Hello! This is the third installment in my ongoing blog of my experience in the ASCSA Summer Session for summer 2023, covering the period of Wednesday, June 21st through Monday, July 3rd. The first installment can be found here and the second installment can be found here.
In this installment, I will describe how I (among many other things) saw the mountain underneath which Zeus is said to have been raised by nymphs, tried octopus, hiked to the top of the Akrokorinth, ran in a footrace in the ancient stadium of the Nemean Games, recited ancient Greek poetry in the ancient Greek Theater of Epidauros, went down an over-three-millennia-old tunnel, and tried alcohol for the first time in Sparta. There will, of course, be plenty of photos of the various sites, monuments, and artworks that I have seen.
Wednesday, June 21st, 2023
I woke up around 6:00 a.m. to get ready for the day. At 7:00 a.m., we ate a continental breakfast at our hotel in Herakleion. Then, around 8:30 a.m. we all loaded into the bus and rode to the site of Gortyn, which was an important classical Greek city-state in southern central Krete.
There, we saw the Great Law Code of Gortyn, a twelve-column inscription in Doric Greek that was carved in boustrophedon style (i.e., with one row written from right to left, the next written from left to right, alternating between the two directions of writing) onto the wall of a round public building, most likely a bouleuterion (i.e., building where the boulē, or council of the city-state, met) sometime in the first half of the fifth century BCE.
The inscription, which is the second-longest surviving inscription from antiquity in the Greek language, records the laws of the city-state of Gortyn and is the most important surviving, published source of information from outside of Athens about the legal systems of Greek city-states in the Classical Period. The inscription survives because, centuries after it was carved, in the Roman period, builders happened to incorporate the complete wall on which it was inscribed into a theater, which protected the inscription.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Greek Law Code of Gortyn
One of my fellow students delivered a report about the Law Code of Gortyn and then Glenn gave us the opportunity to explore the site. The only other significant surviving exposed ruin at the site was a ruined early Christian basilica dedicated to Saint Titus, the patron saint of Krete.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the early Christian basilica of Saint Titus at Gortyn
Nonetheless, we wandered around a little bit and saw some heavily dilapidated ancient walls at the site.
ABOVE: Photo of some dilapidated ancient walls at Gortyn
After exploring Gortyn, we all got back onto the bus and rode to Phaistos, an ancient Minoan center located in southern central Krete. Phaistos is the second-largest Minoan so-called “palace” after Knossos and most likely served as some kind of administrative and religious center. It is also the site where, in July 1908, a team led by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier discovered the famous “Phaistos disk,” which I wrote about in this post I made back in November 2022.
ABOVE: Ruins of Phaistos
ABOVE: Great Staircase at Phaistos leading down to the so-called “theatral area”
ABOVE: So-called “theatral area” at Phaistos
ABOVE: View looking down the hill at more ruins at Phaistos
ABOVE: Mores ruins at Phaistos
ABOVE: Doorway of the courtyard at Phaistos
ABOVE: Ruins of the so-called “Queen’s Megaron” at Phaistos from above
ABOVE: Photo I took of some ruins at Phaistos near where Pernier’s foreman Zakarias Iliakis found the Phaistos disk
After exploring Phaistos for about an hour, we all got back on the bus and rode to Agia Triada, another Minoan site located in southern central Krete near Phaistos. Readers may recall from my last post that, on June 18th, a couple of my fellow students gave reports at the Herakleion Archaeological Museum about the Agia Triada sarcophagus, the Harvester Ryton, and the Chieftain Cup. Agia Triada is the site where all of those important artifacts were discovered. The ruins at this site, however, were somewhat less extensive than those at Phaistos and, as a result, we spent less time there.
ABOVE: Ruins at Agia Triada
ABOVE: More ruins at Agia Triada
ABOVE: View approaching the covered part of the ruins at Agia Triada
ABOVE: View underneath the covering
ABOVE: More underneath the covering at Agia Triada
On the hill above the Bronze Age Minoan site stood a small late medieval Christian church. Some of us went inside this church and saw that the walls and ceiling were covered in beautiful, ruined frescoes.
ABOVE: Exterior of the late medieval church at Agia Triada
ABOVE: Interior of the late medieval church at Agia Triada
After visiting Agia Triada, we stopped in the small town of Matala. There, some of us found lunch at a local restaurant while the others went swimming at the beach. I did not go swimming this time because, as I have mentioned before, I am not especially fond of it. After spending several hours in Matala, we boarded the bus and rode back to Herakleion.
On our way back, the bus driver drove us past Mount Ida, a mountain in central Krete which is the tallest on the island and is also an extremely important location in Greek myth. According to Greek myth, Kronos, the father of the Olympian deities, repeatedly impregnated his wife Rhea, but he feared that his offspring would grow up to overthrow him, so, whenever Rhea gave birth to a child, he deliberately swallowed each one whole.
After Rhea gave birth to their youngest son Zeus, however, she presented Kronos with a rock wrapped in swaddling clothes instead of their son. Fooled, Kronos swallowed the rock, believing that it was his son. Meanwhile, Rhea arranged for nymphs to raise the infant Zeus in a cave under Mount Ida on Krete. There, she arranged for young men known as Kouretes, who were dressed in full armor and carrying shields, to dance, clashing their armor and shields, to cover up the sound of the baby Zeus crying so that Kronos wouldn’t hear.
ABOVE: Photo I took of Mount Ida as we drove past it on the bus back to Herakleion
That evening, around 8:00 p.m., some friends I had made in the program and I went out, found food on our own, and ate a delightful picnic dinner on the wall down by the harbor. It was a beautiful, cool evening, a nice breeze was blowing, and, if we looked over a short wall, we could see a beautiful sunset over the Aegean.
As we were walking around, the differences between Athens and Herakleion began to strike me. Athens has places in it that are spectacularly distinctive and beautiful, but it is a sprawling metropolis and significant parts of the city are cheaply-built, run-down, and dirty. There aren’t as many impressive historical monuments and ruins in Herakleion as there are in Athens, but, overall, the city—or at least the parts of it where we stayed and visited—struck me as being overall a little bit better-kept, cleaner, and culturally distinctive in general.
Thursday, June 22nd, 2023
I woke up around 6:00 a.m. and ate breakfast in the hotel around 7:00 a.m. We loaded onto the bus around 8:30 a.m. and rode to Knossos, which is the largest and by far the most famous ancient Minoan center. The English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans began the first thorough excavation of the site in the year 1900 and continue to work there throughout the following decades.
Evans carried out an extremely heavy-handed and, in many cases, highly speculative restoration of Knossos, reconstructing what he imagined entire building structures might have looked like from only knee-high ruins. As a result of this, much of what visitors today see when visiting Knossos is not ancient at all, but rather the product of Evans’s restorations.
There are both benefits and drawbacks to this. On the one hand, Evans’s restorations allow tourists to imagine much more clearly what the palace might have looked like in its ancient heyday before it fell into ruins. Unfortunately, on the other hand, the restorations frequently obscure the line between the actual ancient evidence that the Minoans themselves have left behind and Evans’s own imagination.
At the site, we met Dr. Doniert Evely, an expert in Bronze Age archaeology who is currently the Curator at Knossos for the British School at Athens. He showed us around and gave us a truly outstanding presentation of the remains there. He had a lively British sense of humor and told us a great deal about what the discoveries at the site reveal about Minoan society and life during the Bronze Age. He made the ruins around us really come to life.
Partly as a result of Evans’s restorations, Knossos is both vastly more visually impressive and vastly more famous than any other Minoan site. As a result, it is an extremely popular destination for tourists. Because the site is on the coast, cruise ships regularly stop at the site. When we first arrived, it was still early morning, so the site was almost deserted, but, within our first hour at the site, at least one cruise ship dropped off its passengers and the site went from almost deserted to absolutely packed with thousands of tourists.
The crowdedness of Knossos was in sharp contrast to all the other Minoan sites we visited throughout the trip. As far as I can remember, we did not see a single person at Gournia, Zakro, Palaikastro, or Mochlos who was not a member of our group; while we were there, all of those sites were completely deserted except for us. At Phaistos and Agia Triada, we did see a few people who were not members of our group, but only a handful.
ABOVE: Photo I took of some unrestored ruins at the southwest end of Knossos near the place where we entered the site, which is actually near the back of the ancient palace
ABOVE: Photo I took of the storerooms at Knossos, protected underneath a modern roof
ABOVE: View from above of the heavily restored so-called “lustral basin” in the throne room at Knossos
ABOVE: Photo I took of the very heavily restored throne room at Knossos
ABOVE: Photo I took of the heavily restored “lustral basin” in the throne room from the ground
ABOVE: Photo I took of some of the less heavily restored ruins on the eastern end of Knossos
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Grand Entryway on the north end of Knossos
ABOVE: Photo I took of the so-called “theatral area” on the northwest end of Knossos
ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me standing in front of a heavily reconstructed part of the site near the Grand Entryway on the north end
We spent probably around three hours at Knossos, first listening to Dr. Evely’s lectures and then exploring the site for ourselves. After we finished exploring there, we got back onto the bus and rode back to Herakleion Archaeological Museum. We had previously visited this museum at the very beginning of our trip to Krete, but now we had the opportunity to go back and see any parts of the museum we might have missed the first time.
This time, I spent some time looking more closely at the Minoan frescoes on the second floor of the museum that I had only had the chance to look at briefly the first time we visited. I also saw some interesting pieces that I had overlooked the first time. For instance, I saw a strangely cute terra-cotta figurine of a male siren beating his breast and screaming with an open mouth in a gesture of mourning that was found buried with a young child in the North Cemetery at Knossos and dates to around 700 BCE.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the figurine of the male siren
I also saw a couple of early Hellenistic terra-cotta figurines of Kybele dating to the third or second centuries BCE.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Kybele figurines in the Herakleion Archaeological Museum
After exploring the archaeological museum some more, I went back to the hotel. At 3:00 p.m., we all met back up by the Morosini Fountain in Lions Square and met Dr. Rena Papadaki, a specialist in early modern Greek literature at the University of Kypros. She took us to the Vikelaia Municipal Library of Herakleion and took us into a lecture hall.
We all sat down in the seats and she gave an hour-and-a-half-long lecture about the Erotokritos, a romantic play in verse, which the Kretan poet Vikentos Kornaros composed in the early seventeenth century in the Kretan dialect of early modern Greek. The play, which displays significant influence from the late medieval Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (lived 1304 – 1374), tells the story of the love between the protagonist, a man named Erotokritos, and his love, a woman named Aretousa. It is considered perhaps the greatest masterpiece of early modern Kretan literature.
After the lecture, some friends and I went down on our own to visit the Castello a Mare or Koules Fortress, a fortress down by the harbor of Herakleion that the Venetians built in the early sixteenth century during their rule over Krete. After exploring the fortress, we spent some more time exploring Herakleion.
At 8:00 p.m., we all met back up and ate dinner together, paid for by the school, at a restaurant in Herakleion.
Friday, June 23, 2023
I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and went down to breakfast in the hotel around 7:00. It was our last day on Krete, so we had to pack up all our things and check out of the hotel. We climbed onto the bus around 8:30 and rode to Rethymno, a city located on the northern coast of Krete to the west of Herakleion. There, we went to the Rethymno Fortezza, a large stone fortress, which the Venetians began building in 1573 and completed in 1580. One of my fellow students delivered a report about the fortress and its history.
