My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 5 (August 9th, 2023)

This post is the fifth installment in my ongoing series about my experience in the 2023 ASCSA Summer Session, covering the period from Sunday, July 9th, to Wednesday, July 12th. (Here are the previous installments, for those who may have missed them: first, second, third, and fourth.)

This post will describe, among many other things, how I went back to the Akropolis for the last time in my adventure, how I visited the ancient quarry where the Athenians quarried the stones they used to build the monuments on the Akropolis and a cave at the quarry that was a sanctuary of the god Pan in antiquity and is known today as the site of all kinds of supposed paranormal activity, how I visited two of the most famous battlefields in Greek history, and how I visited an often-overlooked ancient city that, for a brief period in the fourth century BCE, became the most powerful in mainland Greece, surpassing both Athens and Sparta. It will conclude with my arrival at Delphi, which was one of the most important sanctuaries in the ancient Greek world.

Sunday, July 9th, 2023

As readers may recall, I left off my account with our first and only completely free day in Athens. The day after that (Sunday, July 9th, 2023), we had the morning free, but, in the afternoon, we went back to the Akropolis for the third and final time for a scholarly presentation about the Erechtheion, which is the last great building on the Akropolis that we had not already had a scholarly presentation about.

By this point, we had already visited the Akropolis twice and spent something like three or four hours there each time, so the excitement of going there was starting to wear off. The buildings on the Akropolis are absolutely stunning and majestic, but it is always packed with hundreds, if not thousands, of tourists at any given time, it is a rather arduous uphill hike to get to the top, and, once one is at the top, there is very little shade anywhere, which makes it unbearable on a hot July afternoon, and, at the time, Greece was entering into a record-breaking heatwave. As a result of these factors, many of us were actually dreading having to go back.

Thankfully, this time, because we went during the afternoon instead of in the morning, the lines were not nearly as awful as they were the previous time we had gone up. Additionally, this time, we went up via the South Slope entrance (which I think tends to be a little less crowded) like we did the first time rather than the main entrance like we did the second time.

I am personally convinced that the best time to go to Greece is either in March through May or September through November, because the sites tend not to be as crowded and the weather is not unbearably hot like it is during the summer months. If, however, one must visit Greece during the summer, I think that the best time for an individual to visit the Akropolis is actually around 6:00 in the evening. All the large cruise ship and tour groups usually go in the morning, so that is the time of day when the site is the most crowded. The crowds are not as bad during the peak afternoon, but the sun is unbearably hot. The evening is probably the best time, because there are fewer people there and it is at least a little bit cooler than it is during the peak afternoon.

Because the lines were not quite as dreadful as we had anticipated, the group I was with arrived at the Akropolis significantly earlier than we had expected and we still had about half an hour before we needed to meet the speaker we were supposed to be meeting with.

We ended up sitting on the rocks in the shade underneath the bastion of the Temple of Athena Nike while we waited. By this point, we’d all been in Greece for nearly a full month and were both highly experienced and highly knowledgeable, so we ended up giving some advice to a family who happened to sit down near us who were visiting the Akropolis for the first time.

After sitting around for a while underneath the Nike bastion, we went up to the top. Both of the previous times we visited the Akropolis, none of us had any idea where the restrooms were. As far as we knew, there weren’t any. This time, however, a few other students and I finally managed to locate the only set of restrooms on the Akropolis. In case anyone reading this is happens to visit there, the restrooms are located on the far east side of the Akropolis, on the opposite side of the Parthenon from the Propylaia, next to the old Akropolis museum building.

Next to the Erechtheion, we met Dr. Marion Meyer, a German scholar of classical archaeology and ancient Greek history. She gave us a talk about some of the Erechtheion’s historical and architectural highlights. We were standing in the direct sun on Akropolis in the dreaded heat, so we were all thankful that she finished her presentation in almost exactly the expected amount of time.

