Oct 15
        This morning we'll take the Metro to the National Archaeological Museum.

        It’s not quite chronologically correct, but probably the best way to see the museum is to go clockwise around the  north side, then see the middle rooms and second floor, then continue around the south side. First we  see archaic sculpture, especially of the "kouros" type (larger-than-life statues of nude youths); next isthe famous Poseidon (or Zeus), a bronze statue found in the sea off Artemision (our ferry to Skopelospasses over the spot) and the Eleusis Relief (portraying the goddess Demeter, her daughter Kore. and Triptolemos, the Johnny Appleseed of Greek myth); the back hall is mainly funerary sculptures,  chiefly from the Kerameikos cemetery in Athens; a side room contains a late model of the great statue of Athena once in the Parthenon; and in the center of the back hall is another bronze found off Artemision, the Horse and Jockey; in the left rear is a collection of small bronzes. including the  famous rampant satyr featured on the most popular postcard in Athens; nearby are spectacular  Egyptian objects from two private collections; stairs lead up to the second floor, where you’ll find the pottery collection (from the Bronze Age to Hellenistic) and the Thira (Santorini) exhibit (do not miss the spectacular frescoes kept in a specially darkened and air-conditioned room); the center hall is the  Bronze Age (or Mycenean) room, containing the objects found by Schliemann at Mycenae (e.g., the Mask of Agamemnon) and artifacts from other Mycenean sites; on one side is a narrow hall of  Cycladic remains (early Bronze Age objects from the Aegean islands), notably fertility idols and the remarkable musician figurines, and on the other side a display of Neolithic finds, chiefly from Dimini  and Sesklo (near Volos); the right side of the back hall is late classical, mostly funerary, sculpture; the south hall leading back to the entrance is Hellenistic (3rd and 2nd century BC) and Roman art. 

Oct 16
        After checking in at our hotel, 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.

        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 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 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.

Oct 17
        Today we’ll go by bus to Faistos, an important Minoan palace on the Messara plain in southern Crete, and then we’ll explore the south coast of Crete.
        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.
        After lunch at Drosia, a wonderful mountain village on the slopes of Mount Ida, we'll drive north to Rethymnon, a fairly touristy port town about 80 minutes west of Iraklion, that is redeemed by an exquisite Venetian harbor and a beautiful Old Town. Then we'll go east to Bali, a tiny village on the sea near Fodele, the birthplace of Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco).  At Bali  we can go for a swim and have a seafood meal in a little restaurant overlooking the beach and scenic harbor.
        This evening we'll return to Iraklion for the ferry back to Athens.

