These dogs are not dead

SEPT 22  Athens

IMPORTANT:  Since we are leaving Athens for Crete tonight on the overnight ferry, it's imperative that everyone be at the Austria Hotel by 7 PM!

            If you’re coming to Greece from the US, you will have left the day before. The time difference between the two countries is 7 to 10 hours; if it’s 8 am in California (and 11 am in Toronto), it’s 6 pm the same day in Greece. The new airport of Athens is attractive and efficient, and easy to navigate.  It’s a good idea to change some money in the banks at the airport; unlike some countries, banks at the airport and everywhere in Greece have approximately the same rate of exchange, which is always better than the rate outside Greece. After coming out the front door of the airport, you’ll see a line of taxis, and a corresponding line of people waiting for taxis. Take a taxi from the taxi stand to the HOTEL AUSTRIA, 7 MOUSON STREET, AKROPOLIS - FILOPAPPOU (telephone 923-5151).  When you arrive at the hotel, tell the driver to wait while you go inside. Tell the desk clerk at the hotel you’re with Dick, and he’ll make sure you pay the right amount for the taxi (it should be around 30 euros) .
        You or I can be contacted anytime at this Athens telephone number: 011-30-210-923-5151 (Hotel Austria). The FAX number is 011-30-210-924-7350. Dial all 15 digits from North America, only the last ten in Athens. If anyone might want to contact you, tell them to use these numbers and we will be notified immediately, wherever we are. Be sure that you, or whoever is calling, mention the name “Dick,” so as to be identified properly. I do not include numbers of all our hotels, since at most of them the desk clerks do not speak English (anyone calling probably would not be able to leave a message).
        This evening we'll take one of the luxury Minoan Line Ferries to Crete; we'll have First Class cabins as nice as any cruise ship.

SEPT 23  Crete
    This morning we’ll go for a walk around Iraklion; particularly interesting is the open market.  At the end of our walk we’ll arrive at the Minoan Museum, which houses the most important finds from Knossos and other Minoan sites.
        The museum is very easy to navigate.  It’s arranged chronologically; you walk up the right-hand set of rooms, then back the left-hand rooms, then upstairs to the frescoes, then downstairs to an annex of post-Minoan Greek and Roman objects. Since the best Minoan art is miniature (some of it can only be seen through a magnifying lens), I would like to compel you to look at everything in detail. Therefore, instead of giving you the location of the most important objects, I will give you an assignment, to find the following: 1) the House Mosaic; 2) the Snake Goddesses; 3) the Phaistos Disc; 4) the double bee pendant (on the entrance ticket); 5) signet seals showing 2 rabbits dueling and a mouse sitting on a stool; 6) any evidence that the Minoans knew the wheel; 7) a boar’s tooth helmet; 8) Linear A and Linear B tablets; 9) Kamares pottery; 10) the Hagia Triada Sarcophagus.

                     
                                Knossos:  the "Queen's Chambers"

