One of the cool things about archeology is that human settlements are like layer cakes, especially the older ones. In antiquity, back before the days of backhoes and subterranean power lines, it was almost always easier to replace earlier ruins by leaving them intact and covering them with dirt until you had a level enough surface to build new things on. Troy, for example, has nine layers over about 2900 years, stacked one on top of the other. This presents some problems, though, most notably that you have to dig through the old stuff to get to the older stuff beneath it. At Troy, Heinrich Schliemann (Remember him?) dug right through what we now think was Homer's Troy (whatever the implies about the truth of the Iliad) because he was in a hurry and figured he'd find Priam's palace or something if he just dug deeper. This is also why you tend to see so many Classical ruins in Greece, because up until fairly recently excavators would rip up Hellenistic stuff on top of it because the earlier layers were valued more.
But all this is only generalization, and in some places you'll find the same ground level used for various eras, which can be a mixed blessing. For example, the middle of the Athenian agora is mostly an unintelligible mess to the layman because of how overcrowded the space is by Classical, Hellenistic and early Roman ruins. But the bright side is that, in 21st century Athens, you get a chance to experience a more representative sample of history.
Athens is mostly famous for the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, which started off with them besting the Persians at Marathon, Salamis and Plateia, although the city itself was annihilated after a mass evacuation. Afterward, though, the Athenians rebuilt, and the following two centuries produced all of the following: the Parthenon, Socrates and Plato, Xenophon (another of Socrates' students, overshadowed by Plato in philosophy but also a writer of history, historical fiction, hunting manuals aimed at dog owners, and a travelogue involving 10,000 Greek mercenaries in the middle of Mesopotamia, who have to get out of the heart of the Persian empire after a failed bid to overthrow its new king), the plays of Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles and Aristophanes, the political careers of Thucydides, Pericles and the birth of direct democracy, and all of those other reasons your teachers told you why you should care about the ancient Greeks. This came to a pretty nasty conclusion: 30 years of bloody war between Athens and it's "allies" and Sparta and it's "allies", ending in Athens' defeat and a short-lived end of democracy. The polis bounced back over the following decades, but was prevented from dominating Greece by the rise of the Macedonians to the north. After being effectively conquered by Alexander the Great, the Athenians took another shot at relevancy after he died only to be put in their place by the Macedonian general Antipater. After this, Athens settled into its new role as a college town for the rest of antiquity. Essentially, wealthy young Greeks and Romans would come to town to catch themselves a philosopher or orator to study under before setting off on a political career. The up side for Athens is that wealthy alumni and men who wanted to appear to be great patrons of culture would build them neat stuff. One of these men was King Attalus of Pergamon, who built them a neat stoa that has been restored and turned into the Agora Museum. Another, even better one, was Hadrian, one of Rome's better emperors.
Hadrian is most famous for a grand tour of Rome's provinces and the neat things he had built during and after it. The most impressive of these, at least in Athens, is the Temple of Olympian Zeus. I guess it's slightly uncool that it wasn't Hadrian's idea. It was originally started way back in the Archaic period by Pisistratus and his sons, the tyrants of Athens, but daddy died and his sons were booted out of town before the project was finished. The democracy ignored the project, and eventually King Antiochus IV (ruler of most of modern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and bits of several other countries) picked it up 375ish years later. He died before it could be completed, and progress went backward, if anywhere, until Hadrian had it completed, 675ish years after construction started. So nevermind, it was entirely cool.
It's really big. Here's a close-up of Dan and I in front of it. If the photo quality looks a little low, it's because the shot's zoomed in on my wimpy camera. Here's the real shot.
There are 15 giant columns still standing, and a 16th on the ground. Most of the original 104 are scattered around Athens, having been broken up for building material for houses, churches, and, in at least one case, a mosque. Although this makes for a good photo op, it mostly brings to mind a certain poem of Shelley's: "Behold my works, ye mighty, and despair."
It was nice to finally get to see the temple up close, since we walked past it every time we went into downtown Athens. It's just off the road, shielded a bit by some trees. Down that street a little we'd come to a major road, and stand next to another of Hadrian's monuments waiting for the stoplight. This is the appropriately named Arch of Hadrian. It came with an inscription that sums up the extent of his building projects around the newer parts of the city. On the side facing the ancient downtown area, it reads: "This is Athens, the ancient city of Theseus." On the side facing the newer, mostly Roman-era development, including the Temple of Olympian Zeus, it reads: "This is the city of Hadrian, not Theseus."
Next up: the Roman agora. By the time their Roman overlords decided that republics are overrated, the original Athenian agora was filling up. Between Pericle's junk, Hellenistic junk (like that Attalid stoa), and Roman junk ("Eheu! Our Revered and Divine Emperor has given us a statue of himself. Where can we put this to best suck up to him?" "Just dump it in the agora with the other 20.") it was getting increasingly difficult to use the marketplace for, your know, marketplace stuff. So the Athenians cleared out a spot which, while not exactly downtown, was within what Hadrian might call "The Thesus Zone" and set up shop. There's not a whole lot left of it, and most of that is of the "generic ruins" variety, and I'm writing this about a year after last seeing it, so I'll just give you the high points (or low points, in a few cases).
Sitting around waiting for the next cargo ship to come in gets boring, so Greek shopkeepers resorted to vandalism. Those are some sort of game boards, carved into what would have been the floor, and businessmen played something on them to pass the time. And if you think that's cool, go look up Senet.
Stuff. That's Doug, delivering his site report, and a gutter which is either remarkably intact or well-restored (or both), and the Tower of the Winds in the background. You can get a good sense for the layout of the place. The bottom-left quarter of this shot shows a level area without anything sticking out of it. This was an open courtyard. Along the right side you can see how, just past the gutter, the land is a few inches higher. This is where the building was, and you would have seen a long, covered are broken up into different stores. The columns supporting that structure are more visible in the background.
A very pretty archway which marked the entrance to the new agora. Walking out that would lead you into the old agora; the Acropolis is due south.
Polluted marble. I'll give you a cookie if you can tell me the order (architectural style) of the columns. DISCLAIMER: You have to come and get it. I'm not mailing you a cookie.
The main flaw of marble is that any bits sticking off from the main column tend to fall off. The Greeks just wrote it off as more suitable for building than sculpting (all of those fancy marbles you see are generally Roman copies of Greek bronzes), but the Romans were determined to make it work. But after a centuries of being kicked around by the elements, barbarians and Christians, bits like heads and hands tend to fall off anyway.
That said, marble is a much more attractive building material than brick.
The door to the Tower of the Winds. It was so named because the top depicts the eight winds. "But wait," you say, "there were only four winds personified in mythology!" Oh ho, what clever and well-read readers I have (or did before I stopped updating regularly and you all got bored and wandered off). There were only four winds, but square buildings are boring, and the lovely 6x13 temple proportions don't lend themselves well to towers, so the ancients just said "Screw it, we'll just make it octagonal and invent four more winds." Only in Greek.
And, to finish up, Doug lecturing about a toilet seat.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
Peloponnese Trip VI: Nemea and Corinth
After a night in Nafplio we finished the Peloponnese trip with a short stop at Nemea, a surprise guest appearance by a real life active archeological dig, and the grand finale at Corinth. This was also our last teaching day with Dr. Farney, who returned to his family in the States after a few weeks with us and a pretty long stay during research in Italy before the trip started.
Nemea, as a site, is pretty boring, and if I have any pictures of the museum then I can't pick them apart from the ones taken at Corinth, since the upload to Picasa shuffled my pictures around for no apparent reason. So here's some mythology to compensate. Herakles' (that's the name civilized peoples use for the strong guy who does all those labors and was played by Kevin Sorbo on tv) first labor was killing a giant nasty lion around Nemea. The beast, called the Nemean Lion for lack of a more interesting name, had an invincible hide and claws that could cut through anything. The latter trait trumped the former, though, and the big H just wrestled the cat to the ground and skinned it with its own claws. I suggest you not think of the mechanics of that too much. Anyway, that's what he's usually depicted wearing a lion skin - not only was it fashionable, but it was functional armor and reminded everyone why you don't rampage through the countryside while Herakles is around.
A more real story about the region is that the museum was broken into a few years ago and quite a lot of artifacts were stolen. This is extremely lame. Not only do people not get to look at them, but the Greek government doesn't make money off of them (money which could fund continued excavations), and scholars don't get to study them. This prompted a big stern lecture on antiquities thieves, how much the suck, and how happy certain giant fine arts museums are to buy stolen goods. While it's rare for a museum to be robbed, during the off season excavation sites are routinely scavenged by looters looking for a quick buck. Even if what they get finds its way into a museum, it's robbed of all useful context that archaeologists could use to learn about the place where it was found and the people who lived there.
All of this was reinforced unexpectedly, when our professors bumped into a buddy of theirs from grad school who had run into town to get lunch. A short while later we got back on the bus and followed her back to a nearby excavation and got a tour of a few bronze age tombs they were working on. Then we got another talk about antiquities thieves and how frustrating they are an how much money we have to waste of private security for dig sites. This was further reinforced when we were walking back to the bus afterward and I noticed some spent shotgun shells in the dust. Anyway, normally taking pictures of unpublished digs is a no-no, but at the end of the tour we were granted special permission. So here's the one shot I took. That's the entrance to a tomb, a Mycenean one, if I remember right, that I got to go into. It was pretty sweet.
Then we went back to Nemea and here are pictures.
A dead Christian. Although the Greeks and Romans would go back and forth on this, the generalization is that they were into cremation. Early Christians, however, expected to be resurrected any day now and didn't think the Kingdom would be very much fun if all they had to enjoy it with was a pile of ash. So in this period they were buried, facing whatever direction they thought Christ was coming back from (West, I think) so they'd have a good view. This lucky lady even had a pillow carved out of the rock for her head.
Neat pipes. Almost certainly Roman.
See also the associated water facilities.
There was also a track for foot races nearby. Here's the other end. Nemea, being a pretty central location for the Greek mainland, hosted a very popular set of games every two (I think) years. For various reasons people dropped coins here a lot, and so the museum had a pretty impressive collection of coins from all over the Greek world.
Here's the Roman-era entrance tunnel.
I have no idea what either of them are doing in this picture. Suggested captions are welcome.
Then we went to Corinth. Map time. The coloration is from a Hellenistic war, so ignore that. But you can see Corinth, right at the isthmus connecting the Peloponnese (the big hand-shaped almost-an-island) to the peninsula that contains Boeotia (around Thebes) and Attica (around Athens). That isthmus is only about ten miles wide around Corinth, so in most of the big land wars it became a focus of fighting between Peloponnesians and everyone else. Since the southern coast of the Peloponnese was pretty rough sailing, it was usually easier to sail through the isthmus. The one problem with that is that the land is solid rock towering over the water level, and so nobody managed to build a canal through it until the 19th century. What they did have were cranes, wheels, chains and slaves, and so the ancients would haul ships up and drag them over the isthmus to the other side. This made the Corinthians rich, and they ended up being a major naval power in the Greek world until the Athenians crushed their navy at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. Even still, Corinth fared pretty well until the managed to annoy the Romans, who obliterated the city under the general Mummius. A hundred years later Julius Caesar refounded it as a Roman military colony, and those are the ruins that still stand.
First off, the museum pictures.
C. Julius Combover. Some fun facts about JC, since everyone knows his name but nobody knows much besides that he was stabbed by a bunch of guys, who, according to Dante, are given personal torture by Satan right alongside Judas. He was notoriously amorous, and slept with half of Rome. Once, during a Senate meeting concerning a conspiracy, Caesar's rival Cato spotted him reading a private letter and insisted it be read to the entire Senate. Much to his chagrin, it was a love letter from Cato's sister. He formed a semi-formalized alliance with Pompey, a famous and popular general, and Crassus, who was rich. Caesar ran off an conquered most of modern France, landing in Britain to beat some obnoxious druids around. Then he wrote a book about it, which was, for some time, the customary first ancient text read by Latin students. Crassus, envious of the two war heroes that he never liked, went off to war in the east and was annihilated with his whole army. Pompey and Caesar fought a big civil war, Caesar won, and then wrote a book about that, too. He was the chief religious official in Rome, and oversaw some calendar reforms. The calendar in use in the west up until the end of the 18th century is called Julian after him, as is the month of July. Had a son by Cleopatra, or at least everyone assumed it was his. Was sort-of the first emperor of Rome, though really that honor goes to his adopted son, who also went through the whole three-way alliance, civil war, sole rule thing but skipped the assassination bit.
A blurry inscription. But you can make out where a word has been chiseled out. It was "M. Antonius", or as we'd say, Marc Antony (the famous one's dad). After Octavian (Caesar's adopted son) fought and won his civil war against Antony (Caesar's right-hand man), he had this reference to Antony's father removed out of spite.
Rooster vase.
Lion thing. It reminds me of a Chinese restaurant in Pembroke mall.
A mosaic. it makes me kind of dizzy.
Hair pins, I think.
Another mosaic. This one reminds me of that "We have Technicolor!" thing from 60s movies.
A guy serenading some cows.
Nero.
Then we wandered around the site for a little while, since all of the real lecture had been in the museum.
An ex-temple.
Picturesque ruins.
Plentiful ruins.
Continued ruins.
A thing. Wait, if I say it in Latin maybe it'll sound like I remember what it was. Res est. Nunc dicimus.
Acrocorinth looming. That's Corinth's acropolis, which positively dwarf's Athens' in size. We took a bus halfway up and climbed the rest.
View from the bus.
View from the parking lot.
More looking up.
Fortification overlooking the path going up. Like every other high point, Acrocorinth has Greco-Roman, Byzantine, Frankish and Turkish stuff on it.
A Turkish mosque. The minarets (those towers they usually have) were knocked down after the Greeks booted the Turks out.
But I think this structure was a free-standing minaret. They're basically enclosed spiral staircases with windows at the top. The idea is that a guy climbs to the top a few times a day and does the Islamic equivalent of yodeling to call the faithful to prayer.
It's as wide as it is tall.
But you can't beat the view.
Quite a look-out.
Although you can't quite see all the way to Athens.
We did see a forest fire.
Perachora. You remember Perachora, don't you?
Land.
Sea.
Clouds and mountains. I almost thought it was going to rain, but it didn't. I was in Greece for a month and did not see a drop of rain, then got back to the US and spent two hours in Philadelphia International's customs area and another I-don't-want-to-remember-how-long in the main airport because of rain.
Peninsulae.
A castle, on the other end of Acrocorinth.
Look left.
Look right.
Look waaaay over there.
The isthmus. Gulf of Corinth on the left, Saronic Gulf on the right. See also dieser Map.
