2008.G

JULY 2 Athens
This morning we'll take the Metro to the National Archaeological Museum.

      Because of its location at the isthmus joining the Peloponnese to north Greece, Corinth was one of the most important and richest commercial centers of antiquity; its citizens were known for their dissipation and its prostitutes for their beauty. In 146 BC a Roman army under Lucius Mummius defeated the Achaean League and, to confirm the final domination of Rome over Greece, Mummius ordered Corinth to be razed to the ground. A century later Julius Caesar established a colony at Corinth and during the Roman Empire Corinth recovered its former importance and wealth. It is estimated that Corinth had some 300,000 citizens (and an even larger number of slaves).
        The Corinth excavations cover an enormous area and most of them are inaccessible; the site we’ll visit is the center of the ancient city. Immediately upon entering the site we come to the small museum; the room on the right contains objects from the Greek period, that on the left from the Roman, and the rear courtyard has a frieze from the theater and various headless statues. After leaving the museum we pass an instructive display of column capitals, then turn left to the archaic Temple of Apollo (6th century BC), the only substantial structure not razed by the Romans. North of the temple is the Roman forum, surrounded by Roman commercial buildings and containing a high platform (Bema) where Roman magistrates addressed the people. From the east end of the Forum steps lead down to the Lechaion Road; on the left are remains of the “Captives’ Facade,” two columns of which (in the shape of barbarian captives) we saw in the museum. On the east side of the road are the famous Spring of Peirene and a well-preserved Roman public toilet.
        South of the city towers the acropolis of ancient Corinth, the “Acrocorinth.”   The top is covered with Byzantine, Venetian, and Turkish fortifications, but hardly anything remains from antiquity.

        From Corinth we drive south (about 1 hour) to Nafplion. On the way we pass Nemea, where the Nemean Games, one of the four great Panhellenic athletic festivals, were held and where Herakles, the greatest hero of Greek myth, accomplished his first Labor by killing the Nemean Lion. Halfway between Corinth and Nafplion we can see Mycenae on a hillside to the left, and, a little further on, Tiryns, another Bronze Age citadel.

      Mycenae, about a half hour’s drive north of Nafplion, is of course the major Bronze Age site on mainland Greece. In myth it was the home of Agamemnon. commander of the Greek army which fought against Troy, and historically it was the most powerful Greek state during the last third of the Bronze Age (1600-1100 BC), which is why this period is called Mycenean. Heinrich Schliemann excavated here in 1874-76 and found in Royal Grave Circle A the rich treasures which proved to him that Agamemnon really lived and that Homer’s story of the Trojan War was history, not myth. Mycenean culture and art were rich and sophisticated, absorbing influences from the high cultures of Egypt and Crete and transforming mainland Greece into a high culture in its own right.
        The myth of Mycenae is the story of the Pelopid dynasty. Pelops, who gave his name to the Peloponnese (Island of Pelops), had two sons, Atreus and Thyestes. Atreus became king of Mycenae but punished his brother, who had an adulterous affair with Atreus’ wife Airope, by forcing him to eat his two sons for dinner. Atreus had two sons, Menelaus and Agamemnon, who married sisters; Menelaus married Helen and Agamemnon married Klytemnestra. When Helen ran off with the Trojan prince Paris, Agamemnon and Menelaus became commanders-in-chief of the great expedition which fought and won the Trojan War. When Agamemnon returned from the war, Klytemnestra was not overjoyed to see him; she had taken a lover (Thyestes’ son Aigisthos) and Agamemnon, who had earlier sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia so that favorable winds would blow his fleet to Troy, now drove up to the palace with his new concubine, the Trojan princess Kassandra. Klytemnestra therefore invited Agamemnon to come in and take a bath; she gave him a garment to put on (with no holes for his head and arms) and while he stood there with this bag on his head she killed him with three blows of an axe. Later Orestes, the exiled son of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra, returned to Mycenae and killed his mother to avenge his father; for his crime of matricide he was driven mad by the Furies (mythic emblems of guilt) until finally, in the Attic version, he was acquitted at the first Areopagos trial.
        Although the Bronze Age began in Greece around the middle of the 3rd millennium BC., the first Indo-European Greek speakers arrived around 2000 and within a few centuries reached a position of dominance. During the Mycenean Period they built great palaces and established relations from Egypt to Turkey and the Black Sea. During the 12th century Mycenean civilization came to an end, for reasons still not entirely clear. The collapse coincided with general disruption in the eastern Mediterranean area and may be due, at least partially, to the raids of the mysterious “Sea Peoples” who appear in Egyptian records. A major role may also have been played by the movement into central Greece and the Peloponnese of new groups of Greek speaking peoples from the northwest, the so-called “Dorian invasion.” Most survivors of this turbulent period probably remained in Greece, but the level of culture changed radically; writing, building in stone, and representational art disappeared, and cultural depression and poverty were wide-spread. A Mycenean group fled to the island of Cyprus soon after the Dorian invasion; they were followed, toward the end of the 2nd millennium, by large-scale migrations from the Greek mainland to the eastern Aegean islands and the western coast of Turkey. For the next 500 years the center of Greek culture was not in Greece but in Asia Minor; here the old stories of heroes and a glorious past, kept alive by generations of oral poets, became the basis of Greek myth as we know it.

