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DAY 2 Athens

    We’ll meet in the hotel lobby for a brief discussion about Athens and the Akropolis, then take a 10-minute walk to the Akropolis entrance. On our way we’ll pass the restored Theater of Herodes Atticus (the Herodion), originally built in the 2nd century AD and still used for musical and theatrical events during the annual Athens Festival (June-September).

        Excavations have shown that the Akropolis itself was inhabited as early as 5000 BC and in use continually through the Helladic (2800-1800) and Mycenean (1800-1100) periods. No remains save pottery survive from the Dark Age (1100-800), but during the Archaic period (800-500) several temples and other structures were built, all of which were destroyed during the sack of Athens by a Persian invasion in 480; the remains of these archaic buildings are housed in the Akropolis Museum. During the second half of the 5th century all the structures still to be seen on the Akropolis were built, first the Parthenon (447-438), then the Propylaia (437-432), the temple of Athena Nike (427-424), and the Erechtheion (completed around 395).
       We enter through the Propylaia, the entrance gate on the west end of the hill; the little temple on the south-west corner is the Athena Nike, restored most recently in 1936-40. Proceeding along the north side of the Parthenon, the Erechtheion is on the left and may be visited first; closed off for restoration for many years, it was opened in 1989 and we can now walk entirely around it. It is a composite structure which was used for several cults. principally those of Athena, Poseidon, and Erechtheus (son of Erichthonios, a mythical half-serpent half-man king of Athens). The south portico is the famous Karyatid Porch: the Karyatids are the six columns in the shape of women. The columns in place are all replicas, one original having been removed by Lord Elgin and the other five kept in the Akropolis Museum.
        Returning to the Parthenon, the north-east corner provides a good vantage to observe certain famous architectural refinements. The spaces between columns are not all the same, the corner columns are a bit thicker than the others, horizontal lines are curved and vertical lines are inclined. If you sight along the top step of the foundation, you will see the slight bulge of the center, which is repeated in the architrave above. All these innovations give the building an appearance of regularity and vertical lift from a distance (and it was from a distance, after all. that most people in antiquity viewed the Parthenon).
        “Parthenon” means ‘virgin” and the temple was dedicated to the virgin goddess Athena, the patroness of Athens. The sculptures on the east pediment represented the birth of Athena (who leapt in full armor from the head of her father Zeus). The scene on the west pediment was the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attica. The metopes had scenes found on many classical temples: the war between the Centaurs and Lapiths, the war between the Giants and the Gods. and the war between Athens and the Amazons. The frieze along the outer wall of the inner temple represented the procession of the Greater Panathenaia festival. Much of the frieze, along with some metopes and pedimental sculptures, was removed by Lord Elgin in 1801 and is now in the British Museum (the “Elgin Marbles”).
        The chief architects of the Parthenon were Iktinos and Kallikrates, and overall supervisor of the project was the famous sculptor Pheidias, who created the gold and ivory statue of Athena almost 40 feet high.
        Although converted into a Christian basilica and, later. into a Moslem mosque, the Parthenon remained largely intact until 26 September 1687, when a mortar shot set off an explosion in the building, which was being used by the Turks as a gunpowder and munitions storehouse.
        Just east of the Parthenon and below ground level is the Museum. Going though it clockwise, the north and back halls contain remains of pre-classical structures and the south halls contain artifacts from the Parthenon and Erechtheion. Specially interesting are the pedimental fragments from 6th century temples (the emphasis on serpentine shapes reflects the importance of snake-men in the mythical history of Athens), the Moschophoros (an early 6th century statue of a man carrying a calf), the Korai (archaic statues of maidens; the most famous is the Peplos Kore), the Kritias Boy (around 480, one of the earliest examples of the Classical style), and the few fragments from the Parthenon pediment not destroyed or carried off. The last two rooms contain what is left in Greece from the friezes of the Parthenon, Erechtheion, and Nike temple, and four of the original Karyatid columns.
        From the wall along the north side of the Akropolis you have a good view of modern Athens, as well as the ancient Agora, the Roman forum, the National Cathedral, and the Parliament building on Syntagma Square. From the lookout point on the east end you can see the National Garden, the Stadium where the 1896 Olympics were held, and the huge Roman temple of Jupiter (2nd century AD). The south wall looks down on the theater of Dionysos (where the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes were performed) and the Roman theater of Herodes Atticus.

