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.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
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.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Pnyx and Agora
This day was a little rough. First we had the first test, then a lecture covering all of Classical Greek history (Persian wars, Peloponnesian War, Thebes vs. Sparta, Phillip II), which took something like an hour and a half, and then we went over to the Pnyx, a small hill where the Athenian assembly met, and had another lecture on Athenian democracy. After breaking for lunch, I did my site report on the temple (combined with the test, roughly half of my grade for the course was determined this day), then we did the agora and, finally, the agora museum. This was probably the most strenuous day of the trip, mentally if not physically.
Ok, while my photos upload, here are some fun facts about Athenian democracy.
- Athenians were divided into four social classes based on property. They had really cool names. The first class were the pentakosiomedemnoi (literally "five-hundred-bushel-ers"), the second the hippeis ("knights" or maybe just "horse owners"), the third zeugetai (which just sounds cool), and the fourth were the dirt poor thetes, who only ever got political power because they provided all the labor for Athens' navy.
- Under Pericles' 'radical democracy', most officials (including the president-equivalents, but not the generals) were elected by lottery. There was an interview process to screen out the nutters and complete morons, but for the most part anyone from the appropriate class could find themselves in government.
- Juries consisted of between 200-500 men, usually old retirees who took advantage of the pay given to jurors as a form of welfare. The Athenians operated on the principle that you can bribe some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, so they grabbed as many people as possible for juries at the last possible second.
- There was no state prosecution, so the only way anyone was ever tried for something was if another private citizen took them to court over it. Think about that the next time you get a traffic violation.
- If there was a conviction, both parties came up with punishments and the jury voted on one of them. Socrates basically committed state-assisted suicide this way; his opponent suggested that they execute him, while Socrates said his punishment should be public honors and free meals for life in the building they used for entertaining foreign dignitaries.
Ok, here we go. First, a pair of photos that should have gone with the 16th update.
The acropolis from the temple of Hephaistos. Areopagus on the right and the agora on the left.
The stoa of Attalos. The agora is hidden by the trees. The stoa was reconstructed and now houses the agora museum.
The acropolis from the Pnyx.
Athenian sprawl. Can you find the 5th century temple is this photo?
What's left of the older (I think) of the two speaker's podiums.
And the newer (I think) podium.
A room with a mosaic. I'm not sure what this is, but it looks like a dining room. Probably a part of the bouleterion, where the elected legislature (the boule) met.
My temple from the other side of the tracks, right before breaking for lunch.
Pete, Hadrian and Dr. Farney in the agora. The agora is the Greek equivalent of a Roman forum, and during the classical period was both a marketplace and a religious and political center. Later the Hellenistic kings and Romans clutter it up so much that Augustus felt the need to build another, more Romanized, agora for businesses. As for Hadrian, you'll be hearing about him a lot a few weeks down the road. There aren't more pictures of the agora because it's utter chaos. You can't get a sense for what anything looked like because there's no reconstruction, and they can't reconstruct anything without destroying something else.
A necklace in the agora museum. This is from a dark age burial, and is actually mentioned in our archaeology textbook. It's an import from the Near East and was a few hundred years old before it was buried with a Greek woman.
A model of a grainery from the same burial. Five storage containers, so maybe an early nod to what would become the pentakosiomedemnoi class. Those little hatches at the top are required to keep the real containers ventilated, or the gas given off by the grain will make them explode.
The Greeks used broken bits of pottery (potsherds or, in Greek, ostraka) as scratch paper pretty frequently, but the more famous use was political. Every year the Athenians voted to decided if they should have an ostracism or not. If they did, basically the two biggest political heavyweights would duke it out in an election and the loser would be exiled for ten years. It was supposed to keep the state in relative harmony, and is probably why Athens didn't have the developed political parties of Rome or some other Greek cities. These ostraka, made from the bottoms of kylixes (there's on in the top middle) all have "Themistokles, son of whoever, the traitor" written on them in the same handwriting. They were probably prepared in advance by his rival's supporters and distributed to voters, then dumped in the agora somewhere afterwards.
More ostracism votes. Pretty much every significant Athenian politician had at least a few.
"Themistokles the traitor"
A blurry picture of something that's basically blurry in real life: a Spartan shield. A bunch of Spartans got captured by the Athenians after doing something stupid during the Peloponnesian war, and the Athenians mounted a bunch of their shields on the Parthenon. None of them are up there now, but you'll see the holes in the next update.