Oct 18
        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 was the home of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the most important cult religion of antiquity before Christianity. Like most ancient religious centers, Eleusis was used for cult practices far into prehistoric times, but its fame and importance greatly increased during the 6th century BC, when a major building project was carried out by the Athenian tyrant Peisistratos. Another large-scale reconstruction occurred during the 2nd century AD, especially during the reigns of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. The cult continued to function until the end of the 4th century.
        The Eleusinian religion was based on the myth of Demeter and her daughter Kore (Persephone). After Kore had been carried off by her uncle Hades to be his bride and the queen of the underworld, Demeter searched for her everywhere; when she came to Eleusis, she disguised herself as an old woman and sat by a well; the women of Eleusis, coming to draw water, tried to talk to Demeter but got no response until a woman named Baubo or Iambe exposed herself to the goddess; Demeter smiled and told the women the fiction that she was Doso from Crete, that she had been captured by pirates, and was now wandering friendless and penniless; having secured a position as nursemaid to the infant son of King Keleus and Queen Metaneira, Demeter held the baby every night in the fire, trying to burn away its mortality; one night Metaneira came upon this scene and cried out; Demeter revealed her true identity, commanded the Eleusinians to build her a temple, and sealed herself inside; since she was the goddess of fertility and vegetation, nothing grew during her isolation; finally Zeus, realizing that without crops, animals, or humans being born there was no future for the gods, commanded his brother Hades to return Kore to her mother; Hades did so, but since Kore had eaten pomegranate seeds in the underworld she was compelled to spend half of each year above the earth and half below (in fact, despite this arrangement, we never hear of Kore/Persephone henceforth other than as the queen of the underworld).
        The annual ceremony of the Greater Eleusinia took place every September; initiates holding a small pig purified themselves (and the pig) in the sea, then marched in procession to Eleusis for several days of varying activity, sometimes orgiastic, sometimes in silent mourning; at the climax of the rites, the high priest (Hierophant) and priestess enacted the marriage of Zeus and Demeter (perhaps quite graphically, as analogy with other cult rituals indicates) and the birth of their child; the celebrants handled sacred objects (e.g., a triangle, a serpent, a fennel stalk, a women’s comb, all condemned as obscene by early Christian converts from the mysteries) and then, stunned by the sudden appearance of a great fire from the inner shrine, were shown the supreme sacred object (probably a sheaf of wheat).
        The great attraction of the religion was surely that it promised a special sort of afterlife to its initiates. However, since revelation of the nature of the religion and its rites was strictly forbidden, we have no sure idea of what this afterlife consisted. Since the charter myth of the religion concerns the separation of a mother and her child and the eventual reunion of mother and child, I would suppose that the afterlife promised to good Eleusinians was in some way represented as a return to the blissful situation of earliest childhood, before that fateful separation of mother and child, the basis of all subsequent anxiety, took place. Our only ancient evidence says merely that the Eleusinians after death continued to practice the Eleusinian mysteries. In any case, almost anything would be preferable to the usual Greek concept of the afterlife, which regarded the souls of the dead as insensate and powerless, flitting around in the darkness of the underworld and making squeaking noises like bats.
        Entering from the east we are in a large forecourt, with a temple of Artemis and a well. We pass through what was the Greater Propylaia, patterned after the Akropolis Propylaia; part of the pediment is in the forecourt, and the relief bust on it may be Marcus Aurelius, who built the Propylaia; we then pass through a second gate, the Lesser Propylaia (forbidden to the non-initiated in antiquity under pain of death); to the right is the Ploutonion, an area and cavern sacred to Plouto; we then come to the Telesterion, or Temple of Demeter, with an inner sanctuary, the Anaktoron; the chief ceremonies of the cult took place in this temple, which was about 170 feet square with 42 columns and eight rows of seats on each side;  West is a late Bouleuterion (Council hall) and above is the Museum, very small and very interesting. Outside is a beautiful Roman sarcophagus of the 2nd century AD.  Inside are 6 small rooms: 1 contains a magnificent archaic amphora with scenes of Odysseus blinding the Cyclops Polyphemos and Perseus fleeing the pumpkin-headed Gorgon sisters of Medousa; 2 has a cast of the Demeter/Kore relief we saw in the National Museum; 4 contains two models of the site (the lower is the Peisistratid [6th century BC] and the upper is the 2nd century AD Roman); 5 has part of a caryatid column from the Lesser Propylaia and a piece of burial cloth, the only surviving example from Classical times; 6 has pottery representing continuous habitation from the early Bronze Age to the 5th century AD, including fertility idols of the Cycladic type.

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

        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.
        We’ll stop briefly in Argos to see the ancient theater; one of the largest in Greece, it held 20,000 spectators and the seats were cut from the native rock. Next to the theater is a large Roman bath.

    Argos was of great importance in Greek myth, especially because of the hero Perseus, whose grandfather Akrisios was king of Argos. Warned by an oracle that he would be killed by the future son of his daughter Danae, Akrisios locked up Danae in a bronze dungeon. Discovering one day that she had given birth to a son (Perseus: his father was either Zeus, who entered the dungeon in a golden rain-shower, or Akrisios’ twin brother Proitos), Akrisios locked both Danae and her son in a chest and threw it into the sea at Nafplion. It washed ashore on the island of Seriphos and was found by a fisherman Diktys, who was the rightful king of Seriphos but had lost his throne to his evil brother Polydektes. Some years later Polydektes discovered Danae and fell in love with her; wanting to get Perseus out of the way, he ordered him to bring back the head of the gorgon Medousa (a female monster with snakes for hair, whose look turned anyone whose eyes met hers into stone). 
        With the help of the goddess Athena Perseus decapitated Medousa and flew back on winged sandals to save his mother. On the way he passed over Ethiopia, where he saw a princess about to be devoured by a sea monster. When King Kepheus told Perseus that he had been obliged to sacrifice his daughter Andromeda to be freed from the monster, Perseus promised to save her and kill the monster if he could marry Andromeda.  Kepheus agreed, but when Perseus had accomplished the task Kepheus told him that Andromeda was already engaged to marry his twin brother Phineus. Perseus used the head of Medousa to turn Phineus and his men to stone, then flew with Andromeda back to Seriphos where he did the same to Polydektes and his army. He now restored Diktys to his rightful position as king of Seriphos, then returned to Argos with his bride and mother. Since Akrisios had left town after learning that Perseus was alive, Perseus now became king of Argos.  Years later, he entered an athletic contest in Larissa in north Greece, where Akrisios was living under an assumed name. Perseus threw his discus wildly and it struck his grandfather, who was sitting in the stands, on the foot and killed him instantly.

        By late afternoon we’ll be in Nafplion, a beautiful port city on the Argolic Gulf. After theWar 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.

Oct 19
       Today we’ll visit two very important sites. Mycenae and Epidavros.