ABOVE: Entrance to the Rethymno Fortezza
ABOVE: Photo I took inside the Rethymno Fortezza, showing the Ottoman-Era mosque inside the fortress
After that, we rode the bus further west to Chania, a city on the northern coast in western Krete. There, we briefly visited the cemetery of the Allied soldiers who died on Krete during World War II. Then we went to the Archaeological Museum of Chania, which is a fairly large, brand-new museum that houses artifacts found in western Krete dating from the Paleolithic to late antiquity.
ABOVE: Minoan terra-cotta figurines of female figures, most likely either goddesses or priestesses, on display in the Archaeological Museum of Chania
ABOVE: Ancient children’s toys in the Archaeological Museum of Chania
ABOVE: Red-figure vase depicting women at work on display in the Archaeological Museum of Chania
ABOVE: Marble statue of the god Asklepios dating to the early third century BCE on display in the Archaeological Museum of Chania
After visiting the archaeological museum, the bus driver took us on foot to the restaurant he knew in the town. On our way there, we happened to pass the house of Eleftherios Venizelos, who was the preeminent Kretan and Greek statesman in the early twentieth century and is still held in extremely high regard in Greece today as the “Ethnarch” and “Maker of Modern Greece.” A statue honoring him stood in front of the house.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the house of Eleftherios Venizelos in Chania, with a statue of him in front
After lunch, we had a long bus ride back to Herakleion. There, we boarded a ferry that would take us back to Peiraieus. Many of us were sad to be leaving Krete and going back to Athens, since Krete is such a wonderful and distinctive part of Greece and we had already made so many wonderful memories there.
Saturday, June 24, 2023
I woke up around 5:30 a.m. and our ferry arrived in Peiraieus around 6:30. We disembarked the ferry and rode on the bus back to the ASCSA’s campus in Kolonaki. We had a couple of hours to shower, eat breakfast, and relax. Then we met back up at 9:20 a.m. at the gate to the Blegen Library and we all took the Metro to the National Archaeological Museum, which is a stunning Neoclassical building located in the Exarcheia district of central Athens.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the exterior of the National Archaeological Museum
At the museum, Dr. Kevin Glowacki, a specialist in Bronze Age Aegean archaeology who is currently a professor in the department of architecture at Texas A&M University, gave us a tour of the museum’s prehistoric collection, which included Kykladic, Minoan, and Mycenaean artifacts.
ABOVE: Marble figurine of a man playing a harp found in the Keros hoard on the island of Keros, now on display in the NAM
ABOVE: Marble figurine of a man playing an aulos also found in the Keros hoard, now on display in the NAM
ABOVE: A display of Kykladic so-called “frying pans”
ABOVE: Kykladic vase shaped like a hedgehog, discovered at Chalandriani on the island of Syros, dating to between c. 2750 and c. 2200 BCE, on display in the Kykladic collection of the NAM
ABOVE: Grave goods that Heinrich Schlieman found in Grave Circle A at Mycenae, including the famous so-called “Mask of Agamemnon,” on display in the NAM
ABOVE: The famous Mycenaean “Warrior Vase,” which Schliemann discovered on the akropolis of Mycenae, dating to the twelfth century BCE, depicting warriors heading into battle wearing armor and carrying spears
ABOVE: The famous “Vapheio Cups,” which the Greek archaeologist Christos Tsountas discovered in a tholos tomb at the site of Vapheio near Sparta
Next, Dr. Aileen Ajootian gave us a tour of the museum’s collection of Archaic Greek sculptures, which included many famous kouroi (i.e., Archaic Greek statues of standing, nude, young men with stiff posture) and korai (i.e., Archaic Greek statues of standing, fully clothed, young women).
ABOVE: Colossal kouros statue carved from Naxian marble dating to around 600 BCE, found near the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion
ABOVE: The Phrasikleia kore, an exceptionally well-preserved kore statue, which was carved by the sculptor Aristion of Paros sometime between c. 550 and c. 540 BCE and served as grave marker for a young woman named Phrasikleia who died before she could be married, discovered in Attica
ABOVE: Kouros statue found alongside the Phrasikleia kore
ABOVE: The Kroisos kouros, which was carved sometime between c. 540 and c. 515 BCE and served as a grave marker for a young man named Kroisos who died in battle, discovered at Anavyssos in Attica
After Dr. Glowacky and Dr. Ajootian’s tours of the National Archaeological Museum, we walked over to the Epigraphic Museum, where we met Robert K. Pitt, a specialist in ancient Greek history and epigraphy who served as the Assistant Director of the British School at Athens and is currently a professor for College Year in Athens (CYA).
The Epigraphic Museum serves a different purpose from most other museums in Greece. Most Greek archaeological museums serve primarily to display ancient artifacts and educate the public about them. The Epigraphic Museum’s collection, however, consists almost entirely of pieces of stone bearing inscriptions in Ancient Greek.
As one might guess, inscriptions written in dead languages don’t appeal to the general public nearly as much as gold death masks or colossal marble statues. In fact, most people who are not professional scholars specializing in ancient history or epigraphy find them quite boring. As a result of this, almost no one ever visits the Epigraphic Museum and the museum functions first and foremost as an institute for scholarly research.
Many students in our group were expecting to find the Epigraphic Museum boring. Dr. Pitt, however, gave an exceptional, highly engaging tour of the museum that managed to hold our attention. He had a great presentational style and his sheer enthusiasm for Greek inscriptions was contagious.
Perhaps the most exciting artifact in the Epigraphic Museum’s collection is not an inscribed piece of stone, but rather a black-glazed Corinthian-type skyphos (i.e., a kind of ceramic drinking cup) that was originally made sometime between c. 480 and c. 465 BCE. It bears a series of names inscribed in at least two different hands: Aristeides, Diodotos, Daisimos, Ariphron, Perikles, and Eukritos. Archaeologists discovered this cup during a rescue excavation in 2014 in a humble grave in what is now the neighborhood of Kifisia in northern Athens.
Scholars generally believe that the “Perikles” whose name appears on the cup is none other than the famous Athenian politician of that name and that the “Ariphron” whose name appears directly above his is his brother. The “Aristeides” on the cup may be the famous politician Aristeides the Just and the “Diodotos” may be Diodotos, son of Eukrates, an Athenian citizen who famously appears in Thoukydides’s account of the Mytilenian debate in his Histories of the Peloponnesian War 3.36–50. If the Diodotos on the cup is in fact the same Diodotos in Thoukydides’s account, then this cup is the only known contemporary evidence independent of Thoukydides that he was a real person.
The most likely hypothesis for the origin of this cup is that it was used at some kind of gathering that involved wine drinking at which Aristeides, Diodotos, Ariphron, Perikles, and the others were present. The men at the gathering wrote their names on the cup they used—a practice which is attested through other evidence. Then, somehow, it passed into the possession of a man of low status (who was possibly enslaved), who treasured it as a memento of the occasion when he met these famous statesmen and eventually had the cup buried with him.
It was exhilarating to gaze upon what may well be the very signatures of several famous Athenian political figures of the fifth century BCE, inscribed on a cup that they might once have drank from.
ABOVE: The skyphos in the Epigraphic Museum’s collection inscribed with names, including those of Aristeides, Diodotos, and Perikles
Sunday, June 25th, 2023
On this day, we had a free morning and then, in the afternoon, we went back to the National Archaeological Museum. A scholar whose name I unfortunately did not catch showed us around the collection of Classical sculptures. These included the famous Artemision bronze, an exceptional Greek bronze statue in the Severe style dating to around 460 BCE that most likely depicts the god Zeus preparing to hurl a thunderbolt.
The statue is one of extremely few well-preserved bronze statues from early Greece, since, in most cases, later people melted down such statues for their metal. In this case, however, the statue happened to be on a ship that sank, perhaps around the middle of the second century BCE, off the coast of Cape Artemision, rendering it inaccessible to people who might have melted it down. It was recovered from the wreck between 1926 and 1928.
ABOVE: The famous Artemision Bronze
ABOVE: A different view of the Artemision Bronze
ABOVE: A closer view of the Artemision Bronze
Another sculpture he highlighted for us was the Great Eleusinian Relief, a larger-than-life-sized relief carved from a single colossal block of Pentelic marble sometime between c. 440 and c. 430 BCE, depicting the goddesses Demeter and Kore standing on either side of Triptolemos, teaching him the secrets of agriculture. The relief was discovered at Eleusis in western Attica, which, in antiquity, was the site of an important sanctuary of Demeter and Kore and the site of the Eleusinian mysteries.
This relief stood out to me especially because I had seen many photos of it before, but had never realized just how huge it was. Seeing it in person, I realized that it was actually something on the order of three times the size I had expected it to be.
ABOVE: The Great Eleusinian Relief
We also saw a whole bunch of other sculptures, including a Roman statue based on the Diadoumenos of Polykleitos, a statue of Aphrodite Areia or “Warlike Aphrodite” (a version of Aphrodite as a warrior goddess), a statue of a siren, the Antikythera ephebe, and the Jockey of Artemision (a bronze statue of a boy riding a horse that was recovered from the same shipwreck as the Artemision Bronze).
ABOVE: Second-century CE Roman marble statue based on the Diadoumenos, a bronze sculpture that the Greek sculptor Polykleitos created sometime around 420 BCE
ABOVE: Second-century CE Roman marble statue based on a Greek original dating to around 400 BCE depicting “Aphrodite Areia” or “Warlike Aphrodite,” a version of Aphrodite as a warrior goddess, found at Epidauros
ABOVE: Attic funerary statue of a siren playing a lyre made from a tortoise shell dating to around 370 BCE
ABOVE: The Antikythera ephebe, a bronze statue of a nude young man dating to between c. 340 and c. 330 BCE, recovered from the same shipwreck off the coast of Antikythera as the Antikythera mechanism
ABOVE: The “Jockey of Artemision”
After that, Dr. Dylan Rogers, a professor of classical archaeology at Florida State University, gave us a tour of the gallery of Greek sculptures from the Hellenistic Period. He gave an exceptionally passionate, engaging presentation and made highly efficient use of the time that was available to him to show us some of the highlights of the Hellenistic sculpture gallery and teach us about the defining features of Hellenistic sculpture. In the end, he completed his presentation four minutes ahead of schedule.
ABOVE: Larger-than-life-sized Pentelic marble statue of the goddess Themis, the divine personification of justice, whom I wrote about in this post from May 2022, dating to around 300 BCE, found at the site of Rhamnous in northern Attica
ABOVE: Head from a bronze statue of a Cynic philosopher recovered from the Antikythera shipwreck, dating to around 240 BCE
ABOVE: Poseidon of Melos, a larger-than-life-sized statue of the god Poseidon carved from Parian marble dating to around the final quarter of the second century BCE, discovered on the island of Melos, the same island as the Aphrodite of Melos or Venus de Milo
Of all the sculptures in the Hellenistic gallery in the National Archaeological Museum, the one I personally find most interesting is a marble statue group depicting the goddess Aphrodite holding up her sandal in her right hand to defend herself against the god Pan, who is attempting to sexually assault her. Meanwhile, her son Eros hovers over her shoulder, grasping Pan by the horn.