        The Akropolis entrance is just a few yards from the Areopagos, a small hill just northwest of the Akropolis. Here, according to myth, the first jury trial was held, the trial of Orestes for the murder of his mother Klytemnestra; when the jury of 12 Athenian citizens voted 6 for acquittal, 6 to convict, Athena cast the deciding vote for acquittal and established the principle that an evenly split jury must decide for the defendant. During historical times the hill was the meeting place first for the aristocratic council of elders and later for the most serious trials (treason and homicide). In 51 AD St. Paul delivered here his sermon on the “Unknown God,” a copy of which is inscribed on a bronze plaque beside the stairs leading up the hill.

      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.
              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.

DAY 5 Dimitsana
        Today we'll go first to Mycenae.

      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!

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

DAY 6 Vassai & Olympia
This morning we'll drive through some of the most beautiful scenery of Arcadia, like Andritsena, Stemnitsa, and Karytena 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).

We pass through the entrance hall to the room in which are kept the finds from the restored Roman houses called the “Terrace Villas”; note especially the large Priapus (a garden watch-god), the bronze statue of an Egyptian priest (centuries older than the house in which it was found), and the fresco of Diana (appearing here in her more familiar guise as a short-skirted huntress). In the next two rooms pedimental sculptures from the Pollio Fountain show Odysseus blinding the Cyclops, and there are exquisite ivory furniture decorations.. In the rear courtyard are several large pieces, including a sarcophagus with reliefs of the Muses and a large curved stone inscription which stood in the harbor and listed customs and tax regulations. The next room has pottery and funerary remains and a chart showing the various forms taken over the centuries by Anatolian goddesses. The highlight of the museum is the display of objects from the Artemision (the precinct of Artemis), especially the two great statues of the Ephesian Artemis; she is fully clothed and looks almost like a pillar, wearing a headdress like a capital. The rows of oval objects across her chest have been interpreted as multiple breasts, fruit, eggs, and most recently as bulls’ testicles (odd as it may seem, this last interpretation may be closest to the truth). She seems utterly different from the Artemis of mainland Greek religion and cult, the only visual connection between the two goddesses being the numerous animals portrayed on her lower limbs (since the Greek Artemis was a huntress and was associated with forests, wild animals, and fertility). In fact (although this probably has little, if anything, to do with their eventual identification), both Artemises perhaps derive from a common ancestress, the fertility goddess of the Early Bronze Age (3000-2000 BC) in Asia Minor, Greece, the Cycladic islands, and Crete (where she appears on seals as the “mistress of animals,” a title given to Artemis by the historical Greeks). The last room contains representations of various Roman emperors.

After lunch in Selcuk there will be time for those who wish to visit the Byzantine church of St. John (built during the reign of Justinian). Then we’ll drive 5 minutes to the site of ancient Ephesus (actually, the Hellenistic and Roman site; the early city, just south of the temple of Artemis, cannot be excavated because of the high water table).

We'll stop briefly at what remains of the Temple of Artemis (the Artemision), then drive by the Magnesia Gate and the East Gymnasium, then go on foot down the ancient road (called Curetes Street) by the Prytaneion, the Upper Agora, and the Odeion. Next to the temple of Domitian is the Pollio Fountain, where the pediment we saw in the museum was located. Across from the Trajan fountain and the temple of Hadrian are the restored Terrace Villas. At present two of these villas are open; each consists of around 10 rooms around a central court and they are decorated with beautiful frescoes and mosaics. Their owners are unknown but they must have been rich Ephesians of the Roman Imperial period. The two buildings (separated by the famed public toilet with marble seats) are the Scholasticia Bath, restored by a Roman lady of this name in the 4th century a.d., and what used to be called the brothel; half-way between the "brothel" (now regarded as some kind of public building) and the theater a sign is etched in the marble street — a left foot, a heart, and a figure of a woman, fancifully interpreted as a sign telling passers-by that the brothel is just ahead to the left. The two most striking buildings at Ephesus are the theater and the Library of Celsus. The library is the tomb and memorial of Gaius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, proconsul of Asia in 106 AD, and was built by his son Aquila. Thanks to years of restoration by the Austrian excavators, the two-story facade is virtually complete; the books were kept in rectangular niches in the walls of the inner room.

