Ancient Asini
Nov. 12, 2008
Mitch was up early this morning, searching for better accommodations -- he found a bright and sparklingly clean blue and white bungalow in the middle of an orange orchard, which is perfect! We'll stay here for a week -- it's supposed to rain for a few days (no surprise there!), so a roof over our heads and a little kitchen will be the ultimate luxury!
We went into Nafplio, the 'big town' nearby, to quickly get groceries and to try and catch the local market before they packed up at noon. I LOVE markets -- as Lochlan and I were wandering through he said "I don't really care of we go anywhere else, Mom. I love this!" There is just such a sense of community in a market; here, all the local farmers have come down from the hills with their produce, which is absolutely terrible in the stores. Once they get over their initial shyness (which I think would be a factor in any country, speaking any language) I marvel at how all three of the kids will fearlessly pick out the fruit they want and then haggle for a price -- all in Greek! How do they do that?! I will never be that brave, but I am very proud of them (and when I have them with me I don't need to be brave!)
And perhaps the greatest thing is that we're literally in the middle of an orange orchard -- the trees touch the bungalows on all sides -- and so we are eating our fill of excellent mandarins! Yum! We offered to help with the harvest but there is apparently a knack to picking, so we'll have to content ourselves with watching and feasting.
Nov. 15, 2008
We took a little day trip today. We're down in a draw between the mountains here, and it is lush and green with irrigated orange groves. As we went up into the hills, east towards the coast, the landscape became much more rocky and desolate. Tucked away up here is the World Heritage site of Epidavros. There is a spectacular theatre here, which is still used for performances in the summer. In ancient times, however, the theatre was secondary; this was the centre of healing, and the site of an enormous Sanctuary of Asclepius, the God of Healing. It seems that most ancient settlements had an "Asclepion", which would have been the equivalent of a hospital or clinic. Epidavros was the main one, however, and people used to flock here to spend a night in the temple, where Asclepius would come to them and heal them in their sleep... although other types of healing, from soaking in mineral waters to blood-letting and leeching were also practised. Poor Asclepius had his heart in the right place... he became so saddened by the suffering of humanity that he wanted to eliminate mortality. For this dangerous idea, Zeus sent him to his own ignominious death... but I can sympathise with this most compassionate of gods; it is a terrible thing to watch others suffer.
Ancient Corinth
Nov. 22, 2008
Everyone I've ever talked to about Greece rhapsodised about the islands they went to (and how great the beaches were) or asked me which ones we're going to. This being the off-season, most of the ferries out to the islands aren't even running, but we're really not feeling the lack in any way. It has been an amazing voyage to just really get a feel for ancient history, and we've explored the Peloponnese pretty thoroughly.
An easy walk from our bungalow was the ruins of Ancient Asini, which was built on a rocky outcrop overlooking the sea, and was great fun to clamber over and around. A little further inland, we walked through the hills and discovered all sorts of strange holes dug into the hills; it turns out they were burial mounds (or tholos), and in typical fashion for Greece, they had been excavated by the Swedes, and then left unfinished and emptied (the locals have been told they cannot build there, and the hills have been empty for years now).
The biggest burial mound in the area, and one of the world's most famous, was about 50 km away in Mycanae. This is an amazing place; it's the old palace of Agamemnon, and the stone lions that guard the entrance to what was the palace complex are the oldest building sculptures in Europe. The dogs are missing their heads, but they are still clearly recognisable as dogs; and they're several thousand years old. It was here that a sense of time really became hard to gauge; Mycanae has been settled since the 6th millennium B.C.! And one of the most exciting things about this place -- for us, anyhow -- is that the walls are said to have been built by the tribe of descendants of the Cyclops that lived up in the hills above. Certainly, the size of the blocks that the walls were constructed of seem to defy mere human powers; they are extraordinarily huge. And the landscape is so jagged and barren all around -- it's easy to imagine the hills swarming with one-eyed giants, clumsily lifting enormous boulders like children's building blocks.
And this palace was the site of such tragedy -- told and probably untold over the many centuries as well. Agamemnon was the brother of Menalaeus -- the old king who Helen betrayed when she had her fling with Paris back in Githio. When Menalaeus went on the war path (literally) and wanted to mobilise a fleet to Troy, he called on his more powerful brother for troops. We followed Menalaeus' trail in reverse as we came up from Gythio, through Sparta, and on to Asini and Mycanae. The problem for Agamemnon (and Odysseus and the others who were to sail to Troy in pursuit of the young lovers), was that the ships sat languishing in Asini, unable to sail because of the lack of a breeze, and Agamemnon got desperate. An oracle told him that if he wanted the fleet to sail, he'd have to sacrifice his daughter. With that strange Grecian acceptance of life as dispensable, he went ahead and sacrificed her. Although the goddess Artemis reportedly stepped in and spared the girl, sending her to be a priestess rather than taking her life, Agamemnon's wife discovered what he had done and went slowly mad. She waited the many years till he returned, and then murdered him his first night back in the castle. And it's Agamemnon's burial mound which is so famous -- it's a huge, beehive shaped mound erupting from the earth. It's totally empty now, but we were able to see many of the artefacts from here -- including Agememnon's gold death mask -- when we went to the National Museum in Athens. Somehow seeing the real-life 'props' for these tales makes them more believable, and sad. An exciting antidote to the tragedy, however, was that the original line of kings thought to inhabit Mycanae came from Perseus, and included King Eurystheus, who sent Herakles on his labours! We loved to think that Herakles himself may have passed under the Lion's Gate, with the Nemean lion's pelt flung over his shoulders, sending the cowardly king scarpering for cover...
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