My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 1 (June 13th, 2023)

As regular readers of this blog are already aware from this post I made back in early March, this summer, I am participating in the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA)’s six-week Summer Session in Greece, which began yesterday (Monday, June 12th) and will continue until July 26th. This is not only my first time ever being in Greece, but also my first time ever visiting any country other than the United States, so it is a very new and exciting experience for me. I have been obsessed with Greece for over a decade now and have wanted to go there for just as long. Now, for the first time, I am finally here.

The program is intensive and, as a result, I will not have time to research and write my usual variety of long, heavily-researched blog posts while I am taking part in it. Instead of writing my usual research posts, I have decided to write short updates about what I have been doing and seeing in Greece, along with photos I have taken myself. Thus, for the next six weeks, this blog will temporarily become a travel blog. After I go back to the U.S. near the end of July, I will resume my usual posting.

Why I have decided to write about my experiences in Greece

I have decided that writing posts about my experiences in Greece will be good for me personally, because it will give me a record of everything I did in Greece that I will be able to go back and consult even years from now when the events of this summer have blurred together in my memory.

Additionally, I have a lot of family members, friends, professors, and classmates who are interested in hearing about what I am seeing and doing this summer and I most likely will not be able to give them all regular updates individually. Making updates on this blog will allow me to have one place online to which I will be able to refer people I know who are interested in learning about what I’ve been doing in Greece.

Finally, making updates on this blog will give regular readers of my blog something to tide their interest during the next six weeks when I will not be able to research and write my usual kind of post.

Sunday, June 11th, 2023

Both of my parents and my sister accompanied me to the Indianapolis International Airport. There, I said goodbye to them and boarded my first plane from Indianapolis to Atlanta, Georgia, at 2:00 p.m. ET on 11 June 2023. It was a little over one hour’s flight. Then, in Atlanta, I boarded a plane for Athens, Greece, at around 4:30 p.m.

The plane from Atlanta to Athens was absolutely massive; it was nine seats across with eight bathrooms and two galleys. I had never ridden on such a massive plane ever before in my life. (Of course, I had never flown on an international flight before either.)

ABOVE: Photograph I took of myself right after I boarded the plane from Atlanta to Greece

The plane took off about half an hour later. The flight lasted for ten hours, which was longer than any flight I had ever ridden on before. They served us dinner and breakfast on the plane. Prior to this, I didn’t even realize that they served full meals on airplanes. I only knew that they served small snacks on shorter domestic flights. I had very low expectations for the food, but I found that it was much better than I thought it would be.

I got very little sleep on the plane, which is not surprising, since I am a chronic insomniac and usually have trouble going to sleep even when I am at home in a comfortable bed and a quiet house. On top of this, the plane seats were extremely cramped and uncomfortable, the plane itself made a lot of noise and was a little bumpy because we went through some turbulence on the way, and there was a small child sitting in the seat behind me who kept crying, making noise, and kicking my seat for most of the flight.

Despite all this, I did successfully manage to get a little less than two hours of sleep out of the entire ten-hour flight, which I regarded as a rather impressive achievement given the circumstances.

Monday, June 12th, 2023

The plane finally arrived in Athens at around 10:35 a.m. EET (equivalent to 3:35 a.m. ET). I was in the seat next to the window, so I received an amazing view of the city from above as the plane was coming in.

ABOVE: Photograph I took of my first view of Athens from outside the window of the plane as it came into the city

By pure coincidence, I happened to meet one of my fellow participants in the ASCSA Summer Session at the airport. We recognized each other because the school had sent us a one-page PDF with instructions for how to get from the airport to the school. We both had printed out this page and we both happened to be holding it as we were waiting in line for a taxi. The two of us ended up riding the same taxi together to the school.

The ASCSA is located in the neighborhood of Kolonaki in Athens at the corner of Gennadiou and Souidias Streets. We all received our packets containing the keys to our rooms and some papers with information at the gatehouse. Loring Hall, where I will be staying, is a beautiful old building. It has a Neoclassical portico with Ionic-order marble columns and a gorgeous, well-tended garden in front.

ABOVE: Photograph of the exterior of Loring Hall that I took when I first arrived

ABOVE: Photograph of part of the garden in front of Loring Hall that I took when I first arrived

ABOVE: Photo of the Neoclassical portico in front of Loring Hall

ABOVE: Photo of the dining room at Loring Hall

ABOVE: Lounge and staircase at Loring Hall next to the dining room

ABOVE: One side of the main lounge at Loring Hall with a view of the fireplace, couches, and bookcases

ABOVE: Other side of the main lounge at Loring Hall with chairs, couches, and a grand piano (which is covered up because no one ever plays it)

I went inside Loring Hall, found the room where I will be staying, and placed my suitcase and bag inside.

ABOVE: Photo I took of my room at Loring Hall after I first arrived

The school served a small lunch for the newly arrived Summer Session participants. We all introduced ourselves to each other and I got to know some of the other people who will be participating in the program with me.