ABOVE: A clear shot of the Erechtheion from the southwest that I took the first time we went to the Akropolis

ABOVE: Close-up view of the karyatid porch of the Erechtheion that I took the first time we went to the Akropolis

ABOVE: View of the top of the Erechtheion from the east, showing the Ionic capitals and entablature

ABOVE: View of the Erechtheion from the northwest

ABOVE: Olive tree growing next to the Erechtheion, marking where an olive tree stood in antiquity that the Athenians believed was either the original Athena gave to them when she won the contest with Poseidon for patronage of the city

After Dr. Meyer’s presentation, we left the Akropolis and took the Metro over to Exarcheia to visit the National Archaeological Museum for the last time in our trip. There, we met Dr. Kathleen Lynch, a professor of classics at the University of Cincinnati who is an expert on ancient Greek pottery, and she gave us a tour of the museum’s gallery of ancient Greek pottery. I think that a lot of people in our group thought that seeing the pottery gallery would be dull, but Dr. Lynch was extremely enthusiastic about pottery and her enthusiasm was contagious.

ABOVE: The Dipylon vase, which was discovered in the Dipylon Cemetery in Athens, is believed to date to sometime around 740 BCE, and bears what may be the oldest surviving inscription in the Greek language using the Greek alphabet

ABOVE: Boiotian late Geometric pithos-amphora dating to between c. 680 and c. 670 BCE depicting the “Mistress of Animals” motif

ABOVE: Ceramic rabbit

ABOVE: Panel painting found in a cave near the village of Pitsa depicting a sacrificial procession, dating to between c. 540 and c. 530 BCE

ABOVE: Black-figure oinochoë depicting Dionysos reclining with a satyr

ABOVE: Bizarre white-ground black-figure lekythos attributed to the Baldam Painter depicting a troupe of five satyrs apparently torturing a woman with seemingly African features who is tied to a palm tree

ABOVE: Attic red-figure pelike attributed to the Pan Painter dating to between c. 470 BCE depicting Herakles killing Bousiris and his priests

ABOVE: Attic red-figure hydria dating to between c. 440 and c. 430 BCE, depicting Sappho reading one of her poems aloud from a roll of papyrus to an audience of three women, one of whom is holding a lyre

ABOVE: Fragment of a red-figure kylix depicting the goddess Athena

ABOVE: “Kabeiric” skyphos dating to the late fifth century BCE, found in the Kabeirion (i.e., the Sanctuary of the Kabeiroi or Megaloi Theoi) in Thebes, depicting two figures riding in in a chariot while another figure riding on the shoulders of another figure plays the aulos and another figure dances

After Dr. Lynch finished her tour of the pottery gallery, everyone else left the museum and went back to Loring Hall, but I stayed behind to explore the galleries of the museum that we hadn’t visited on my own. First, I visited the gallery of art and artifacts from the Bronze Age settlement of Akrotiri on the island of Thera (which is commonly known today as Santorini).

ABOVE: Fresco from Akrotiri depicting two boys or young men boxing

ABOVE: Fresco from Akrotiri depicting hills with crocus flowers

After that, I walked through the gallery of ancient Egyptian art and artifacts.

Lastly, I walked through the gallery of bronze artifacts. Perhaps the most exciting display in this collection is of the surviving fragments of the Antikythera mechanism, which I wrote a post on this blog about back in December 2019.

ABOVE: Fragments of the Antikythera mechanism

After thoroughly looking through all the galleries of the museum, I went back to Loring Hall. There, we ate dinner in the dining room at 8:00 p.m.

Monday, July 10th, 2023

On this day, we had a day trip to visit various sites in northern Attica, so we ate breakfast in Loring Hall and loaded onto the bus first thing in the morning. First, the bus took us to visit the ancient marble quarry on Mount Pentelikon, located just northeast of Athens with a view overlooking the city. This is where the ancient Athenians quarried the marble that they used to build all the monuments on the Akropolis.

ABOVE: View of Athens from the ancient marble quarry on Mount Pentelikon

The marble from Mount Pentelikon, known as “Pentelic marble,” is known for its exceptionally fine quality. Along with marble from the island of Paros, it is considered the finest marble in Greece. It is highly crystalline in its structure, semi-translucent, and known for its white color with a faintly golden undertone in sunlight.

