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.