The statue was carved around 100 BCE. Its base bears an inscription, which records that a man named Dionysios from Beryttos (i.e., the city that is now Beirut, Lebanon) dedicated it “to his ancestral gods” in the “House of the Poseidoniastai of Beryttos” on the Greek island of Delos. (Delos is where the statue was discovered.)
ABOVE: Photo of the Aphrodite and Pan statue group
ABOVE: A view of the Aphrodite and Pan statue group from a different angle
Finally, Dr. Mary Sturgeon, a professor emerita of art history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specializes in Roman art, gave us a tour of the museum’s gallery of sculptures dating to the Roman period.
ABOVE: Bronze sculpture of the Roman emperor Augustus dating to the late first century BCE
ABOVE: Marble bust of Antinous, the eromenos of the Roman emperor Hadrian
ABOVE: Marble table support depicting the god Dionysos and companions, made in a workshop in Asia Minor between c. 170 and c. 180 CE
ABOVE: Marble portrait busts of the ultrawealthy Roman-era Athenian aristocrat Herodes Attikos (right) and his eromenos Polydeukion (left), both dating to the mid-second century CE
ABOVE: Marble statue of a sleeping mainad, based on the Hellenistic sculpture type of the sleeping Hermaphroditos
Monday, June 26th, 2023
On this day, we went on a day trip to visit sites in western Attica. We ate breakfast at Loring Hall at 7:00 a.m. and loaded onto the bus at 8:00 a.m. First, the bus driver took us to Dafni. In antiquity, the site was a sanctuary of the god Apollon, but the Visigoths under King Alaric I sacked and desecrated it in 395 CE. In the late sixth century CE, Christians founded a monastery on the site. This monastery fell into decline in the ninth century CE, but the Roman emperor Basileios Boulgaroktonos (lived 976 – 1025 CE) restored it during his reign by demolishing the old monastery and completely rebuilding it.
The monastery is currently undergoing extensive restoration and is closed to the public on all days except during limited hours on Tuesdays and Fridays. The ASCSA, however, was able to obtain special permission for us to go in on a Monday morning. The walls and ceiling of the monastery’s main church building are adorned with an array of absolutely stunning frescoes that left all of us in awe as soon as we walked in.
ABOVE: Photo I took outside Dafni Monastery
ABOVE: Mosiac of Christos Pantokrator on the ceiling of Daphni Monastery
ABOVE: Column from the ancient Temple of Apollon at Dafni that has been incorporated into the main church building of Dafni Monastery
ABOVE: Back side of the main church building at Dafni
After we left Dafni Monastery, we began our journey west to the town of Eleusis. On our way there, we drove past a sanctuary of Aphrodite that the ancient Greek travel writer Pausanias (lived c. 110 – c. 180 CE) mentions in his Guide to Greece. We didn’t stop, but I took a photo as we drove past.
ABOVE: Photo I took through the window of the bus of the Aphrodite sanctuary as we passed it
We also drove past the Strait of Salamis, which is where the allied forces of several Greek city-states (particularly Athens, which had the largest navy) won a decisive naval victory against the invading Achaemenid Persian Empire in the famous Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE. This battle turned the tide of the war in the Greeks’ favor. They successfully drove the Persian forces out of Greece the following year through their succeeding victories in the Battle of Plataia on land and the Battle of Mykale at sea.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Strait of Salamis through the window of the bus as we drove past
We also made a short stop to look at an impressively well-preserved ancient bridge dating to the period when the Roman Empire ruled Greece.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Roman bridge we stopped to see on our way to Eleusis
Finally, we arrived at Eleusis itself. I was extremely excited about seeing Eleusis because ancient religion is my foremost area of interest, I am especially interested in mystery religions, and, as the site of the Eleusinian mysteries, Eleusis is an immensely important site for the study of mystery religions in the Greek world.
I had, of course, read quite a bit about Eleusis in my previous studies and, during the spring 2023 semester, I was a course assistant for a class on ancient mystery cults at Brandeis, which was taught by Dr. Alexandra Ratzlaff, an archaeologist. In that course, Dr. Ratzlaff talked extensively about the archaeology of Eleusis and the Eleusinian mysteries.
It was truly exhilarating to walk the same path that initiates of the mysteries once walked and to set foot myself in the Telesterion, the great hall where people in antiquity performed the most secret initiations into the mysteries. There, in that very hall, over the course of the hundreds of years for which the Eleusinian mysteries lasted, thousands of people underwent initiation. We even sat in the very same seats in the Telesterion that those ancient initiates sat in while one of my fellow students delivered a site report about Eleusis and the rites that took place there.
ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me at Eleusis
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Telesterion at Eleusis
ABOVE: Photo I took of the ruins of the Telesterion at Eleusis from above
After visiting the site itself, we went into the Archaeological Museum of Eleusis, which was updated fairly recently and houses an impressive collection of ancient artifacts and artworks that have been found at the site and nearby.
One important highlight of the collection is a colossal ancient caryatid bust from Eleusis that has an absolutely fascinating story attached to it, which I discuss in this post I wrote back in October 2020.
ABOVE: Caryatid bust in the Archaeological Museum of Eleusis (Read this post from three years ago to learn more.)
Another important highlight of the collection is an original marble cult statue of Demeter that dates to the Classical Period.
ABOVE: Photo of an original marble cult statue of Demeter found at Eleusis dating to around 400 BCE
After Eleusis, we rode the bus to Eleutherai, which is the site of an ancient Greek stone fortress that either the Athenians or the Boiotians constructed sometime in the first half of the fourth century BCE. (Scholars still dispute who built the fort.) To get to the fortress, we had to hike up the side of a mountain, which was a rather grueling hike, especially under the hot Greek sun of late June.
At the top, we saw the walls of what must have once been a sturdy Classical-Era fortress built from ashlar masonry using the emplekton construction technique. We managed to find a shady spot by the walls where we could all sit. A cool mountain wind helped to keep us from getting too hot. There, one of my fellow students gave a site report about the fort. After his report, we spent some time exploring the ruins.
ABOVE: Photo showing my first view of the ancient fortress at Eleutherai
ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me standing on the wall of the fort at Eleutherai
Tuesday, June 27th, 2023
On this day, we returned to the Athenian Akropolis to learn more about the Propylaia and the Temple of Athena Nike from Dr. Julia L. Shear. Unfortunately, we had an absolute nightmare trying to get inside the Akropolis precinct. We went there first thing in the morning when the Akropolis first opened and there were enormous lines of tourists that stretched for hundreds of meters at both the south slope and main entrances.
Although we all have museum passes that grant us free admission to all publicly-owned museums and archaeological sites in Greece, we still had to show our passes at the ticket booth to get tickets, which meant we had to wait in line there. After that, we had to wait in line for over an hour and a half to get into the Akropolis itself. During this time, there was much confusion and a bitter confrontation between our group and an Education First (EF) tour group. At one point it actually seemed like Dr. Shear and the leader of the EF group were about to get into fisticuffs.
Finally, though, after that whole nightmare, we managed to get in. Dr. Shear began her lecture about the Propylaia on the steps leading up to it, where we had a clear view of both the Propylaia and the Nike bastion.
ABOVE: View of the Propylaia and the Nike bastion from the spot where Dr. Shear began her lecture
Tourists are not allowed to go behind the ropes on the Akropolis, but, because we are students at the ASCSA, we have special privileges, so, in the course of her lecture, Dr. Shear was able to take us behind the ropes and into the north wing of the Propylaia. We weren’t able to stay inside the north wing for very long, since they are doing construction in there. The guard told us that we could take photos inside the north wing, but told us that we are absolutely not allowed to post them anywhere online.
Similarly, tourists are never allowed to go onto the bastion of the Temple of Athena Nike, but, because we are ASCSA students, so Dr. Shear was able to take us there. We were not allowed to go inside the temple or walk around behind it, but we were able to go onto the bastion directly in front of the temple. There, she delivered a lecture about the temple as we all sat directly in front of it.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Temple of Athena Nike from where I sat during Dr. Shear’s lecture about the temple
After that, Dr. Shear took us around behind the Propylaia (another part of the Akropolis where tourists are not allowed to go) and showed us the visible remains of the Old Propylaia, which was built in the Archaic Period and which the current Propylaia stands on top of.
ABOVE: View of the remains of the Old Propylaia
After Dr. Shear finished her presentation, we all went back down from the Akropolis and dispersed for lunch. I ended up eating lunch with one of my fellow students and her ASL interpreter at a restaurant in the Plaka district right next to the ancient agora. Her interpreter happened to order octopus and he offered me some. I am normally not at all adventurous in my gastronomic proclivities, but he was insistent enough and I was curious enough that I ate a very small piece of it along with a potato. It actually wasn’t bad!
After lunch, we went to the ancient agora to meet Dr. John K. Papadopoulos, the current director of the ongoing ASCSA excavations in the Athenian agora. (Readers may recall that I already mentioned him briefly in my previous blog post.) He gave us an extensive tour of the agora, which was the commercial hub of ancient Athens, as well as an important political center, since it was where the Boulē or council met and where the Athenians conducted ostracisms.
The agora eventually fell out of the use in the Roman Period. It was eventually abandoned and became buried. In modern times, two of Athens’ most densely populated neighborhoods, Vrysaki and Vlassarou, covered the site. Nonetheless, it was clear to scholars, archaeologists, and Greek politicians that it was the site of the ancient Athenian agora. In 1925, the Greek government declared the site an excavation zone and, in 1927, they granted the ASCSA a permit to excavate the site.
The Greek government forced all the people who lived and owned property in the neighborhoods to sell their property to the state and move out. In 1931, the ASCSA began to clear away all the modern buildings covering the site in order to excavate the ancient ruins underneath. The ASCSA has been excavating the agora almost continuously ever since.
The excavations in the agora have revealed an enormous amount of information about ancient Athenian commerce, politics, society, and material culture. Today, the space is a vast, beautiful public park with ancient ruins surrounded by beautiful trees, bushes, and landscaping. It is an island of green amid a sea of concrete. Dr. Papadopoulos described it to us rather aptly as “the lungs of this part of Athens.” That being said, all of this has come at the cost of the total destruction of two once-thriving, densely populated neighborhoods of the modern city.
Dr. Papadopoulos was an engaging presenter. He asked us a lot of questions about Greek history, language, literature, and archaeology to test our knowledge. I gave thorough and accurate answers to many of these questions. He did have a tendency to go off on semi-relevant tangents, but these were generally interesting and one of them afforded me an opportunity to impress everyone with my knowledge.