At the site of the ancient quarry, millions of tiny pieces of Pentelic marble covered the ground and glimmered beautifully in the bright morning sunlight. One student asked Glenn if she could take a piece, but he told her that we were at an archaeological site and, under Greek law, it is illegal to remove any material from such a site, even unworked rocks.

ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me standing at the site of the ancient marble quarry on Mount Pentelikon, with the ground covered in millions of pieces of Pentelic marble

While we were at Mount Pentelikon, we went to visit the Davelis Cave, a natural cave that was originally hidden inside the mountain. The Athenians most likely discovered the cave by accident while quarrying marble in the fifth century BCE. In antiquity, the Greeks used the cave as a sanctuary to Pan, the god of the wild. Archaeologists have found various artifacts related to Pan’s worship in the cave, which are now housed in the National Archaeological Museum.

In the cave’s more recent history, in around the twelfth century CE, a Greek Orthodox church with an unusual double layout was constructed in its mouth. One part of the church is dedicated to Saint Spyridon and the other part is dedicated to Saint Nikolaos. In the nineteenth century CE, a notorious kléftis (i.e., brigand) named Davelis used the cave as a hideout and, today, the cave bears his name.

Since the late nineteenth century, the cave has acquired a reputation as the site of all kinds of supernatural activity. Popular tradition holds that the cave is haunted. While inside the cave, visitors have reported hearing disembodied voices (including, according to some stories, voices chanting in Ancient Greek), witnessing ghostly apparitions, seeing strange lights, and having phones and other electronic devices spontaneously go haywire or stop working.

Some people claim that they have seen water inside the cave flowing up instead of down, as though gravity had reversed. Some even claim that they have seen bizarre, otherworldly creatures, including creatures like cats that walk upright on two legs. Some travelers are said to have mysteriously disappeared inside the cave and never been seen again.

As a result of the cave’s use as a sanctuary of Pan in antiquity, its present-day reputation for paranormal activity, and the fact that it is unguarded and in a remote location, various Neopagan and occult groups go to the cave regularly to perform their rituals, especially at night. Glenn specifically warned us to never visit the cave at night “because you never know what kind of Satanist you might encounter.”

ABOVE: Entrance to Davelis Cave

Glenn said that the door to the church is usually closed and locked, but, by sheer luck, on this particular occasion, the door happened to be open, so we were able to go inside. The church contains some poorly-preserved medieval frescoes, modern altars, and modern icons.

ABOVE: Closer view of the medieval church that sits in the entrance to the cave

ABOVE: View inside the medieval church

ABOVE: View inside the medieval church

After looking around inside the church, I went down into the cave. There was no one there except for us, but I did see evidence that someone else had been there fairly recently. Just inside the mouth of the cave, someone had left a pentacle on the ground with candles at each of the five corners and one in the center. The candles were heavily melted, but still burning.

A different group of visitors might have freaked out at the sight of such ritual remains, but, as far as I am aware, not a single one of us even remarked on them. We all just walked past them on our way into the cave. After all, we’re classics students; pagan worship isn’t even odd to us. (In fact, I might add, a significant percentage of us are rather spiritually inclined toward paganism to some degree or another ourselves.)

It was boiling hot outside in the sun, but, as I descended into the darkness of the cave, the air slowly grew cool and then cold. It felt amazing. I wanted to stay in the cave for hours.

ABOVE: View inside the Davelis Cave

I went as deep into the cave as it is possible for visitors to go. (Unfortunately, this was not very far, since all the tunnels are blocked off.) In the deepest accessible part of the cave, it was cold enough that it was actually possible to see one’s breath. There, I openly called out to Pan. Sadly, I received no response and I saw nothing at all paranormal whatsoever (much to my disappointment).

ABOVE: View of the entrance from inside the cave

After our visit to the cave, we got back onto the bus and rode the bus to Rhamnous, which is a ruined city on the northern coast of Attica overlooking the Euboian Strait that was known in antiquity for its sanctuary of Nemesis, the goddess of retribution. This sanctuary houses the ruins of two temples, which are located directly next to each other. The smaller of these temples is dedicated to Nemesis and Themis (the goddess of just order) and the larger temple is dedicated to Nemesis alone.

