians. On the advice of Alcibiades, they fortified Decelea, near Athens, and prevented the Athenians from making use of their land year round. The fortification of Decelea prevented the shipment of supplies overland to Athens, and forced all supplies to be brought in by sea at increased expense. Perhaps worst of all, the nearby silver mines were totally disrupted, with as many as 20,000 Athenian slaves freed by the Spartan hoplites at Decelea. With the treasury and emergency reserve fund of 1,000 talents dwindling away, the Athenians were forced to demand even more tribute from her subject allies, further increasing tensions and the threat of further rebellion within the Empire.
The Corinthians, the Spartans, and others in the Peloponnesian League sent more reinforcements to Syracuse, in the hopes of driving off the Athenians; but instead of withdrawing, the Athenians sent another hundred ships and another 5,000 troops to Sicily. Under Gylippus, the Syracusans and their allies were able to decisively defeat the Athenians on land; and Gylippus encouraged the Syracusans to build a navy, which was able to defeat the Athenian fleet when they attempted to withdraw. The Athenian army, attempting to withdraw overland to other, more friendly Sicilian cities, was divided and defeated; the entire Athenian fleet was destroyed, and virtually the entire Athenian army was sold off into slavery.
Following the defeat of the Athenians in Sicily, it was widely believed that the end of the Athenian Empire was at hand. Her treasury was nearly empty, her docks were depleted, and the flower of her youth was dead or imprisoned in a foreign land. They overestimated the strength of their own empire and the beginning of the end was indeed imminent.
Athens recovers

Following the destruction of the Sicilian Expedition, Lacedaemon encouraged the revolt of Athens's tributary allies, and indeed, much of Ionia rose in revolt against Athens. The Syracusans sent their fleet to the Peloponnesians, and the Persians decided to support the Spartans with money and ships. Revolt and faction threatened in Athens itself.
The Athenians managed to survive for several reasons. First, their foes were lacking in initiative. Corinth and Syracuse were slow to bring their fleets into the Aegean, and Sparta's other allies were also slow to furnish troops or ships. The Ionian states that rebelled expected protection, and many rejoined the Athenian side. The Persians were slow to furnish promised funds and ships, frustrating battle plans.
At the start of the war, the Athenians had prudently put aside some money and 100 ships that were to be used only as a last resort.

These ships were then released, and served as the core of the Athenians' fleet throughout the rest of the war. An oligarchical revolution occurred in Athens, in which a group of 400 seized power. A peace with Sparta might have been possible, but the Athenian fleet, now based on the island of Samos, refused to accept the change. In 411 BC this fleet engaged the Spartans at the Battle of Syme. The fleet appointed Alcibiades their leader, and continued the war in Athens's name. Their opposition led to the reinstitution of a democratic government in Athens within two years.
Alcibiades, while condemned as a traitor, still carried weight in Athens. He prevented the Athenian fleet from attacking Athens; instead, he helped restore democracy by more subtle pressure. He also persuaded the Athenian fleet to attack the Spartans at the battle of Cyzicus in 410. In the battle, the Athenians obliterated the Spartan fleet, and succeeded in re-establishing the financial basis of the Athenian Empire.
Between 410 and 406, Athens won a continuous string of victories, and eventually recovered large portions of its empire. All of this was due, in no small part, to Alcibiades.
Lysander triumphs, Athens surrenders

Faction triumphed in Athens following a minor Spartan victory by their skillful general Lysander at the naval battle of Notium in 406 BC. Alcibiades was not re-elected general by the Athenians and he exiled himself from the city. He would never again lead Athenians in battle. Athens was then victorious at the naval battle of Arginusae. The Spartan fleet under Callicratidas lost 70 ships and the Athenians lost 25 ships. But, due to bad weather, the Athenians were unable to rescue their stranded crews or to finish off the Spartan fleet. Despite their victory, these failures caused outrage in Athens and led to a controversial trial. The trial resulted in the execution of six of Athens's top naval commanders. Athens's naval supremacy would now be challenged without several of its most able military leaders and a demoralized navy.