DAY 10 Dalyan
        This is one of the best site-seeing days of the tour, taking in Miletus, Didyma, and Euromus.
Miletus was the most important city in the Greek world during the first part of the 6th century BC.
        Here philosophy began, under a succession of famous names: Thales, who predicted an eclipse of the sun in 585, founded geometry, and taught that the fundamental material of the universe is water; his successor Anaximander, who taught evolution, drew the first map of the earth, and believed that the basic principle of the universe is the “Unlimited;” and Anaximander’s pupil Anaximenes, who taught that the universe is consituted by the condensation and rarefaction of divine air. Also from this period was the first Greek geographer Hekataios, who traveled in Egypt and Asia and wrote a “Journey around the World.” In 499 Miletus led a revolt against Persia (the “Ionian Revolt”) which was put down in 494 after a naval defeat at Lade, then an island off Miletus but now, thanks to the silting of the delta, one of the hills west of the ruins. During the 4th century Miletus came under the control of Mausolos of Halicarnassus, was liberated by Alexander, and eventually became part of the Roman province of Asia. It shared in the wealth of the Roman empire, but gradually declined as shipping was prevented by the silting of the harbor.
        From the parking lot we walk directly to the theater (the water in the plan by the entrance to the site is of course no longer in our path). The theater, originally built in the 4th century, was enlarged during Hellenistic and Roman times from a capacity of 5,300 to 25,000. Only the bottom half of the seating area is preserved; the large structure in the upper part of the audience is part of a Byzantine fortress. Walking around the theater and over the theater hill, we come to the port and city center. Two hellenistic lion statues guard the entrance to the harbor, and the large harbor monument commemorates Pompey’s victory over the pirates in 63 BC and Augustus’ victory at Actium in 31. The harbor gate leads via the Processional Road to the South Agora. To the left of the gate are a Greco-Roman bath and the Delphinion, a Hellenistic precinct of Apollo. On the left side of the road are a partially reconstructed Ionic Stoa, a 15th century Selcuk bath, the Capito baths, a Hellenistic gymnasium, and a 2nd century AD fountain-house. On the right side are the North Agora , and the Bouleuterion. Next we come to a long storehouse and a small temple of Serapis with a well-preserved pediment.
        Our final stops are at the Ilyas Bey mosque, completed in 1404 and one of the great examples of Selcuk architecture, and at the monumental Faustina bath complex, built by the wife of the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Miletus: Ionic Stoa

From Miletus a Sacred Road led to the sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma, and we’ll now follow this route.

Didyma was never a city; it was the religious center for Miletus and one of the most famous oracles of antiquity. The archaic temple (which, according to Pausanias, replaced an earlier [i.e., indigenous] cult shrine), was renowned throughout the Greek world; before it was destroyed by the Persians in 494 BC., it received gifts from the Pharaoh Necho and from Croesus of Lydia. A new larger temple on the same model was begun by 300 BC and still not completed 500 years later: most of this temple still stands.
A small inner temple (naiskos), which once contained a statue of Apollo, is within the interior walls (cella); the room in which the oracles were actually delivered is up a flight of stairs at the opposite end of the courtyard, flanked on either side by labyrinths. The entrances to the courtyard are through tunnels under the labyrinths. The dimensions of the whole temple are 623 by 167 feet.

From Didyma we’ll drive south to the Mediterranean coast, stopping once to see the 2nd century Temple of Zeus at ancient Euromus, a pleasant contrast to the gigantic temple at Didyma.
Our stop will be at Dalyan, a picturesque village on the Dalyan River.