Most likely sometime in the 430s BCE, the famous Athenian sculptor Agorakritos, who was a student of the even more famous sculptor Pheidias (who sculpted the Statue of Zeus at Olympia and the Athena Parthenos that stood inside the Parthenon and oversaw the sculptural program for the Parthenon as a whole), sculpted a colossal marble cult statue of Nemesis to stand inside the naos of the larger temple to Nemesis alone.

This statue stood inside the Temple of Nemesis for hundreds of years. Wealthy sculpture collectors during the Roman Period admired it and commissioned numerous statues based on it, including one well-preserved marble statue that we saw when we visited the sculpture gallery in the National Archaeological Museum.

ABOVE: The Roman-Period copy of Agorakritos’s statue of Nemesis that we saw in the National Archaeological Museum

At some point in the late fourth century CE, a group of Christians destroyed the Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous and the cult statue it contained, breaking the statue into pieces. After this point, the sanctuary of Nemesis lay in ruins for over 1,500 years. Since the late nineteenth century, however, archaeologists have excavated the ruins of the sanctuary and uncovered pieces of the statue. From these pieces, they have successfully pieced together most of the statue’s base and pieces of the lower part of the statue itself.

We received special permission to go inside a warehouse that is normally kept locked to see architectural elements from the Temple of Nemesis and the fragmentary remains of Agorakritos’s original cult statue that once stood inside it. They did allow us to take photos inside the warehouse, but they strictly prohibited us from posting the photos anywhere online, so, unfortunately, I am not able to share those photos here.

After viewing the contents of the warehouse, we went to the sanctuary of Nemesis itself. All that survives of the temples in situ are the crepidomas (i.e., the stepped foundations on which the temples stood) and the bottoms of some of the columns. The site was perfectly deserted except for us and the caretakers who worked there. There, one of my fellow students delivered a site report about the sanctuary and its temples.

ABOVE: View of the sanctuary of Nemesis at Rhamnous from the east. The smaller temple (on the left in this photo) is dedicated to Nemesis and Themis and the larger temple (on the right) is dedicated to Nemesis alone.

ABOVE: View of the Temples of Nemesis from the northeastern corner of the larger temple

ABOVE: View from the sanctuary of Nemesis at Rhamnous of the Euboian Strait with the island of Euboia visible on the other side

After the site report, Glenn gave us some time to walk down to the ruins of the city and explore them for ourselves.

ABOVE: View of some of the ruins of the city at Rhamnous

ABOVE: More ruins at Rhamnous

After taking some time to explore the ruins at Rhamnous, we rode in the bus to a site that is far more famous, but yet has far fewer visible ruins: Marathon. The story of Marathon begins in 499 BCE when the Ionian Greek cities of Asia Minor rebelled against the Achaemenid Persian Empire which ruled them. The Ionians sent emissaries to all the city-states of mainland Greece begging them to aid in the revolt. Only two city-states sent aid: Eretria and Athens.

By 493 BCE, King Darius I of the Achaemenid Empire had crushed the revolt and, in 492 BCE, he sent a punitive expedition under the command of the general Mardonios to destroy Eretria and Athens in order to punish them for having aided the rebels. A storm destroyed Mardonios’s fleet off the coast of Mount Athos, but, in 490 BCE, Darius sent a second expedition under the command of the generals Datis and Artaphernes. Datis and Artaphernes’s army burned Eretria to the ground and enslaved all the Eretrians. They then headed south to do the same to Athens.

Thus, in August or September 490 BCE, a force of 9,000 Athenians and 1,000 allied Plataians confronted the vastly larger Achaemenid force on the plain at Marathon. One of the Athenian generals at this battle, Miltiades (whose helmet I saw in the museum at Olympia, as I discuss in my last post), had experience with the Persians and knew that the Athenians and Plataians’ best chance to defeat them was to beat them before they managed to fully deploy their cavalry.