Finally, Dianna and I doing the obligatory pose.
And the modern canal, where we stopped on the way out.
Nemea, as a site, is pretty boring, and if I have any pictures of the museum then I can't pick them apart from the ones taken at Corinth, since the upload to Picasa shuffled my pictures around for no apparent reason. So here's some mythology to compensate. Herakles' (that's the name civilized peoples use for the strong guy who does all those labors and was played by Kevin Sorbo on tv) first labor was killing a giant nasty lion around Nemea. The beast, called the Nemean Lion for lack of a more interesting name, had an invincible hide and claws that could cut through anything. The latter trait trumped the former, though, and the big H just wrestled the cat to the ground and skinned it with its own claws. I suggest you not think of the mechanics of that too much. Anyway, that's what he's usually depicted wearing a lion skin - not only was it fashionable, but it was functional armor and reminded everyone why you don't rampage through the countryside while Herakles is around.
A more real story about the region is that the museum was broken into a few years ago and quite a lot of artifacts were stolen. This is extremely lame. Not only do people not get to look at them, but the Greek government doesn't make money off of them (money which could fund continued excavations), and scholars don't get to study them. This prompted a big stern lecture on antiquities thieves, how much the suck, and how happy certain giant fine arts museums are to buy stolen goods. While it's rare for a museum to be robbed, during the off season excavation sites are routinely scavenged by looters looking for a quick buck. Even if what they get finds its way into a museum, it's robbed of all useful context that archaeologists could use to learn about the place where it was found and the people who lived there.
All of this was reinforced unexpectedly, when our professors bumped into a buddy of theirs from grad school who had run into town to get lunch. A short while later we got back on the bus and followed her back to a nearby excavation and got a tour of a few bronze age tombs they were working on. Then we got another talk about antiquities thieves and how frustrating they are an how much money we have to waste of private security for dig sites. This was further reinforced when we were walking back to the bus afterward and I noticed some spent shotgun shells in the dust. Anyway, normally taking pictures of unpublished digs is a no-no, but at the end of the tour we were granted special permission. So here's the one shot I took. That's the entrance to a tomb, a Mycenean one, if I remember right, that I got to go into. It was pretty sweet.
Then we went back to Nemea and here are pictures.
A dead Christian. Although the Greeks and Romans would go back and forth on this, the generalization is that they were into cremation. Early Christians, however, expected to be resurrected any day now and didn't think the Kingdom would be very much fun if all they had to enjoy it with was a pile of ash. So in this period they were buried, facing whatever direction they thought Christ was coming back from (West, I think) so they'd have a good view. This lucky lady even had a pillow carved out of the rock for her head.
Neat pipes. Almost certainly Roman.
See also the associated water facilities.
There was also a track for foot races nearby. Here's the other end. Nemea, being a pretty central location for the Greek mainland, hosted a very popular set of games every two (I think) years. For various reasons people dropped coins here a lot, and so the museum had a pretty impressive collection of coins from all over the Greek world.
Here's the Roman-era entrance tunnel.
I have no idea what either of them are doing in this picture. Suggested captions are welcome.
Then we went to Corinth. Map time. The coloration is from a Hellenistic war, so ignore that. But you can see Corinth, right at the isthmus connecting the Peloponnese (the big hand-shaped almost-an-island) to the peninsula that contains Boeotia (around Thebes) and Attica (around Athens). That isthmus is only about ten miles wide around Corinth, so in most of the big land wars it became a focus of fighting between Peloponnesians and everyone else. Since the southern coast of the Peloponnese was pretty rough sailing, it was usually easier to sail through the isthmus. The one problem with that is that the land is solid rock towering over the water level, and so nobody managed to build a canal through it until the 19th century. What they did have were cranes, wheels, chains and slaves, and so the ancients would haul ships up and drag them over the isthmus to the other side. This made the Corinthians rich, and they ended up being a major naval power in the Greek world until the Athenians crushed their navy at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. Even still, Corinth fared pretty well until the managed to annoy the Romans, who obliterated the city under the general Mummius. A hundred years later Julius Caesar refounded it as a Roman military colony, and those are the ruins that still stand.
First off, the museum pictures.
C. Julius Combover. Some fun facts about JC, since everyone knows his name but nobody knows much besides that he was stabbed by a bunch of guys, who, according to Dante, are given personal torture by Satan right alongside Judas. He was notoriously amorous, and slept with half of Rome. Once, during a Senate meeting concerning a conspiracy, Caesar's rival Cato spotted him reading a private letter and insisted it be read to the entire Senate. Much to his chagrin, it was a love letter from Cato's sister. He formed a semi-formalized alliance with Pompey, a famous and popular general, and Crassus, who was rich. Caesar ran off an conquered most of modern France, landing in Britain to beat some obnoxious druids around. Then he wrote a book about it, which was, for some time, the customary first ancient text read by Latin students. Crassus, envious of the two war heroes that he never liked, went off to war in the east and was annihilated with his whole army. Pompey and Caesar fought a big civil war, Caesar won, and then wrote a book about that, too. He was the chief religious official in Rome, and oversaw some calendar reforms. The calendar in use in the west up until the end of the 18th century is called Julian after him, as is the month of July. Had a son by Cleopatra, or at least everyone assumed it was his. Was sort-of the first emperor of Rome, though really that honor goes to his adopted son, who also went through the whole three-way alliance, civil war, sole rule thing but skipped the assassination bit.
A blurry inscription. But you can make out where a word has been chiseled out. It was "M. Antonius", or as we'd say, Marc Antony (the famous one's dad). After Octavian (Caesar's adopted son) fought and won his civil war against Antony (Caesar's right-hand man), he had this reference to Antony's father removed out of spite.
Rooster vase.
Lion thing. It reminds me of a Chinese restaurant in Pembroke mall.
A mosaic. it makes me kind of dizzy.
Hair pins, I think.
Another mosaic. This one reminds me of that "We have Technicolor!" thing from 60s movies.
A guy serenading some cows.
Nero.
Then we wandered around the site for a little while, since all of the real lecture had been in the museum.
An ex-temple.
Picturesque ruins.
Plentiful ruins.
Continued ruins.
A thing. Wait, if I say it in Latin maybe it'll sound like I remember what it was. Res est. Nunc dicimus.
Acrocorinth looming. That's Corinth's acropolis, which positively dwarf's Athens' in size. We took a bus halfway up and climbed the rest.
View from the bus.
View from the parking lot.
More looking up.
Fortification overlooking the path going up. Like every other high point, Acrocorinth has Greco-Roman, Byzantine, Frankish and Turkish stuff on it.
A Turkish mosque. The minarets (those towers they usually have) were knocked down after the Greeks booted the Turks out.
But I think this structure was a free-standing minaret. They're basically enclosed spiral staircases with windows at the top. The idea is that a guy climbs to the top a few times a day and does the Islamic equivalent of yodeling to call the faithful to prayer.
It's as wide as it is tall.
But you can't beat the view.
Quite a look-out.
Although you can't quite see all the way to Athens.
We did see a forest fire.
Perachora. You remember Perachora, don't you?
Land.
Sea.
Clouds and mountains. I almost thought it was going to rain, but it didn't. I was in Greece for a month and did not see a drop of rain, then got back to the US and spent two hours in Philadelphia International's customs area and another I-don't-want-to-remember-how-long in the main airport because of rain.
Peninsulae.
A castle, on the other end of Acrocorinth.
Look left.
Look right.
Look waaaay over there.
The isthmus. Gulf of Corinth on the left, Saronic Gulf on the right. See also dieser Map.
Finally, Dianna and I doing the obligatory pose.
And the modern canal, where we stopped on the way out.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Peloponnese Trip V (Part 2): Epidaurus and Nafplio (again)
After we left the lecture-heavy, ruins-lite site at Sparta, we hit the lecture-heavy, ruins-heavy site of Epidaurus. I found that lecture to be a lot less interesting though, so this is basically a picture post. Epidaurus was a polis on the eastern coast of the Peloponnese, making it a convenient stop between Sparta and the isthmus out of the peninsula. In antiquity the place was mostly known as a sanctuary of Asklepios. Among Apollo's numerous responsibilities, he was also the god of healing, but he was a pretty busy guy and eventually passed that off to his son and/or mortal physician-turned-god Asklepios. These sanctuaries were pretty popular among the ancient Greeks. For one thing, they equated medicine and religion together very strongly during the classical period and only somewhat less strongly afterward. For another, the Asklepia, as the sanctuaries are called, evolved into ancient health spas. Anyway, picture time.
The main temple, I think.
Asklepios. That's a big snake he's hanging out with. The Greeks, who hadn't read Genesis, thought snakes were good things. You see, snakes slither up from the ground, which makes it look kind of like they're just popping into existence; they also shed their skins. Both of these led to associations with healing, renewal and resurrection, and when Asklepios needed a cute sidekick the snake seemed like a perfect match. That staff with snakes wrapped around it that you see on ambulances is the end result of that association.
A well.
That looks like a bathtub to me. The Greeks weren't generally big on bathing, since they didn't have soap. What they did have, though, was olive oil. So they way they'd clean themselves was just to lather themselves up with oil and then use a squeegie-like thing called a strigil to scrape the oil, and all the sweat and dirt and such, off.
Deanna, sitting on a rock that may or may not have been a chair.
Epidaurus also had a pretty sweet stadium. You can see a bit of the Roman-era stone seating.
But the thing that modern people associate with Epidaurus is the theater. The site had a pretty well-preserved Roman stone theater, and the modern Greeks, sensing tourism gold, filled in the missing bits and bam! Giant, beautiful theater. They show plays in it every summer, though we didn't get the chance to catch one. Those train tracks were part of a modern staging of a Euripides play. Phonecian Women, I think.
Looking left.
Looking right. That's Dr. Farney talking, but here's the same shot sans Farney.
Looking up at the seating.
The view from the site.
My favorite part of the site.
Notice that the bottom row is not reserved for the handicapped, just the first row one has to climb a step to get to.
There was also a great production of Aristophanes' Clouds. Bah-bum-tish! (My apologies to Aristophanes for muddying his name with that joke.)
You know what everyone needs more of? Castles. When we got back to Nafplio (where we'd stopped for lunch our first day out of Athens) we decided to hit one before going to the hotel. Palamidi, the castle in question, was built by Venetians in 1714 and eventually saw some action during the Greek revolt against the Turks in 1822. Nafplio was actually independent Greece's first capital, which lasted during its very short time as a Republic before descending into chaos and having a western parliamentary monarchy imposed on them by the Europeans to settle things down.
But back to the castle.
Our approach. We're already up on a big rock that I, in my flatlander ignorance, am going to call a mountain. We took our bus up, then took something approximating 1000 stairs down the steep side to street level.
Nafplio.
The harbor. To the left you can see the town's other castle our in the bay, which I took a picture of on our previous trip.
More bay.
One of those small windows out of which defenders could shoot arrows. I always thought they were a great design, since you can stick a bow or crossbow up to one of these and fire without exposing yourself. But when I actually looked through one I realized that you don't have a good view for shooting.
The other castle, which Wikipedia tells me is called Bourtzi.
Looking off in the direction of Argos.
A bell!
Tourists.
A small peninsula branching off from where Palamidi is. Also, the bill of Pete's hat.
Zoomed in.
Looking down on the peons. Clockwise from bottom: Doug, AJ, Dan, Alex.
I like this shot.
The crew.
Blue.
A long staircase that doubles as a diving board.
More fortifications on the next hill over.
The bell again.
Me. I hadn't shaved in several days, so if you squint you might make out my face's pathetic attempt at growing a beard. I'm trying to stick to the Alexander the Great look these days: clean shaven with long hair.
The main temple, I think.
Asklepios. That's a big snake he's hanging out with. The Greeks, who hadn't read Genesis, thought snakes were good things. You see, snakes slither up from the ground, which makes it look kind of like they're just popping into existence; they also shed their skins. Both of these led to associations with healing, renewal and resurrection, and when Asklepios needed a cute sidekick the snake seemed like a perfect match. That staff with snakes wrapped around it that you see on ambulances is the end result of that association.
A well.
That looks like a bathtub to me. The Greeks weren't generally big on bathing, since they didn't have soap. What they did have, though, was olive oil. So they way they'd clean themselves was just to lather themselves up with oil and then use a squeegie-like thing called a strigil to scrape the oil, and all the sweat and dirt and such, off.
Deanna, sitting on a rock that may or may not have been a chair.
Epidaurus also had a pretty sweet stadium. You can see a bit of the Roman-era stone seating.
But the thing that modern people associate with Epidaurus is the theater. The site had a pretty well-preserved Roman stone theater, and the modern Greeks, sensing tourism gold, filled in the missing bits and bam! Giant, beautiful theater. They show plays in it every summer, though we didn't get the chance to catch one. Those train tracks were part of a modern staging of a Euripides play. Phonecian Women, I think.
Looking left.
Looking right. That's Dr. Farney talking, but here's the same shot sans Farney.
Looking up at the seating.
The view from the site.
My favorite part of the site.
Notice that the bottom row is not reserved for the handicapped, just the first row one has to climb a step to get to.
There was also a great production of Aristophanes' Clouds. Bah-bum-tish! (My apologies to Aristophanes for muddying his name with that joke.)
You know what everyone needs more of? Castles. When we got back to Nafplio (where we'd stopped for lunch our first day out of Athens) we decided to hit one before going to the hotel. Palamidi, the castle in question, was built by Venetians in 1714 and eventually saw some action during the Greek revolt against the Turks in 1822. Nafplio was actually independent Greece's first capital, which lasted during its very short time as a Republic before descending into chaos and having a western parliamentary monarchy imposed on them by the Europeans to settle things down.
But back to the castle.
Our approach. We're already up on a big rock that I, in my flatlander ignorance, am going to call a mountain. We took our bus up, then took something approximating 1000 stairs down the steep side to street level.
Nafplio.
The harbor. To the left you can see the town's other castle our in the bay, which I took a picture of on our previous trip.
More bay.
One of those small windows out of which defenders could shoot arrows. I always thought they were a great design, since you can stick a bow or crossbow up to one of these and fire without exposing yourself. But when I actually looked through one I realized that you don't have a good view for shooting.
The other castle, which Wikipedia tells me is called Bourtzi.
Looking off in the direction of Argos.
A bell!
Tourists.
A small peninsula branching off from where Palamidi is. Also, the bill of Pete's hat.
Zoomed in.
Looking down on the peons. Clockwise from bottom: Doug, AJ, Dan, Alex.
I like this shot.
The crew.
Blue.
A long staircase that doubles as a diving board.
More fortifications on the next hill over.
The bell again.