Most of the program participants are graduate students in classics, ancient history, and archaeology. Many of them are from very prestigious colleges and universities. In addition to the grad students, there are also a few undergraduates and a few high school Latin teachers. Everyone whom I have met so far has seemed very intelligent and generally very friendly. After arriving, I had long conversations with some of them about topics related to ancient history, archaeology, and ancient languages and literature.

At 4:00 p.m., the director of the Summer Session for this year Dr. Glenn Bugh, who is an associate professor of ancient history at Virginia Tech, took us all on a walk to show us the area around the school. As I mentioned earlier, the American School is located in Kolonaki, which is a beautiful, well-kept, affluent neighborhood on the northeast side of Athens that extends to the west and south of Mount Lykabettos.

The name Kolonaki means “little column” in Greek. The neighborhood takes this name from a small ancient column that stands in what is now Kolonaki Square. Today, the area is known for its plenitude of sidewalk cafés, shops, and upscale restaurants. It is far enough out from the city center and far enough away from the major monuments and museums that tourists like to visit that not many tourists go there. Most of the people that one sees there, even during the summer at the height of the tourist season, are locals who live or work there. The area has a very low crime rate and we all felt perfectly safe walking around the streets.

ABOVE: Photo I took of a walk path in Evangelismos Park in Kolonaki

ABOVE: View of a street in Kolonaki with old Neoclassical mansions

ABOVE: View of a different street in Kolonaki with Mount Lykabettos in the background

ABOVE: Pedestrian street in Kolonaki leading up toward Mount Lykabettos with shady trees and sidewalk cafés on either side

While we were on the walk, Glenn showed us how to get to the Metro. He warned us at length that pickpocketing is absolutely rampant on the Metro and told us that, whenever we go on it, we need to be constantly on our guard and watch and hold onto our belongings at all times.

After we got back from this walk, I took a shower because I was hot and sweaty from the walk. At 7:00 p.m., we had “ouzo hour,” which is when the school served ouzo and cheese and the students all gathered to drink and snack with old, famous professors there who are staying at the school to do research. I attended the ouzo hour, but I did not drink any ouzo, since I do not drink alcohol (or caffeine for that matter).

At 8:00 p.m., we all ate dinner in the dining room at Loring. After dinner, some of us stayed around to chat in the dining room for a little while. After that, we all went back to our rooms and I went to bed almost immediately because I was exhausted.

Tuesday, June 13th, 2023

Today, I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and went to the dining hall for breakfast at 7:00 a.m. At 8:30 a.m., we all headed over to the Blegen Library, which is one of the American School’s two research libraries. There, the director and assistant director of the program took us into a conference room, where they talked to us about living in Athens.

We had a short break from 9:00 to 9:30 a.m. Then we went back to the conference room and one of the librarians spoke to us about the library’s online resources. Next a different librarian gave us a tour of the library building; it has several floors of rooms that are just full of bookshelves. A couple of men showed us the computer room. After that, we had a short break.

At 11:00 a.m., we met up outside the Gennadios Library or Gennadeion, which is the American School’s other research library. It is an absolutely stunning Neoclassical building. I took several photos of it from the outside yesterday evening, which you can see below.

ABOVE: Photograph I took on the afternoon of June 12th showing the exterior of the Gennadios Library

ABOVE: Photograph I took closer up showing the portico of the Gennadios Library

ABOVE: Photograph I took showing underneath the portico of the Gennadios Library

Inside the Gennadeion, the archivist took us into the John B. Mandilas Rare Book Reading Room and showed us a few of the most exciting documents that the ASCSA archive in the Gennadeion houses. These documents included the German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann’s handwritten field notebooks from his excavations at Troy and Mycenae, complete with detailed drawings of artifacts that he excavated, and first-edition copies of his published books Ilios: City and Country of the Trojans and Mycenae, in which he describes his discoveries at those sites respectively.

ABOVE: Photograph I took of Heinrich Schliemann’s original handwritten field notebook of his excavations at Troy, which is housed in the ASCSA archive in the Gennadios Library

ABOVE: First-edition copies of Schliemann’s books Ilios: City and Country of the Trojans and Mycenae, as well as his original handwritten field notebook of his excavations at Mycenae

The archivist also showed us the original copy of a typewritten letter that the British architect Michael Ventris sent to the U.S. archaeologist Carl Blegen in which he describes his own decipherment of the Mycenaean Linear B script.

ABOVE: Michael’s Ventris’s letter to Carl Blegen describing his decipherment of Linear B

After showing us these documents and others, the archivist led us down into the secure archive basement. There, she showed us a room full of shelves of ancient artifacts that the ASCSA has excavated and collected over the years. She also showed us several rooms full of shelves upon shelves of papers pertaining to various archaeologists and scholars affiliated with the ASCSA, such as Carl Blegen, as well as the papers of people who have had important roles in shaping modern Greece, such as the poets Odysseus Elytis and Giorgos Seferis.

ABOVE: Shelf full of artifacts in the ASCSA archive in the Gennadios Library

ABOVE: Shelf full of more artifacts in the ASCSA archive in the Gennadios Library

After that, we went to another wing of the Gennadeion, where a different librarian showed us some of the most exciting books that the Gennadeion’s main collection houses. The first book she showed us was a copy of the editio princeps (i.e., the first ever printed edition) of the Iliad, which the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles edited and printed in Florence, Italy, in 1488. She told us that this was the book that Ioannes Gennadios, the wealthy book collector who built the collection that eventually became the original basis for the Gennadios Library, had paid the most money for.