For some reason, at one point, Dr. Papadopoulos happened to get talking about Lord Byron and asked, “Who here is going to recite some Byron for us?” A brief silence fell and many students looked at me, since they knew that I have a hobby of memorizing poems for fun. Luckily, I happened to have memorized the first stanza of Byron’s poem “The Isles of Greece,” so I recited it for everyone from memory.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the ruins of the Stoa Basileios on the northwest corner of the agora, which served in antiquity as the headquarters of the Archon Basileus. Plato’s dialogue Euthyphron takes place in front of this building.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the ruins of the Odeion of Agrippa, which was constructed under the commission of the Roman general Agrippa c. 15 BCE
ABOVE: Ruins of the Temple of Ares in the Athenian agora with a view of the Temple of Hephaistos in the background
ABOVE: Altar of the Twelve Gods at the northwest corner of the Athenian agora, which Peisistratos the Younger (the grandson of the famous Athenian tyrant) originally commissioned in 522/21 BCE and which marked the point from which distances were traditionally measured
ABOVE: Ruins of the House of Simon the Shoemaker on the edge of the Athenian agora
ABOVE: Ruins of the “New Bouleuterion,” which was constructed in the late fifth century BCE as the meeting place for the Boulē or Council of the 500
After Dr. Papadopoulos finished his tour, I stayed behind just a few minutes to ask him some questions about the Metroön, the temple of the mother goddess Kybele in the agora. As a result of this, however, I became separated from the other members of the group.
I thought that I could find my way back to the school on my own, but, at the Metro, I accidentally got on the wrong train and ended up in a part of Athens far away from the school with no idea how to find my way back. I couldn’t figure out the maps of the different Metro lines and ended up having to message my other students for help finding my way back.
Thankfully, they were eventually able to help me find my way back to the school, but I ended up humiliating myself quite a bit and arriving back roughly an hour and a half later than they did, even though I had left the agora only a few minutes after them. As a result of this, I missed most of a lecture that Dr. Nancy Bookidis delivered over Zoom for us about the archaeological site of Olympia, which we were going to visit on our imminent trip to the Peloponnesos.
Wednesday, June 28th, 2023
I woke up around 6:00 a.m. to finish packing for our trip to the Peloponnesos, ate breakfast in Loring Hall, and then climbed onto the bus with everyone else. Our bus drove for about an hour until we reached the Isthmus of Corinth. There, the bus stopped for about twenty minutes so that we could all get out, stand on the walkway on the bridge over the Corinth Canal, take photos, and use the restroom.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Corinth Canal while standing on a bridge above it
After that, the bus drove onward until we reached the site of Lechaion, which was the oldest and primary port of the ancient Greek city of Corinth. The ASCSA is currently conducting excavations at the site and, when we arrived, the student workers were just taking a break for lunch. There must have been around thirty to forty students at the site.
The site director Dr. Paul Scotton, who is a professor of classics at California State University, Long Beach, showed us around the site and told us all about the archaeological remains that the excavations were uncovering. As he did this, the students finished eating and started going back to work excavating. It was really exciting to watch an archaeological excavation in progress up-close. I took some photos, but I am not allowed to share them here because the finds are still unpublished.
After touring the Lechaion excavations, the bus driver took us to the Akrokorinth, the akropolis of the ancient city of Corinth, which is a fortified mountain that towers over the ancient city. The bus driver took as far up the mountain as the bus could go. Then, we got out of the bus and hiked a significant distance further up the mountain. There, Glenn gave us lecture about the history of the Akrokorinth.
ABOVE: Photo of me standing on the Akrokorinth near the point where Glenn gave his lecture, with a view of the sea behind me
When Glenn finished, he gave us some time to explore. Most of us decided to hike all the way to the mountain’s summit. The journey up the Akrokorinth was an absolutely brutal uphill march on a steep, rocky path in the 90°F heat of Greece in late June with no shade and the sun continually beating down on us. Finally, though, we made it to the top.
ABOVE: Photo of me standing at the summit of the Akrokorinth, looking very hot and exhausted, but happy to have finally made it
Expectedly, the journey back down the Akrokorinth to the place where our bus was parked was significantly quicker and less arduous than the journey up had been. After we got back on the bus, the bus took us to the site of ancient Corinth proper. There we found food at a restaurant overlooking the ruins of the ancient city, which the ASCSA has been excavating almost continuously since 1896.
After lunch, we went into the archaeological site and Dr. Christopher A. Pfaff, an associate professor of classics at Florida State University and the current director of the ongoing ASCSA excavation at Corinth, gave us a lecture about the history of ancient Corinth and the history of the ASCSA’s excavation work there. Then he showed us around the ruins of the ancient city.
The most impressive surviving monument at Corinth is the ruined Temple of Apollon, which the Corinthians constructed in the Doric order in the sixth century BCE. The temple is not nearly as well preserved as, say, the Parthenon or the Temple of Hephaistos in the Athenian agora, but it is still the best-preserved temple at Corinth and one of the better-preserved of the temples we have seen during our travels. The crepidoma (i.e., the stepped base on which the temple rests) and the columns and part of the entablature on one side of the temple have survived.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Temple of Apollon at Corinth
The Temple of Apollon is unusual because it is one of the very few large buildings at the site that date to the time before the Roman conquest. In 146 BCE, the Romans sacked Corinth and completely destroyed the city. Just over a century later, in 44 BCE, Julius Caesar ordered for the city to be refounded as a Roman colonia. As a result of this, most of the visible ruins at the site today date to the period of the Roman Empire.
We also saw the bema or speaker’s platform of Roman Corinth, which some people believe might be the place where, according to the Book of Acts of the Apostles 18:12–17, the apostle Paul was brought for his trial before Gallio, the Roman proconsul of Achaia, in 51/52 CE. Dr. Pfaff mentioned that the historicity of Paul’s trial in Corinth and the identification of the bema as the site of this supposed trial are both open to question, but he said that Christians from around the world still regularly come to the bema as a pilgrimage site and often will sing hymns and say prayers there.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Roman-era bema at Corinth
Dr. Pfaff also showed us the ruins of Temple E, a building with Corinthian-order columns. Archaeologists have been able to identify the building as a temple, but they have not been able to identify which deity the temple was dedicated to.
ABOVE: Photo I took of Temple E at Corinth
After Dr. Pfaff showed us around the archaeological site, he led us into the Archaeological Museum of Corinth, where many of the artifacts that the excavators have found over the past century and a quarter of excavations are displayed, as well as some artifacts that have found their way into the museum in other ways. These include a pair of almost identical marble Archaic kouroi that were rescued from the illegal antiquities market in 2010.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the kouroi in the Archaeological Museum of Corinth
The museum also had a pair of giant Roman-era marble sculptures of Phrygian captives.
ABOVE: Photo of one of the Phrygian captive sculptures
After touring the archaeological site of Corinth and the museum, we walked over to the Bert Hodge Hill House, which is a building owned by the ASCSA directly next to the ruins of ancient Corinth that is named after the important twentieth-century archaeologist Bert Hodge Hill. There, we sat down in a snug, dimly-lit living room and Dr. Nancy Bookidis delivered a presentation for us about her own excavation of the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on the Akrokorinth.
The presentation lasted for somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half. After that, we all loaded back onto the bus and rode it to the nearby resort town of Loutraki, where we checked into a hotel for the night.
Thursday, June 29th, 2023
I woke up around 6:30 a.m. and ate breakfast in the hotel. Then, around 8:20 a.m., we all loaded back onto the bus and rode to Isthmia, which is an ancient sanctuary dedicated to the god Poseidon. It was also the site of the Isthmian Games, which was one of the four great Panhellenic athletic festivals.
At Isthmia, we met Dr. Alessandro Pierattini, who showed us some of the finds in the Archaeological Museum of Isthmia and the remains of the temples of Poseidon at the site and gave us a highly technical, detailed lesson on Greek temple architecture that lasted much longer than the expected time.
ABOVE: Ruined foundation of the Temple of Poseidon at Isthmia
After his presentation, another scholar took us to the northeast of the site to see the remains of an ancient theater that was constructed in the fifth century BCE.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the ancient theater at Isthmia
Then she took us to the north end of the site to see the ruins of a particularly lavish Roman bathhouse dating to the second century CE, underneath which they have found the remains of an older Greek bathhouse, which may date as far back as the fourth or even the fifth century BCE.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the remains of a hypocaust, a system for heating the bath from under the floor, at the Roman bathhouse at Isthmia
ABOVE: Part of the Roman bathhouse
ABOVE: Detail of the mosaic floor in the Roman bathhouse
After that, a third scholar gave us a quick tour of the museum, which she had to rush because we were running behind on time. Then we left Isthmia, stopped at a shop that sold sandwiches and salads, ate a quick lunch, and then drove on to Nemea, an ancient sanctuary dedicated to Nemean Zeus that was also the site of the Nemean Games, which was one of the other of the four great Panhellenic athletic festivals.
We began in the Archaeological Museum of Nemea, where we met Dr. Kim Shelton, who is a professor of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the current director of excavations at Nemea. She showed us around the museum and told us all about the site and the artifacts that have been found there. She was very enthusiastic about the site and she had a great sense of humor, which made her presentation quite lively.
After she showed us around the museum, she took us outside and showed us the Christian basilica that her team is currently working to excavate and protect. There were people out working on it while we were there. Then she showed us an ancient Greek bathhouse dating to the fourth century BCE.
She remarked that a lot of people will claim that the Greeks did not have public bathhouses in the time before the Romans, but declared that the bathhouses at Isthmia and Nemea disprove this claim. She did, however, note that bathhouses were less common in the pre-Roman Greek world than they were in the Roman Empire and were less technologically sophisticated. Notably, unlike most later Roman bathhouses, the Greek bathhouses at Isthmia and Nemea do not have hypocausts underneath them for heating the water. Such hypocaustic heating did not become common in bathhouses until the first century BCE.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the ancient Greek bath at Nemea, which dates to the fourth century BCE
After showing us the bathhouse, Dr. Shelton took us over to the Temple of Nemean Zeus, which is the most famous and most architecturally imposing monument at the site. The temple was built in the fourth century BCE and is smaller than the absolutely colossal temples of the fifth century BCE like the Parthenon and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, but it is nonetheless a towering structure in its own right.
Three columns of the temple have remained continuously standing since antiquity. Archaeologists have reconstructed six additional columns, which comprise a complete corner of the temple, using the technique of anastylosis, which means using original materials to greatest possible degree.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Temple of Nemean Zeus
ABOVE: Closer-up view of the part of the temple with standing columns
ABOVE: Photo I had one of the other students take of me standing in front of the Temple of Nemean Zeus at Nemea
After visiting the temple, we all climbed back into the bus along with Dr. Shelton and she rode with us a short distance to the site of the ancient stadium where the Greeks in antiquity held the footraces for the Nemean Games.
As I previously discussed in this post I wrote about the ancient Olympic Games, all athletes participating in ancient Greek athletic competitions were required to do so completely naked. As we entered, we passed through the ruins of the apodyterion, which is the room where athletes who were taking part in the footrace stripped off all their clothes in preparation for the race.
ABOVE: Photo of the apodyterion at Nemea
After the apodyterion, we passed through an ancient tunnel with an arched roof that was built in the fourth century BCE.
ABOVE: Photo of the tunnel leading from the apodyterion to the stadium
Finally, we reached the ancient stadium itself, which was massive. There, Dr. Shelton gave a lecture about the Nemean Games and how the ancient footrace worked. After she finished this lecture, someone or other suggested that we should have a footrace from one end of the stadium to the other so that we would all know exactly what it was like to run a race in the ancient stadium. Although it was not compulsory, almost everyone decided to participate. Dr. Shelton taught us exactly the correct way to position our feet on the ancient starting line. Then she gave the signal for us to run.