Thanks in part to Miltiades’s leadership, against all odds, the Athenians and Plataians decisively defeated the Achaemenid force and thereby beat back the first Achaemenid invasion of Greece. Ten years later, in 480 BCE, Darius I’s son and successor Xerxes I would invade Greece again with a much larger force in an attempt to conquer it, but an alliance of Greek city-states would eventually drive back this invasion as well.

The most significant ruin to see at Marathon is the tumulus of the Athenians, which is a large mound under which the Athenian soldiers who died at Marathon in 490 BCE lie buried. It was in the shade under some trees within view of this tumulus that one of my fellow students delivered a site report about the battle.

ABOVE: Tumulus of the Athenians at Marathon

We didn’t get to spend any time at Marathon after the site report because Glenn wanted to hurry over to the Archaeological Museum of Marathon before it closed, but, by the time we got there, it turned out that the museum was already closed. Since we couldn’t go to the museum and we’d already left the site, we went to a nearby beach for a swim, which was the last item on the itinerary for the day.

We went to one beach, but it didn’t have any tavernas or any obvious places for us to change into our swim clothes and Glenn wanted a place to sit and drink while students swam, so he made us all get back on the bus. We rode on the bus for over an hour and spent a large part of that time heading away from the coast, but we did eventually end up at a beach that Glenn deemed satisfactory. There, we unloaded from the bus.

Even though I’m not normally interested in swimming, I actually did go swimming this time because I kind of liked it the first time I went swimming in the Aegean Sea at Mochlos, I wanted to go swimming at least one more time before I left Greece, and I knew that we wouldn’t have many more opportunities for it after this because we wouldn’t be visiting many beaches on the northern trip.

After that little swimming excursion, we rode back to the ASCSA’s main campus. We ate dinner that night in Loring Hall.

Tuesday, July 11th, 2023

That morning, we were supposed to go to the ancient agora of Athens to see a presentation about the ongoing excavations there. The excavators are working to uncover the remains of the Stoa Poikile or Painted Stoa on the north end of the agora, which was constructed in the fifth century BCE and, in antiquity, was used primarily to display a set of famous paintings depicting battle scenes, including one depicting the Battle of Marathon.

To get to the agora, we took the Metro. By this point, we all knew how to use the Metro on our own, at least well enough to get to the agora, so we went over in small groups, which left at different times, instead of all going at once in a single group. Sadly, while one of my fellow students was on the Metro, someone robbed her. I was not there when it happened; I only heard about it after the fact and I heard several different accounts from different people about what exactly occurred. Regardless of how it happened, though, the thief stole all her cash and her credit card.

Dr. John K. Papadopoulos, the director of the agora excavations, whom I have already mentioned several times in previous posts, told us about the ongoing field work and took us into the excavation site. For part of the time, he turned the presentation over to Dr. Debby Sneed, who is an assistant professor of classics at California State University, Long Beach, and the field director of the excavation.

After the presentation, we went back to Loring Hall. There, we ate lunch. After lunch, we all walked separately from Loring Hall to the Byzantine and Christian Museum, which is in Kolonaki within walking distance of the school’s main campus. There, Dr. Fotini Kondyli, who is an associate professor of Byzantine art and archaeology at the University of Virginia, gave us what she described as “an unconventional tour” of the museum.

In this tour, instead of simply lecturing about the history of Byzantine art and the artifacts in the museum’s collection, she tried to use the artifacts and artworks in the museum’s collection to introduce us to broader aspects of Byzantine history and culture. She is extremely passionate about all aspects of the Byzantine world and this passion really showed through in her presentation. I thought that she was a very engaging speaker and I personally appreciated the “unconventional” nature of her tour.

After Dr. Kondyli’s presentation, we were free to explore the museum or leave. I chose to explore the museum, since it is a huge museum with an amazing collection and Dr. Kondyli had only taken us through about half of it. I really enjoyed looking around the museum on my own.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the exterior of the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens

ABOVE: Marble slab depicting the nativity of Jesus dating to the late fourth or early fifth century CE

ABOVE: A suit of Byzantine iron chain mail

ABOVE: Dome with a painting of Christ Pantokrator from the Chapel of Saint Nikolaos in Spilia Pendeli, Attica, dating to 1233 or 1234 CE

ABOVE: Byzantine pottery

ABOVE: Byzantine relief carving depicting a centaur playing a lute while a girl dances, dating to the eleventh or twelfth century CE

ABOVE: Illuminated gospel manuscript open to the beginning of the Gospel of John

ABOVE: Icons of the Virgin and child

ABOVE: Icon of Saint Aikaterina (i.e., Saint Catherine) of Alexandria

That evening, we ate dinner at Loring Hall. That night, we all packed our belongings in preparation for our final multi-day trip of the program, which was an eight-day trip through central and northern Greece.