Kylixes, used for drinking wine. You'd see a red, murky picture in them that got clearer as you drank the wine. Ancient wine also had a lot of dregs in it, and the Greeks would try to hit targets with them as a game at parties. One of these is actually a picture of a guy doing just that.
A closeup.
Next up: a ton of Acropolis pictures.
Ok, while my photos upload, here are some fun facts about Athenian democracy.
- Athenians were divided into four social classes based on property. They had really cool names. The first class were the pentakosiomedemnoi (literally "five-hundred-bushel-ers"), the second the hippeis ("knights" or maybe just "horse owners"), the third zeugetai (which just sounds cool), and the fourth were the dirt poor thetes, who only ever got political power because they provided all the labor for Athens' navy.
- Under Pericles' 'radical democracy', most officials (including the president-equivalents, but not the generals) were elected by lottery. There was an interview process to screen out the nutters and complete morons, but for the most part anyone from the appropriate class could find themselves in government.
- Juries consisted of between 200-500 men, usually old retirees who took advantage of the pay given to jurors as a form of welfare. The Athenians operated on the principle that you can bribe some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, so they grabbed as many people as possible for juries at the last possible second.
- There was no state prosecution, so the only way anyone was ever tried for something was if another private citizen took them to court over it. Think about that the next time you get a traffic violation.
- If there was a conviction, both parties came up with punishments and the jury voted on one of them. Socrates basically committed state-assisted suicide this way; his opponent suggested that they execute him, while Socrates said his punishment should be public honors and free meals for life in the building they used for entertaining foreign dignitaries.
Ok, here we go. First, a pair of photos that should have gone with the 16th update.
The acropolis from the temple of Hephaistos. Areopagus on the right and the agora on the left.
The stoa of Attalos. The agora is hidden by the trees. The stoa was reconstructed and now houses the agora museum.
The acropolis from the Pnyx.
Athenian sprawl. Can you find the 5th century temple is this photo?
What's left of the older (I think) of the two speaker's podiums.
And the newer (I think) podium.
A room with a mosaic. I'm not sure what this is, but it looks like a dining room. Probably a part of the bouleterion, where the elected legislature (the boule) met.
My temple from the other side of the tracks, right before breaking for lunch.
Pete, Hadrian and Dr. Farney in the agora. The agora is the Greek equivalent of a Roman forum, and during the classical period was both a marketplace and a religious and political center. Later the Hellenistic kings and Romans clutter it up so much that Augustus felt the need to build another, more Romanized, agora for businesses. As for Hadrian, you'll be hearing about him a lot a few weeks down the road. There aren't more pictures of the agora because it's utter chaos. You can't get a sense for what anything looked like because there's no reconstruction, and they can't reconstruct anything without destroying something else.
A necklace in the agora museum. This is from a dark age burial, and is actually mentioned in our archaeology textbook. It's an import from the Near East and was a few hundred years old before it was buried with a Greek woman.
A model of a grainery from the same burial. Five storage containers, so maybe an early nod to what would become the pentakosiomedemnoi class. Those little hatches at the top are required to keep the real containers ventilated, or the gas given off by the grain will make them explode.
The Greeks used broken bits of pottery (potsherds or, in Greek, ostraka) as scratch paper pretty frequently, but the more famous use was political. Every year the Athenians voted to decided if they should have an ostracism or not. If they did, basically the two biggest political heavyweights would duke it out in an election and the loser would be exiled for ten years. It was supposed to keep the state in relative harmony, and is probably why Athens didn't have the developed political parties of Rome or some other Greek cities. These ostraka, made from the bottoms of kylixes (there's on in the top middle) all have "Themistokles, son of whoever, the traitor" written on them in the same handwriting. They were probably prepared in advance by his rival's supporters and distributed to voters, then dumped in the agora somewhere afterwards.
More ostracism votes. Pretty much every significant Athenian politician had at least a few.
"Themistokles the traitor"
A blurry picture of something that's basically blurry in real life: a Spartan shield. A bunch of Spartans got captured by the Athenians after doing something stupid during the Peloponnesian war, and the Athenians mounted a bunch of their shields on the Parthenon. None of them are up there now, but you'll see the holes in the next update.
Kylixes, used for drinking wine. You'd see a red, murky picture in them that got clearer as you drank the wine. Ancient wine also had a lot of dregs in it, and the Greeks would try to hit targets with them as a game at parties. One of these is actually a picture of a guy doing just that.
A closeup.
Next up: a ton of Acropolis pictures.
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