ABOVE: First page of the editio princeps of the Iliad, printed by Demetrios Chalkokondyles in Florence in 1488, held in the collection of the Gennadios Library

ABOVE: Closer-up view of the Demetrios Chalkokondyles’s 1488 editio princeps of the Iliad

Other books that she showed us included an eighteenth-century book of illustrations of Greek and Turkish clothing and a nineteenth-century book of engravings that illustrate the French artist’s travels in Greece.

ABOVE: Page of an eighteenth-century book of illustrations of Greek and Turkish clothing

ABOVE: Page of a nineteenth-century book of engravings showing the French artist’s travels in Greece

After our tour of the Gennadios Library, we went back to Loring Hall, where the director of the building told us a little about its history and about the rules and expectations for us living there for the next six weeks. She also took us down to the kitchen and we met the cook. After that, we ate lunch.

At 3:00 p.m., we met up with Dr. Edward M. Harris, who is an emeritus professor of ancient history from Durham University in the U.K., and took the Metro to the Pnyx, which is a hill in central Athens located west of the Akropolis where the ancient Athenian ekklesia or assembly, which was composed of all adult male Athenian citizens, met to discuss and vote on political issues during the time of Athenian democracy. Before we got on the Metro, Dr. Harris warned us again at length about the danger of pickpockets on the Metro.

The Metro train was extremely hot and extremely crowded. We were all packed extremely close together so that we were all touching the people closest to us. I could easily see why pickpocketing was such a problem in such an environment. Thankfully, though, I made it through without anyone stealing anything out of my purse.

After we got off the Metro, as we were approaching the Pnyx, I saw my very first in-person view of the Akropolis at a distance.

ABOVE: Photograph I took of my very first in-person view of the Akropolis

We arrived at the Pnyx and walked up a modern stairway up the hill and around the retaining wall, which was built sometime around 400 BCE as part of the Pnyx II construction phase.

ABOVE: Retaining wall of the Pnyx, most likely constructed around 400 BCE

Once we reached a place near the top of the hill, we all sat down on the rocky ground just like Athenian citizen men did when they took part in the meetings of the assembly during the Classical Period. The assembly typically met on the Pnyx around forty times each year during the Classical Period and all citizen men were required to attend.

It was absolutely thrilling and strange to think that I was sitting on the very ground where numerous major events in ancient Greek history took place, including the Athenian debates over whether to slaughter all of the men of the city of Mytilene and sell all the women and children into slavery in 427 BCE (which the Athenian historian Thoukydides famously recounts in his Histories of the Peloponnesian War 3.36–50), the debates over whether to send the expedition to invade Sicily in 416 BCE (which Thoukydides describes in his Histories 6.8–26), and the infamous trial of the generals after the Battle of Arginousai in 406 (which the Athenian historian Xenophon describes in his Hellenika 1.7).

The bema or speaker’s platform that currently stands on the Pnyx was constructed sometime around 350 BCE as part of the Pnyx III construction phase, so it is certain that neither Perikles nor Kleon nor Alkibiades nor Nikias nor any of the other famous Athenian politicians of the fifth century BCE ever used it. It is, however, most likely the bema that the Athenian orator and politician Demosthenes used when he delivered his Philippic speeches.

At the Pnyx, Dr. Harris lectured to us about the hill’s history, its use as the meeting place for the Athenian assembly, and how the Athenian assembly worked.

ABOVE: Photo I took of myself sitting on the Pnyx with the bema in the background

ABOVE: View of the bema on the Pnyx in Athens from a distance

ABOVE: View of the bema on the Pnyx from much closer

After Dr. Harris’s lecture, we climbed a bit higher up, past the second retaining wall, and had an amazingly clear view of the Akropolis, the Areios Pagos, and Mount Lykabettos.

ABOVE: Photograph I took of the Akropolis from atop the Pnyx

ABOVE: Photograph I took of the Akropolis (right), the Areios Pagos (middle), and Mount Lykabettos (left) from atop the Pnyx

ABOVE: Photo that I got one of my fellow Summer Session participants to take of me standing on the Pnyx with the Akropolis and Areios Pagos in the background

After our excursion to the Pnyx, we took the Metro back to Kolonaki and headed back to the school. We arrived back at around 5:00 p.m. and had a couple of hours of free time, during which time I took a shower because I again found myself hot and sticky from all my time outside in the heat and the humidity.

At 7:00 p.m., there was a welcome ceremony for the Summer Session participants and reception for the recipient of the Aristeia Award in the garden in front of Loring Hall. A huge number of scholars were present, most of them quite senior and well-established in their careers.

Food and alcoholic drinks were served, but I did not drink any alcohol and I honestly ate little of the food. I spoke to at length to a handful of scholars and seem to have made good impression on them. Then, sometime around 10:30 p.m. or so when the event was dying down, I went back to my room to work on this post.

Now, with this post finished, I am going to bed. I will continue on my adventure tomorrow.