        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 returning to Nafplion, we’ll go northeast 20 miles to Epidavros, home of the most important medical sanctuary of ancient Greece (the Asklepion) and the best-preserved ancient theater. Considerable archaeological activity is currently taking place here, especially in the areas west of the Odeion and south of the Tholos. From the end of June through September ancient dramas are performed here in the Epidavros Festival.
        We’ll begin at the theater, reached by a short walk through a park-like setting in a pine forest. The theater, which holds 14,000, was built in the 4th century BC and is a superb example of a classical theater (to tell at a glance what kind of theater you’re in, look at the orchestra, the circular or semicircular area between the seats and the stage; the classical theater has a full circle [5th-4th cent.], the Hellenistic theater [3rd-2nd cent.] has about a third of the orchestra covered by the stage, and the Roman theater has a semicircular orchestra [there are of course variations]).
        Next we’ll visit the little museum. The anteroom has a case of ancient medical instruments, and the main room has many casts of sculptures, plans and diagrams of the site, and parts of the Temple of Asklepios and the Tholos.
        Finally we’ll visit the site of the sanctuary.  Again we find that a place of magical or religious significance was used for cult purposes far back into prehistory. During the Archaic period Apollo seems to have been the chief god here, but by the 4th century BC. Asklepios, the god of medicine and healing, had taken over the cult, and Epidavros became the Mayo clinic of antiquity. Patients, especially those suffering from chronic physical or emotional ailments, came here to be cured; then as now, they waited an indeterminate length of time to be seen by the priest-physicians, then went to the dormitory (Abaton) to sleep and dream; a diagnosis was made by dream interpretation, and the treatment prescribed. Usually this involved diet, exercise, and hydrotherapy, methods which required the patient to stay on at Epidavros during the cure and insured a high standard of living for the priests and local entrepreneurs. This is why the site is full of baths, gymnasia, and lodgings, and why the theater itself might be regarded as a functional equivalent to the magazines in a doctor’s office today.

        On our way back to Nafplion we'll stop at Argos to see the amazing ancient theater, cut into the solid rock of the hillside and once holding 20,000 spectators.  Near Argos is the mysterious ancient Pyramid of Elliniko and the Church of the Life-Giving Spring (a spring gushes from beneath the church, aand its chapels are in adjoining caves).

Oct 20
        Today we’ll drive west and south through the Peloponnese to Mistra and Kiparissia. Our first stop is at Lerna, just 10 minutes around the bay from Nafplion.

        Lerna was excavated in 1952-58 by J. Caskey of the Univ. of Cincinnati and is famous for the “House of Tiles,” the earliest palace in Europe; its date is 2400-2100 BC. Lerna also appears in two ancient myths: here 49 of the 50 daughters of Danaos decapitated their husbands on their wedding night and threw their heads into the Lake of Lerna, and here Herakles killed the monstrous Hydra for his 2nd Labor (Herakles then dipped his arrows in the gall of the Hydra, the second deadliest poison in myth; the first deadliest was the blood in the left-hand veins of the gorgon Medousa).
        Danaos, who had 50 daughters, lived in Libya, and his brother Aigyptos, who had 50 sons, lived in Egypt. The sons wanted to marry the daughters, but they refused and fled with their father to Argos, their ancestral home. Aigyptos’ sons pursued them with an Egyptian army, a battle took place between the Egyptians and the Argives, and the girls were forced to marry their cousins. Danaos gave each of his daughters a knife and commanded them to kill their husbands. 49 did so. but Hypermnestra fell in love with Lynkeos and spared his life (fortunately for Greek myth, since their descendants include Perseus and Herakles).
       We have seen now the sites of Herakles’ 1st and 2nd Labors (the Nemean Lion and the Lernaian Hydra). In fact, the first half of Herakles’ 12 Labors all take place in the northern Peloponnese. The 3rd, 4th, and 6th Labors (the Erymanthian Boar, the Arcadian Deer, and the Stymphalian Birds) all occur in Arcadia, and the 5th (the Augeian Stables) is at Elis, the territory of Olympia. Furthermore, Tiryns, just north of Nafplion, is where Herakles stays between Labors, and Mycenae is ruled by Eurystheus, Herakles' master and the one who sends him out on his Labors. The 7th through 12th Labors take Herakles throughout the world (and beyond), but this may be a later addition to an earlier tale of a local Peloponnesian hero.