Me. I hadn't shaved in several days, so if you squint you might make out my face's pathetic attempt at growing a beard. I'm trying to stick to the Alexander the Great look these days: clean shaven with long hair.
Peloponnese Trip V (Part 1): Sparta
This post will be particularly text-heavy. Partly that's because Sparta's so incredibly weird that there's a lot to write about it, and partly that's because I have a total of three pictures, one of which might actually be from Epidaurus. The museum in town was closed for renovations, and the archaeological site, well, this is it. There's more to it than that, but very little is visible. That photo is of a Roman theater.
Any statement about "Greece" or "the Greeks" from the bronze age to Alexander is a pretty sweeping generalization, as each city did their own thing and getting the entire culture to agree on anything was like herding cats - cats with spears that they like to stick into you and each other every summer. Religion, calendars, units of measurement, dialect, alphabet, government, the text of the Iliad and Odyssey, and just about everything that wasn't warfare varied from city to city. But the Spartans are the exception to pretty much any rule we can come up with.
For starters, their entire society revolved around soldiers, who were the only citizens. They were supported by perioikoi, who were free non-citizens under Spartan rule who usually provided most of the man-power for the army anyway, and helots, who were enslaved Greeks from neighboring regions who had been conquered. Most of the helots were from the next valley over, Messenia. At the top of the food chain were landed nobility whose property was worked by helots under the supervision of the head of the household. Like the other Greeks, the Spartans considered the household to be women's sphere of influence; unlike the other Greeks, they actually meant it. Spartan women were notoriously liberated. Some of this was intentional. The Spartans believed that strong, physically fit women would give birth to healthier, stronger children, and so Spartan women married later in life and exercised nude just like men all over Greece did. Not surprisingly, Spartan girls almost always won the girls' footrace at the Olympics. But there was also the matter of necessity: Spartan men spent almost all of their time from age 7 until death in the barracks or on campaign, so their wives and sisters were forced to handle all economic matters.
The Spartans were famous for their one-liners, and the women got a few good ones in, too. When asked why they had so much more freedom than other Greek women, one replied "Because Spartan women are the only ones in Greece to give birth to real men.
" Greek soldiers would often drop their shields when fleeing battle, and the shields of fallen soldiers were used to carry their corpses home, hence the tradition farewell of a Spartan mother to her son going to war: "Come back with your shield or on it."
For men, life was even weirder. At birth they were inspected by government officials for any apparent defects and left on a mountain to die if any was found. From then they were given a reprieve until their seventh year, when they entered the military training system, the agoge. For the next ten years their lives were nothing but harsh training. They were issued one cloak every year, no shoes, and only enough food to keep them alive. If they wanted more, they were encouraged to steal from each other, or to sneak out of the barracks and steal from helots. They were trained constantly in athletics, hoplite warfare, and dance, which was intended to help their march in step during battle. One of the weirder examples of this training regimen is the festival of Artemis Ortheia. The boys would play a little game as part of the ritual, in which the goal was to steal a piece of cheese protected by an older boy with a whip. Participants were almost always injured and died with some frequency. Everything was more brutal in Sparta.
Pederasty was one thing that wasn't that different in Sparta, at least compared to other Greeks. The standard practice was that older men, established in their careers, would hit on boys on the cusp of puberty, give them presents, mentor them, have a sexual relationship for a few years and then continue on a "just-friends" basis afterward. In Sparta, younger boys would pick up an older boyfriend, who would mentor them, sleep with them, and help them with their career. Weird by everybody else's standards, at least until the Romans adopted all things Greek, but pretty standard in their world.
When they turned 17, Spartan trainees got a bump in status. The first order of business was to join a mess club. This was a lot like pledging a fraternity, only there were more expensive dues and if you didn't get in you were stripped of your citizenship and kicked out of school. And, of course, it was Sparta, so the hazing probably involved torture. The upside is that these guys could see the light at the end of the tunnel. From 18-19 they served as a sort of national guard if the army was away. From 20-30 they served as hebontes and made up the backbone of the army. Although they still weren't really citizens, they could at least grow their hair and beards out. The best ones served in the krypteia, the Spartan secret police, whose primary job was to ride around Messenia and Laconia at night terrorizing and murdering helots. At 30 the Spartans who hadn't died, failed out of the agoge or ran out of money became full citizens and could participate in the government. This participate amounted to voting, by screaming, to ratify the decisions of the Gerousia. The Gerousia was a 30-member body: 28 Spartans over the age of 60 (which was about all of the Spartans over the age of 60) and the two kings. What? Two kings? Being the only real Greeks with a home-grown monarchy wasn't weird enough for the Spartans. Instead they had two royal families and two kings at any given time. One king would serve as the general for the garrison in Sparta and one would lead the army out on campaign. The kings and the old men ('Gerousia', like the Roman 'Senatus', and the American 'Senate', basically means "bunch of old guys") proposed all legislature. Most of the legislature was put into practice by five men called Ephors who were elected annually, and who also served as judges and back-up generals in case of dead, young or incompetent kings. 300 presents them as inbred mutant priests who spend all day alone on a mountain counting their gold and molesting oracles, but in reality they were probably the handsomest and bravest men Sparta had to offer.
As far as totalitarian military states go, Sparta's was extremely successful. They conquered about a third of the Peloponnese in the early Archaic period and quickly established a very one-sided set of alliances with everyone else on the peninsula. By the time the Persians started conquering their way to Athens, the Spartans were the natural choice to lead the resistance. Unfortunately for King Leonidas, they needed the Athenian navy to win the war, and so the Greek army had to hastily mount a defense at Thermopylae, north of Athens. Once they were surrounded, Leonidas sent everyone home except for his 300 guards, their helot slaves, 300 Thespians and some Thebans. The Thebans prompted surrendered, and the Persians slaughtered everyone else before marching south and burning Athens to the ground. Free of any obligation to protect what was left of Athens, the Spartans holed up at Corinth, where there weren't any pesky mountain passes for the Persians to use against them. The Athenians managed to break the Persian navy just offshore near the island of Salamis, and the next year the Greek alliance finished off all of the Persian troops that Xerxes hadn't taken home with him after Salamis.
During the following decades, Athens rebuilt and founded a naval empire able to threaten Sparta and its allies. The inevitable war lasted thirty years and decimated all of Greece, and though Sparta won their victory was short-lived. The 30 tyrants they imposed on Athens were so unpopular that within a year even the Spartans were sick of them and helped the Athenians overthrow them. So the Athenians prompted went back to rebuilding their empire. Meanwhile, the arrogant Spartans had managed to alienate almost all of their allies during and immediately after the war. After about a decade of peace, the other Greeks got fed up and Athens, Corinth, Argos and Persia all went to war against Sparta again, though this war didn't last and didn't accomplish much of anything. The next war, however, broke Sparta for good. The Theban general Epamenondas and his fancy new army crushed the Spartans and killed about half of the full citizens at the Battle of Leuktra, then prompted beat feet to Messenia where they freed the helots and built them a heavily fortified city. After this the Spartans kept their attitude but lost their relevance. When the Macedonians conquered the rest of Greece, Sparta was the only city to never submit; and neither Philip nor Alexander considered it worth their trouble to march down there and conquer it.
A statue of Leonidas. The inscription, ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ, is another of those Spartan quips. We have two good ones from Thermopylae. One of them is a reply to the Persian boast that they would fire so many arrows that they would blot out the sun: "Good, then we can fight our battle in the shade." The other, the one written on this statue, is Leonidas' supposed reply to Xerxes' demand that the Greek surrender their weapons: "Come and take them."
A list of every Spartan Olympic victor, from Akanthos in 720BC to Thomakos in 2004. Also of note is Kyniska, who was the only adult female Olympic victor. During the games women were not even allowed on site, but the victors of the chariot races weren't the horses or the charioteers, but the person who funded them. One of the Spartan kings entered a team in his daughter's name out of spite for the Olympic organizers.
This is Sparta (I think).
Because of the length of all the Spartan stuff, I'm breaking this day in half. See the next post for Epidaurus and Nafplio.
Any statement about "Greece" or "the Greeks" from the bronze age to Alexander is a pretty sweeping generalization, as each city did their own thing and getting the entire culture to agree on anything was like herding cats - cats with spears that they like to stick into you and each other every summer. Religion, calendars, units of measurement, dialect, alphabet, government, the text of the Iliad and Odyssey, and just about everything that wasn't warfare varied from city to city. But the Spartans are the exception to pretty much any rule we can come up with.
For starters, their entire society revolved around soldiers, who were the only citizens. They were supported by perioikoi, who were free non-citizens under Spartan rule who usually provided most of the man-power for the army anyway, and helots, who were enslaved Greeks from neighboring regions who had been conquered. Most of the helots were from the next valley over, Messenia. At the top of the food chain were landed nobility whose property was worked by helots under the supervision of the head of the household. Like the other Greeks, the Spartans considered the household to be women's sphere of influence; unlike the other Greeks, they actually meant it. Spartan women were notoriously liberated. Some of this was intentional. The Spartans believed that strong, physically fit women would give birth to healthier, stronger children, and so Spartan women married later in life and exercised nude just like men all over Greece did. Not surprisingly, Spartan girls almost always won the girls' footrace at the Olympics. But there was also the matter of necessity: Spartan men spent almost all of their time from age 7 until death in the barracks or on campaign, so their wives and sisters were forced to handle all economic matters.
The Spartans were famous for their one-liners, and the women got a few good ones in, too. When asked why they had so much more freedom than other Greek women, one replied "Because Spartan women are the only ones in Greece to give birth to real men.
" Greek soldiers would often drop their shields when fleeing battle, and the shields of fallen soldiers were used to carry their corpses home, hence the tradition farewell of a Spartan mother to her son going to war: "Come back with your shield or on it."
For men, life was even weirder. At birth they were inspected by government officials for any apparent defects and left on a mountain to die if any was found. From then they were given a reprieve until their seventh year, when they entered the military training system, the agoge. For the next ten years their lives were nothing but harsh training. They were issued one cloak every year, no shoes, and only enough food to keep them alive. If they wanted more, they were encouraged to steal from each other, or to sneak out of the barracks and steal from helots. They were trained constantly in athletics, hoplite warfare, and dance, which was intended to help their march in step during battle. One of the weirder examples of this training regimen is the festival of Artemis Ortheia. The boys would play a little game as part of the ritual, in which the goal was to steal a piece of cheese protected by an older boy with a whip. Participants were almost always injured and died with some frequency. Everything was more brutal in Sparta.
Pederasty was one thing that wasn't that different in Sparta, at least compared to other Greeks. The standard practice was that older men, established in their careers, would hit on boys on the cusp of puberty, give them presents, mentor them, have a sexual relationship for a few years and then continue on a "just-friends" basis afterward. In Sparta, younger boys would pick up an older boyfriend, who would mentor them, sleep with them, and help them with their career. Weird by everybody else's standards, at least until the Romans adopted all things Greek, but pretty standard in their world.
When they turned 17, Spartan trainees got a bump in status. The first order of business was to join a mess club. This was a lot like pledging a fraternity, only there were more expensive dues and if you didn't get in you were stripped of your citizenship and kicked out of school. And, of course, it was Sparta, so the hazing probably involved torture. The upside is that these guys could see the light at the end of the tunnel. From 18-19 they served as a sort of national guard if the army was away. From 20-30 they served as hebontes and made up the backbone of the army. Although they still weren't really citizens, they could at least grow their hair and beards out. The best ones served in the krypteia, the Spartan secret police, whose primary job was to ride around Messenia and Laconia at night terrorizing and murdering helots. At 30 the Spartans who hadn't died, failed out of the agoge or ran out of money became full citizens and could participate in the government. This participate amounted to voting, by screaming, to ratify the decisions of the Gerousia. The Gerousia was a 30-member body: 28 Spartans over the age of 60 (which was about all of the Spartans over the age of 60) and the two kings. What? Two kings? Being the only real Greeks with a home-grown monarchy wasn't weird enough for the Spartans. Instead they had two royal families and two kings at any given time. One king would serve as the general for the garrison in Sparta and one would lead the army out on campaign. The kings and the old men ('Gerousia', like the Roman 'Senatus', and the American 'Senate', basically means "bunch of old guys") proposed all legislature. Most of the legislature was put into practice by five men called Ephors who were elected annually, and who also served as judges and back-up generals in case of dead, young or incompetent kings. 300 presents them as inbred mutant priests who spend all day alone on a mountain counting their gold and molesting oracles, but in reality they were probably the handsomest and bravest men Sparta had to offer.
As far as totalitarian military states go, Sparta's was extremely successful. They conquered about a third of the Peloponnese in the early Archaic period and quickly established a very one-sided set of alliances with everyone else on the peninsula. By the time the Persians started conquering their way to Athens, the Spartans were the natural choice to lead the resistance. Unfortunately for King Leonidas, they needed the Athenian navy to win the war, and so the Greek army had to hastily mount a defense at Thermopylae, north of Athens. Once they were surrounded, Leonidas sent everyone home except for his 300 guards, their helot slaves, 300 Thespians and some Thebans. The Thebans prompted surrendered, and the Persians slaughtered everyone else before marching south and burning Athens to the ground. Free of any obligation to protect what was left of Athens, the Spartans holed up at Corinth, where there weren't any pesky mountain passes for the Persians to use against them. The Athenians managed to break the Persian navy just offshore near the island of Salamis, and the next year the Greek alliance finished off all of the Persian troops that Xerxes hadn't taken home with him after Salamis.
During the following decades, Athens rebuilt and founded a naval empire able to threaten Sparta and its allies. The inevitable war lasted thirty years and decimated all of Greece, and though Sparta won their victory was short-lived. The 30 tyrants they imposed on Athens were so unpopular that within a year even the Spartans were sick of them and helped the Athenians overthrow them. So the Athenians prompted went back to rebuilding their empire. Meanwhile, the arrogant Spartans had managed to alienate almost all of their allies during and immediately after the war. After about a decade of peace, the other Greeks got fed up and Athens, Corinth, Argos and Persia all went to war against Sparta again, though this war didn't last and didn't accomplish much of anything. The next war, however, broke Sparta for good. The Theban general Epamenondas and his fancy new army crushed the Spartans and killed about half of the full citizens at the Battle of Leuktra, then prompted beat feet to Messenia where they freed the helots and built them a heavily fortified city. After this the Spartans kept their attitude but lost their relevance. When the Macedonians conquered the rest of Greece, Sparta was the only city to never submit; and neither Philip nor Alexander considered it worth their trouble to march down there and conquer it.