       We enter the citadel of Mycenae through the famous Lion Gate, the first monumental sculpture in Europe (13th century BC). Immediately we come to Grave Circle A, a royal cemetery in which Schliemann found six shaft graves, 19 skeletons, and the incredibly rich burial furnishings which made his discovery one of the great archaeological finds of all time. A ramp and stairs lead up from the grave circle to the palace on the top of the hill; unfortunately little remains of the palace except for a Great Court and a megaron (a room with central hearth and inner columns). From the top of the hill, with its view commanding the valley all the way down to Argos and Nafplion, we can follow a path down the back of the site to the Postern Gate and the Secret Cistern, a pitch-dark tunnel leading down some 80 steps through the solid rock. We can then return to the Lion Gate around the north side of the hill.
        Outside the city walls, just south of the site entrance. are an earlier royal grave circle (Circle B, discovered in 1952) and two “tholos” tombs which we can visit. Around 1500 BC the royal families here and at other Mycenean sites changed their burial style from shaft graves to tholos tombs, enormous circular rooms with domed roofs as high as 50 feet. The tholos closest to Grave Circle B was excavated by Mrs. Schliemann and is called the Tomb of Klytemnestra; it is one of the latest and most finely-constructed of the tholoi. The other, called the Tomb of Aigisthos. is much earlier and its roof has collapsed. Returning down the modern road about a half mile we come to the most famous tholos, the Tomb of Agamemnon; the half-columns which decorated its doorway are in the Mycenean Room of the National Museum.

        Maybe we’ll have lunch in the village of modern Mycenae; restaurants here have quaint mythical titles, like Orestes Cafe or La Belle Helene; the Klytemnestra Restaurant specializes in well-done chops!
              By late afternoon we’ll be in Nafplion, a beautiful port city on the Argolic Gulf. After the War of Independence Nafplion was the first capital of Greece, from 1828 to 1834, and it remains one of the most attractive cities in Greece. The architecture is unmistakably Venetian, there is even a marble piazza (Syntagma Square), and a striking castle, the Bourzi Palace (built in 1471). stands on an island in the bay. Above Nafplion are the fortifications of Its Kale (Three Castles) and, higher still, the fortress of Palamidi.
       Tonight we’ll have dinner in Nafplion.

After Nemea we'll drive up into the mountains of Arcadia to the village Dimitsana.

JULY 5 Olympia & Vassai
This morning we'll drive through some of the most beautiful scenery of Arcadia, like Andritsena, Stemnitsa, and Dimitsana on our way to the temple of Epikourios Apollo at Vassai, one of the most dramatic and architecturally significant temples of the classical period. Then we'll drive west to Olympia.

