Visiting the Ancients

In early December Bruce and I wanted to see our friend Andreas one more time before ... going back home.

So we took a ferry from Brindisi (Italy) to Patra (Greece), which is overnight and takes 15 hours. Fortunately, there were virtually no passengers, so we had whole banquettes to ourselves (including all-night TV).

We drove off the ferry into Patra and drove up to the bridge crossing the Gulf of Corinth. The day was beautiful and warm, and the arid mountains bounding the gulf were crystal clear.

The waters of the Gulf of Coritnth are also crystal clear and the day was enchanting. We drove along little "seaside" towns which were quiet in this off-season, stopping at Galaxidi in the afternoon, and staying the night. It is a charming fishing village about ten miles from Delfi. There are no tourists this time of year, so we had the pick of the little hotels in town. The contrast between the supremely arid mountains and the gentle blue waters was sort of fascinating; one doesn't expect them to border each other.

A perfect seaside luncheon: pickled vegetables, cheeses, beer & fish

The next day we drove to Delfi, where the ancient oracle was located.

It is a fantastical location for people to have gotten to in ancient times. The mountains rise steeply from an olivey plain, and after winding round and round precipitous roads, one comes to Delfi the town, and beyond it ancient Delfi.

The site consists of a museum, which houses the objects that came out of the site, and the site itself. On a 70-degree hillside overlooking a tremendous ravine, the oracle was built, as well as, surprisingly to me, at any rate, an amphitheatre, many buildings, a school, a gymnasium, and at the very top, a gigantic stadium. The theatre seated 5,000 people, the stadium 40,000.

Here, in Delfi, was the belly-button of the World!

Delicate carvings remain: Honeysuckle leaves ornament the capital of a column

Intricate Grecian scripts adorn temple walls

The numbers tell the story: all those people we in this wildly inaccessible place! Some people came to to have questions answered, having come from far and wide, and in return, sent gifts to Delfi; some of these gifts were enormous carved stone statues, one in particular had come from an island, which means the very heavy, breakable thing had crossed the waters on a boat, then up into these mountains...it is mind-boggling.

It must be that we have incorrect ideas about ancient people. I, for one, think of the difficulty of doing things, of traveling, and think, well, they just didn't go far from home, because it was so difficult. Yet this is plainly not the case, whether it is medieval England, or ancient Rome, or ancient Greece. In fact, there seems to be an inverse relationship between the difficulty and the effort: the harder the thing is to accomplish, the greater the effort is put into it.

Think of the cathedrals that were built in the fourteenth century, the temples that were built 2,000 years ago. The Mycenaeans lived 3,500 years ago but spared nothing to produce stupendous stone structures, where the blocks of stone were so large that the only way it could have been raised was by building a hill, rolling the stones into place, and then taking down the hill. And Stonehenge was built, the stones carved, 5,000 years ago with antlers. Unfortunately, no matter how much you think about it, it is deeply incomprehensible and jarring to all one’s preconceptions.

After Delfi, we drove to Athens to stay with Andreas and wife Maria and their two children Christina and Savas. (I met Andreas at the University in High Wycombe.) Greece is going through significant upheaval, and we were a tad trepidacious about arriving in a place that the news portrays as spinning out of control. Everything seemed calm and the same as our last visit, though people have much less money for eating out, petrol, housing, and are very worried about how much worse things might get. There are regular protests, but not on the days we were there, but at any rate, the protests are only in front of the Parliament building. We managed to have excellent times with Andreas and family. The tavernas and little restaurants are very good, and we ate our fill of calamari, octopus, and other delicious things.

We had been up to the Acropolis the previous visit, so we did not do that, but went to the Archaeological Museum, where we saw the amazing finds from the ancient city of Mycenae. Gold jewellery, bronze tools, pots -- all sorts of things from Mycenae, which piqued our interest. We resolved to see Mycenae after Athens, as it was on our way back west.

The funerary art, as well as the busts, were very surprising because they were so individual, instead of heroic. I found myself really looking at faces, and tombstones that seemed to tell a story about the person who had died, often of women. They also have a huge collection of black and red Attic pottery, which my dad would have appreciated very much indeed.

After three nights, we said goodbye, wondering when we would see Andreas again, we headed back west, stopping at Mycenae. It is known as Cyclopean stone, because the stones of which this royal city was built are so large that myth says it was built by giants (Cyclops). The famous entrance gate depicting two lions is the earliest known example of sculpture in Europe.

The setting is beautiful, on a hill overlooking a great plain bounded by other great hills. Smoke signals were sent between cities, especially to warn of invaders by sea, which is visible in the distance. There was virtually no one there, and we were able to sit and contemplate how this came to be, what life would have been like, with only the sounds of goat bells and birds -- chaffinches, green finches, wagtails, robins, a hawfinch (!), sparrows, starlings.
This photo of Mycenae is courtesy of TripAdvisor

I sat looking at the grave circle, with its absolutely perfectly rectangular upright stones, fitted together so that a piece of paper could not fit between them, wondering...what can one wonder? What is one to think? From these graves were found women, children, babies, literally covered with gold, from head to foot. An extraordinary feature of Mycenae is the beehive-shaped tombs, gigantic underground structures built in a cone shape, with grand entrances using Cyclopean stones. We went inside one of them, tremendously tall and about forty feet across at the base where we stood. There was an interesting acoustical property: when you hoot, there is a three second reverberation. They must have noticed this and built them partly for this phenomenon.

This photo of Mycenae is courtesy of TripAdvisor

We drove across the Peloponnesus to ancient Olympus, where the Olympic games began. I, stupidly, kept looking for Mount Olympus, but there was no mountain!  Today, Olympia is a small town.  We stayed in a bedraggled pension with too many idiosyncrasies to mention and a decor that required sunglasses. But it was cheap and quiet! And offered decent wine and a home-cooked meal on a cold and rainy night near the bottom of the year.

The next morning, our last of the trip, we walked to the ancient site. It is beautiful, and very extensive.  [We couldn't take pictures, having stupidly forgotten our battery charger, but this photo tour -- starting with the villa of the Roman emporer Nero -- gives you some idea.]  So sophisticated, with baths and echo chambers and a stadium to accommodate 45,000 people. Again, one has to marvel at this many people dropping whatever they were doing to attend games! And where did they all come from?   

The hubbub must have been something: people buying and selling food and drink and souvenirs, and votive figurines by the thousands (many of which we saw in the museum nearby). The rituals bonfires, where a hundred oxen would be roasted, must have been a sight, and smell.

The great temple of Zeus succumbed to an earthquake around 400 AD, and the giant sections of columns lie there just as they fell that day.

And then we drove back to Patra and got on the afternoon ferry. It was my second trip to Greece, and Bruce's third. How marvellous, the things we have seen!