I am not at all an athletic person and, from the very beginning, I had absolutely no expectation to win the race. Nonetheless, I decided that, since this was potentially the only chance I would ever have in my life to run a footrace against other people in an ancient stadium, I wanted to get the fullest experience out of it, so I sprinted as fast as I possibly could. I certainly did not win, but I did a lot better than I expected. Out of the eighteen of us who ran, I think I came in something like fifth or sixth place.
I was surprised by how quickly it was all over; no one actually timed the race, but, based on my own subjective perception, I think it took most of us less than a minute to run the full length of the stadium. Although I was out of breath at the end, I was also greatly surprised by how much I actually enjoyed the experience.
ABOVE: Photo of the ancient stadium at Nemea
After our footrace at the stadium, we left Nemea and rode in the bus to Nafplio, which is a city located in the northeast Peloponnesos on the Gulf of the Argolis. The Republic of Venice ruled the city for long stretches of its medieval and early modern history and the city has a large amount of Venetian architecture.
Glenn told us that Nafplio is his favorite city in Greece and, once we arrived, it was not at all difficult for us to see why; it is a gorgeous city on the coast with a rich history and highly distinctive architecture. From the beginning, it reminded me far more of the cities that we visited on Krete than it did of Athens.
We checked into a hotel in Nafplio. Later in the evening, I went out to dinner at a local restaurant with some friends. Nafplio is known for its gelato, so, after dinner, we got gelato from a place that Glenn had recommended to us earlier; it was delicious. Then we spent some time walking around the city, strolling by the harbor, looking at all the beautiful shops and houses, and exploring Plateia Syntagmatos (the central square of the city), with talented live street musicians performing as we went past.
ABOVE: Photo I took of a city square in Nafplio
ABOVE: Photo I took of a random street in Nafplio in daylight
ABOVE: Photo I took of a different random street in Nafplio shortly after dusk
Sadly, even though Nafplio is perhaps the most beautiful city we have visited on this whole trip so far, the hotel we stayed in there was definitely one of the worst, if not the absolute worst. It was absolutely filthy and run-down, the sheets on my bed had gross-looking stains on them, and none of the bathroom doors in any of the rooms even had latches on them (let alone locks).
The shower in my room had two showerheads, one of which was a handheld one for which there was no place to mount it anywhere on the wall and the other of which was a mounted showerhead that sprayed water in every direction, including to the sides and straight up at the ceiling.
On top of all this, around 10:00 p.m., one of the male students sent a message in our group WhatsApp reminding us all to check our beds for bedbugs, saying that the room he was originally assigned was infested with bedbugs and he had to be transferred to a different room. Everyone who was still awake instantly flew into a panic.
I thoroughly searched my own bed multiple times, checking everywhere, including under the mattress, and found no traces of bedbugs. (The stains on the sheets were definitely not bedbug stains since they were not the right shape or color.) Nonetheless, I was still terrified to get into the bed, fearing that there might be bedbugs that I missed. I ended up not going to bed until after 2:00 a.m.
Friday, June 30th, 2023
I woke up around 6:00 a.m. and went down for breakfast in the hotel at 7:00. At 8:30, we all climbed onto the bus and rode to Palamidi, which is a fortress that the Venetians constructed on the Akronafplia from 1711 to 1714. There, Glenn delivered a lecture about the history of Nafplio from the Middle Ages to after Greek Revolution, focusing on the history of the Palamidi in particular.
Despite the fact that the fort was extremely expensive and took three years for the Venetians to build, it ultimately proved basically useless to them, since Ottomans captured it after a siege of only eight days on July 20th, 1715, only a year after the Venetians built it.
After capturing the fort, the Ottomans sacked the town, massacred the population, and sold everyone that they didn’t slaughter into slavery. A little over a century later, the Greek revolutionary forces captured the fort in 1822 and gave the fort its present name of Palamidi, after the legendary Greek hero Palamedes.
ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me standing atop the Venetian fortress of Palamidi with a view of Nafplio in the background
After Glenn gave us his lecture about the fort, he gave us some time to explore it. While some of us were exploring, we found the entrance to a dark tunnel and went down it to see where it led. The tunnel led around several bends and eventually let out in a different room of the castle.
ABOVE: Photo of the place where we came out of the tunnel
After we spent some time looking around the castle, the group I was with walked down all the steps to the bottom of the Akronafplia, which was extremely bad for our knees. (Our legs were all shaking by the time we reached the bottom.) Then we met up with Glenn and the others.
Glenn took us on a walk around Nafplio and showed us some of the historic sites around the city. Then he took us to the Archaeological Museum of Naplio, which has a large collection of artifacts that have been found in the Argolis region. Because many important Mycenaean sites existed in this region during the Bronze Age, the museum has a particularly significant collection of Bronze Age artifacts.
While we were inside the museum, we heard loud noises like gunshots and people cheering or ululating. Some of us panicked at first, but we eventually figured out that it was just a local graduation celebration. Apparently, there is a tradition in Greece of making lots of loud noise at graduation celebrations.
ABOVE: Display of Mycenaean artifacts (including armor) in the Archaeological Museum of Nafplio
ABOVE: Display of Mycenaean terra-cotta figures and pottery in the Archaeological Museum of Nafplio
After we made our way through the museum, we had a few hours of free time to find lunch on our own and explore the city. A few other of the women students who I have become friends with and I looked through some of the clothing shops, but none of us found anything we liked that we were willing to pay for. After that, we ate lunch at a local restaurant.
After lunch, we met back up with Glenn and the others and rode the bus to the site of Epidauros, an ancient Greek city that was known in antiquity primarily for its important sanctuary to Asklepios, who was the patron god of healing and medicine. After we arrived, we went into the Archaeological Museum of Epidauros, which is fairly small and has clearly not been updated in a while, but has a very impressive collection.
After going through the museum, we went back outside and one of my fellow students delivered his site report about the cult of Asklepios at Epidauros. After that, we went to see the ancient theater of Epidauros, which was constructed in the late fourth century BCE and can seat up to 14,000 spectators.
Because the site of Epidauros was abandoned in late antiquity and there was no major town nearby during the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, almost no one removed any of the stones from the theater there to use them for other building projects. As a result of this, it is the best-preserved ancient theater in Greece. In fact, the theater is so well preserved that the Greeks regularly stage performances of classical dramas there today.
At the theater, visitors were going up on stage and saying things to test out the acoustics, which are exceptionally good. We decided to test it out ourselves. Some of my fellow students went up to the very top of the theater while I stood in the middle of the stage and recited some ancient Greek poems from memory in the original Ancient Greek. Specifically, I recited the first fifteen lines of the Odyssey and Sappho fragment 1 (the “Ode to Aphrodite”).
Unfortunately, while we were there, an accident occurred in which a woman (a German tourist who was not a member of our group) fell and seriously injured herself on the stone at the top of the theater. Thankfully, she was able to get medical attention.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Theater of Epidauros
After spending some time at the theater, we went to see the other ruins of the sanctuary. We walked across a bridge over the ancient athletic stadium of Epidauros, which I think is actually a little better preserved than the stadium at Nemea that we had visited the day before.
ABOVE: Photo of the stadium of Epidauros
We saw the Temple of Asklepios, the “tholos,” and the abaton, which is the building where people seeking healing would sleep at the sanctuary in hope that the god would miraculously heal them. There, another student delivered his site report about the temple and the “tholos.”
ABOVE: Temple of Asklepios at Epidauros
ABOVE: “Tholos” of Asklepios at Epidauros
ABOVE: Abaton at the sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros
After we finished up at Epidauros, we rode the bus back to Nafplio. That night, almost all the students in the program except me went to the Plateia, where there was a massive event with tons of people, alcoholic drinks, and a very loud live musical performance that lasted from around 9:00 p.m. until after 2:00 a.m. (I could hear the music loud and clear from inside my hotel room!)
Unlike most of the others, I did not go that event because I don’t drink alcohol and I don’t enjoy crowds or loud music. I ended up finding dinner on my own and eating alone. It was my first time eating at a restaurant by myself in Greece.
Saturday, July 1, 2023
After breakfast in the hotel, we all loaded onto the bus at 8:00 a.m. and rode out to Mycenae, which is the largest and most famous Bronze Age citadel in mainland Greece. Most of us were especially excited to see Mycenae because it is such a famous and important site.
Dr. Kim Shelton was originally supposed to give us a tour of Mycenae and show us around the museum there, but she was not able to come, since she was busy that day with something else. Instead, one of her PhD students, a man named David Wheeler, gave us a tour of the site. He was young, very enthusiastic about the site, and gave a really outstanding presentation. He was also more than happy to answer our questions about the site.
I was surprised to find that Mycenae was not packed with tourists like the Akropolis and Knossos had been. There were some other visitors there who were not members of our group, but not nearly as many as I was expecting. In retrospect, I reckon that several factors most likely contributed to this state of affairs.
In contrast to the Akropolis, which is in the heart of Athens, the largest city in Greece, Mycenae is at a fairly isolated location on a hill on the Argive plain, far away from any large cities. Meanwhile, in contrast to Knossos, which is right on the coast, Mycenae is far enough inland that it is not possible for cruise ships to let their passengers off there. As a result of this, the only ways for foreign tourists to visit the site are either by taking a tour bus or by renting a car in Nafplio and driving out to the site. We visited the site very early in the morning on a Saturday and, as a result, there were no tour buses at the site.
David began his tour of Mycenae at the famous Lion Gate, which is a colossal gateway entrance to the citadel.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the famous Lion Gate at Mycenae at a distance
ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me standing in front of the Lion Gate
ABOVE: Detail of the carving of the lions above the Lion Gate
After the Lion Gate, David took us to Grave Circle A, which is located just inside the citadel, off to the right after one enters through the Lion Gate. This is where Heinrich Schliemann found the expensive grave goods that we saw in the National Archaeological Museum, including the so-called “Mask of Agamemnon.”
ABOVE: Photo I took of Grave Circle A at Mycenae
David showed us all around the rest of the citadel. One other highlight was the cistern tunnel, which is a long, dark tunnel leading deep down into the hill on which Mycenae stands.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the cistern tunnel at Mycenae
David led us part of the way down the cistern tunnel to a point where modern caretakers of the site have installed a metal gate to prevent visitors from going any deeper.
ABOVE: A view further down the dark cistern tunnel
After David showed us around Mycenae itself, we went to the Archaeological Museum of Mycenae, which houses many artifacts that archaeologists have found at the site, excluding the ones that are in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. There, we saw (among other things) some statuettes recovered from the cult center at Mycenae depicting female figures and also frescoes that may reveal information about Mycenaean religion.
ABOVE: Photo I took of some statuettes on display in the Archaeological Museum of Mycenae that were found in the cult center at Mycenae and are believed to depict either goddesses, priestesses, or priestesses taking the roles of goddesses
ABOVE: Fresco on display in the Archaeological Museum of Mycenae
After that, we went to see the so-called “Treasury of Atreus,” which is located near Mycenae. The structure receives its name because Pausanias claimed that the treasury of Atreus, a legendary king of Mycenae who is said to have been the father of Agamemnon and Menelaos, was located in this area. Visitors to the site in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, relying on Pausanias, mistakenly identified the building as this supposed “treasury.”