        Predictably, Olympia was a cult center before Mycenean times, although the official date for the first Olympic Games is 776 BC. Originally a local festival of Elis (the territory of Olympia), the Games became the great panhellenic festival during the Archaic period and continued to be held until suppressed by the anti-pagan edict of Emperor Theodosius I in 391 AD. The Games were held every four years; ten months before their occurrence the competitors began to train; they spent the last month at Olympia and during the actual week of the Games a Sacred Truce was observed by all Greeks. Competitors had to be native speakers of Greek (although in the last phase Romans were admitted), and no married women could be present under penalty of death. The list of events was periodically augmented, and came to include the foot-race, boxing, chariot-racing, horse-racing, the Pentathlon (jumping, wrestling, running, spear and discus throwing), and the Pankration (a form of wrestling in which everything was allowed but biting and gouging). To win at Olympia was the greatest honor a Greek could attain, promising immortal fame (as the Victory Odes of the 5th century poet Pindar declare) not only for him but for his family and city as well.
        In myth Herakles is the founder of the Games. At the first Games he was the only contestant, which was acceptable for the running and throwing events but extremely boring in the case of boxing and wrestling, so boring, in fact, that his father Zeus, who was present as a spectator, entered the wrestling match against Herakles and grappled him to a draw. Other versions say that the Games were founded by another person with the same name, Herakles the Daktyl, who was only as big as a finger. or by Pelops to commemorate his victory over the king of Elis.
        King Oinomaos of Elis had a daughter Hippodameia but refused to allow her to marry, either because he was in love with her himself or because a Delphic oracle warned that he would be killed by his daughter’s husband. He compelled any suitor to compete in a chariot race against him and, since he had the fastest horses in the world, he always won (and celebrated his victory by attaching the loser’s head to his palace wall). When Pelops arrived, Hippodameia fell in love with him and persuaded her father’s charioteer Myrtilos to sabotage Oinomaos' chariot. The chariot crashed and, as Oinomaos lay dying, he cursed Myrtilos; later Myrtilos assaulted Hippodameia and, thrown from a cliff by Pelops, cursed Pelops (it is this curse which, through Pelops’ sons Atreus and Thyestes, extended down through the royal house of Mycenae).

Nafpaktos Harbor

JULY 7   Meteora & Volos
        Delfi was the most famous oracle of the ancient world (remember that an oracle was a place or a message, not a person), already held in highest esteem at the time of Homer (8th century). Here questions were asked of the god Apollo (mostly by rulers and governments in the earlier phase, by individuals in the later phase) and his answer was transmitted by a priestess, the Pythia, who babbled something incoherent which was translated into hexameter verse by the college of priest-poets. The petitioner would first purify himself in the sacred Kastalian spring, then write his question on a lead tablet, and wait for his turn to submit it. The order of submission was determined by lottery, unless one was granted the right of promanteia (the privilege of cutting in line), presumably in return for a handsome gift to the sanctuary; an extant inscription just below the Temple of Apollo reads “Delfi grants to the people of Chios the right of promanteia (cutting the line).” The oracles were characteristically vague or ambiguous, thus increasing immeasurably their odds of success.
        In myth Delfi (like almost all oracles) was at first the possession of Gaia (Earth), who was the first to utter prophecies. Later Apollo killed the great serpent which guarded the site and took it over (Pytho, the early name of Delfi, and Pythia, the priestess, may be words derived not from python [serpent] but from pythao [a verb “to rot”], since Apollo left the body of the serpent to rot in the sun).
       We’ll begin with the museum (the display labels are mostly in Greek and French, so if you don’t know one of these languages attach yourself to someone who does).
       We go up the entrance stairs to the first exhibit, a large omphalos (navel stone). Zeus saw where two eagles, flying from the ends of the earth, met; this place was Delfi, the navel of the earth. The following rooms contain in order the Sphinx of the Naxians; a huge archaic sculpture which stood atop a 30-foot column, and the pediment and frieze from the Treasury of the Siphnians; large, very early bronze shields; two kouros statues of Kleobis and Biton, two youths proclaimed by Solon to be the most fortunate persons in the world, since they pulled their mother’s chariot to the Argive Heraion, fell asleep in the temple, and never awoke; a treasure of gold, silver, and ivory objects found in 1939 under a path below the Temple of Apollo; sculpture from the Treasury of the Athenians; statuary from the archaic Temple of Apollo (this temple, called the Alkmaionid temple because it was paid for by the aristocratic Athenian clan of the Alkmaionidai, was the second on the site and was destroyed by an earthquake in 373 BC). The Alkmaionid temple was quickly rebuilt, and the new temple’s repair by Domitian at the end of the 1st century a.d. is commemorated by an inscription; a rare and important inscription of a hymn with musical notation. objects from the Tholos, a round temple in the lower shrine; 4th century sculptures, including three enormous dancing girls on a column which was the base for a tripod, and the votive offering of Daochos, a family group tracing his genealogy; the highlight of the museum (and perhaps of all museums) is the bronze statue of the Charioteer in; this spectacular piece, from around 475 BC, stands poised at the end of the Archaic age, on the verge of motion and the Classical style.
        Turning left from the Museum entrance, we take the paved path to the site entrance (separate ticket). As we begin up the slope after the entrance we come first to the Offerings of the Arcadians and the Spartan Monument of the Admirals, two rows of statue bases, then two semi-circular Argive monuments, followed by a large number of treasuries, including those of the Sikyonians, the Siphnians, the Thebans, and the Athenians (reconstructed). Next is a small Council Chamber near the site of the column which held the Sphinx of the Naxians, the place at which the gold and silver treasures in the museum were found, and the Treasury of the Corinthians. Below the Temple of Apollo is the Stoa of the Athenians, a colonnade honoring the victory over the Persians in 480, and before the Temple is the Altar of Apollo, dedicated by the people of Chios (with the aforementioned inscription granting Chios the nght of promanteia). A reconstructed pillar held an equestrian statue of Prusias, king of Bithynia in the 2nd century BC. The great Temple of Apollo was the actual site of the oracle, perhaps in an underground chamber. Above the temple is a small but well-preserved theater, built in the 4th century and restored by the Romans. A steep but worthwhile walk leads from the theater to the Stadium, the best-preserved in Greece; it held 7,000 spectators and is still used for theatrical and musical events. After returning downhill to the entrance we turn left and follow the path to the Kastalian Spring; a little below the spring is a refreshment terrace (much needed by those who’ve gone all the way to the stadium) with a good view of the lower site. The large, recently-excavated gymnasium area is now open to visitors; below it is the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, which contains an old and a new temple of Athena, two treasuries, and a beautiful, partially-reconstructed 4th century Tholos.