A statue of Leonidas. The inscription, ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ, is another of those Spartan quips. We have two good ones from Thermopylae. One of them is a reply to the Persian boast that they would fire so many arrows that they would blot out the sun: "Good, then we can fight our battle in the shade." The other, the one written on this statue, is Leonidas' supposed reply to Xerxes' demand that the Greek surrender their weapons: "Come and take them."
A list of every Spartan Olympic victor, from Akanthos in 720BC to Thomakos in 2004. Also of note is Kyniska, who was the only adult female Olympic victor. During the games women were not even allowed on site, but the victors of the chariot races weren't the horses or the charioteers, but the person who funded them. One of the Spartan kings entered a team in his daughter's name out of spite for the Olympic organizers.
This is Sparta (I think).
Because of the length of all the Spartan stuff, I'm breaking this day in half. See the next post for Epidaurus and Nafplio.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Peloponnese Trip IV: Pylos and Mystra
The first site was only a short distance away, as we were going from the modern town of Pylos to the ancient site of Pylos, another Mycenaean palace. It was one of the most powerful, but unfortunately also one of the most flammable. The building was mostly wood and stored tons of wine and oil, and seems to have ended in a pretty spectacular conflagration. This upside to this took a few thousand years to become obvious: as the headquarters of the local king, who owned about as much stuff as the rest of the region combined, Pylos had pretty well-developed system of record keeping using clay tablets. Pretty much the only advantage to using clay tablets is that heat, for example from the fires set by the army looting your palace, bakes them and makes them extremely durable, and 3000 years later archeologists can read them and be impressed by how awesome you are. This happened pretty frequently in the Near East, but about 90% of the Mycenaean Greek we have comes from either Pylos or Knossos, so it was a pretty significant find. Pretty recent, too; I actually met a guy earlier this week (this is really being written 1/15/2008) who excavated it.
The other significant thing about Pylos is that it's home to one of the best characters in epic: Nestor. The Greek army in the Iliad isn't so much a coherent army as it is a bunch of war bands under the command of various kings who have sworn loyalty to Agamemnon for the duration of the war. Homer gives us these impression that these kings actually do all the real fighting. For example, the Greeks are winning the war, but then Achilles stops fighting to go sulk in his tent, and that alone turns the tide of battle so that the Trojans nearly burn down the Greek ships. The only reason the don't is because another Greek, Ajax, almost single-handedly fights off the entire Trojan assault force. The exception to this rule is Nestor, who's about three times as old as anyone else in Greece and spends the entire war doing typical old man stuff. He tells stories, gives good advice that everyone ignores and bad advice that everyone follows, and occasionally berates those young punks for being young and stupid. In his day, Greeks were real men, like Theseus, and they were fighting centaurs! Monsters! None of these girly Trojans. In his day they would have had that war wrapped up in under a week! Yes sirree. If Nestor were still a young man, he'd show that Hector a thing or two. And so on. Anyway, picture time:
A view of the sea.
A hearth. There's actually very faded painting on it of a flame motif, but I can't make it out in this picture.
Nestor's bathroom.
The tub is mentioned in the Odyssey.
After Pylos we stopped for lunch in Kalamata, where all of those olives come from.
From there we had to drive through the mountains to Laconia. Thanks to a large dose of transdermal motion sickness medicine it was a pleasant trip.
Another picture of the drive.
Last one. This is about a lush as Greece gets during the summer.
The end goal of the drive was Sparti, but before going into town we stopped at Mystras for an hour or two. Here's out friend Leonidas (more about him next time) with a geography lesson. Mystras is roughly the same spot as Sparta, but instead of being in the valley it's on one of the western mountains overlooking Sparta.
Mystras itself is actually of Western European origin, and was founded in 1249 by Frankish crusaders as a fortified settlement. The Spartans, who had stopped by relevant to anything centuries before, eventually all moved uphill. By the end of the century the Byzantines had taken control of the area again. For all of you normal people who have no idea who the Byzantines are, that's the modern name for the Christian Greek empire centered on the city of Byzantium. Of course, they called themselves Romans (in Greek, since hardly any of them knew any Latin) and they called Byzantium Constantinople, but Byzantine sounds less clunky than "Eastern Roman Empire". Eventually, as the Roman government suffered from civil strife of various sorts, the Romans decided that it would make their civil wars more pleasant for everyone if they split the job of being emperor up. The man who made the lasting division between the Western Empire, centered in Rome, and the Eastern Empire, centered in Byzantium, is coincidentally the same one who officially converted the Roman state to Christianity - Constantine. The Eastern empire long outlived the actual "Roman" empire, was mostly dismantled in the 1200s by the crusaders that were supposedly their allies against the Muslims, and, just when they had started to get their act together again, were taken down for good in 1453 by the Turks, about 1100 years after Constantine and 1000 years after Rome had been sacked by Germans.
Under the Byzantines, Mystras did pretty well and for a time was the tradition seat of power of the heir to the Byzantine throne. Shortly after the fall of Constantinople, the Turks took Mystras and held it for a few hundred years, lost it to the Venetians for a few hundred more years, and then finally retook it in 1715 and started booting the natives out. In the 1830s, after the Greeks won their independence, the western classics geeks who had helped fight off the Turks backed a western classics geek as the first king of modern Greece, Otto. Otto, a German, and his buddies immediately had the people of Mystras refound the long-abandoned Sparta, and also build the village at Athens up into their capitol. Now Mystras is a bunch of ruins and half of Greece lives in Athens.
This began a three-day string of climbing on castles and stuff, which I discovered is a really enjoyable hobby and I highly recommend it if you're ever in Europe.
Another view of Sparta, and also Ana's knee.
Looking at the mountains on the east side of Laconia from the mountains on the west side of Laconia
Looking down on my classmates.
Among their other wonderful social practices, the Spartas were in the habit of leaving scrawny babies out to die. Actually, newborns with birth defects or whose parents couldn't care for them were routinely abandoned in antiquity, so one can't be that hard on the Spartans in particular, but they were known even then for killing off any babies they didn't think could survive their education system. More on that in the next post, but anyway, this is probably the mountain where they exposed those kids.
On a lighter, crimes-against-humanity-free note, this is how we got up to the fortifications.
And this is what we had to drive through to get to that last picture.
The view from the top, looking northish.
Byzantine ruins, as seen from Frankish ruins.
Castle walls. They look just like the Lego set I had.
More castle.
A big face.
This does not look like Greece.
A neither does this.
A couple of tourists.
Look! Trees that don't have olives on them.
A Byzantine church.
I can see the influence on later Turkish mosques.
This picture is only interesting if you like circles or ceilings.
A Byzantine palace for the Despot of Mystras, their equivalent of the Prince of Wales.
They were restoring it, so I couldn't go inside.
Western European church art.
This looks like Italy to me.
And that's it for Mystras.
The other significant thing about Pylos is that it's home to one of the best characters in epic: Nestor. The Greek army in the Iliad isn't so much a coherent army as it is a bunch of war bands under the command of various kings who have sworn loyalty to Agamemnon for the duration of the war. Homer gives us these impression that these kings actually do all the real fighting. For example, the Greeks are winning the war, but then Achilles stops fighting to go sulk in his tent, and that alone turns the tide of battle so that the Trojans nearly burn down the Greek ships. The only reason the don't is because another Greek, Ajax, almost single-handedly fights off the entire Trojan assault force. The exception to this rule is Nestor, who's about three times as old as anyone else in Greece and spends the entire war doing typical old man stuff. He tells stories, gives good advice that everyone ignores and bad advice that everyone follows, and occasionally berates those young punks for being young and stupid. In his day, Greeks were real men, like Theseus, and they were fighting centaurs! Monsters! None of these girly Trojans. In his day they would have had that war wrapped up in under a week! Yes sirree. If Nestor were still a young man, he'd show that Hector a thing or two. And so on. Anyway, picture time:
A view of the sea.
A hearth. There's actually very faded painting on it of a flame motif, but I can't make it out in this picture.
Nestor's bathroom.
The tub is mentioned in the Odyssey.
After Pylos we stopped for lunch in Kalamata, where all of those olives come from.
From there we had to drive through the mountains to Laconia. Thanks to a large dose of transdermal motion sickness medicine it was a pleasant trip.
Another picture of the drive.
Last one. This is about a lush as Greece gets during the summer.
The end goal of the drive was Sparti, but before going into town we stopped at Mystras for an hour or two. Here's out friend Leonidas (more about him next time) with a geography lesson. Mystras is roughly the same spot as Sparta, but instead of being in the valley it's on one of the western mountains overlooking Sparta.
Mystras itself is actually of Western European origin, and was founded in 1249 by Frankish crusaders as a fortified settlement. The Spartans, who had stopped by relevant to anything centuries before, eventually all moved uphill. By the end of the century the Byzantines had taken control of the area again. For all of you normal people who have no idea who the Byzantines are, that's the modern name for the Christian Greek empire centered on the city of Byzantium. Of course, they called themselves Romans (in Greek, since hardly any of them knew any Latin) and they called Byzantium Constantinople, but Byzantine sounds less clunky than "Eastern Roman Empire". Eventually, as the Roman government suffered from civil strife of various sorts, the Romans decided that it would make their civil wars more pleasant for everyone if they split the job of being emperor up. The man who made the lasting division between the Western Empire, centered in Rome, and the Eastern Empire, centered in Byzantium, is coincidentally the same one who officially converted the Roman state to Christianity - Constantine. The Eastern empire long outlived the actual "Roman" empire, was mostly dismantled in the 1200s by the crusaders that were supposedly their allies against the Muslims, and, just when they had started to get their act together again, were taken down for good in 1453 by the Turks, about 1100 years after Constantine and 1000 years after Rome had been sacked by Germans.
Under the Byzantines, Mystras did pretty well and for a time was the tradition seat of power of the heir to the Byzantine throne. Shortly after the fall of Constantinople, the Turks took Mystras and held it for a few hundred years, lost it to the Venetians for a few hundred more years, and then finally retook it in 1715 and started booting the natives out. In the 1830s, after the Greeks won their independence, the western classics geeks who had helped fight off the Turks backed a western classics geek as the first king of modern Greece, Otto. Otto, a German, and his buddies immediately had the people of Mystras refound the long-abandoned Sparta, and also build the village at Athens up into their capitol. Now Mystras is a bunch of ruins and half of Greece lives in Athens.
This began a three-day string of climbing on castles and stuff, which I discovered is a really enjoyable hobby and I highly recommend it if you're ever in Europe.
Another view of Sparta, and also Ana's knee.
Looking at the mountains on the east side of Laconia from the mountains on the west side of Laconia
Looking down on my classmates.
Among their other wonderful social practices, the Spartas were in the habit of leaving scrawny babies out to die. Actually, newborns with birth defects or whose parents couldn't care for them were routinely abandoned in antiquity, so one can't be that hard on the Spartans in particular, but they were known even then for killing off any babies they didn't think could survive their education system. More on that in the next post, but anyway, this is probably the mountain where they exposed those kids.
On a lighter, crimes-against-humanity-free note, this is how we got up to the fortifications.
And this is what we had to drive through to get to that last picture.
The view from the top, looking northish.
Byzantine ruins, as seen from Frankish ruins.
Castle walls. They look just like the Lego set I had.
More castle.
A big face.
This does not look like Greece.
A neither does this.
A couple of tourists.
Look! Trees that don't have olives on them.
A Byzantine church.
I can see the influence on later Turkish mosques.
This picture is only interesting if you like circles or ceilings.
A Byzantine palace for the Despot of Mystras, their equivalent of the Prince of Wales.
They were restoring it, so I couldn't go inside.
Western European church art.
This looks like Italy to me.
And that's it for Mystras.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Peloponnese Trip III: Bassae and Messene
We did two sites after leaving Olympia; contrary to what I said in the last post, Mystra was the day after this.
First up was the temple of Apollon the Averter of Evil at Bassae. But before we get to the temple itself: kittens! More kittens! Multiple kittens! Adorable kittens!
While we were occupied poking stray cats with bits of grass, Sheila managed to get an actual look at the temple before she had to do her site report on it. And here you can see it. That thing in the background is part of the big structure the Ministry of Culture has built in an attempt to preserve the temple. The structure itself was built around 430 BCE, and remained in use until the 2nd century CE, after the community that built it was absorbed into Megalopolis, a city inconveniently far away. It has some weird architectural elements that are common in this part of Greece, but which we didn't see elsewhere on the trip. For one thing, this temple is built on a north-south axis, instead of facing east (like a normal temple) or west (like a later Christian church). It does, however, have a big doorway in the east wall. I think that's so that the light from the sunrise would reach the cult statue. I don't know if you can make it out in this shot, but you might be able to see the base of another of the temple's more unusual features. As well as the typical exterior columns, this temple had two rows of Ionic columns inside. Even odder, there was one Corinthian column, perhaps the first in Greece, front and center. There's a theory that this was an aniconic cult statue, but our professors didn't buy that, and it would be extremely odd for the period. Instead, it's likely that they took the actual statue with them when they abandoned this temple for one closer to Megalopolis, which would explain why nobody's found one at this site.
Looking through the temple, on the north-south axis. you can see the columns on the interior and how well they line up with the exterior ones on the north and south walls.
Misc temple shot.
No humans allowed inside the temple!
Veni. Although he came, unlike Caesar he neither saw or conquered.
Another exterior shot.
They were really adamant about not letting humans in.
I can't make up my mind if this view is from right before we left Bassae or right outside the museum at Messene, though at the moment I'm leaning towards the former.
The Spartan ruling class was able to devote themselves exclusively to warfare only because they had a massive slave class to do their farming and prop up the Spartan state. Some of these slaves came from Lacadaimonia, the territory immediately surrounding Sparta. Others came from Messenia, the next valley over to the west. After their victory in the Persian wars, the Spartans, who controlled through alliance and intimidation most of the Peloponnese, and the Athenians, who controlled in the same manner the islands and much of the Aegean coast, entered a period of cold war. When that war inevitably turned hot, the result was the Peloponnesian War, which devastated much of Greece but left the Spartans as the dominant power in the region. Their good fortunes didn't last long, and after defeating the Spartan army, the Thebans, under the innovative general Epamenondas, broke Spartan power for goo by freeing their slaves. As part of that campaign, Epamenondas founded the city of Messene for freed Messenians, which was heavily fortified and was supposedly built in 85 days. It's also had a lot of money thrown at it in recent years by the Greek Ministry of Culture, and thus looks great for modern tourists. Bring a parasol, though, since there's very little shade.
The Messenians cooperated with the Romans early on, and did very well under the first few centures of Roman rule. So it's not surprising to find a few nice Roman statues in the site's museum.