Unlike some of his predecessors the new Spartan general, Lysander, was not a member of the Spartan royal families and was also formidable in naval strategy; he was an artful diplomat, who had even cultivated good personal relationships with the Achaemenid prince Cyrus the Younger, son of Emperor Darius II. Seizing its opportunity, the Spartan fleet sailed at once to the Dardanelles, the source of Athens's grain. Threatened with starvation, the Athenian fleet had no choice but to follow. Through cunning strategy, Lysander totally defeated the Athenian fleet, in 405 BC, at the Battle of Aegospotami, destroying 168 ships and capturing some three or four thousand Athenian sailors. Only twelve Athenian ships escaped, and several of these sailed to Cyprus, carrying the strategos (general) Conon, who was anxious not to face the judgment of the Assembly.
Facing starvation and disease from the prolonged siege, Athens surrendered in 404 BC, and its allies soon surrendered as well. The democrats at Samos, loyal to the bitter last, held on slightly longer, and were allowed to flee with their lives. The surrender stripped Athens of its walls, its fleet, and all of its overseas possessions. Corinth and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved. However, the Spartans announced their refusal to destroy a city that had done a good service at a time of greatest danger to Greece, and took Athens into their own system. Athens was "to have the same friends and enemies" as Sparta.[25]
Aftermath
The overall effect of the war in Greece proper was to replace the Athenian Empire with a Spartan empire.  After the battle of Aegospotami, Sparta took over the Athenian empire and kept all of its tribute revenues for itself; Sparta's allies, who had made greater sacrifices for the war effort than had Sparta, got nothing.[1]
For a short period of time, Athens was ruled by the "Thirty Tyrants", and democracy was suspended. This was a reactionary regime set up by Sparta. In 403 BC, the oligarchs were overthrown and a democracy was restored by Thrasybulus.
Although the power of Athens was broken, it made something of a recovery as a result of the Corinthian War and continued to play an active role in Greek politics. Sparta was later humbled by Thebes at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, but the rivalry between Athens and Sparta was brought to an end a few decades later when Philip II of Macedon conquered all of Greece except Sparta, which was later subjugated by Philip's son Alexander in 331 BC.[26]

Further reading
Classical authors

Aristophanes, Lysistrata
Diodorus Siculus
Herodotus, Histories sets the table of events before Peloponnesian War that deals with Greco-Persian Wars and the formation of Classical Greece
Plutarch, known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Xenophon, Hellenica
Modern authors
Bagnall, Nigel. The Peloponnesian War: Athens, Sparta, And The Struggle For Greece. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN0-312-34215-2).
Cawkwell, George. Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War. London: Routledge, 1997 (hardcover, ISBN0-415-16430-3; paperback, ISBN0-415-16552-0).
Hanson, Victor Davis. A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. New York: Random House, 2005 (hardcover, ISBN1-4000-6095-8); New York: Random House, 2006 (paperback, ISBN0-8129-6970-7).
Heftner, Herbert. Der oligarchische Umsturz des Jahres 411 v. Chr. und die Herrschaft der Vierhundert in Athen: Quellenkritische und historische Untersuchungen. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001 (ISBN3-631-37970-6).
Hutchinson, Godfrey. Attrition: Aspects of Command in the Peloponnesian War. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Tempus Publishing, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN1-86227-323-5).
Kagan, Donald:
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969 (hardcover, ISBN0-8014-0501-7); 1989 (paperback, ISBN0-8014-9556-3).
The Archidamian War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974 (hardcover, ISBN0-8014-0889-X); 1990 (paperback, ISBN0-8014-9714-0).
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981 (hardcover, ISBN0-8014-1367-2); 1991 (paperback, ISBN0-8014-9940-2).
The Fall of the Athenian Empire. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987 (hardcover, ISBN0-8014-1935-2); 1991 (paperback, ISBN0-8014-9984-4).
The Peloponnesian War. New York: Viking, 2003 (hardcover, ISBN0-670-03211-5); New York: Penguin, 2004 (paperback, ISBN0-14-200437-5); a one-volume version of his earlier tetralogy.
Kallet, Lisa. Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides: The Sicilian Expedition and its Aftermath. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001 (hardcover, ISBN0-520-22984-3).
Kirshner, Jonathan. 2018. "Handle Him with Care: The Importance of Getting Thucydides Right." Security Studies.
Krentz, Peter. The Thirty at Athens. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982 (hardcover, ISBN0-8014-1450-4).
The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, edited by Robert B. Strassler. New York: The Free Press, 1996 (hardcover, ISBN0-684-82815-4); 1998 (paperback, ISBN0-684-82790-5).
Roberts, Jennifer T. The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017 (hardcover, ISBN9780199996643

 (Public Domain Audiobooks in the US– 20:57:23 hours, at least 603.7 MB)
Richard Crawley,  (Translation of Thukydides's books – in )