After visiting Delfi we'll drive north to Kalambaka, the town of the Meteora (24 Orthodox monasteries perched on sheer precipices). Long ago under water, the rocks have been wierdly shaped and pitted by countless centuries of wind and rain. The recesses and their inaccessibility attracted early hermits and monks to the place, and during the 14th century the first monasteries were built. Once crowded and prosperous, they became virtually deserted during the last century, although a current renaissance in monasticism is accompanied by large building projects at several of the bigger monasteries. We’ll visit either Varlaam or Metamorphosis, and see the chapel (with frescoes depicting every possible way to become a martyr), the museum, and the platform from which rope nets are let down several hundred feet by a windlass; this was until 70 years ago the only means of entrance to the monasteries and still the only way to transport goods and materials. Male visitors are not allowed to wear shorts in the monasteries, and women must wear a skirt or dress and have their shoulders covered.

meteora2

        From Kalambaka we'll drive east for about 90 minutes to Volos, a large port city on the Aegean sea. Volos is a wonderful port city famous for its ouzeris (waterfront restaurants specializing in the seafood appetizers that are served with the anise-flavored liquor ouzo).

July 8-9 Skopelos
       The morning of the 8th we'll take the ferry to Skopelos.

STAFILOS beach

        Like the other Sporades Islands, Skopelos is mountainous and pine-covered, with dozens of marvelous beaches and picturesque coves and villages. It’s visited during the summer by many knowledgeable tourists from around the world, but fortunately it has no airport and hasn’t yet been ruined by mass tourism. It’s a big island, about 40 miles long and from 5 to 12 miles wide. A single paved road runs from Glossa, an elevated village on the west coast, to the main town of Skopelos. Situated in a circular harbor surrounded by mountains, the town rises steeply above the water like a huge layer cake. The bottom layer is the waterfront, a half-mile of restaurants, shops, and cafes almost hidden by the green of mulberry and plane trees, while above it layers of whitewashed houses with red tile roofs and brightly painted shutters seem to be piled on top of one another.
        What is there to do in Skopelos? One could easily spend two days just exploring the town; the people are friendly and the view around every corner of the narrow lanes is wonderful; when you get tired of walking, have a seat at one of the waterfront cafes and watch the boats or chat with the people at the next table. If you want to see other parts of the island, rent a motor scooter or take the bus or a taxi; both taxis and busses leave from a plane tree on the waterfront, and the bus schedule is on a sign attached to the tree. About two and a half miles from town (a pleasant and not difficult walk) is Staphylos. the best-known beach; it’s named for a mythical prince of Crete who supposedly colonized Skopelos during the Bronze Age. Another two and a half miles along the truly breathtaking scenery of the southern coast brings you to Agnondas, a quaint village with a few houses and three seafood restaurants. Or, if you want to see the whole island, take the bus all the way to Glossa and back.
        Skopelos is the home of Kostas and Voula Kalafatis, my Greek colleagues (they help me with my arrangements while I am in America). If you want information, help, or just friendly conversation and a cup of coffee (or something stronger), go to their shop on the waterfront.

JULY 10   Athens
        On the 28th we'll take the ferry back to the Agios Konstantinos on the mainland; from here it's a 2-hour bus ride back to Athens.

JULY 11 Departure