Wednesday, July 12th, 2023

We ate breakfast at Loring Hall and, by 7:30 a.m., we all went down to the gate in front of the Gennadios Library to get on the bus for our trip to the north. On all the previous trips, including both the day trips to sites in Attica and the longer multi-day trips to Krete and the Peloponnesos, we always had the same bus and the same bus driver. This time, however, we had a different bus and a different bus driver.

The bus didn’t arrive until about ten minutes after the time that Glenn had told us we were supposed to depart, so we spent some time waiting for the bus driver. We should have recognized this as an ill omen of what was to come.

The bus took us out of Athens to the city of Thebes, which is located in the region of Boiotia in central Greece, to the west of Attica. Thebes was one of the most significant city-states in mainland Greece during the Classical Period. In fact, for a brief period in the fourth century BCE, it even attained the status of the most powerful city-state in Greece, surpassing both Athens and Sparta, which had been the great superpowers of the Greek world in the fifth century BCE. Unfortunately, most of the ruins of ancient Thebes are inaccessible to archaeologists because the modern city of Thebes is built directly on top of them and archaeologists cannot excavate the ruins without demolishing the buildings that are over them.

In Thebes, we went to the Archaeological Museum of Thebes. Although the museum was established in 1894, the current museum building was built in 2007, so the building is fairly new. The museum holds an impressive collection of ancient artifacts and artworks from various sites in Boiotia dating from a range of historical periods from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages.

At the museum, Dr. Brendan Burke, who is a professor of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Victoria and the current Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the ASCSA, gave a presentation about ancient Thebes and showed us around the museum’s collection. He also showed us underneath the museum, where archaeologists have been able to excavate ruins that date to the Mycenaean Period. After Dr. Burke’s presentation, we had time to explore the museum on our own.

ABOVE: Mycenaean ruins underneath the Archaeological Museum of Thebes

ABOVE: Mural fragments from Thebes dating to the fourteenth or thirteenth century BCE depicting a procession of women in Minoan dress bearing offerings to a female figure (most likely a goddess, a priestess, or a priestess taking on the role of a goddess)

ABOVE: Detail of one woman in the mural bearing wild lilies

ABOVE: Cylinder seals from different parts of the ancient Middle East found in the thirteenth-century BCE Palace of Thebes

ABOVE: Column drum carved from micaceous poros bearing an inscription dating to the late sixth century BCE recording the Lydian king Kroisos’s dedication to the oracle of Amphiaraos, reused as a stone block in the Byzantine wall of Thebes and discovered in 2005

ABOVE: “Kabeiric” vase depicting a man with a massive erection, a man playing an aulos, and an elderly man reclining on a couch while he yells at the other two

ABOVE: Grave stele dating to the Hellenistic Period bearing a beautifully painted portrait of the deceased

ABOVE: Statuette of the goddess Kybele holding a tympanon while a lion rests on her lap

ABOVE: Relief sculpture from Tanagra dating to the first or second century CE depicting a priestess of Isis

ABOVE: Stele found at Charoneia dating to the Roman Period depicting the god Sabazios

ABOVE: Fragment of a painting from Byzantine Thebes showing the head and halo of Jesus

After our visit to Thebes, we got back on the bus and rode it to Gla, which is a Mycenaean fortified site located on a hill overlooking the Kopaïc Basin. It was only inhabited for a short period of time (i.e., a few decades) in the late Bronze Age, no surviving ancient written source ever mentions it, and no one knows what the people who built it called it. (Gla is a modern name for the site.)