This is a list of countries by apple production in 2016 and 2017, based on data from the Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database.[1] The total world apple production for 2017 was 83,139,326 metric tonnes, down 6.9% from 89,329,179 tonnes in 2016.
List of countries by production quantity
>1,000,000 tonnes

100,000–1,000,000 tonnes

50,000–100,000 tonnes

10,000–50,000 tonnes

1,000–10,000 tonnes

<1,000 tonnes

List of countries by area harvested for apples
This is a list of the top ten countries by area harvested for apples in hectares (ha). The total area harvested in the world for apples was 4,933,841 hectares in 2017, down 6.8% from 5,293,340 hectares in 2016.[2]

Notes


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In financial auditing of public companies in the United States,   SOX 404 top–down risk assessment (TDRA) is a financial risk assessment performed to comply with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX 404). The term is used by the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The TDRA is used to determine the scope and required evidence to support management's testing of its internal controls under SOX404. It is also used by the external auditor to issue a formal opinion on the company's internal controls.  However, as a result of the passage of Auditing Standard No. 5, which the SEC has since approved, external auditors are no longer required to provide an opinion on management's assessment of its own internal controls.
Detailed guidance about performing the TDRA is included with PCAOB Auditing Standard No. 5 (Release 2007-005 "An audit of internal control over financial reporting that is integrated with an audit of financial statements")[1] and the SEC's interpretive guidance (Release 33-8810/34-55929) "Management's Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting".[2][3] This guidance is applicable for 2007 assessments for companies with 12/31 fiscal year-ends.  The PCAOB release superseded the existing PCAOB Auditing Standard No. 2, while the SEC guidance is the first detailed guidance for management specifically. PCAOB reorganized the auditing standards as of December 31, 2017, with the relevant SOX guidance now included under AS2201: An Audit of Internal Control Over Financial Reporting That is Integrated with An Audit of Financial Statements.[4]
The language used by the SEC chairman in announcing the new guidance was very direct: "Congress never intended that the 404 process should become inflexible, burdensome, and wasteful. The objective of Section 404 is to provide meaningful disclosure to investors about the effectiveness of a company's internal controls systems, without creating unnecessary compliance burdens or wasting shareholder resources." [5]  Based on the 2007 guidance, SEC and PCAOB directed a significant reduction in costs associated with SOX 404 compliance, by focusing efforts on higher-risk areas and reducing efforts in lower-risk areas.
TDRA is a hierarchical framework that involves applying specific risk factors to determine the scope and evidence required in the assessment of internal control.  Both the PCAOB and SEC guidance contain similar frameworks.  At each step, qualitative or quantitative risk factors are used to focus the scope of the SOX404 assessment effort and determine the evidence required. Key steps include:
identifying significant financial reporting elements (accounts or disclosures)
identifying material financial statement risks within these accounts or disclosures
determining which entity-level controls would address these risks with sufficient precision
determining which transaction-level controls would address these risks in the absence of precise entity-level controls
determining the nature, extent, and timing of evidence gathered to complete the assessment of in-scope controls
Management is required to document how it has interpreted and applied its TDRA to arrive at the scope of controls tested.  In addition, the sufficiency of evidence required (i.e., the timing, nature, and extent of control testing) is based upon management (and the auditor's) TDRA.  As such, TDRA has significant compliance cost implications for SOX404.
Method
The guidance is principles-based, providing significant flexibility in the TDRA approach.  There are two major steps: 1) Determining the scope of controls to include in testing; and 2) Determining the nature, timing and extent of testing procedures to perform.
Determining scope
The key SEC principle related to establishing the scope of controls for testing may be stated as follows: "Focus on controls that adequately address the risk of material misstatement." This involves the following steps:
Determine significance and misstatement risk for financial reporting elements (accounts and disclosures)
Under the PCAOB AS 5 guidance, the auditor is required to determine whether an account is "significant" or not (i.e., yes or no), based on a series of risk factors related to the likelihood of financial statement error and magnitude (dollar value) of the account.  Significant accounts and disclosures are in-scope for assessment, so management typically includes this information in its documentation and generally performs this analysis for review by the auditor.  This documentation may be referred to in practice as the "significant account analysis."  Accounts with large balances are generally presumed to be significant (i.e., in-scope) and require some type of testing.
New under the SEC guidance is the concept of also rating each significant account for "misstatement risk" (low, medium, or high), based on similar factors used to determine significance.  The misstatement risk ranking is a key factor used to determine the nature, timing, and extent of evidence to be obtained.  As risk increases, the expected sufficiency of testing evidence accumulated for controls related to significant accounts increases (see section below regarding testing & evidence decisions).
Both significance and misstatement risk are inherent risk concepts, meaning that conclusions regarding which accounts are in-scope are determined before considering the effectiveness of controls.
Identify financial reporting objectives
Objectives help set the context and boundaries in which risk assessment occurs. The COSO Internal Control-Integrated Framework, a standard of internal control widely used for SOX compliance, states: "A precondition to risk assessment is the establishment of objectives..." and "Risk assessment is the identification and analysis of relevant risks to achievement of the objectives."  The SOX guidance states several hierarchical levels at which risk assessment may occur, such as entity, account, assertion, process, and transaction class. Objectives, risks, and controls may be analyzed at each of these levels. The concept of a top-down risk assessment means considering the higher-levels of the framework first, to filter from consideration as much of the lower-level assessment activity as possible.
There are many approaches to top-down risk assessment. Management may explicitly document control objectives, or use texts and other references to ensure their risk statement and control statement documentation is complete. There are two primary levels at which objectives (and also controls) are defined:  entity-level and assertion level.
An example of an entity-level control objective is: "Employees are aware of the Company's Code of Conduct."  The COSO 1992/1994 Framework defines each of the five components of internal control (i.e., Control Environment, Risk Assessment, Information & Communication, Monitoring, and Control Activities). Evaluation suggestions are included at the end of key COSO chapters and in the "Evaluation Tools" volume; these can be modified into objective statements.
