So I’ve heard through the grape-vine that I ought to send y’all another shout out. I promise I haven’t been intentionally ignorin’ y’all (I’d be happy to send our syllabus out if you think I’m lyin’). So let me catch y’all up on our little adventure since Egypt (ok, wow, I really have been out of communication, mea culpa).
First off, the structure of our trip in Greece has been very different from London or Egypt. In London, we were in a culture that is in many ways similar to our own, and spent a lot of time wandering around the city, exploring everything there is to do in London (after spending hours wandering through the British Museum or the Library at the University of London). In Egypt, we were led by the hand (and security personnel) to temples, tombs, pyramids, and museums all day. Greece has been some mix of the two. We have been averaging two archaeological sites per day, with some museums thrown in, but the pace has been much more relaxed (if you can call it relaxed). At each site, we have spent 1 to 2 ½ hours, first led around the site by the students assigned to lead that day, then exploring on our own. This takes the form of a)climbing over ruins like a bunch of sheep, b)running races in any athletic structures, c) scrambling through any caves we can find on the site, and d)contemplating the structural, compositional, intellectual, metaphysical differences between all sorts of columns, statues, temple plans, etc. until our brains felt like mush.
So let’s sum up the journey, and I’ll then provide some highlights. From Egypt, we flew into Athens and met our driver, Spiros, and boarded his double-decker bus. He took us out to Thorikos and Sounion, a couple of sites near Athens (if you’ve never driven through mountains in a double-decker bus, think twice before you choose the top section). Sounion in particular made an impression. At Sounion, the Athenians had built a temple to Poseidon on the headland at the very end of Attica. From there, we could either gaze at the partly reconstructed temple, or at the vast expanse of the Mediterranean Sea and islands interspersed off the coast of Attica (see the poem I wrote in response to this view). From there, we booked it back to Athens, boarded a ferry, and spent the night crossing to Crete. After arriving in Iraklion, Crete at 6:00 AM, we got back on the bus, checked in to our hotel, and went straight to the sites of Agia Triada and Phaistos, two Minoan palaces complexes. Over our time on Crete, we also saw the remains of Minoan sites at Knossos, Mallia, and Gournia. At the end of the week, we focused our free day partly toward exploring the city of Iraklion, but mostly on preparing for/taking our first test, or I should say first set of four tests, one for each course. We finished the test up (partly on the ferry back to Athens) and arrived in Athens early the next morning.
Once back in Athens (which was much colder than Crete, I actually had to wear a jacket), we went to Eleusis, the site of the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries, one of the most important and longest lasting cults of the ancient world. From there, we bussed to Nauplion, our first stop in the Peloponnese, just through the isthmus on the other side of Corinth. During our four days in Nauplion, we went to the site of ancient Korinth, Epidauros (site of ancient healing center and wicked cool theater), Lerna, Nemea, Tiryns, and Mycenae. After Nauplion, we drove through the mountains to Sparti (Sparta) in the southern Peloponnese, a drive which should have taken 2 hours took us 6, due to the unfortunate arrival of a snowstorm while we were crossing the mountains. Eventually we made it to Sparta, saw the remains there (not much), and the next morning left for Pylos, on the western coast. Before reaching Pylos, we spent nearly 3 hours at a Byzantine fortress/monastery/town complex that spanned an entire mountain. Then we saw the ancient site of Messene, and Pylos the next day. We also climbed high into the mountains to see the temple of Apollo at Bassai (in the middle of nowhere, more below), and then went on to Olympia. At Olympia, we saw the ancient complex made famous for the festival and athletic contests begun in 776 BC. Today, we left the Peloponnese, traveling 5 hours north, and are now in Delphi, site of the ancient oracle of Apollo.
Whew! It’s a lot to catch y’all up on, so I’ll condense it into some highlights. When at Sounion on the mainland, it was humbling to sit atop the summit and a gaze out at the Mediterranean Sea as a storm system came rolling in. It really was breathtaking to see the sheer rock faces give way to the grey-green-blue waves rolling up to the horizon pierced by sharp, glaring rays of the sun as it set into the sea. On Crete, we got to see the palace at Knossos, which Sir Arthur Evans excavated around the turn of the 20th century. He did a fair amount of (sometimes incorrect) reconstruction, so it was very enlightening to see a picture of what some of these sites would have actually looked like, beyond the pile of rocks we see most of the time. Also, in a moment that reminded me why I love being on this trip, we got into a very lively debate about the use of stairs as liminal space at the ruins of Mallia. It was just one instance of how we have been applying what we’ve been reading at actual ruins, speculating as to the function of walls and rooms. In fact, we’ve often found that we have ideas just as plausible as the original excavator.
My love of art history has been getting fed in a big way. We’ve seen the Cyclopean construction at Mycenae (rocks used in construction there weigh upwards of 100 tons), where we saw the Lions Gate and the Treasury of Atreus. It made me shiver a little to stand beneath those huge blocks, a picture of which I remember studying in Humanities as a freshman in high school. We saw the Bull Jumping fresco that was found at Knossos, and an Octopus Vase that stands as a perfect example of Minoan maritime motif. At Mistras, the Byzantine monastery, we saw a bunch of late-Byzantine frescoes, still clinging to the chapel and apsidal walls, depicting any number of saints, martyrs, and apostles. We’ve seen Greek-style theaters built into existing hillsides (with perfect acoustics), and stadiums at Olympia, Nemea, and Messene that would have held nearly 40,000 people. We ran off the starting blocks at Nemea in the same fashion athletes did 2500 years ago. At Olympia, we tried to start up a game of Ultimate Frisbee, but got yelled at, even though we were the only ones there. Also at Olympia we also saw a famous Roman marble copy of a bronze statue of Hermes by Praxiteles, as well as the pediments of the massive Temple of Zeus containing the myth of Pelops (the mythical founder of the Games) competing in (and winning) a chariot race for the right to marry Hippodomia.
Probably my favorite afternoon of the trip so far was our time spent at Bassai. The Doric structure itself is impressive, and boasts a unique door in the side of the temple, to allow for sun to shine on the cult statue in the uncommon north-south oriented temple. It was nice to finally see the temple after reading about it and experiencing the sculpture frieze from the cella, now arranged in the British Museum. But that wasn’t even the good part. After we saw the temple, we hiked up to the top of the mountain, where there used to be two Archaic temples. There are no longer any remains of those temples, but the view was spectacular. From nearly 1300 meters up, we could see the snow-capped mountains in the middle of the peninsula, all the way to the coast, and everything in between. We had been at the seashore that morning, and then were standing in snow at the peak of the height. What an incredible experience!
Ok, that’s about what I can offer right now. I’ve been typing a while, and the view out the balcony from Delphi, overlooking a small town at the base of the mountain, with the sun setting over the mountains of the Peloponnese across the channel, is calling my name. Arrivederci!
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