Here is one of the neater buildings at the site. Being an unusually planned community, the people at Messene decided to clump together their temples instead of spreading them around all willy-nilly. In addition to the structure in the center, you can see that it was surrounded by four stoas, many of which also had religious use. Among the more prominent gods worshiped here are Asklepios, the god of healing, Messene, the personification of the region, Artemis Ortheia ("the straightener") and the cult of the Roman Imperial household also had dedicated space in later periods.
In addition to being the Homeric virgin huntress and protector of nature, Artemis was also associated with pregnancy, childbirth and children, especially girls. The Messenians would take her cult statue out into the courtyard at night for a coming-of-age ritual for their daughters, and here you can see Rachel sitting on the statue's more usual resting place. That ritual is particularly interesting because the Messenians' former masters, the Spartans, also had a rite-of-passage ritual in honor of Artemis Ortheia, but for boys. Oh, and it was much more brutal and occasionally killed a few of the participants, but that's Sparta for you.
Stoa ruins. The propped up bit of decoration is from the second floor.
Looking into the courtyard. That long, short thing in the fore/mid-ground is the altar for the entire complex.
A beautiful odeon with Dr. Bloy.
The same building, but without any doctors of classical archaeology in it.
It's small compared to a theater, but that's the price you pay for covered structure.
There's still a very nice view of the floor, though.
The athletic complex in the distance.
A little closer...
Sheila, Deanna and Ana looking out at the stadion from the shade.
VIP seating.
Dr. Bloy took a picture of all of us with the curved bit of the stadion behind us.
The building at the far end of the stadion. This is probably the shrine built to honor the hero Demophon, a sculptor native to Messene.
It's got a neat foundation made from alternating layers of different kinds of marble.
Leaving the site, we stopped the bus a few minutes down the wall to get out and play on the site's walls. They weren't that difficult to get on top of, for how high they are. Here's a shot of some of my comrades up in a tower. Zoomed in you can make out Doug and Deanna with AJ behind them. Several people climbed up into that tower from the wall right below it. I decided against it because they didn't appear to be an easy way back down. I had climbed down the wall again and was on my way to the other side of the tower to see if the other side was a little friendlier, but by the time I got there Aleko was yelling at us to get back on the bus.
We arrived in the modern town of Pylos a little before sunset started. The view was lovely. We only stayed there for the night, before setting out in the morning for ancient Pylos and Mystra.
First up was the temple of Apollon the Averter of Evil at Bassae. But before we get to the temple itself: kittens! More kittens! Multiple kittens! Adorable kittens!
While we were occupied poking stray cats with bits of grass, Sheila managed to get an actual look at the temple before she had to do her site report on it. And here you can see it. That thing in the background is part of the big structure the Ministry of Culture has built in an attempt to preserve the temple. The structure itself was built around 430 BCE, and remained in use until the 2nd century CE, after the community that built it was absorbed into Megalopolis, a city inconveniently far away. It has some weird architectural elements that are common in this part of Greece, but which we didn't see elsewhere on the trip. For one thing, this temple is built on a north-south axis, instead of facing east (like a normal temple) or west (like a later Christian church). It does, however, have a big doorway in the east wall. I think that's so that the light from the sunrise would reach the cult statue. I don't know if you can make it out in this shot, but you might be able to see the base of another of the temple's more unusual features. As well as the typical exterior columns, this temple had two rows of Ionic columns inside. Even odder, there was one Corinthian column, perhaps the first in Greece, front and center. There's a theory that this was an aniconic cult statue, but our professors didn't buy that, and it would be extremely odd for the period. Instead, it's likely that they took the actual statue with them when they abandoned this temple for one closer to Megalopolis, which would explain why nobody's found one at this site.
Looking through the temple, on the north-south axis. you can see the columns on the interior and how well they line up with the exterior ones on the north and south walls.
Misc temple shot.
No humans allowed inside the temple!
Veni. Although he came, unlike Caesar he neither saw or conquered.
Another exterior shot.
They were really adamant about not letting humans in.
I can't make up my mind if this view is from right before we left Bassae or right outside the museum at Messene, though at the moment I'm leaning towards the former.
The Spartan ruling class was able to devote themselves exclusively to warfare only because they had a massive slave class to do their farming and prop up the Spartan state. Some of these slaves came from Lacadaimonia, the territory immediately surrounding Sparta. Others came from Messenia, the next valley over to the west. After their victory in the Persian wars, the Spartans, who controlled through alliance and intimidation most of the Peloponnese, and the Athenians, who controlled in the same manner the islands and much of the Aegean coast, entered a period of cold war. When that war inevitably turned hot, the result was the Peloponnesian War, which devastated much of Greece but left the Spartans as the dominant power in the region. Their good fortunes didn't last long, and after defeating the Spartan army, the Thebans, under the innovative general Epamenondas, broke Spartan power for goo by freeing their slaves. As part of that campaign, Epamenondas founded the city of Messene for freed Messenians, which was heavily fortified and was supposedly built in 85 days. It's also had a lot of money thrown at it in recent years by the Greek Ministry of Culture, and thus looks great for modern tourists. Bring a parasol, though, since there's very little shade.
The Messenians cooperated with the Romans early on, and did very well under the first few centures of Roman rule. So it's not surprising to find a few nice Roman statues in the site's museum.
Here is one of the neater buildings at the site. Being an unusually planned community, the people at Messene decided to clump together their temples instead of spreading them around all willy-nilly. In addition to the structure in the center, you can see that it was surrounded by four stoas, many of which also had religious use. Among the more prominent gods worshiped here are Asklepios, the god of healing, Messene, the personification of the region, Artemis Ortheia ("the straightener") and the cult of the Roman Imperial household also had dedicated space in later periods.
In addition to being the Homeric virgin huntress and protector of nature, Artemis was also associated with pregnancy, childbirth and children, especially girls. The Messenians would take her cult statue out into the courtyard at night for a coming-of-age ritual for their daughters, and here you can see Rachel sitting on the statue's more usual resting place. That ritual is particularly interesting because the Messenians' former masters, the Spartans, also had a rite-of-passage ritual in honor of Artemis Ortheia, but for boys. Oh, and it was much more brutal and occasionally killed a few of the participants, but that's Sparta for you.
Stoa ruins. The propped up bit of decoration is from the second floor.
Looking into the courtyard. That long, short thing in the fore/mid-ground is the altar for the entire complex.
A beautiful odeon with Dr. Bloy.
The same building, but without any doctors of classical archaeology in it.
It's small compared to a theater, but that's the price you pay for covered structure.
There's still a very nice view of the floor, though.
The athletic complex in the distance.
A little closer...
Sheila, Deanna and Ana looking out at the stadion from the shade.
VIP seating.
Dr. Bloy took a picture of all of us with the curved bit of the stadion behind us.
The building at the far end of the stadion. This is probably the shrine built to honor the hero Demophon, a sculptor native to Messene.
It's got a neat foundation made from alternating layers of different kinds of marble.
Leaving the site, we stopped the bus a few minutes down the wall to get out and play on the site's walls. They weren't that difficult to get on top of, for how high they are. Here's a shot of some of my comrades up in a tower. Zoomed in you can make out Doug and Deanna with AJ behind them. Several people climbed up into that tower from the wall right below it. I decided against it because they didn't appear to be an easy way back down. I had climbed down the wall again and was on my way to the other side of the tower to see if the other side was a little friendlier, but by the time I got there Aleko was yelling at us to get back on the bus.
We arrived in the modern town of Pylos a little before sunset started. The view was lovely. We only stayed there for the night, before setting out in the morning for ancient Pylos and Mystra.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Peloponnese Trip II: Olympia
I'm back, after two weeks of dealing with network issues courtesy of CNU's IT department. It's still not really fixed, but it's livable for a while.
Olympia (as in Olympic games, but not Mt. Olympus, which is far, far to the north), between the site and the museum, took up a whole day by itself. It's also the halfway point in the trip, at least if you're going by when I filled up the first of my two camera memory cards. This, even more that the Acropolis post, is a popcorn and tea occasion.
We spent both this night and the previous night in the town of "Ancient Olympia". That is the town's official name, as evidenced by their trash cans, although Wikipedia stubbornly refers to it only as Olympia. There is no "Olympia" or even "Modern Olympia" or "New Olympia". Just "Ancient Olympia", most of which seems to be only a year old, since the forest fires of last summer took out at least part of the area.
As for ancient Ancient Olympia, the site was only used as a religious sanctuary, starting sometime way back in the 800s BCE. The first games supposedly took place in 776, though modern scholars are hesitant to accept any number in Greek history that hasn't been independently verified. The games, part of a big festival to Zeus, were always held in the summer, at Olympia, every fourth year. They were the most important of four big Panhellenic games/festivals, the other three of which didn't start up until the 500s. It was so important that in the Hellenistic period certain historians started using the games as a sort of Panhellenic dating system. "The 3rd year of the 86th Olympiad", for example, as opposed to "the year in which Jimbo was the eponymous archon in Athens" or "the 23rd year in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphos". Originally the games were limited to Greeks, but later included Macedonians (who were sort of Greek) and Romans (who were not Greek but were good at killing Greeks who pointed that out). Women were not allowed on the grounds during the games, though there were a few races for girls, which the Spartans almost always won, and one Spartan king had a chariot team entered in his daughter's name out of spite for the people who ran the festival.
Wiki's got a really nice map of the sanctuary at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Plan_Olympia_sanctuary-en.svg. We entered the site from the northeast corner, moved roughly clockwise around the site, and then broke for lunch before hitting the museum.
The Philippeion, built by Philip II of Macedon as a shrine/monument to his family.
Walking along the south wall of the temple of Hera. This is the oldest building on site, and some people think that it was a temple of Zeus rededicated to Hera when the newer one was built.
Looking in. You can see a couple of monuments in front. Remember that all of the important rituals take place outside the temple, which leaves the inside mostly empty. In later periods the inside of this temple was used as a sort of museum, where statues dedicated by Olympic victors would be stored. Other fun fact: those columns aren't original. The temple was built with wooden columns, which were replaced with stone as they started to rot.
The alter of Zeus, conveniently placed in the shade.
The columns from the temple of Zeus. The reason that they've fallen over so neatly is because they were pulled down by goons sent by Theodosius II, a Byzantine emperor who was Christian in the Spanish Inquisition sense.
That's one column base, just to show you the scale.
A few of the treasuries. There are a bunch of these at Delphi, as well, if not at the other Panhellenic sites. Cities built these partly to serve as treasuries, but also as a sort of embassy/clubhouse for citizens attending the games.
The Olympic stadium.
I bet you're all really underwhelmed. If it makes you feel better, just pretend the shots of the one in Messene (next post) are at Olympia. There would have been stone seating here during the Roman period, anyway.
Looking along. The stadium building is named after the stadium race, which is named after the stadium unit of measurement. It varied from place to place, but at Olympia at stadion was about 200 yards.
AJ testing out the starting blocks.
Deanna and Dan doing the same. This inevitably resulted in a race, especially since it was only 90-something degree that day.
Dan got a slight head start and would have been whipped in ye olden days. Doug won, but got gypped since nobody had a laurel crown handy. The Greek government probably won't even honor his right to build a statue of himself on site.
The competitors walking back.
Leaving. This is also Roman, but unlike the seating has survived pretty well.
All of these rocks are from dedications and statues and such. They're a bit too heavy to use in a zen rock garden, so the excavators have just put them in neat little rows.
A Roman building. I think this is the Leonidaion, which was basically a hotel built by and for wealthy Romans. Both that pit surrounding it and the ring in the middle would have been filled with water.
The wall of a Roman bath.
The professors looking inside.
More Roman stuff! I'm going to arbitrarily say that this is the workshop of Phidias.
The workshop of Phidias. It's a bit of a misnomer because most of what you can see was built after he was dead. Phidias was the guy who made the cult statue for the Parthenon, and was hired on to build a similar statue of Zeus for the new temple they were building. To make sure the scale was right, he had a workshop the same dimensions as the main room of the temple. That was probably a good idea, since the most famous description of the statue mentions how the seated Zeus would burst through the roof of the temple if he ever decided to stand up. The statue was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Afterwards the workshop was preserved as a heroon to Phidias, and later turned into a church by Theodosius, which is why it looks like a church.
A peristyle. This is part of the gymnasium complex, near where we got a nice student-presented lecture on combat sports.
And that's it for the site! Hopefully I can get the next half done in under two weeks.
After breaking for lunch, we went through the site's museum. In addition to some nice sculpture from the temples, there were a bunch of dedications from Olympic victors and visitors to the site.
Among them: griffins! Roar! Screech! These guys are from the Archaic period, and a nice example of Greeks getting artistic inspiration from their eastern neighbors.
This one is also a bit more practical. He's made of bronze and would have been the center of some hoplite's shield. Then again, I'm not sure to what degree a bronze plate would actually improve the already sturdy Greek shields. In any event, it looks cool.
An here's an illustration of a fully armored hoplite. He'd be armed with a long spear (6' or so off the top of my head, which is still nothing compared to the 20' Macedonian sarissa) and a shorter sword used as a backup weapon. This depiction is a little idealized, since many men wouldn't have been able to afford the full set and would have skipped over things like the foot armor and the piece covering the inner forearm.
A rooster, also from a shield. Chickens had the complete opposite symbolism for Greek soldiers than for modern Americans.
A bunch of Greek helmets, dedicated by Greeks who had looted them from the armies of rival poleis.
A freaky shield with a gorgon on it. While I'm on the subject of shields, I feel obligated to retell the story about one of the Spartans who had painted a life-size fly on his shield instead of a gorgon or a chicken or something. When questioned about it by his friends, he told them that he'd be so close to his enemies that the fly would look like a lion.
A bronze bracelet, which was probably much prettier when it was shiny.
A pediment from the treasury of Megara. I don't remember and can't tell from this picture what the sculpture is, but the odds are better than even that it's Lapiths fighting centaurs.
Decorated terra cotta from another building.
Nike of Paionios. The goddess of victory doing what she does best: coming in for a landing to crown the winner of a competition.
The helmet of a particularly famous guy. I don't have my notes with me to doublecheck, but if I remember correctly it belonged to Mardonius, the guy Xerxes left in charge of the second invasion of Greece after their defeat at Salamis. He's mostly famous for losing the battle of Plataea, which was the defeat of the Persian land forces in Greece.
A horse, of course.