In reality, the building is not a treasury at all, but rather a Mycenaean tholos tomb, which was constructed sometime between 1400 and 1200 BCE. It is the largest known tholos tomb and one of the best preserved by far. While we were there, one of my fellow students gave a site report about the tomb.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the outside of the Treasury of Atreus
ABOVE: Me standing in front of the Treasury of Atreus
ABOVE: Ceiling of the Treasury of Atreus
After that, we got back on the bus. We needed to find a place to eat, so the bus driver recommended a place that he said had the capacity to handle a large group. It turned out to be a place that caters specifically to tour buses.
Essentially, these kinds of restaurants buy extremely nasty, pre-made food at dirt cheap prices and sell it to foreign tourists for something on the order of ten to fifteen times what they originally paid for it. They then give tour bus drivers a cut of the profits to incentivize them to take their passengers there. The food was disgusting and it left most of us feeling at least nauseous. Several of us got food poisoning.
Immediately after that, we rode to visit the Heraion of Argos, an ancient sanctuary of the goddess Hera. There, Dr. Pfaff (the same scholar who had given us a tour of Corinth three days earlier) gave us a tour of the site, which was completely deserted except for us for the entire duration of the time we were there. Dr. Pfaff commented that almost no one knows that the Heraion site exists and no one ever goes there; when people do show up, it’s usually because they’re lost.
Dr. Pfaff was really nice and he gave a good presentation, but all of us felt at the very least nauseous from lunch (if not outright sick), we had to walk a distance uphill to get to the site, it was a blisteringly hot afternoon under the Greek sun, there was virtually no shade to speak of, and the presentation lasted for over an hour. (I don’t remember exactly how long it lasted.) As a result, we were all rather miserable and were unable to give him our full attention.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the ruined foundation of the Temple of Hera at the Heraion
After we left the Heraion, we stopped very briefly to visit the Merbaka Church, a Roman Catholic church built in the thirteenth century CE in the town of Merbaka, which is thought to be named after the Flemish scholar and theologian William of Moerbeke. The church building incorporates several relief sculptures from the Greek Classical Period, which the builders of the church evidently decided to reuse as spolia.
ABOVE: Photo of the Merbaka Church
After that, we rode in the bus to Tiryns, a Mycenaean citadel that is known for its colossal walls built of Cyclopean masonry. Some scholars believe that Tiryns may have been the port of Mycenae, since it shows many architectural affinities with Mycenae, it seems to be located too close to Mycenae to have been a rival kingdom, and it is located near the coast.
Dr. Katie Fine, the assistant director of the summer session, came down from Athens to lecture to us about Mycenae. She was able to show us the famous walls of the city, but we were only able to spend about ten minutes there, which was far less time than we had planned, because the guard at the gate wanted to lock up and go home at 3:30 p.m.
We therefore went back to Nafplio and Dr. Fine gave her lecture about the history and archaeology of Tiryns in the Plateia of Nafplio under the shade of an awning at one of the restaurants there.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the walls of Tiryns
Sunday, July 2, 2023
We ate breakfast in the hotel at 7:00 a.m., collected all of our belongings, checked out of the hotel, and loaded onto the bus at 8:30. We rode in the bus to Lerna, where we visited the House of the Tiles, which was built sometime around 2200 BCE during the Early Helladic Period. The archaeologist John L. Caskey led the first excavations at the site in the 1950s on behalf of the ASCSA.
All in all, the House of the Tiles is not a very visually impressive site; it is mostly built of mud bricks and only the very bottoms of the walls remain. Nonetheless, it is the oldest site in mainland Greece that we will visit in our entire trip. A modern shed has been built over the ruins of the house in order to protect it, since the mud bricks that comprise it are extremely delicate and, without the shed, the rain, wind, and snow would quickly destroy what little remains of the site.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the House of the Tiles
ABOVE: Another view of the House of the Tiles
After visiting the House of the Tiles, we got back on the bus until we arrived at the archaeological site of the ancient Greek city of Mantineia, which, in antiquity, was one of the most prominent Greek cities in Arkadia. There was no guard posted at the gate and it was obvious that no one was taking care of the site or doing anything to protect it. The site itself was completely overgrown with grass and weeds and almost none of the ancient ruins were visible apart from a few stones that happened to stick up above the weeds.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the archaeological site at Mantineia
ABOVE: Another photo I took at Mantineia
More impressive than the archaeological site of Mantineia itself is the modern church Agia Foteini Mantineias, which stands just outside the archaeological site. It was designed by the modern Greek architect Kostas Papatheodorou and was completed and inaugurated in 1978. Although it is modern, it is a wondrously unique, eclectic blend of different ancient, medieval, and modern architectural styles. After visiting the archaeological site, we headed over to the church and were able to go inside.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the church Agia Foteini Mantineias
ABOVE: A closer-up view of the church
ABOVE: View of the side of the church through which we entered
As soon as we entered, we were struck by the smell of burning incense. The church was just as beautiful inside as it was outside.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the interior of the Agia Foteini Mantineias
After stopping to see the church, we got back on the bus and rode on toward the ancient site of Therapne near Sparta. At the site, there are Mycenaean ruins and also a small temple that the Spartans originally built in the second half of the seventh century BCE and used for the hero cult worship of the legendary King Menelaos and his wife Helen.
The Menelaion is atop a large hill and the bus could only take us a certain distance up the hill, so we had to walk the rest of the way up. It was yet another grueling uphill march in the blistering heat with very little shade. One student had to stay behind because they realized they weren’t going to make it to the top. The rest of us, however, eventually made it to the Menelaion.
There, I gave my first site report about both the Mycenaean remains at the site and the historical-period temple to Menelaos and Helen. I had spent a great deal of time before the trip and during it doing research for my report and preparing the handout that I was required to make with maps of the site, a select bibliography of modern secondary sources about it, and select quotations about the site from ancient Greek authors.
Like all the other reports, my report lasted about twenty-five minutes. I covered the Bronze Age ruins at the site, the historical-period temple of Menelaos and Helen, the ancient testimonia for the site, the site’s excavation history, and why the site is important. I was very enthusiastic and thorough in my presentation and many people gave me complements on my performance.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the Menelaion
ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me standing on top of the Menelaion
After we finished up at the Menelaion, the bus drove us into the modern city of Sparta and we found lunch at a local Spartan restaurant that sold mostly baked goods. After lunch, we went to visit the surviving ruins of ancient Sparta. The surviving ruins themselves are not impressive and almost all of them date to the late Hellenistic and Roman Periods. Almost no ruins survive from Archaic and Classical Periods when Sparta was at the peak of its political and military prominence.
There is an ancient theater on the slope of the Spartan Akropolis, but it did not exist in the Archaic or Classical Periods; it was originally constructed in the late Hellenistic Period and was extensively renovated during the Roman Period. The theater is not in the best state of preservation and we were not able to go inside because they are currently doing restoration work on it.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the ancient theater of Sparta
A number of other students and I walked up to the Spartan akropolis. It was not an especially steep hike; compared to the hike we had made earlier that day to the Menelaion, the walk up to the Spartan akropolis was nothing.
Atop the akropolis, we saw the ruins of St. Nikon’s Basilica, a Christian basilica that was constructed in late antiquity. All that remained of the basilica were the lower parts of some of the walls.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the ruins of St. Nikon’s Basilica on the Spartan akropolis
The only building on the akropolis of Sparta that dates to the Classical Period or earlier even in part is the Temple of Athena Chalkioikos. It was probably not a very impressive building even when it stood complete, but, today, only the lowest blocks of the walls remain.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the remains of the Temple of Athena Chalkioikos
My overall impression of the Spartan akropolis could not possibly be more different from my impression of the Athenian Akropolis. Whenever someone goes to the Athenian Akropolis, they are immediately stunned by the extraordinary stature and beauty of the monuments. One finds oneself wondering, “How on earth did they build this?” When one lays eyes on it, it still has the power to take one’s breath away, even if one has already seen it many times before. When one visits the Spartan akropolis, by contrast, the only thought one comes away with is: “Man, what a dump.”
That being said, in contrast to the ancient ruins there, the modern town of Sparta is not a dump. Indeed, although none of the standing buildings of the modern town date any earlier than the nineteenth century, it is still a lovely little town. Immediately after our visit to the ancient Spartan akropolis, we checked into a hotel in Sparta, which was by far the nicest one that we have stayed in so far in this entire trip.
After we all got settled into our hotel rooms, some of the other students and I went out to eat at a local restaurant, where we were able to get a very nice meal together at an affordable price. The other students I was with were all drinking alcohol and, for some reason, I happened to mention in the conversation that I had never tried alcohol in my life, even though I will be turning twenty-four next month.
One of the women was drinking white wine and she offered to let me try some of it. I normally would have refused, but I was feeling abnormally adventurous, so I timidly drank two sips. I’m still trying to decide what I think of it, but, in any case, it was another new experience for me.
Monday, July 3rd, 2023
We ate breakfast in the hotel at 7:00 a.m. and, around 8:15, we walked over to the Archaeological Museum of Sparta, which was only a hundred feet away from our hotel. It is a lovely little museum and the objects in its collection were far more interesting than what we saw on the Spartan akropolis.
ABOVE: Photo I took of the exterior of the Archaeological Museum of Sparta
ABOVE: Marble statue of a Spartan hoplite dating to between c. 480 and c. 470 BCE, discovered at the Temple of Athena Chalkioikos on the akropolis, traditionally identified as King Leonidas I on the basis of very little evidence
ABOVE: Display of lead votive figurines left as dedications at temples in Lakonia
ABOVE: Display of terra-cotta masks left as votive offerings to Artemis Orthia
ABOVE: Hellenistic statue of a boar found on the akropolis of Sparta
ABOVE: Roman-era mosaic depicting Achilleus on the island of Skyros disguised as a woman, but identified as a man by his masculine interest in weapons
After visiting the archaeological museum, we checked out of our hotel, loaded onto the bus, and rode out. We ate a quick lunch at the same baked-goods shop in Sparta where we had eaten lunch the day before.
After lunch, we went to Mystras, a fortified medieval and early modern town located atop Mount Taÿgetos near Sparta. Glenn delivered a lecture for us about the town and then he turned us loose to explore on our own. Some of us immediately began to hike all the way up to the top of Mount Taÿgetos to see the fort at the top.
It was, again, a grueling uphill march on an uneven, rocky path in the brutal heat with very little shade. I commented to some of the students I was with as we were climbing up: “By the time this program is over, I’m either going to be dead or really fucking in shape.” (For context, I normally don’t swear very much in person, so, when I drop the f-bomb in a sentence like that, it takes people by surprise and the shock factor adds a degree of intensity.) In the end, we were thoroughly overheated and exhausted, but we eventually did make it to the top.
ABOVE: Photo of me at the top of Mystras
After seeing the fort, we came back down to see the magnificent medieval churches and monasteries that Mystras is known for. These churches were filled with stunning frescoes depicting all kinds of saints, holy figures, and scenes from the life of Jesus.
ABOVE: Exterior of the Church of Saint Sophia at Mystras
ABOVE: Fresco inside the Church of Saint Sophia showing the nativity of Jesus
ABOVE: Fresco inside the Church of Saint Sophia showing Jesus as Christos Pantokrator
We saw the outside of the palace of Mystras, but we were not able to go inside.
