If anything was going to cure me of the awful post election depression i was suffering, it was going to be an orgy of ancient art and architecture in Athens.
I had to get up at 5am to catch the train from kalambaka to Athens and for the first time in four weeks, found myself talking to Australians. I had a feeling they were "liberal" voters so avoided mentioning the election. The trains in Greece are pretty good these days. Certainly they go faster than Australian ones. In fact, the whole transport infrastructure of Greece has improved incredibly in the last thirty years, while that of Brisbane has barely changed, except for all the infernal toll tunnels. There's an excellent metro system, tram lines, trolley buses, buses and suburban rail. Still, they do have all that graffiti. Apparently, the thessaloniki metro csrriages have slready been defsced, before even going into service!
Anyway, got to Athens and decided to walk to my guesthouse via two museums. The national archaeology museum was my first stop. It has a lovely tree filled courtyard, where s coffee and baklava fortified me for orgy to come. Now i could think about people 1000s of years ago instead of now. There were all the must sees, like 'agamemnon's' death mask in gold, the giant statues of zeus and the boy jockey, but it was the little things that caught my attention the most. Dozens of persian arrow head found at thermopylae after killing the 300 spartans, the scenes of domesticity and mourning. I am always struck by the sympathetic and numerous depictions of women in a highly masculine world. The women rarely , if ever look subservient yo their husbands in the many depictions of married couples.
The artistic ability of the greeks, to produce so many tiny masterpieces amazes me. Miniatures of animals in gold and silver soldered to swords, incredible little cut stone representations, like the baby deer (?) suckling.
It is possible to smell the perfume women wore 3000 years and more ago, recreated from a recipe in mycenean linear A script; to look at what is possibly the world's oldest mechanical computer, the antykthera mechanism; i really did feel as if i was walking among the ancients. The people who created most of these items lived in a world, in southern and western Europe , north africa and the coast of asia minor, that essentially stayed the same in many of its basic beliefs and practices, for 900 years. And it was a world full of movement, incredible religious tolerance and intellectual curiosity. And where skin colour meant nothing at all. Of course, it was also full of incredible acts of brutality, endless wars huge divides in wealth, slavery and short lives, but people today could certainly learn something frome these dead greeks.
I moved on to the museum of cycladic art, passing a lot of greeks dressed in traditional costume. I was tempted to follow them to whatever performance they were about to give, but the statuary of the neolithic cycladic islands won out. I'd been here before too, in 1987. I had a very fifferent recollection of it. I think they have retired a lot of the artrfacts, but displayed those left much better, with eccellent signage. I kept wanting to run my hands over these strangely stylised human forms from 4000 years ago. They have a real otherwordly quality.
Passed an excavated Roman bath house, uncovered when they put the metro in, a statue of Alexander the great, bust of Euripides, the temple of Olympian Zeus . There are not many european cities where the past lies in so many layers around you as in Athens. It remained central to western culture for 900 years. Its hard to crefit that it had become nothing more than a village by the time Greece gained independence from the ottomans less than 200 hundred years ago.
As i walked, i realised that for the first time in four years, i felt a little sad that i was no longer a teacher. Teaching about the classical world had meant it was fresh in my head, and i had the awareness that i had been missing this immersion in a world so far removed from my own. In particular, i had enjoyed teaching students through the works of the first two true historians, herodotus and Thucydides, both of whom can help us think about our own world, through their examination of their own. Herodotus, for his exuberance and delight in the diversity of humanity and his generosity of spirit. Thucydides, for his dark, cynical examination of the way that people can so easily be turned into a mob, continually making disastrous decisions at the urging of demagogues.
Day 2:
Up at seven and acropolis by 8 to avoid the hordes. I could actually pretend the Parthenon and associated temples were on a lonely hill in the wilds, so long as i was willing to sit in the dirt and look through the many bits and bobs of stonework piled up here and there. In fact, it wasn't long before i was joined by 100s of other sightseeers, but i mostly didn't have them cluttering up my sight. But there was no imagining away the giant crane inside the parthenon, or the scaffolding all across one end. It has been under a state of almost continuous repair and reconstruction since greek independence. The turks did not treat it well. Already converted to a church by the byzantines, it became a mosque, which then also doubled as a gunpowder warehouse. With inevitable results. And of course, a local official let a british lord rip off almost all of the decorative sculptures and take them to london.
Wandered down the slopes of the acropolis past the theatre. THE theatre. This is the theatre where drama as we know it, developed. Without it, there would be no shakespeare, no films...The front row seats were interesting for the names of who sat there, inscribed on them. Nearby was a statue of the 4th century comic playwright, menander. Of particular interest to me as i once acted in a play of his. The start of my short lived career on the stage. I think my first role as a parasite, fawning over arisocrats typecast me. Been rebelling against the role ever since.
Determined to get my money's worth from the 30 euro combined ticket, i then proceeded to visit the roman agora, complete with very intact tower that used to be a water clock; the classical era agora and its museum, the keramicos site and Hadrian's library. The agora museum had some nice little indicators of athenian democracy at work. A lottery machine to allocate places on juries. Prized by the poor, since you got paid. And ostraka, bits of broken pottery, used to write the names of politicians who had got too big for their own boots and could be voted out of town, for ten years. The two they displayed were for miltiades, the general who defeated the persians at the battle of mararhon, and themistocles, who led the greeks to victory at the naval battle of salamis. Being good at your job was no bar from getting exiled.
There was also a big giant money box. When you got married, you paid sphrodite one drachma to make sure the marriage was successful. It is an interesting aspect to greek religion that they had such a transactional view of their relationship with gods. There were lots of little plaques with contracts for all sorts of things, written on them. And all with the writer shaking hands with an sppropriate god, to seal the deal.
At the keramikos site there are a lot of funerary monuments, still in situ, along what used to be one of the main roads out of Athens. Apparently this is where pericles delivered his funeral oration for the first war dead of the peloponnesian war.
By now it was getting on for five, so I'd been sightseeing for ten hours. Time to head home, exhausted. I guess i walked 15 kms or more.
After many years away from Greece, i was very happy to have returned. Hopefully it won't be thirty years till i visit athens again. If it is, I'll probably be doing it ftom inside a coffin!
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