One of the pediments of the temple of Zeus, presented in glorious panorama. Here are the center and left parts of the same. It depicts the battle between drunken centaurs and their human hosts at the wedding feast of Perithoos, the king of the Lapiths. In the middle is Apollo, flanked by Perithoos on one side and the best man Theseus on the other, which a bunch of Lapiths and centaurs further out. Perithoos' other big story in Greek myth is one of history's great Bad Ideas. He enlists Theseus' help in trying to abduct Persephone, Hades' wife, so he can be married to a daughter of Zeus (Theseus picked the easier target of Helen, who was rescued by her brothers and later married off to Agamemnon). Anyway, the two make their way into Hades and, tired and hungry, stumble into a gigantic dining room filled to the brim with a spectacular feast. As soon as they sit down, vines grow up around them and keep them stuck to their chairs. Eventually Herakles stumbles through in his quest to abduct Hades' dog and rips his friend Theseus free, but Perithoos ends up spending all of eternity stuck in a dining room in hell.
The left, center and right shots of the other pediment. This one tells the story of Pelops, who won his wife through a rigged chariot match with her father. The middle figure is Zeus, who is, among other things, the god of Not Cheating and Punishing Oathbreakers, present to remind us that, although Pelops won the race, he was cursed for his treachery, so much so that his descendants were doing wacky things like eating each others' children until his great-grandson Orestes sorts things out. The middle shot is the first one on my second big memory card. The right one is notable because the center figure, that philosopher, is both old, ugly, and showing actual emotion, all things that Greek sculpture avoided until this point.
The metapes of the temple depict the labors of Herakles. This shot's of Athena telling him what to do.
Another one. Between the picture size on Panoramio, damage to the sculpture, and the lack of my notes, I have no idea which two labors those are. This one show him holding up the heavens while Atlas gets the golden apples of the Hisperides for him. Athena's helping out and looking bored.
An artist's rendering of the big cult statue. Aleko assured us that it's completely wrong.
The Hermes of Praxiteles. Even though it's a marble, a lot of people seem to think this is the original work of one of the great sculptors of classical Greece. Dr. Bloy doesn't agree, for a number of reasons involving the finish and that huge thing he's leaning on.
A bull. It just occurred to me that I know the verb for mooing in Latin but not in Greek. It has also occurred to me that I should probably not be left alone in an empty library media center for six hour stretches at night, lest I start mooing at strangers in dead languages over the internet.
A Roman emperor. I think this one's Hadrian, though it might be Marcus Aurelius. Or it could be someone completely different; while I only recall seeing Augustus, Caligula, and those two, this guy looks a little off from the usual Hadrian.
Agrippina Minor. She was Claudius' second wife, and presumably poisoned him so that his son, Nero, could take over. A bit of a momma's boy at first, Nero eventually got so sick of her that he sent her on a cruise in a specially-designed boat that was supposed to fall apart once it got out to sea. Unfortunately, Agrippina was a really good swimmer and made it back to shore. Nero sent goons after her instead, and, while they killed her, they didn't earn him any style points in being a Bad Emperor.
And that's it! May the rest of these updates be less trouble than this one. We spent that night in Olympia and left in the morning to hit three lesser-known sites: Bassae, Messene and Mystra, ending up in Sparti for the night.
Olympia (as in Olympic games, but not Mt. Olympus, which is far, far to the north), between the site and the museum, took up a whole day by itself. It's also the halfway point in the trip, at least if you're going by when I filled up the first of my two camera memory cards. This, even more that the Acropolis post, is a popcorn and tea occasion.
We spent both this night and the previous night in the town of "Ancient Olympia". That is the town's official name, as evidenced by their trash cans, although Wikipedia stubbornly refers to it only as Olympia. There is no "Olympia" or even "Modern Olympia" or "New Olympia". Just "Ancient Olympia", most of which seems to be only a year old, since the forest fires of last summer took out at least part of the area.
As for ancient Ancient Olympia, the site was only used as a religious sanctuary, starting sometime way back in the 800s BCE. The first games supposedly took place in 776, though modern scholars are hesitant to accept any number in Greek history that hasn't been independently verified. The games, part of a big festival to Zeus, were always held in the summer, at Olympia, every fourth year. They were the most important of four big Panhellenic games/festivals, the other three of which didn't start up until the 500s. It was so important that in the Hellenistic period certain historians started using the games as a sort of Panhellenic dating system. "The 3rd year of the 86th Olympiad", for example, as opposed to "the year in which Jimbo was the eponymous archon in Athens" or "the 23rd year in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphos". Originally the games were limited to Greeks, but later included Macedonians (who were sort of Greek) and Romans (who were not Greek but were good at killing Greeks who pointed that out). Women were not allowed on the grounds during the games, though there were a few races for girls, which the Spartans almost always won, and one Spartan king had a chariot team entered in his daughter's name out of spite for the people who ran the festival.
Wiki's got a really nice map of the sanctuary at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Plan_Olympia_sanctuary-en.svg. We entered the site from the northeast corner, moved roughly clockwise around the site, and then broke for lunch before hitting the museum.
The Philippeion, built by Philip II of Macedon as a shrine/monument to his family.
Walking along the south wall of the temple of Hera. This is the oldest building on site, and some people think that it was a temple of Zeus rededicated to Hera when the newer one was built.
Looking in. You can see a couple of monuments in front. Remember that all of the important rituals take place outside the temple, which leaves the inside mostly empty. In later periods the inside of this temple was used as a sort of museum, where statues dedicated by Olympic victors would be stored. Other fun fact: those columns aren't original. The temple was built with wooden columns, which were replaced with stone as they started to rot.
The alter of Zeus, conveniently placed in the shade.
The columns from the temple of Zeus. The reason that they've fallen over so neatly is because they were pulled down by goons sent by Theodosius II, a Byzantine emperor who was Christian in the Spanish Inquisition sense.
That's one column base, just to show you the scale.
A few of the treasuries. There are a bunch of these at Delphi, as well, if not at the other Panhellenic sites. Cities built these partly to serve as treasuries, but also as a sort of embassy/clubhouse for citizens attending the games.
The Olympic stadium.
I bet you're all really underwhelmed. If it makes you feel better, just pretend the shots of the one in Messene (next post) are at Olympia. There would have been stone seating here during the Roman period, anyway.
Looking along. The stadium building is named after the stadium race, which is named after the stadium unit of measurement. It varied from place to place, but at Olympia at stadion was about 200 yards.
AJ testing out the starting blocks.
Deanna and Dan doing the same. This inevitably resulted in a race, especially since it was only 90-something degree that day.
Dan got a slight head start and would have been whipped in ye olden days. Doug won, but got gypped since nobody had a laurel crown handy. The Greek government probably won't even honor his right to build a statue of himself on site.
The competitors walking back.
Leaving. This is also Roman, but unlike the seating has survived pretty well.
All of these rocks are from dedications and statues and such. They're a bit too heavy to use in a zen rock garden, so the excavators have just put them in neat little rows.
A Roman building. I think this is the Leonidaion, which was basically a hotel built by and for wealthy Romans. Both that pit surrounding it and the ring in the middle would have been filled with water.
The wall of a Roman bath.
The professors looking inside.
More Roman stuff! I'm going to arbitrarily say that this is the workshop of Phidias.
The workshop of Phidias. It's a bit of a misnomer because most of what you can see was built after he was dead. Phidias was the guy who made the cult statue for the Parthenon, and was hired on to build a similar statue of Zeus for the new temple they were building. To make sure the scale was right, he had a workshop the same dimensions as the main room of the temple. That was probably a good idea, since the most famous description of the statue mentions how the seated Zeus would burst through the roof of the temple if he ever decided to stand up. The statue was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Afterwards the workshop was preserved as a heroon to Phidias, and later turned into a church by Theodosius, which is why it looks like a church.
A peristyle. This is part of the gymnasium complex, near where we got a nice student-presented lecture on combat sports.
And that's it for the site! Hopefully I can get the next half done in under two weeks.
After breaking for lunch, we went through the site's museum. In addition to some nice sculpture from the temples, there were a bunch of dedications from Olympic victors and visitors to the site.
Among them: griffins! Roar! Screech! These guys are from the Archaic period, and a nice example of Greeks getting artistic inspiration from their eastern neighbors.
This one is also a bit more practical. He's made of bronze and would have been the center of some hoplite's shield. Then again, I'm not sure to what degree a bronze plate would actually improve the already sturdy Greek shields. In any event, it looks cool.
An here's an illustration of a fully armored hoplite. He'd be armed with a long spear (6' or so off the top of my head, which is still nothing compared to the 20' Macedonian sarissa) and a shorter sword used as a backup weapon. This depiction is a little idealized, since many men wouldn't have been able to afford the full set and would have skipped over things like the foot armor and the piece covering the inner forearm.
A rooster, also from a shield. Chickens had the complete opposite symbolism for Greek soldiers than for modern Americans.
A bunch of Greek helmets, dedicated by Greeks who had looted them from the armies of rival poleis.
A freaky shield with a gorgon on it. While I'm on the subject of shields, I feel obligated to retell the story about one of the Spartans who had painted a life-size fly on his shield instead of a gorgon or a chicken or something. When questioned about it by his friends, he told them that he'd be so close to his enemies that the fly would look like a lion.
A bronze bracelet, which was probably much prettier when it was shiny.
A pediment from the treasury of Megara. I don't remember and can't tell from this picture what the sculpture is, but the odds are better than even that it's Lapiths fighting centaurs.
Decorated terra cotta from another building.
Nike of Paionios. The goddess of victory doing what she does best: coming in for a landing to crown the winner of a competition.
The helmet of a particularly famous guy. I don't have my notes with me to doublecheck, but if I remember correctly it belonged to Mardonius, the guy Xerxes left in charge of the second invasion of Greece after their defeat at Salamis. He's mostly famous for losing the battle of Plataea, which was the defeat of the Persian land forces in Greece.
A horse, of course.
One of the pediments of the temple of Zeus, presented in glorious panorama. Here are the center and left parts of the same. It depicts the battle between drunken centaurs and their human hosts at the wedding feast of Perithoos, the king of the Lapiths. In the middle is Apollo, flanked by Perithoos on one side and the best man Theseus on the other, which a bunch of Lapiths and centaurs further out. Perithoos' other big story in Greek myth is one of history's great Bad Ideas. He enlists Theseus' help in trying to abduct Persephone, Hades' wife, so he can be married to a daughter of Zeus (Theseus picked the easier target of Helen, who was rescued by her brothers and later married off to Agamemnon). Anyway, the two make their way into Hades and, tired and hungry, stumble into a gigantic dining room filled to the brim with a spectacular feast. As soon as they sit down, vines grow up around them and keep them stuck to their chairs. Eventually Herakles stumbles through in his quest to abduct Hades' dog and rips his friend Theseus free, but Perithoos ends up spending all of eternity stuck in a dining room in hell.
The left, center and right shots of the other pediment. This one tells the story of Pelops, who won his wife through a rigged chariot match with her father. The middle figure is Zeus, who is, among other things, the god of Not Cheating and Punishing Oathbreakers, present to remind us that, although Pelops won the race, he was cursed for his treachery, so much so that his descendants were doing wacky things like eating each others' children until his great-grandson Orestes sorts things out. The middle shot is the first one on my second big memory card. The right one is notable because the center figure, that philosopher, is both old, ugly, and showing actual emotion, all things that Greek sculpture avoided until this point.
The metapes of the temple depict the labors of Herakles. This shot's of Athena telling him what to do.
Another one. Between the picture size on Panoramio, damage to the sculpture, and the lack of my notes, I have no idea which two labors those are. This one show him holding up the heavens while Atlas gets the golden apples of the Hisperides for him. Athena's helping out and looking bored.
An artist's rendering of the big cult statue. Aleko assured us that it's completely wrong.
The Hermes of Praxiteles. Even though it's a marble, a lot of people seem to think this is the original work of one of the great sculptors of classical Greece. Dr. Bloy doesn't agree, for a number of reasons involving the finish and that huge thing he's leaning on.
A bull. It just occurred to me that I know the verb for mooing in Latin but not in Greek. It has also occurred to me that I should probably not be left alone in an empty library media center for six hour stretches at night, lest I start mooing at strangers in dead languages over the internet.
A Roman emperor. I think this one's Hadrian, though it might be Marcus Aurelius. Or it could be someone completely different; while I only recall seeing Augustus, Caligula, and those two, this guy looks a little off from the usual Hadrian.
Agrippina Minor. She was Claudius' second wife, and presumably poisoned him so that his son, Nero, could take over. A bit of a momma's boy at first, Nero eventually got so sick of her that he sent her on a cruise in a specially-designed boat that was supposed to fall apart once it got out to sea. Unfortunately, Agrippina was a really good swimmer and made it back to shore. Nero sent goons after her instead, and, while they killed her, they didn't earn him any style points in being a Bad Emperor.
And that's it! May the rest of these updates be less trouble than this one. We spent that night in Olympia and left in the morning to hit three lesser-known sites: Bassae, Messene and Mystra, ending up in Sparti for the night.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Peloponnese Trip I: Eleusis and Perachora
EDIT: Fun fact: I can't spell altar. Now back to work on that Olympia post...
I've finally reached the boring, pictureless updates and can replace them with real stuff.
We were joined by Aleko Costas from CYA and then boarded the bus for a day full of driving. The only two sites we did, as well as lunch, weren't actually in the Peloponnese, so we got all of the work out of the way in the morning and then settled in for the six hour drive to Olympia.
The first site we did was Eleusis, a sanctuary site on the western border of Attica, between the territory of the ancient city-states of Athens and Megara. It's mostly famous as a sanctuary of Demeter, and was the site of a huge mystery cult. As opposed to normal Hellenic religion, this would involve initiation and a private annual ritual. It had something to do with the post-death experience and became very popular with Roman visitors even before the conquest of Greece. Being a major pagan sanctuary in a well-traveled area, this site hasn't survived as well as some other which were just abandoned during the Christian area.
Look! Rocks.
I vaguely recall this being an altar to Artemis. While Eleusis was mostly focused on Demeter, Persephone and even Hades, this altar was outside the entrance of that sanctuary. Judging by the construction, these are Roman remains.
Debris. Those are Corinthian order column capitals stack on Doric triglyphs from a temple roof.
Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian didn't get around to building/rebuilding everything in Greece, so a few emperors down the line M. Aurelius went on another building spree.
Decorations. Wheat, flowers, containers for the harvest... you know, agricultural stuff as befits an agricultural goddess.
A cave that was probably a shrine to Hades. This is the only one I've even heard of. The Greeks didn't normally sacrifice to Hades, partly since he got everyone in the end, and partly because he wasn't the kind of god one wanted to draw the attention of. Normally Persephone acted as his intermediary, since he was only half-creepy.
The cult building. Unlike the traditional temple, this one was meant for the ritual and the attendees to stay inside. It started off pretty small but was expanded several times. You can still see some of the seating carved into the rock.