Although the site covers a huge area of land, today, there is not much of interest there to see. The site is best known for its fortification walls, but even those, at least in their present state, are not nearly as impressive as those of Tiryns. (Glenn told us that we should think of Gla as a “Tiryns wannabe.”)

When we arrived, the sun was beating down on us, it was blisteringly hot, and we had to make a rather arduous hike up the hill. The terrain was uneven and we had to clamber around and over lots of large rocks. Once we were up the hill, there was almost no shade anywhere and most of the site was heavily overgrown with prickly and thorny plants that came up to our waists in some places. While we were there, large bees hovered around us, buzzing loudly.

When we sat down in the scant patch of shade underneath one of the only trees atop the entire hill so that Dr. Burke could tell us about the site without any of us passing out from the heat, the ground we sat on was rough. Enormous grasshoppers hopped out of the grass onto people’s backs and frightened quite a few of us.

ABOVE: View of the hill of Gla

ABOVE: View of the rocks and prickly plants on the hill

ABOVE: View of some ruins at Gla

ABOVE: View of the Kopaïc Basin from Gla

After Gla, the bus drove us to Chaironeia, which is where, in 338 BCE, King Philippos II of the kingdom of Makedonia and his allies decisively defeated an alliance of city-states located in southern Greece, led by Athens and Thebes, in the Battle of Charoneia. With this victory, Philippos forced Athens, Thebes, and their allies to join the League of Corinth, effectively making them subjects of his empire.

The ancient Greek travel writer Pausanias (lived c. 110 – c. 180 CE) records in his Description of Greece 9.40.10 that, after the battle, the Thebans buried all their soldiers who died in the battle against Philippos in a mass grave near the site of the battle and erected a colossal statue of a lion to mark the spot where they were buried. Today, this lion statue is known as the “Lion of Chaironeia.”

ABOVE: Photo I took of the Lion of Chaironeia

We ate a picnic lunch while sitting in the grass in the shade underneath the cypress trees next to the Lion of Chaironeia while one of my fellow students delivered a site report about the famous battle that took place there. After he finished his report, there was some time for people to ask him questions. As people were doing this, I felt a strong, steady blast of water suddenly pelt me from my left side, completely drenching me. I shrieked and jumped up.

I looked down and saw that there was a lawn sprinkler in the grass right next to me. It had been off when we had all sat down and I hadn’t noticed it, but it had just turned on and was spraying water. I was the closest to it, so it had doused me the most, but some of the water had also sprayed on Glenn and a few others.

ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me standing next to the Lion of Chaironeia

With me still wet and shaken from the lawn sprinkler incident, we went over to the Archaeological Museum of Chaironeia, which is a small museum located right next to the Lion of Chaironeia. The most exciting thing I saw in the museum is a life-sized marble statue that an Athenian sculptor made in the second century CE, based on a fifth-century BCE original by Agorakritos, depicting the goddess Kybele sitting on a throne. The statue was found at Livadeia, which is near Chaironeia.

ABOVE: Second-century CE statue of Kybele found at Livadeia

After our stop at the museum, we all got back on the bus and rode to the memorial of the victims of the Distomo massacre. During World War II, the Axis powers occupied Greece and divided the country into occupation zones that different powers administered. At the time, Distomo was a tiny Greek village in western Boiotia. It was originally part of the Italian occupation zone, but, in September 1943, the Fascist government in Italy was overthrown and the new government signed an armistice with the allies, so the Germans took over all the areas of Greece that Italy had previously occupied.

The majority of Greek civilians virulently despised the Nazi occupiers and viewed them as worse occupiers than the Italians. The Greek resistance was one of most organized and most active resistance movements across Axis-occupied Europe. Various resistance militia groups existed in Greece, but the largest of these was the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), which was ideologically communist. Although only a minority of Greeks were active resistance fighters, many Greeks who were not part of the resistance were sympathetic to its aims and a significant number of them secretly aided the guerillas.