        After a brief stop for lunch in Sparta (where virtually nothing remains of the ancient city), we’ll go a few kilometers west to the Byzantine town Mistra on the slopes of Mt. Taygetos. Mistra began as a fortress, built in 1249 by the Franks, and soon passed into the control of the Byzantines, under whom it was the leading city of the Peloponnese. It was governed by a Byzantine Despot, usually either a son or a brother of the Emperor in Constantinople.
        Mistra enjoys one of the most beautiful situations in Greece, lying along a steep slope of Mt. Taygetos. At the top is the Kastro (fortified citadel), and on successive levels below are several Byzantine churches (most notably the Pantanassa), the Palace of the Despots, and everywhere spectacular views.
        From Mistra it’s about 40 miles southeast, through some of the most striking and at times hair-raising scenery in Greece, to Kalamata, and from Kalamata it’s another 32 miles to Kiparissia on the SW corner of the Peloponnese. We’ll spend the night in Kiparissia, at a pleasant hotel on the beach.

Oct 21
        We'll spend the day in and around Pylos, visiting the Venetian castle at Methoni, the Mycenean palace at Pylos (called the Palace of Nestor, the garrulous old advisor in the Iliad), and the Pylos Museum.  The Palace of Nestor was first excavated by Carl Blegen of Cincinnati in 1952 and was destroyed by fire at the end of the Mycenean period (around 1200 BC).   It is quite a bit smaller than Mycenae, and it is here that the first Linear B tablets found on the Greek mainland were discovered in 1939.  

Oct 22
        This morning we'll drive north to Olympia, about 35 miles from Kiparissia.  It’s not difficult to see why the ancients chose Olympia for the Games and the sanctuary of Zeus; it is now, and certainly was, one of the most beautiful places in Greece. The confluence of seven rivers and sufficient rainfall provide a green and shady setting that is reminiscent of northern Italy.

        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’ll first visit the Museum, one of the newest in Greece (opened in 1972) and newly renovated. The great center hall contains pedimental sculptures from the Temple of Zeus and the inner frieze of the same temple. The east pediment represents the start of the chariot race between Oinomaos and Pelops, with Zeus in the center; the west pediment is the battle between the Centaurs and the Lapiths at the wedding of Peirithoos, with Apollo in the center. The twelve metopes of the frieze portray the twelve Labors of Herakles. The rest of the museum is arranged chronologically: going clockwise from the entrance hall, Room 1 has Neolithic, Mycenean, and Geometric objects; Room 2 has archaic bronzes (especially armor, weapons, and decorated tripods; there are some fine gorgon shields, a unique bronze mother-and-baby griffin pair, and acroteria (decorations, usually terracotta, on the roofs of temples); Room 3 has objects from various Treasuries (small houses in which cities displayed their offerings to Olympia) and the only extant ancient Greek battering ram; Rooms 4 and 5 are mostly sculpture and bronzes, the most interesting being the large terracotta acroterion of Zeus carrying off the Trojan prince Ganymede to be his “cupbearer”; Room 6 contains the famous statue of Hermes by the 4th century sculptor Praxiteles; the baby on Hermes’ left arm is the god Dionysos, whose upbringing was entrusted to Hermes; some critics maintain the work is a Roman copy, but opinion is divided on this matter; Room 7 has Roman objects, notably a marble bull from the Exedra of Herodes Atticus;  Room 8 has inscriptions and objects directly connected with the athletic contests.
       The site is across the street (separate ticket).  Keeping to the right after going through the entrance, we come first to the large Gymasium, then through the wrestling and socializing area, the Palaistra, to the workship of Pheidias. This is the same Pheidias who supervised the building of the Parthenon in Athens, and he had the same function for the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. The building was later used as a Byzantine church, but in 1958 a cup was found with Pheidias’ name on it. South is the Leonidaion, an elaborate guest-house for distinguished visitors (later the residence of the Roman governor); in the center courtyard you can see the brick walls of a curving pool; going from here to the Temple of Zeus, we enter the Sacred Grove, or Altis. The temple is one of the largest Greek temples, and the statue of seated Zeus within was one of the Seven Wonders of the world; it was almost 40 feet high and covered with gold and ivory (it supposedly was carried off to Constantinople after the cessation of the Games and was destroyed in a fire). Continuing east from the temple we pass the Stoa of Echo, the nymph who loved Narcissus, then through the athletes’ tunnel to the Stadium where the foot-races were held. Returning to the entrance we go by the Treasuries, the Metroon, or Temple of the Mother of the Gods, the Exedra of Herodes, the 7th century Temple of Hera, and the Philippeion, a round structure, or tholos, built by Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, in his own honor.

        From Olympia we'll visit the temple of Epikourios Apollo at Vassai, one of the most dramatic and architecturally significant temples of the classical period.  We'll drive through some of the most beautiful scenery of Arcadia at this time, like Andritsena and Dimitsana.  We'll stay tonight at the striking village Laggadia in Arcadia.

Oct 23 
        Today we'll return to Athens, stopping along the way at Nemea (A UC Berkeley excavation), where we'll visit the Temple of Zeus, the stadium, and the fine new museum.

Oct 24
        Departure