A Roman sarcophagus. I don't know what's going on in the carving, but it sure is dramatic. Note that the lid looks a little small. This is because the Romans didn't have any problems with reusing other people's sarcophagi and the original lid for this probably didn't outlast the original owner.
A big vase from the transition from Geometric/Dark Age to Archaic style. Odysseus and some happy sailors blinding the cyclops Polyphemus, and then below them some bulls. Below the bulls you can see two gorgons, who kinda look like big vase monsters themselves. Around the left side is the beheaded corpse of their sister, Medusa, and the damaged bit on the right is the figure they're chasing, Perseus.
A blurry picture of a Karyatid. For scale, that's a regular sized chair next to the base, only a few feet behind her. This lady was huge, and, like the ones at the Erechtheion on the Athenian acropolis, basically acted like a decorated column.
Our first Antinoos. Hadrian was a prolific builder, and this is at least partially because he spent most of his reign traveling around the empire in general, and Greece and Egypt in particular. While in Egypt, his boyfriend drowned in the Nile. The heartbroken emperor had him deified (the Romans would have worshiped a sock puppet if you told them it was an exotic god from the east) and ordered statues made of him all over the Roman world. We saw a few of him, and there's a particularly good one in the National Museum.
A reconstruction of the site. The big building is the main cult site. Good Hellenes weren't supposed to sack sanctuary sites, but Eleusis was also a border town and that wall is proof that the Athenians weren't foolish enough to rely on their enemies' piety.
A dedication. I probably took this picture because it's got writing on it, but it's just the chick's name.
Next we went to an archaic site that nobody goes to, or at least not for archaeological purposes. That's probably because the place, Perachora, is a great spot for an afternoon off. Nowadays, with roads and automobiles, it's out of the way but not that hard to get to. This is one of the few pictures I've bothered to map through Panoramio's Google Maps widget. Take a look at that, and zoom out until you can see Korinthos. Right around the spot labeled E65 is where the ancient polis of Corinth was, and they're the once who controlled the site. It's a bit far away by land, but you can actually see Corinth's acropolis across the Gulf of Corinth from Perachora.
Dr. Farney in a 7th century BCE stoa.
Dr. Bloy in a 7th century BCE stoa.
21st century CE tourists.
An archaic cistern, that would have held the site's water supply.
Deanna, Ana and NaDea sitting on 2600-year-old couches in a dining room. They weren't that comfortable, but in ancient times they would have had cushions.
We ate lunch with a view. That water is actually a big lake that only opens out into the sea because of a canal.
After lunch we drove six hour to the modern town of "Ancient Olympia", where we stayed the night before hitting the ancient site of "Olympia" the next day.
I've finally reached the boring, pictureless updates and can replace them with real stuff.
We were joined by Aleko Costas from CYA and then boarded the bus for a day full of driving. The only two sites we did, as well as lunch, weren't actually in the Peloponnese, so we got all of the work out of the way in the morning and then settled in for the six hour drive to Olympia.
The first site we did was Eleusis, a sanctuary site on the western border of Attica, between the territory of the ancient city-states of Athens and Megara. It's mostly famous as a sanctuary of Demeter, and was the site of a huge mystery cult. As opposed to normal Hellenic religion, this would involve initiation and a private annual ritual. It had something to do with the post-death experience and became very popular with Roman visitors even before the conquest of Greece. Being a major pagan sanctuary in a well-traveled area, this site hasn't survived as well as some other which were just abandoned during the Christian area.
Look! Rocks.
I vaguely recall this being an altar to Artemis. While Eleusis was mostly focused on Demeter, Persephone and even Hades, this altar was outside the entrance of that sanctuary. Judging by the construction, these are Roman remains.
Debris. Those are Corinthian order column capitals stack on Doric triglyphs from a temple roof.
Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian didn't get around to building/rebuilding everything in Greece, so a few emperors down the line M. Aurelius went on another building spree.
Decorations. Wheat, flowers, containers for the harvest... you know, agricultural stuff as befits an agricultural goddess.
A cave that was probably a shrine to Hades. This is the only one I've even heard of. The Greeks didn't normally sacrifice to Hades, partly since he got everyone in the end, and partly because he wasn't the kind of god one wanted to draw the attention of. Normally Persephone acted as his intermediary, since he was only half-creepy.
The cult building. Unlike the traditional temple, this one was meant for the ritual and the attendees to stay inside. It started off pretty small but was expanded several times. You can still see some of the seating carved into the rock.
A Roman sarcophagus. I don't know what's going on in the carving, but it sure is dramatic. Note that the lid looks a little small. This is because the Romans didn't have any problems with reusing other people's sarcophagi and the original lid for this probably didn't outlast the original owner.
A big vase from the transition from Geometric/Dark Age to Archaic style. Odysseus and some happy sailors blinding the cyclops Polyphemus, and then below them some bulls. Below the bulls you can see two gorgons, who kinda look like big vase monsters themselves. Around the left side is the beheaded corpse of their sister, Medusa, and the damaged bit on the right is the figure they're chasing, Perseus.
A blurry picture of a Karyatid. For scale, that's a regular sized chair next to the base, only a few feet behind her. This lady was huge, and, like the ones at the Erechtheion on the Athenian acropolis, basically acted like a decorated column.
Our first Antinoos. Hadrian was a prolific builder, and this is at least partially because he spent most of his reign traveling around the empire in general, and Greece and Egypt in particular. While in Egypt, his boyfriend drowned in the Nile. The heartbroken emperor had him deified (the Romans would have worshiped a sock puppet if you told them it was an exotic god from the east) and ordered statues made of him all over the Roman world. We saw a few of him, and there's a particularly good one in the National Museum.
A reconstruction of the site. The big building is the main cult site. Good Hellenes weren't supposed to sack sanctuary sites, but Eleusis was also a border town and that wall is proof that the Athenians weren't foolish enough to rely on their enemies' piety.
A dedication. I probably took this picture because it's got writing on it, but it's just the chick's name.
Next we went to an archaic site that nobody goes to, or at least not for archaeological purposes. That's probably because the place, Perachora, is a great spot for an afternoon off. Nowadays, with roads and automobiles, it's out of the way but not that hard to get to. This is one of the few pictures I've bothered to map through Panoramio's Google Maps widget. Take a look at that, and zoom out until you can see Korinthos. Right around the spot labeled E65 is where the ancient polis of Corinth was, and they're the once who controlled the site. It's a bit far away by land, but you can actually see Corinth's acropolis across the Gulf of Corinth from Perachora.
Dr. Farney in a 7th century BCE stoa.
Dr. Bloy in a 7th century BCE stoa.
21st century CE tourists.
An archaic cistern, that would have held the site's water supply.
Deanna, Ana and NaDea sitting on 2600-year-old couches in a dining room. They weren't that comfortable, but in ancient times they would have had cushions.
We ate lunch with a view. That water is actually a big lake that only opens out into the sea because of a canal.
After lunch we drove six hour to the modern town of "Ancient Olympia", where we stayed the night before hitting the ancient site of "Olympia" the next day.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Boring update.
The internet cafe I'm at closes in five minutes so I don't have time to get any pictures up. Oh bother. Anyway, we're heading out to Peleponnese tomorrow.
Also, Link and Eric are married! Yay them. It's a shame I couldn't be there, but with any luck I'll see them pretty shortly after getting back.
Over and out.
Also, Link and Eric are married! Yay them. It's a shame I couldn't be there, but with any luck I'll see them pretty shortly after getting back.
Over and out.
Friday, July 18, 2008
The Obligatory Acropolis Visit and National Archaeology Museum 3/4
This is going to be a long one, so go grab some popcorn or a pot of tea. Ready? Alright, background first. "Akropolis" is just Greek for the high part of the city, and most of the poleis had them because they made great defensive positions in the days before big stone walls. Some of them have special names, like Acrocorinth, some of them have later fortifications on them, like the one in Argos, and the one in Athens, being the center point of both the old and new cities, has had temples, churches, mosques, and at least one Ottoman palace complete with harem. Legend has it that the Athenian acropolis was the site of the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the favor of the city. Poseidon caused a salt water spring to bubble up, which, while impressive, was not nearly as useful to the people as the olive tree Athena planted. The supposed first olive tree in Athens remained up there (along with a well that was probably not salt water) and by the time of the Persian wars there was a big temple to Athena Polias (of the city), another temple to Athena Parthenos (the virgin) (the first Parthenon), and some other stuff I don't remember. In any event, the Persians destroyed all of that in 490, and the Athenians vowed to leave it all in ruins until they defeated the Persians. When they made peace a few decades later, Perikles convinced the Athenians to take all of the money their allies had been paying for them in exchange for protection from the Persians and blow it on a massive building project. The most impressive stuff ended up on the acropolis.
The ascent. The place was packed already when we got there, but they let us in a few minutes before it opened so we had a few moments of peace.
Chiselers. Marble gets really slippery when it's polished by thousands of feet a day, so they have guys roughen the stone a bit to reduce the number of falling tourists.
Looking back. The big empty spot is the Pnyx.
Inside the propylon, the big entrance to the acropolis.
A very impressed Kat shown for scale.
All of this is marble, except that one layer of rock at the bottom of the walls.
As we were making our way in, we heard some shouting and stomping. Back in the 40s, after the Germans had conquered Greece (Mussolini had already failed; apparently the Italians can't take down an army armed with anything more advanced than a sharpened stick) they had a Nazi flag flying over the acropolis. One night a bunch of Greek snuck in, risking execution, and replaced it with a Greek flag. Ever since then the army has had a detachment raise the flag every morning and lower it every evening. Even though it was only four guys and an officer, it was pretty impressive. The way they marched on the planks laid down as part of the propylon's maintenance it sounded like there were a thousand of them.
The least crowded you will ever see the Parthenon in an amateur shot.
The Erechtheion, that building nobody's ever heard of.
The propylon from inside.
The porch of the Karyatids, the famous part of the building nobody's ever heard of.
The west side of the Parthenon.
Looking out at the shrine to the nymphs on Philopappos hill.
West side. This is where we did our lecture.
If you look carefully, you can see the Saronic Gulf behind Philopappos. The shore is about an hour away by train.
The Odeon of Herodes Atticus, built during the Roman era. We were never able to go in, since it's now exclusively a concert venue instead of an archaeological site.
The long, black building is the new Acropolis museum, built to call the British Museum's bluff that they weren't giving the sculptures from the Parthenon back because the old museum wasn't nice enough. We did go in for a few minutes another day, but I didn't have my camera. Not much of a loss, actually, since they literally have nothing for public display at the moment except for cardboard cutouts. It should be opening for real in a few months.
The gaping hole in the side of the Parthenon. One of the buildings many uses was as a gunpowder storage facility for the Turks during a Venetian attack on the city. The Turks apparently didn't think through the ramifications of putting their munitions in one of the three or so places in Athens than can easily be shot by a cannon from sea. That hole is the result of the explosion of gunpower when the Venetians hit it.
The temple of Olympian Zeus. The hazy Athenian air pollution is starting to show.
Kalimarmaro Stadio. I don't know if I could literally see our house from there, but we could definitely see the neighborhood.
The theater of Dionysus. Unless you are a classicist, every ancient Greek play you've ever heard of was first performed right there.
The front (east) side of the Parthenon. Now's probably a good time to describe the building. In form it's basically an exceptionally fancy temple, made of solid marble, with the best sculptures in classical Greece and every single architectural innovation the Greeks had made to that point. The question is, was it a temple? We know that it was used as a treasury, which was common in Greek temples, since everything took place outside. The Parthenon doesn't have an altar outside that we know of, which essentially means that there was no actual worship done here. It's quite possible, since the Erechtheion was also dedicated to Athena, or the two buildings might have just shared an altar. In any event, the Parthenon was the headquarters of the priests of Athena (who were not nearly as important as Egyptian or Near Eastern priests, to say nothing of later Christians) and it held the second nicest cult statue in mainland Greece, sculpted by the same guy who made the nicest one (one of the Seven Wonders of the World (tm)).
A close-up. Some copies of the sculpture the Greeks have, and those big round holes on the bottom row are where those captured Spartan shields were fixed. The big groups of tiny holes are from a dedication to Nero the Athenians put up for the emperor's visit and then took down later.
The Erechtheion from the southeast.
The front. The keen-eyed will notice that the columns and frieze are in a different style than the Parthenon. These are Ionic, as are, if I remember right, the interior set of the Parthenon. The outer set was Doric, and that combination of the two was pretty common in Athenian temples of the period. Most Ionic-speaking Greeks stuck to Ionic order temple and the Doric-speakers had their own style, but 5th century Athenians, despite speaking a basically Ionic dialect, felt like they were in between the ethnicities.
Looking inside. The floor's not the best preserved. Anyway, what's this building for, you ask? It's a mutant. Unlike the typical single-god Greek temple, the Erechtheion is dedicated to a half-dozen of them and doesn't look like any other building in Greece. It's partially built over the temple of Athena destroyed by the Persians, and is the real religious center on site. It's named after one of the more obscure of Athens' excessive number of founder-figures, Erechtheus, who's kind of but not really a child of Hephaistos and Athena.
The north porch.
The south porch, which isn't even accessible from the main part of the building. The columns shaped like women are called Karyatids after a lesser known myth, and while they weren't unique to Athens these are the only ones we saw outside of a museum. Even then, they were pretty rare. Like I said, the Erechtheion is a really weird building and this doesn't help that.
Three things to point out here. First, look at how intricate the ceiling is. The Athenians were filthy rich in the 430s, when this was built, and didn't cut any corners on the decoration. Second, you see that hole? That's actually where lightning struck, and was never repaired because the ancients were pretty hesitant to rebuild something Zeus personally blew to smithereens. Last, the black gunk is marble's reaction to air pollution. The only way to get rid of it is to dab at it with a wet sponge for a few hours.
Again, they didn't spare any effort when it came to these buildings.
Athena's olive tree! Well, ok, it's a modern replanting of the original olive tree. Well, ok, it probably wasn't the same tree all the way through from the Mycenaean period to the Christian era, and it probably wasn't planted by Athena, but the ancients thought it was and that's good enough for us.
From the southwest. That rubble in the foreground is what's left of the temple of Athena Polias destroyed in 490BC. The Erechtheion only overlaps one corner, and probably only that much because they didn't want Athena to think they were snubbing her by abandoning her site entirely.
A picture with me actually in it. These are so rare that they should put it in the national museum.
The horde. Romans, Vandals, Goths, Turks, Moors, Huns, Venetians and every people under the sun.
Exodos.
The view of Athens was better going down than coming up.
The Aeropagus, everyone's favorite big rock.
The agora, temple on the left and stoa on the right.
I kinda have an obsession with the stupid thing.