The 2nd company of the 4th Waffen-SS Polizei Panzergrendier Division, which was serving in this region, consisted of ethnic German teenaged boys from Hungary and Romania. Most of the boys did not have enough documentation to prove that they were of pure German ancestry and the SS leaders suspected that many of them were not of pure blood. As a result, the boys were desperate to prove their Germanness. Meanwhile, their SS commanding officers were especially fanatical and willing to use violence against Greek civilians.

On June 10th, 1944, members of the Greek resistance ambushed this company’s convoy several miles outside Distomo. That afternoon, the company retaliated by driving into the village of Distomo itself and, over the course of approximately two hours, brutally and sadistically massacring virtually the town’s entire population, amounting to 228 Greek civilians of all ages, including men, women, and children.

The few surviving witnesses of the massacre reported that members of the company gunned down civilians in the streets, burst into all the houses, impaled infants in their cribs with their bayonets, raped women and girls before savagely killing them, cut off the head of the village priest, extensively mutilated many of their victims’ corpses, and looted their victims’ houses for valuables before burning them.

When members of the Red Cross arrived from Athens a few days later, they found victims’ mutilated corpses hanging from trees in a gory display of barbarity. It was one of the most brutal and notorious massacres that the occupying Nazi forces committed against Greek civilians during the war.

In the 1980s, the Greek government constructed a huge memorial, which commemorates the Greek civilians that the Waffen-SS murdered in this massacre. It stands on a hill near the site of Distomo. The monument consists of a one-room central building with two long stone panels extending from it. One of these panels bears a series of relief carvings that depict the story of the massacre. The other bears the names of all the Greek civilians of Distomo that the Nazis murdered, with their ages listed next to their names.

The central building of the memorial is a chapel and ossuary, which visitors can look inside through a small window. On one side is an icon of the Virgin Mary with a small altar beneath it. On this altar sits a candle that is left perpetually burning. On the other side is a wall covered in shelves bearing the skulls of victims of the massacre.

ABOVE: View of the Distomo Massacre Memorial

ABOVE: View of the relief carvings on the memorial

ABOVE: Back of the memorial, showing the window through which visitors can look into the chapel and ossuary

After stopping to view the memorial and pay our respects, we rode on toward Delphi. Delphi is one of the places in Greece that I was most looking forward to seeing even before I went to Greece, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is because it was the site of an immensely important Panhellenic sanctuary of the god Apollon. The Temple of Apollon there housed the oracle at Delphi, which was perhaps the most important oracle in the ancient Greek world. Since I am academically interested ancient Greek religion, I was very excited to see this sanctuary for myself.

Additionally, the site of Delphi is absolutely stunning. It is located high up on the southwestern slope of Mount Parnassos amid the mountains of Phokis overlooking a beautiful valley. The ancient ruins there are extensive and include some truly stunning monumental remains.

We arrived in Delphi in late afternoon and checked into our hotel in the modern town there, which is located on the slope of Mount Parnassos right next to the ruins of the ancient sanctuary. Because of its historical importance and beautiful location, Delphi is a very popular site for tourists in Greece to visit and the economy of the town there relies mainly on tourism. The town is fairly small and it has lots of hotels, restaurants, and shops that cater to tourists, but it is a really beautiful place.

ABOVE: View of a random street in Delphi

ABOVE: View of a pedestrian walkway in Delphi

The view of the valley below from the balcony of the hotel room I was assigned to was absolutely stunning.

ABOVE: View of the valley below from the balcony of my hotel room in Delphi

That evening, after we had time to shower, change clothes, and get cleaned up, Dr. Edward R. Harris, the same scholar who lectured to us at the Pnyx on the second day of the program, delivered a lecture for us in the lobby of our hotel about ancient Delphi. After this lecture, I went out to eat with a group of my fellow students at one of the local restaurants. As we were heading back to the hotel, we saw a lovely sunset over the valley.

ABOVE: View of the sunset over the valley from the town of Delphi that we saw on our first night there

We spent that night and the two nights after that in Delphi. I will tell more about what we saw during our time there in my next post, which will also describe our visit to the hanging monasteries of Meteora, our visit to the ancient tombs at Aigai (including a tomb that is most likely that of none other than King Philippos II himself, the father of Alexander the Great), and our arrival in Thessaloniki.