ABOVE: Exterior of the palace of Mystras
While we were at Mystras, we visited Pantanassa Monastery, which is a still-active monastery of female monks. In English, female monks are known as nuns, but, in Greek, a male monk is known as a μοναχός (monachós) and a female monk is known as a μοναχή (monachḗ), which is simply the same word with a feminine ending.
Because Pantanassa is still an active monastery, all the women were required to put on long skirts that were hanging outside the monastery in order to go in. (The men, by contrast, were able to go in wearing shorts and T-shirts.) It is an absolutely gorgeous place. The monks manufacture and sell handmade lace, which helps to support their monastic lifestyle.
ABOVE: Entrance to Pantanassa Monastery at Mystras
ABOVE: View of the main church building at Pantanassa Monastery
ABOVE: Fresco inside the entrance to Pantanassa Church
ABOVE: View of the inside of the main church building at Pantanassa
Next, we left Mystras and rode the bus to the town of Methoni, where we visited Methoni Castle, which the Venetians built originally and the Ottomans later took over and significantly expanded. Glenn delivered a lecture about the castle and then he turned us loose again. We were allowed to swim at the beach next to the castle. I didn’t swim because I had forgotten my swim clothes on the bus and was not able to retrieve them, but I did roll up my pants and wade in the water up to the certain depth.
ABOVE: Entrance to Methoni Castle from the land
ABOVE: Gateway at Methoni Castle
ABOVE: View of Methoni Castle from the sea
ABOVE: Bourtzi of Methoni Castle
Finally, we arrived in Pylos, which is a beautiful seaside town on the western coast of the Peloponnesos directly across a strait from the small island of Sphakteria. The modern town was founded in the nineteenth century and is named after the ancient city of Pylos, which was located very nearby.
At Pylos, we checked into a hotel located right next to the harbor. The hotel room I was assigned to absolutely reeked of cigarette smoke, but the view from the balcony was truly extraordinary.
ABOVE: View of Pylos harbor from the balcony of the hotel room where I stayed
To be continued…
Attentive readers will have noticed that the day I am posting this is July 11th, but this post only brings my adventure up to July 3rd. This is because I have been doing so much and I have had so little time to write that I have not been able to keep my posts up to date with where I am now. Do not worry, though; I promise that I will fill in the events of the past eight days in my next blog post.
Another terrific post with spectacular pictures. Thank you SO MUCH for such a thorough and fascinating report. As you may know, “bema” is the term in Hebrew that also refers to the “speaker’s platform” in a synagogue, more specifically to the table upon which the Torah is unrolled for its weekly reading during Saturday morning services.
Yes! That’s a fascinating example of how ancient Greek political terms have entered religious usage in other languages.
In another example, the word ecclesiastical, meaning “of or pertaining to the Christian church,” comes from the Ancient Greek word ἐκκλησία (ekklēsía), meaning “assembly,” which is the same word that the Athenians of the Classical Period used to refer to the assembly meeting of all adult male citizens on the Pnyx in which they made decisions on behalf of the polis. In later times, Christians adopted the same word to refer to the assembly of Christian worshippers and eventually broadened the term to refer to the community of all Christians.
2 minor comments:
You mention the Antikythera mechanism, but you do not say whether you actually saw it. Well, I am not sure whether it’s still there, but anyway 50 years ago it was in a room on the back-left of the National Archaeological Museum. Unfortunately it’s easy to miss, among so many other impressive exhibits.
Also, if I remember correctly, the Nobel laureate poet George Seferis considered Erotokritos the greatest poem of modern Greek literature, not just of early modern Kretan literature.
Waiting for the next sequence of your Greek pilgrimage…
I did not see the Antikythera mechanism on any of the days that I describe in this post, but I did see it when we went back to the National Archaeological Museum again a few days ago. You’re absolutely right that it is easy to miss, since they shoved it in the very back of the bronzes gallery, which itself is kind of in the back of the museum.
Thank you so much for both the write up and the photos! It makes me so happy to be able to follow along as you go about on your adventures. What an experience!
Thank you for the positive feedback! I know that what I’m writing this summer is a little bit different from what I usually write, but I’m glad to hear that you are still enjoying my posts!
Also in Italian (Roman Catholic terminology) nuns are called monache, feminine form of monaco (monk), obviously from the greek words.
I believe that in English the word nun can also be used for a religious sister who doesn’t live in an enclosure, which in Italian is called Suora (from the Latin for sister), like the male equivalent Friar is called Frate.
It is really helpful to experience through your eyes places I have read so much about. The little personal details make it all feel very real–like being there. I feel like I am ready to plan a trip to Greece supplied with truly practical knowledge.
Also, I applaud your willingness to (carefully) try new things in the midst of what must be a constant assault of newness!
Trivia note for everyone: Loutraki and nearby Pechora were the primary shooting locations (in 1960) for “The 300 Spartans”, the 1962-release 20th Century Fox epic about the battle of Thermopylae.
Fascinating! I did not know that.
Apologies for not having kept up my commenting much on this blog in recent months! I must say I really enjoy your travelogue though, and am happy that your experience seems to (mostly) be positive!
Some thoughts:
Your trips to the Minoan ruins of Crete reminded me of when I studied these in the beginning of this year, not in person but mostly through Charles Gates’ book Ancient Cities. My professor had actually excavated Aegean sites from the Bronze Age, though mostly in the Peloponnese (but I believe she had studied artefacts from Khania as well). At any rate actually being there must be a great experience!
I like your photos, they seem to give a good impression of what it is like to actually be there. The photos of you standing at various places are very nice as well!
I am sorry to learn of the bad parts of the journey, like the bedbugs and nausea-inducing food, but perhaps good to know for others who want to travel in Greece. Also, I understand this must have been an unpleasant experience at the time, but I did get a pretty funny mental image of there almost being a fight between the ASCSA group and the EF group!
I do not think you have mentioned before that you like to memorise poems by heart, but I am glad you could make use of it, and it is fortunate you had learned such an appropriate one for the occasion!
It must be pretty scary to be lost in a foreign city! I was rather worried for that when going in a somewhat similar trip to yours in secondary school/high school, but luckily I was very ‘coddled’ and there was never a serious risk of it happening.
Must be interesting to actually be at the Theatre in Epidauros, for some reason there was also a focus on that (and the Asclepieion) in the course I took this term.
Your thoughts on the ruins of Sparta immediately reminds me of Thucydides’ discussion in 1.10 of his History.
As for you trying alcohol, it seems we are a bit alike in that I am not much of a drinker myself (and I have disliked the taste of the wines I have sipped too). Sometimes I have thought I should try it to experience what Anacreon and so many other poets have written of; but on the other hand, speaking of poetry, I am a big fan of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan but I wouldn’t think that is a good reason to try opium!
Am very much looking forwards to your next post!
Thank you for your thoughts! I have to admit that I missed seeing your comments.
I actually wasn’t there for most of the altercation between our group and the EF tour group because I arrived at the Akropolis late and I was in the ticket line when that happened while most of the others were in the entry line. They told me about the incident after I met back up with them, though.
Yes, I have a hobby of memorizing poems, especially ancient poems, in the original languages. It’s something I do in what little spare time I have to entertain myself. It’s quite fun. Some of the ones I have memorized in Ancient Greek include the Iliad 1.1–7, the Odyssey 1.1–15, Homeric Hymn 14, Sappho fragments 1, 31, 47, 147, and the Midnight Poem, and various other random passages and such. I’m also trying to memorize some poems in other ancient languages; for instance, I’m working to memorize Judges 5:2–31 (the “Song of Deborah,” thought to be one of the oldest passages in the Hebrew Bible) in Hebrew.
Several of us actually brought up Thoukydides’s Histories 1.10 both before and after visiting the ruins of Sparta. It is remarkable how prescient his observation was!
I’m glad you appreciate them; now I feel honoured!
It must be amazing to hear you recite poems in ancient languages! I think I have somewhat of a knack for memorising verses myself, but mostly in Swedish and English, and I haven’t seriously practised it much.
Yes, definitely! It is fascinating that ancient authors can occasionally get something so right
These posts are so delightful! Your vivid descriptions make me almost feel like I’m there with you and the other students. I’m enjoying them very much.
I feel that after so many wonderful words I can’t make a comment with any real value of its own, except maybe for this one:
As Elena has already said, the Italian word for ‘nun’ is monaca, which is the feminine version of the word for ‘monk’, monaco. Similarly, in Spanish those words are respectively translated as monja and monje. This is why I think your sentence beginning with “In western Christianity, female monks are known as nuns…” should perhaps be rewritten as “In the English language…” and so on (or something like that).
Thank you very much! We’re expecting your next issue!
Hello Spencer!
It is unfortunate that you didn’t go to the central square of Nafplio on the 30th of June,because I was there and maybe we could have met in person. I am a resident of Nafplio and I was there at the concert in memoriam of the local musician and teacher Yiannis Nonis. I think that if you showed up I would have recognized you since I knew that you are in Greece, having read your previous post. I don’t know if you have liked a stranger calling you by name but it would be quite a surprise, wouldn’t it?
Anyway, best wishes to you and I hope you enjoy your time in Greece!
Oh my gosh, that’s so funny that we could have run into each other!
I actually did go to the central square that evening very briefly around 8:30 p.m. or so to talk to the other students who were there, but I was only there for about a minute before I left. After that, I wandered the streets near the square for a long time trying to decide on a place to eat. I ended up eating alone at a restaurant that was one or two streets over from the square and then I went back to the hotel.
As of the time I am writing this, we are no longer in the Peloponnesos, but rather on a trip through central and northern Greece. We are currently in Delphoi and will be remaining here for a couple more nights before we move on to the north.
Spencer, I was really starting to miss you…
My company sent me to a three-day training session across the country. I was put up in a hotel build to accomodate events hosted by biotech companies in the area. There was a restaurant strip mall conveniently located beside it, but they were awful and/or overpriced— I even saw a mouse on the counter of one! When I returned to work and voiced my disappointment about the dining options, a coworker who attended the session before I went said she should have warned me!
I hope you and others in your group reported the disgusting hotel and restaurant to someone responsible for making those arrangements. Hopefully those weren’t the only options in Nafplio and near Mycenae. Perhaps future groups should be told that some recommendations made by bus drivers may not be in one’s best interest.
Thank you for such an absorbing travelogue!
Try a few stretching exercises before taking on hills, and keep applying sunscreen.
A very fine series of travelogues, and some excellent photography to go with them! I’m especially glad that you had an opportunity to see Mykenae and Crete (or, should that be Krete?). With regard to ancient Crete, I’ve always been puzzled about one thing: even though many of the reconstructions at Knossos were poorly done, the Cretans do come across as being an artistic people. And yet, even though only Linear B has been fully translated, and some work done on Linear A seems to have been accomplished, we’ve as yet found no trace whatsoever of any kind of a literary tradition. Am I correct in this? I’m certainly unaware of any kind of epic or lyric poetry, or of dramatic literature, either. It seems inconceivable that such a people would not have had an impressive body of literature. And yet, there you have it! I’d like to think that if–IF–Linear A is ever fully translated, it will yield up a Cretan literary tradition. Or perhaps there’s a Cretan literary tradition in the Cretan hieroglyphs (if indeed I’m correct in referring to them as hieroglyphs). If that’s the case, I’ve read that we’re very likely out of luck, barring the discovery of a Cretan Rosetta Stone! And, to conclude, will your tour encompass any of the Hellenic sites in southern Italy? Thank you so much for these posts! They’re enabling me to see a part of the world that I’ve somehow managed to overlook, in spite of my intense interest in ancient history! Safe travels, my friend!