By this point we had a very low opinion of the Athenian postal system, because none of us ever found the post office in our neighborhood, and then invariably outside of Athens our hotel would be right next to one. This, fifteen minutes uphill from the nearest residential building, did not help. Apparently it's for the cruise ship passengers who want to send a postcard right now, though to be fair I guess "Greetings from the Acropolis" is more sincere that way. About three days before the program ended we realized that there was box down the street from the girls' apartment on Eratosthenous and another twenty feet from the grocery store we used.
We also had a short museum trip. Unfortunately, on the subway on the way there Rachel got her pocket (well, her backpack) picked and lost everything up to and including her passport. The bright side is that, other than the initial distress and two or three embassy visits, it didn't mess up the rest of the trip for her. Anyway, while she and Dr. Farney were tending to that, Dr. Bloy showed the rest of us around.
While we were all incredibly sick of pottery and moderately sick of classical sculpture (naked athletes or women wearing 50lbs of clothing lest some poor guy be attracted to one) by the end of the trip, at this point it was a welcome relief from dark age pottery (etch-a-sketch) and archaic statues ("Alright, looking at the butt cheeks we can tell this one in a 6th century because of the shift in weight to one foot...").
This is either Zeus or Poseidon (or some schmuck with a javelin) and, unlike most statues in the museum, is actually from the classical period and not a later Roman copy. Archaic statues were boring because they were made of marble, and in any pose besides standing straight up, hands by the sides, stuff has a tendency to fall off. So when the Greeks got the hang of sculpture they started working with bronze, which doesn't have that problem. Unfortunately, bronze is both useful and easily melted down, so even fewer of these survived than marble statues (which are only useful for making lime). Incidentally, the Greeks got very good with bronze and this guy probably had sculpted eyelashes that he lost somewhere between sinking into the sea and making it to the museum.
A big, bottomless funerary urn depicting the deceased. It was standard practice to make liquid offerings to the dead, at least for a little while, and so these were common as both grave markers and convenient pipes for libations. Every other century or so the Athenians got fed up with the wealthy people throwing vast amounts of money at grave monuments and would make laws preventing it.
Hermes. The Romans liked marble sculpture and, unlike the Greeks, were not above adding stuff just for the sake of support. This is, more likely than not, a copy of a Greek bronze that didn't have the tree stump or the support between his calves. Even with those additions, you can still see how he arm fell off.
Aphrodite. Probably just a straight up copy of a classical bronze, especially since Hellenistic and Roman sculpters preferred the naked or scantily clad look for younger women in general and love goddesses in particular.
A small marble copy of the cult statue from the Parthenon. The real thing was significantly bigger (3x, I think?). All of her skin was solid ivory, and everything else was gold. Phidias, the guy responsible for the real statue, was chased out of Athens along with Perikles because either A) they embezzled some of the gold or B) Phidias depicted them on the inside of her shield, a religious no-no. Eventually he ended up in Olympia, where he crafted, again in gold and ivory, a statue of Zeus which is a contender for the nicest statue ever made by human hands. As in Wonder of the World good, and as in he was so revered that they turned his workshop into a hero cult honoring him good. Sometime shortly after that, though, an Athenian hit squad killed him for robbing and/or desecrating their favorite building.
A copy of a statue of the goddess Nemesis that was originally in black marble. Just because the female statues in this period got the Greek equivalent of burkas while the men got athletic, idealized bodies doesn't mean that the clothes were poorly made. This is one of the better examples, though even being one solid hunk of marble her head and arms have broken off.
White vases. These were buried with the dead. Unlike the black figure and red figure vases, the coloring was painted on these instead of fired into them.
Someone's giving something to the goddess Demeter. This probably has a connection to Eleusis, which will be in the next update.
An example burial. I think the skeleton's fake.
A prize. Olympic victors got several of these filled with olive oil from a particularly sacred tree, or maybe they only got one but could fill it up multiple times. The style was often imitated but the Greek seem to have been pretty honest about only putting the "this guy won at Olympia" inscriptions on the real deal. They all show the competition won and Nike (Victory) flying down to crown the victor.
And, just as a bonus, an Athenian drier.
That's three updates today, and this is probably all for tonight. Not only do I have my old loves Rome: Total War and Mount & Blade now that I'm back on my computer, but Kelly gave me something to play on dad's Wii. Tomorrow: updates on Eleusis and Olympia, and maybe Bassae and Messene.
The ascent. The place was packed already when we got there, but they let us in a few minutes before it opened so we had a few moments of peace.
Chiselers. Marble gets really slippery when it's polished by thousands of feet a day, so they have guys roughen the stone a bit to reduce the number of falling tourists.
Looking back. The big empty spot is the Pnyx.
Inside the propylon, the big entrance to the acropolis.
A very impressed Kat shown for scale.
All of this is marble, except that one layer of rock at the bottom of the walls.
As we were making our way in, we heard some shouting and stomping. Back in the 40s, after the Germans had conquered Greece (Mussolini had already failed; apparently the Italians can't take down an army armed with anything more advanced than a sharpened stick) they had a Nazi flag flying over the acropolis. One night a bunch of Greek snuck in, risking execution, and replaced it with a Greek flag. Ever since then the army has had a detachment raise the flag every morning and lower it every evening. Even though it was only four guys and an officer, it was pretty impressive. The way they marched on the planks laid down as part of the propylon's maintenance it sounded like there were a thousand of them.
The least crowded you will ever see the Parthenon in an amateur shot.
The Erechtheion, that building nobody's ever heard of.
The propylon from inside.
The porch of the Karyatids, the famous part of the building nobody's ever heard of.
The west side of the Parthenon.
Looking out at the shrine to the nymphs on Philopappos hill.
West side. This is where we did our lecture.
If you look carefully, you can see the Saronic Gulf behind Philopappos. The shore is about an hour away by train.
The Odeon of Herodes Atticus, built during the Roman era. We were never able to go in, since it's now exclusively a concert venue instead of an archaeological site.
The long, black building is the new Acropolis museum, built to call the British Museum's bluff that they weren't giving the sculptures from the Parthenon back because the old museum wasn't nice enough. We did go in for a few minutes another day, but I didn't have my camera. Not much of a loss, actually, since they literally have nothing for public display at the moment except for cardboard cutouts. It should be opening for real in a few months.
The gaping hole in the side of the Parthenon. One of the buildings many uses was as a gunpowder storage facility for the Turks during a Venetian attack on the city. The Turks apparently didn't think through the ramifications of putting their munitions in one of the three or so places in Athens than can easily be shot by a cannon from sea. That hole is the result of the explosion of gunpower when the Venetians hit it.
The temple of Olympian Zeus. The hazy Athenian air pollution is starting to show.
Kalimarmaro Stadio. I don't know if I could literally see our house from there, but we could definitely see the neighborhood.
The theater of Dionysus. Unless you are a classicist, every ancient Greek play you've ever heard of was first performed right there.
The front (east) side of the Parthenon. Now's probably a good time to describe the building. In form it's basically an exceptionally fancy temple, made of solid marble, with the best sculptures in classical Greece and every single architectural innovation the Greeks had made to that point. The question is, was it a temple? We know that it was used as a treasury, which was common in Greek temples, since everything took place outside. The Parthenon doesn't have an altar outside that we know of, which essentially means that there was no actual worship done here. It's quite possible, since the Erechtheion was also dedicated to Athena, or the two buildings might have just shared an altar. In any event, the Parthenon was the headquarters of the priests of Athena (who were not nearly as important as Egyptian or Near Eastern priests, to say nothing of later Christians) and it held the second nicest cult statue in mainland Greece, sculpted by the same guy who made the nicest one (one of the Seven Wonders of the World (tm)).
A close-up. Some copies of the sculpture the Greeks have, and those big round holes on the bottom row are where those captured Spartan shields were fixed. The big groups of tiny holes are from a dedication to Nero the Athenians put up for the emperor's visit and then took down later.
The Erechtheion from the southeast.
The front. The keen-eyed will notice that the columns and frieze are in a different style than the Parthenon. These are Ionic, as are, if I remember right, the interior set of the Parthenon. The outer set was Doric, and that combination of the two was pretty common in Athenian temples of the period. Most Ionic-speaking Greeks stuck to Ionic order temple and the Doric-speakers had their own style, but 5th century Athenians, despite speaking a basically Ionic dialect, felt like they were in between the ethnicities.
Looking inside. The floor's not the best preserved. Anyway, what's this building for, you ask? It's a mutant. Unlike the typical single-god Greek temple, the Erechtheion is dedicated to a half-dozen of them and doesn't look like any other building in Greece. It's partially built over the temple of Athena destroyed by the Persians, and is the real religious center on site. It's named after one of the more obscure of Athens' excessive number of founder-figures, Erechtheus, who's kind of but not really a child of Hephaistos and Athena.
The north porch.
The south porch, which isn't even accessible from the main part of the building. The columns shaped like women are called Karyatids after a lesser known myth, and while they weren't unique to Athens these are the only ones we saw outside of a museum. Even then, they were pretty rare. Like I said, the Erechtheion is a really weird building and this doesn't help that.
Three things to point out here. First, look at how intricate the ceiling is. The Athenians were filthy rich in the 430s, when this was built, and didn't cut any corners on the decoration. Second, you see that hole? That's actually where lightning struck, and was never repaired because the ancients were pretty hesitant to rebuild something Zeus personally blew to smithereens. Last, the black gunk is marble's reaction to air pollution. The only way to get rid of it is to dab at it with a wet sponge for a few hours.
Again, they didn't spare any effort when it came to these buildings.
Athena's olive tree! Well, ok, it's a modern replanting of the original olive tree. Well, ok, it probably wasn't the same tree all the way through from the Mycenaean period to the Christian era, and it probably wasn't planted by Athena, but the ancients thought it was and that's good enough for us.
From the southwest. That rubble in the foreground is what's left of the temple of Athena Polias destroyed in 490BC. The Erechtheion only overlaps one corner, and probably only that much because they didn't want Athena to think they were snubbing her by abandoning her site entirely.
A picture with me actually in it. These are so rare that they should put it in the national museum.
The horde. Romans, Vandals, Goths, Turks, Moors, Huns, Venetians and every people under the sun.
Exodos.
The view of Athens was better going down than coming up.
The Aeropagus, everyone's favorite big rock.
The agora, temple on the left and stoa on the right.
I kinda have an obsession with the stupid thing.
By this point we had a very low opinion of the Athenian postal system, because none of us ever found the post office in our neighborhood, and then invariably outside of Athens our hotel would be right next to one. This, fifteen minutes uphill from the nearest residential building, did not help. Apparently it's for the cruise ship passengers who want to send a postcard right now, though to be fair I guess "Greetings from the Acropolis" is more sincere that way. About three days before the program ended we realized that there was box down the street from the girls' apartment on Eratosthenous and another twenty feet from the grocery store we used.
We also had a short museum trip. Unfortunately, on the subway on the way there Rachel got her pocket (well, her backpack) picked and lost everything up to and including her passport. The bright side is that, other than the initial distress and two or three embassy visits, it didn't mess up the rest of the trip for her. Anyway, while she and Dr. Farney were tending to that, Dr. Bloy showed the rest of us around.
While we were all incredibly sick of pottery and moderately sick of classical sculpture (naked athletes or women wearing 50lbs of clothing lest some poor guy be attracted to one) by the end of the trip, at this point it was a welcome relief from dark age pottery (etch-a-sketch) and archaic statues ("Alright, looking at the butt cheeks we can tell this one in a 6th century because of the shift in weight to one foot...").
This is either Zeus or Poseidon (or some schmuck with a javelin) and, unlike most statues in the museum, is actually from the classical period and not a later Roman copy. Archaic statues were boring because they were made of marble, and in any pose besides standing straight up, hands by the sides, stuff has a tendency to fall off. So when the Greeks got the hang of sculpture they started working with bronze, which doesn't have that problem. Unfortunately, bronze is both useful and easily melted down, so even fewer of these survived than marble statues (which are only useful for making lime). Incidentally, the Greeks got very good with bronze and this guy probably had sculpted eyelashes that he lost somewhere between sinking into the sea and making it to the museum.
A big, bottomless funerary urn depicting the deceased. It was standard practice to make liquid offerings to the dead, at least for a little while, and so these were common as both grave markers and convenient pipes for libations. Every other century or so the Athenians got fed up with the wealthy people throwing vast amounts of money at grave monuments and would make laws preventing it.
Hermes. The Romans liked marble sculpture and, unlike the Greeks, were not above adding stuff just for the sake of support. This is, more likely than not, a copy of a Greek bronze that didn't have the tree stump or the support between his calves. Even with those additions, you can still see how he arm fell off.
Aphrodite. Probably just a straight up copy of a classical bronze, especially since Hellenistic and Roman sculpters preferred the naked or scantily clad look for younger women in general and love goddesses in particular.
A small marble copy of the cult statue from the Parthenon. The real thing was significantly bigger (3x, I think?). All of her skin was solid ivory, and everything else was gold. Phidias, the guy responsible for the real statue, was chased out of Athens along with Perikles because either A) they embezzled some of the gold or B) Phidias depicted them on the inside of her shield, a religious no-no. Eventually he ended up in Olympia, where he crafted, again in gold and ivory, a statue of Zeus which is a contender for the nicest statue ever made by human hands. As in Wonder of the World good, and as in he was so revered that they turned his workshop into a hero cult honoring him good. Sometime shortly after that, though, an Athenian hit squad killed him for robbing and/or desecrating their favorite building.
A copy of a statue of the goddess Nemesis that was originally in black marble. Just because the female statues in this period got the Greek equivalent of burkas while the men got athletic, idealized bodies doesn't mean that the clothes were poorly made. This is one of the better examples, though even being one solid hunk of marble her head and arms have broken off.
White vases. These were buried with the dead. Unlike the black figure and red figure vases, the coloring was painted on these instead of fired into them.
Someone's giving something to the goddess Demeter. This probably has a connection to Eleusis, which will be in the next update.
An example burial. I think the skeleton's fake.
A prize. Olympic victors got several of these filled with olive oil from a particularly sacred tree, or maybe they only got one but could fill it up multiple times. The style was often imitated but the Greek seem to have been pretty honest about only putting the "this guy won at Olympia" inscriptions on the real deal. They all show the competition won and Nike (Victory) flying down to crown the victor.
And, just as a bonus, an Athenian drier.
That's three updates today, and this is probably all for tonight. Not only do I have my old loves Rome: Total War and Mount & Blade now that I'm back on my computer, but Kelly gave me something to play on dad's Wii. Tomorrow: updates on Eleusis and Olympia, and maybe Bassae and Messene.
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