        Late afternoon (when it’s cooler and less crowded) we’ll go by public bus (about 10 minutes) to the so-called Palace of Minos at Knossos, just south of Iraklion. This was the largest and most important of the Minoan palaces in Crete, and has been partially reconstructed, chiefly by the original excavator, Sir Arthur Evans. The name “Minoan,” derived from the mythical king Minos, was used by Evans to designate the Bronze Age civilization of Crete (3000-1000 b.c.).
        Although Knossos was inhabited far back into Neolithic times, the first palaces were built around 2200 BC. The Minoan civilization was extremely advanced, the first “high culture” in Europe, and rivalled the contemporary cultures of Babylon and Egypt.  Sometime around 1750 (or earlier) the first palaces were destroyed, perhaps by earthquake, and new palaces (the “Second Palaces”) were built; these in turn were destroyed during the first half of the 15th century (or more than a century earlier, if the destruction resulted from the volcanic eruptions at Santorini). The best Minoan pottery (especially Kamares Ware, beautifully-shaped polychrome cups and vases with eggshell-thin walls) was made during the First Palace period, while the best jewelry, engravings, and frescoes are from the Second Palace period. The Minoans also had writing systems, both hieroglyphic and linear (“Linear A”), but these have not yet been deciphered. Later Linear A was adapted by the Myceneans to write Greek; this script, called Linear B, is a syllabary (each symbol represents a syllable) and has been found on more than 4000 tablets from mainland Greece and Crete.
        There are two important things to keep in mind as you walk through the ruins: (I) at least 75% of what you see has been reconstructed, much of it to conform with Evans’ theories of Minoan history, and these theories have recently come under heavy criticism; (2) the Minoans were not Greek, although they greatly influenced the first Greeks (the Myceneans) in art and architecture; their impact on historical Greece seems to have consisted mostly of certain religious traditions and practices (e.g., the Eleusinian religion).
       We enter (after running a gauntlet of tour guides) near two large round holes, perhaps cisterns. The main entrances were at the north and south ends, and led into the central court:  on the east and west sides of the court were complexes of rooms and apartments, several stories high, ventilated and lit by light wells. At the northwest corner of the court is a throne room with nice griffin frescoes (restored); on the floor above, around a light well, are replicas of many of the frescoes found at Knossos (the originals are in the Iraklion Museum). All along the west side are storehouses; in the southwest corner, at the end of a processional corridor, are a propylaion and great staircase. On the east side of the court is another staircase, called by Evans the “Grand Staircase,” because he thought it led to the royal living quarters; this staircase leads down through three levels around a light well into a maze of rooms, one of which is called the Throne Room and another the Queen’s Bedroom. Outside these rooms, alongside a narrow stairs, is a storehouse of giant pithoi, 6-foot high storage vases; beneath a metal grill nearby is a good example of the terra cotta plumbing which brought running water to the palace; in the room of the Medallion Vases a small section of floor is cut away around a column base. Northwest of the palace is a paved road, perhaps the oldest in Europe, which widens as it ends at shallow stairs leading to the north entrance.

                   
                                   Knossos:  Bull-Leaping Fresco

       Tonight we’ll eat at an ouzeri on the harbor, and there will be an opportunity to see, hear, and take part in Cretan dancing and lyra music at a famous taverna.

SEPT 24
        Today we’ll go by bus to Faistos, an important Minoan palace on the Messara plain in southern Crete. 

                               
                                         Faistos:  the Megaron

        On the way to Faistos we’ll stop at the archaeological site of Gortyna, where the famous archaic Law Code of Gortyna was found. Then we’ll continue to Faistos, a palace almost as large as that at Knossos. Built at the same time as Knossos, but more carefully and with better material, Faistos is our example of an unrestored Minoan palace.
        From Faistos we'll drive north for a late lunch at Drosia, in a verdant mountain valley, where all the residents have the same last name and the food is unique.
    Tonight we'll return to Athens on the overnight ferry.

SEPT 25  Nafplion
    This morning we leave by bus for the Peloponnese.  As we drive west out of Athens we’ll pass Daphni Monastery  (5th or 6th century, rebuilt 1080), the western extension of Peiraeus port, and enormous oil refineries. Our first stop will be at ancient Eleusis, 15 miles west of Athens.
 
       

                            
                                     Eleusis:  Greater Propylaia

        Continuing west from Eleusis, we pass the island of Salamis; at the narrowest point of the straits between Salamis and the mainland, a Greek fleet under the Athenian admiral Themistokles won a decisive victory over the Persian fleet of Xerxes in September 480, ending the great Persian invasion and establishing Athens’ dominance in Greece.
        About 40 minutes after Eleusis we come to the Corinth Canal, where we’ll stop for lunch and a walk over the canal bridge.  Although several attempts were made in antiquity to dig a canal through the narrow Isthmus of Corinth, none succeeded and the canal was finally completed in 1893. It is 4 miles long, 80 feet wide, and 26 feet deep; from the bridge down to the water is 290 feet.

                    
                                          The Corinth Canal

        Ten minutes’ drive from the canal brings us to ancient Corinth.

                                  Corinth:  the Temple of Apollo


                             
                                    Corinth:  Peirene Fountain

      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.

                            
                                      Mycenae:  Tholos tomb

Mycenae:  gold death mask

Mycenae:  Lion Gate

       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.

Nafplion:  Bourzi Palace

                          
                                              Nemea:  Stadium

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

                          
                            Vassai:  Temple of Apollo Epikourios

Dimitsana

Stemnitsa

SEPT 27  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).

Olympia Museum:  Hermes of Praxiteles

Olympia Museum:  helmet of Miltiades