An example of an assertion-level control objective is "Revenue is recognized only upon the delivery of products and services." Lists of assertion-level control objectives are available in most financial auditing textbooks. Excellent examples are also available in AICPA Statement on Auditing Standards No. 110 (SAS 110) [6] for the inventory process.  SAS 106 includes the latest guidance on financial statement assertions.[7]
Control objectives may be organized within processes, to help organize the documentation, ownership and TDRA approach. Typical financial processes include expense & accounts payable (purchase to payment), payroll, revenue and accounts receivable (order to cash collection), capital assets, etc. This is how most auditing textbooks organize control objectives. Processes can also be risk-ranked.
COSO issued revised guidance in 2013 effective for companies with year-end dates after December 15, 2014. This essentially requires control statements to be referenced to 17 "principles" beneath the five COSO "components." There are approximately 80 "points of focus" that can be evaluated specifically against the controls of the company, to form a conclusion about the 17 principles (i.e., each principle has several relevant points of focus). Most of the principles and points of focus relate to entity-level controls. As of June 2013 the approaches used in practice were in the early stages of development.[8] One approach would be to add the principles and points of focus as criteria within a database and reference each to the relevant controls that address them.
Identify material risks to the achievement of the objectives
One definition of risk is anything that can interfere with the achievement of an objective. A risk statement is an expression of "what can go wrong." Under the 2007 guidance (i.e., SEC interpretive guidance and PCAOB AS5), those risks that inherently have a "reasonably possible" likelihood of causing a material error in the account balance or disclosure are the material misstatement risks ("MMR"). Note that this is a slight amendment to the "more than remote" likelihood language of PCAOB AS2, intended to limit the scope to fewer, more critical material risks and related controls.
An example of a risk statement corresponding to the above assertion level control objective might be: "The risk that revenue is recognized before the delivery of products and services." Note that this reads very similarly to the control objective, only stated in the negative.
Management develops a listing of MMR, linked to the specific accounts and/or control objectives developed above. MMR may be identified by asking the question: "What can go wrong related to the account, assertion or objective?"  MMR may arise within the accounting function (e.g., regarding estimates, judgments, and policy decisions) or the internal and external environment (e.g., corporate departments that feed the accounting department information, economic and stock market variables, etc.)  Communication interfaces, changes (people, process or systems), fraud vulnerability, management override of controls, incentive structure, complex transactions, and degree of judgment or human intervention involved in processing are other high-risk topics.
In general, management considers questions such as: What is really difficult to get right? What accounting problems have we had in the past? What has changed? Who might be capable or motivated to commit fraud or fraudulent financial reporting?  As a high percentage of financial frauds historically have involved the overstatement of revenue, such accounts typically merit additional attention. AICPA Statement on Auditing Standards No. 109 (SAS 109)[9] also provides helpful guidance regarding financial risk assessment.
Under the 2007 guidance, companies are required to perform a fraud risk assessment and assess related controls.  This typically involves identifying scenarios in which theft or loss could occur and determining if existing control procedures effectively manage the risk to an acceptable level.[10] The risk that senior management might override important financial controls to manipulate financial reporting is also a key area of focus in the fraud risk assessment.[11]
In practice, many companies combine the objective and risk statements when describing MMR. These MMR statements serve as a target, focusing efforts to identify mitigating controls.
Identify controls that address the material misstatement risks (MMR)
For each MMR, management determines which control (or controls) address the risk "sufficiently" and "precisely" (PCAOB AS#5) or "effectively" (SEC Guidance) enough to mitigate it.  The word "mitigate" in this context means the control (or controls) reduces the likelihood of material error presented by the MMR to a "remote" probability. This level of assurance is required because a material weakness must be disclosed if there is a "reasonably possible" or "probable" possibility of a material misstatement of a significant account. Even though multiple controls may bear on the risk, only those that address it as defined above are included in the assessment. In practice, these are called the "in-scope" or "key" controls that require testing.
The SEC Guidance defines the probability terms as follows, per FAS5 Accounting for Contingent Liabilities:
"Probable: The future event or events are likely to occur."
"Reasonably possible:  The chance of the future event or events occurring is more than remote but less than likely."
"Remote:  The chance of the future event or events occurring is slight."[12]
Judgment is typically the best guide for selecting the most important controls relative to a particular risk for testing. PCAOB AS5 introduces a three-level framework describing entity-level controls at varying levels of precision (direct, monitoring, and indirect.) As a practical matter, control precision by type of control, in order of most precise to least, may be interpreted as:
Transaction-specific (transaction-level) – Authorization or review (or preventive system controls) related to specific, individual transactions;
Transaction summary (transaction-level) – Review of reports listing individual transactions;
Period-end reporting (account-level) – Journal entry review, account reconciliations or detailed account analysis (e.g., utility spending per store);
Management review controls (direct entity level) – Fluctuation analyses of income statement accounts at varying levels of aggregation or monthly reporting package containing summarized financial and operational information;
Monitoring controls (monitoring entity level) - Self-assessment and internal audit reviews to verify controls are designed and implemented effectively; and
Indirect (indirect entity level) - Controls that are not linked to specific transactions, such as the control environment (e.g., tone set by management and hiring practices).
It is increasingly difficult to argue that reliance upon controls is reasonable in achieving assertion-level objectives as one travels along this continuum from most precise to least, and as risk increases.  A combination of type 3-6 controls above may help reduce the number of type 1 & 2 controls (transaction-level) that require assessment for particular risks, especially in lower-risk, transaction-intensive processes.
Under the 2007 guidance, it appears acceptable to place significantly more reliance on the period-end controls (i.e., review of journal entries and account reconciliations) and management review controls than in the past, effectively addressing many of the material misstatement risks and enabling either: a) the elimination of a significant number of transactional controls from the prior-year's scope of testing; or b) reducing related evidence obtained.  The number of transaction-level controls may be reduced significantly, particularly for lower-risk accounts.
Considerations in testing and evidence decisions