I’ve just found this wonderful site and read a few of your older articles. I just wanted to say thank you, your insights are very helpful to clarify a lot of popular misconceptions about the ancient world and the preservation of classical texts. Sadly, those misconceptions keep being repeated again and again even in college, I’ve been “taught” a few of those. Thanks for sharing your valuable knowledge.
Thank you so much! I’m glad that you’re enjoying my work. I will warn you, though, that I wrote my older articles when I was in high school and undergrad and many of them, especially ones I wrote while I was in high school and during my first two years of undergrad (i.e., before summer 2020), contain omissions of important context that I didn’t know at the time and statements that I believed were correct at the time that I now know are inaccurate. I’ve learned so much in the past three years especially and I haven’t been able to go back through all my old posts to correct all the mistakes and omissions because I just don’t have enough time nowadays.
So many great objects and sites! I can only imagine how you must have felt beholding the inscribed skyphos: to be in the presence of an object possibly handled by people you have studied. The pictures of you seem to show you absolutely reveling in the experience-you look like you’re having the time of your life!
Thank you for sharing photos of the church Agia Foteini Mantineias. That one fascinates me for some reason, and I intend to read up on it this weekend. I think that calling it eclectic is putting it mildly : such a mix of styles.
Keep ‘em coming (as time permits, of course)
Scot
The mycenaean tombs were called “treasuries” because they were keeping the most valuable thing: the souls of the dead. It was not accidental that Pluto was both the god of the underworld and of wealth and treasures.
I’m afraid that’s simply not factually correct. First of all, we don’t know what the Mycenaeans themselves called their tombs because the only surviving Mycenaean written texts are administrative documents in Linear B that don’t talk about the tombs. Second, today, the only Mycenaean tomb that is called a “treasury” is the so-called “Treasury of Atreus,” which is called that not because the Mycenaeans or even the Classical Greeks called it that, but rather because visitors to the tomb in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who did not know it was a tomb incorrectly identified it as a treasury. From there, the name simply stuck. It’s a modern name, not an ancient one.
Not really. Elderkin, G. W. (1939). The Bee of Artemis. American Journal of Philology, 60(2), 203. DOI: 10.2307/291201 for example states that the term “thesauros” was used by Pausanias, mentioning a metaphorical view of the tomb that probably the Myceneans “inherited” from the Minoans.
Ok, there are several issues here.
First, the article you’ve cited here was published over eighty years ago at a time when the study of Bronze Age Aegean civilizations was still fairly new, scholars still could not read Linear B, and scholarly arguments about Mycenaean society frequently relied on heavy-handed speculation using very late sources that were written centuries or even millennia after the Mycenaean period ended. This article is precisely an example of this kind of unsupported speculation.
Second, although it is true that Pausanias, a travel writer who was writing around the middle of the second century CE at the time when Greece was ruled by the Roman Empire, over a thousand years after the Mycenaean period, makes a very brief, ambiguous reference in his Guide to Greece 2.16.6 to “underground chambers of Atreus and his children, in which were stored their treasures,” it is very far from clear whether he thought that the specific tholos tomb that is known today as the “Treasury of Atreus” was one of these “underground chambers.” There are a lot of “underground chambers” in Mycenae itself and the surrounding country that Pausanias could have been thinking of.
Third, even if we knew for certain that Pausanias was thinking of the tomb that we know today as the “Treasury of Atreus” or some other tomb when he referenced these “underground chambers,” as I emphasized earlier, he was writing in the second century CE, well over a thousand years after the Mycenaean civilization collapsed. There is absolutely no reason to think that an offhand comment he makes about the existence of supposed “underground chambers” in which Atreus and his children stored their treasures reflects a Mycenaean or Minoan practice of referring to tombs as “treasuries.”
I am not going to comment on most you wrote because it is getting late here but I will point out just one thing: the fact that Pausanias in the 2nd c. AD was talking about tombs as treasuries in Mycenae shows that their characterisation as such is far from being modern.
On a second note the translation about the literal treasures of Atreus is exactly that: a translation bearing an interpretation of the original text. By this I am not claiming that the Myceneans themselves called their tombs treasuries but I am saying we cannot rule it out either. Since the Myceneans were heavily influenced by the Minoans it would take a lot of convicing arguments to show that they were not influenced in this matter in particular.
There is no reason to call a tholos tomb a treasury and not any other if you refer just to the valuable objects being buried there. Most tombs not just Mycenean tholoi had valuables buried in them.
And if Pausanias is talking about all tholoi and not only the one we call today “treasury of Atreus” that shows exactly a common character for all of them steming perhaps from a specific burial tradition and/or belief and not just because the tomb belonged to a rich guy with lots of valuables.
Again, you’re ignoring my first point. We do not know whether the ambiguous “underground chambers” Pausanias references are in fact tholoi at all, since there are lots of “underground chambers” in the area of Mycenae that are not tholoi and we have no way of knowing which chambers Pausanias was thinking of. For all we know he could have been thinking of the cistern tunnel or some other underground structure.
Additionally, even if Pausanias is in fact talking about chambers that scholars today know are tombs, there is nothing in Pausanias’s passage to indicate that he believed that they were also tombs. In fact, immediately after Pausanias references the supposed treasuries of Atreus and his children, he goes on to talk about the graves of Atreus, Agamemnon, Kassandra, Eurymedon, and Teledamos and Pelops, which he clearly distinguishes as different and distinct structures.
And, again, Pausanias was over a millennium removed from the time of the Mycenaeans and there is no reason to assume that an offhand comment he makes about the supposed treasuries of a legendary king reveals any deep secrets about the way the Mycenaeans over a millennium before his time thought about death and burial.
You’re layering unwarranted assumptions on top of unwarranted assumptions and not listening to my points. I do not wish to continue this argument further.
I agree with you about Pluto: it was not accidental that he was both the god of the underworld and of wealth and treasures, but the explanation for this is probably not the same as the one you think about. As the god of wealth, Ploutos / Plouton was associated with the richness provided by the soil: gems in mines and crops in fields. Besides that, both corn and dead people were stored underground in clay pots. This made the ancient Greeks believe that there was a main god of the underworld, who ruled over the riches with Kore / Persephone (daughter of Demeter, goddess of agriculture) as wife, and over the souls of the dead as well.
I read about this from some books in my personal library (in Spanish translations): Martin Persson Nilsson, A History of Greek Religion (London, 1925, revised in 1956), chapters IV and VI; Pierre Grimal, Dictionnaire de la mythologie grecque et romaine (Paris, 1951), s. v. Hades; Mircea Eliade, Traité d’histoire des religions (Paris, 1964, revised in 1970), ch. IX, § 135. Surely Spencer can give you some better, newer sources.
This is exactly what I mean. Thank you. And dead ancestors are always considered valuable by humans (and elephants by the way). We don’t really need archaeological evidence for that.
Marvelous especially for older-folks unable to travel again. Your wiring is immediate and riveting and your photos excellent. Nice to see you in situ too.
AM SO grateful!
One loose end. You mentioned the ‘sound check’ at the theater at Epidaurus. How did it go? How were the acoustics? Could your colleagues hear you clearly? That must have been quite an experience for all concerned.
My first post ever on this site, after sedulously reading – I think — all of your entries. It won’t be the last.
One suggestion: try more octopus.
I am sorry my comments upset you. I won’t disturb you anymore. I wish you good time in Greece and all the best in the academic career you dream.
Dear Spencer: Last light, on the way back home from the supermarket and listening to my phone radio as I usually do, I chanced upon a radio adaptation of Oedipus Rex of Sophocles at the local Pacifica radio station. Once I attended a performance of the play at Epidaurus – they have performances at the ancient theater during the summer. If they did not take you to see a ancient play at Epidaurus this time around, remember to go there on your next visit to Greece!
Once at high school I had considered participating in a school play of Oedipus Rex, and had learned by heart (though I didn’t have to) the part of the ἄγγελος (in transation), although I did not follow up because of other interests.
Speaking about ἄγγελος, you should watch, if you haven’t done so, Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite, in which Woody Allen actually recites an ἄγγελος part in an ancient Greek theater!
These posts are very informative and helpful! Thanks for all this hard work.
I have read from other writers and travelers that Laconia / Lacedaemon is exceptionally beautiful as a natural setting, so I hope you found your Spartan sojourn educational and inspiring. Mistras always sounds entrancing, and I believe a lot of it was built from materials taken from ancient Sparta. So a continuity of sorts.
Good grief, the length of this post is quite a pickle for me to read at 1 am, but such sacrifices are pitiful in comparison to being able to read another immensely comprehensive and entertaining post.
You’re having an experience you’ll remember your whole life. So many firsts, and so many great experiences. Your diary is incredibly detailed, so many fun details (like reactions of straight women, etc etc). I’m really happy for you! Enjoy Greece!
Thanks! I’m glad that you’re enjoying my account.
Yes, you are a good writer, it’s really interesting.
I must say I was a bit underwhelmed with Greece (especially modern Athens) but that was more than 30 years ago…
I think it depends to a certain extent on which part of Athens you’re visiting. I’ve been all over Athens at this point and I’ve seen most of the neighborhoods and it’s clear to me that they differ drastically in their degree of appeal. Kolonaki (where the ASCSA is located) is a gorgeous place, but definitely very bougie. Plaka is beautiful also, but overrun with tourists, especially during the summer. Monastiraki is also very touristy, but has some beautiful historical buildings and ruins and holds considerable charm as well. Meanwhile, the neighborhoods on the northwest side of central Athens (i.e., Profitis Daniil, Kolonos, Gazi, Metaxourgeio) and, to a lesser extent, the neighborhoods on the north side (i.e., Omonoia, Exarcheia) are dirty, run-down, and frankly kind of scary places that I wouldn’t want to visit after dark.
I think that Nafplio, Pylos, and Delphi were the best and most beautiful cities we stayed in, all things considered. Siteia and Herakleion were both very lovely places as well. All the folks at the school warned us that modern Sparta is a dump, but, when we actually went there, I thought it was actually a fairly nice place. (Of course, we only stayed in Sparta for one night, so it’s possible I just had an unusually nice experience there.)
I’m still not sure what I think of Thessaloniki. We only stayed there for three nights and we only spent one full day in the city itself, since we spent two of the three days while we were in the north visiting sites outside the city. We were there in the middle of the recent heatwave, the hotel we stayed in didn’t have fully working air conditioning, and, on the one day we actually spent the whole day in Thessaloniki, I got heat exhaustion, which was not fun. I can say that it’s very urban and modern, the historic buildings there are mostly late antique, medieval, and early modern, and it seems to attract far fewer tourists than Athens. Glenn commented that Thessaloniki is a lot more like the cities of western and central Europe than the other cities of Greece. I’ve never been to western or central Europe, but I can attest that Thessaloniki had a very different vibe to it from the cities of the south that we visited.
I think that the worst city we stayed in was probably Pyrgos, which was genuinely kind of a dump and also felt very seedy and unsafe.