The key SEC principle regarding evidence decisions can be summarized as follows: "Align the nature, timing and extent of evaluation procedures on those areas that pose the greatest risks to reliable financial reporting." The SEC has indicated that the sufficiency of evidence required to support the assessment of specific MMR should be based on two factors: a) Financial Element Misstatement Risk ("Misstatement Risk") and b) Control Failure Risk.  These two concepts together (the account- or disclosure-related risks and control-related risks) are called "Internal Control over Financial Reporting Risk" or "ICFR" risk.  A diagram was included in the guidance (shown in this section) to illustrate this concept; it is the only such diagram, which indicates the emphasis placed on it by the SEC.  ICFR risk should be associated with the in-scope controls identified above and may be part of that analysis.  This involves the following steps:
Link each key control to the "Misstatement Risk" of the related account or disclosure
Management assigned a misstatement risk ranking (high, medium or low) for each significant account and disclosure as part of the scoping assessment above.  The low, medium, or high ranking assessed should also be associated with the risk statements and control statements related to the account. One way of accomplishing this is to include the ranking within the risk statement and control statement documentation of the company.  Many companies use databases for this purpose, creating data fields within their risk and control documentation to capture this information.
Rate each key control for "control failure risk (CFR)" and "ICFR risk"
CFR is applied at the individual control level, based on factors in the guidance related to complexity of processing, manual vs. automated nature of the control, judgment involved, etc.  Management fundamentally asks the question: "How difficult is it to execute this control properly each and every time?"
With account misstatement risk and CFR defined, management can then conclude on ICFR risk (low, medium, or high) for the control.  ICFR is the key risk concept used in evidence decisions.
The ICFR rating is captured for each control statement. Larger companies typically have hundreds of significant accounts, risk statements, and control statements. These have a "many to many" relationship, meaning risks can apply to multiple accounts and controls can apply to multiple risks.
Consider the impact of risk on the timing, nature, and extent of testing
The guidance provides flexibility in the timing, nature and extent of evidence based on the interaction of Misstatement Risk and Control Failure Risk (together, ICFR Risk). These two factors should be used to update the "Sampling and Evidence Guide" used by most companies. As these two risk factors increase, the sufficiency of evidence required to address each MMR increases.
Management has significant flexibility regarding the following testing and evidence considerations, in the context of the ICFR risk related to a given control:

Extent (sample size):  The sample size increases proportionally to ICFR risk.
Nature of evidence:  Inquiry, observation, inspection and re-performance are the four evidence types, listed in order of sufficiency.  Evidence beyond inquiry, typically inspection of documents, is required for tests of control operating effectiveness.  Re-performance evidence would be expected for the highest risk controls, such as in the period-end reporting process.
Nature of the control (manual vs. automated):  For fully automated controls, either a sample size of one or a "benchmarking" test strategy may be used.  If IT general controls related to change management are effective and the fully automated control has been tested in the past, annual testing is not required.  The benchmark must be periodically established.
Scope of roll-forward testing required:  As risk increases, roll-forward testing is increasingly likely to be necessary to extend the effect of interim testing to year-end.  Lower-risk controls presumably do not require roll-forward testing.
Pervasive factors that also affect the evidence considerations above include:
Overall strength of entity-level controls, particularly the control environment:  Strong entity-level controls act as a pervasive "counter-weight" to risk across the board, reducing the sufficiency of evidence required in lower-risk areas and supporting the spirit of the new guidance in terms of reducing overall effort.
Cumulative knowledge from prior assessments regarding particular controls: If particular processes and controls have a history of working effectively, the extent of evidence required in lower-risk areas can be reduced.
Consider risk, objectivity, and competence in testing decisions
Management has significant discretion in who performs its testing.  The SEC guidance indicates that the objectivity of the person testing a given control should increase proportionally to the ICFR risk related to that control.  Therefore, techniques such as self-assessment are appropriate for lower-risk areas, while internal auditors (or the equivalent) generally should test higher-risk areas.  An intermediate technique in practice is "quality assurance," where manager A tests manager B's work, and vice versa.
The external auditors ability to rely on management's testing follows similar logic.  Reliance is proportional to the competence and objectivity of the management person that completed the testing, also in the context of risk.  For the highest risk areas, such as the control environment and period-end reporting process, internal auditors or compliance teams are likely the best choices to perform testing, if a significant degree of reliance is expected from the external auditor.  The ability of the external auditor to rely on management's assessment is a major cost factor in compliance.
Strategies for efficient SOX 404 assessment
There are a variety of specific opportunities to make the SOX 404 assessment as efficient as possible.[13][14] Some are more long-term in nature (such as centralization and automation of processing) while others can be readily implemented. Frequent interaction between management and the external auditor is essential to determining which efficiency strategies will be effective in each company's particular circumstances and the extent to which control scope reduction is appropriate.
Centralization and automation
Centralize: Using a shared service model in key risk areas enables multiple locations to be treated as one for testing purposes.  Shared service models are typically used for payroll and accounts payable processes, but can be applied to many types of transaction processing.  According to a recent survey by Finance Executives International, decentralized companies had dramatically higher SOX compliance costs than centralized companies.[15]
Automate and benchmark: Key fully automated IT application controls have minimal sample size requirements (usually one, as opposed to as many as 30 for manual controls) and may not have to be tested directly at all under the benchmarking concept.  Benchmarking (see Appendix B of the PCAOB guidance) allows fully automated IT application controls to be excluded from testing if certain IT change management controls are effective.  For example, many companies rely heavily on manual interfaces between systems, with spreadsheets created for downloading and uploading manual journal entries.  Some companies process thousands of such entries each month.  By automating manual journal entries, both labor and SOX assessment costs may be dramatically reduced.  In addition, the reliability of financial statements is improved.
Overall assessment approach
Review testing approach and documentation: Many companies or external audit firms mistakenly attempted to impose generic frameworks over unique transaction-level processes or across locations.  For instance, most of the COSO Framework elements represent indirect entity-level controls, which should be tested separately from transactional processes.  In addition, IT security controls (a subset of ITGC) and shared service controls can be placed in separate process documentation, enabling more efficient assignment of test responsibility and removing redundancy across locations.  Testing the key journal entries and account reconciliations as separate efforts enables additional efficiency and focus to be brought to these critical controls.
Rely on direct entity-level controls: The guidance emphasizes identifying which direct entity-level controls, particularly the period-end process and certain monitoring controls, are sufficiently precise to remove assertion-level (transactional) controls from scope.  The key is to determine which combination of entity-level and assertion-level controls address particular MMR.
Minimize roll-forward testing:  Management has more flexibility under the new guidance to extend the effective date of testing performed during mid-year ("interim") periods to the year-end date.  Only the higher risk controls will likely require roll-forward testing under the new guidance.  PCAOB AS5 indicates that inquiry procedures, regarding whether changes in the control process occurred between the interim and year-end period, may be sufficient in many cases to limit roll-forward testing.
Revisit scope of locations or business units assessed:  This is a complex area requiring substantial judgment and analysis.  The 2007 guidance focused on specific MMR, rather than dollar magnitude in determining the scope and sufficiency of evidence to be obtained at decentralized units.  The interpretation (common under the pre-2007 guidance) that a unit or group of units was material and therefore a large number of controls across multiple processes require testing irrespective of risk, has been superseded.  Where account balances from single units or groups of similar units are a material portion of the consolidated account balance, management should carefully consider whether MMR may exist in a particular unit. Testing focused on just the controls related to the MMR should then be performed. Monitoring controls, such as detailed performance review meetings with robust reporting packages, should also be considered to limit transaction-specific testing.
IT assessment approach
Focus IT general control (ITGC) testing:  ITGC are not included in the definition of entity-level controls under the SEC or PCAOB guidance.  Therefore, ITGC testing should be performed to the extent it addresses specific MMR.  By nature, ITGC enables management to place reliance on fully automated application controls (i.e., those that operate without human intervention) and IT-dependent controls (i.e., those that involve the review of automatically generated reports).  Focused ITGC testing is merited to support the control objectives or assertions that fully automated controls have not been changed without authorization and that control reporting generated is both accurate and complete.  Key ITGC focus areas therefore likely to be critical include: change management procedures applied to specific financial system implementations during the period; change management procedures sufficient to support a benchmarking strategy; and periodic monitoring of application security, including separation of duties.
PCAOB guidance subsequent to 2007
The PCAOB issues "Staff Audit Practice Alerts" (SAPA) periodically that "highlight new, emerging or otherwise noteworthy circumstances that may affect how auditors conduct audits under the existing requirements of the standards..."  Under SAPA #11 Considerations for Audits of Internal Control over Financial Reporting (October 24, 2013), the PCAOB discussed significant audit practice issues regarding ICFR assessment. These included, among other topics:
System-generated reports ("Information provided by the entity" or "IPE"): Requirements that auditors (and by proxy management) obtain additional evidence that fully automated reports and manual queries used as control inputs are accurate and complete.
Entity-level controls and management review controls: Excessive reliance was sometimes placed on entity-level controls and management review controls (similar conceptually to period-end controls), which were insufficiently precise to reduce the risk of material misstatement to the "remote" level. SAPA #11 provides additional criteria to assist in this evaluation of precision.
Criteria for investigation: Auditors did not always obtain sufficient evidence that management's controls were executed effectively where unusual variation outside of specified tolerances was noted. For example, management may have signed a control report saying it was reviewed but provided no other documentation of investigation, despite some unusual activity on the report. SAPA #11 states: "Verifying that a review was signed-off provides little or no evidence by itself about the control's effectiveness."[16]
SAPA #11 may translate into more work for management teams, which may be required by auditors to retain evidence that these reports and queries were accurate and complete. Further, management may be required to retain additional evidence of investigation where detective control report amounts contain transactions or trends outside of predefined tolerance ranges.

Is SOX 404 top–down risk assessment required by law?