Day at the Acropolis

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  Athens, Greece
Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Today was the big day, the excursion to the Acropolis with our guide, our Ancient Greek Monuments professor (whom I guess I'll call Indy, as he seems like the sort of archaeologist who has adventures even though he claims he isn't). Indy told us so many interesting things, but I didn't think to bring a notebook (you're not allowed to bring a backpack up the Acropolis), so I'll just write here some of the bits and pieces I remember.

.5 Hadrian's Arch. Hadrian was a Roman who was educated in Athens at a time when Athens had no political power and was somewhat of a population backwater, but remained the premiere university town in the Western world. When the Romans took over Greece and Hadrian ruled, he erected this monument, which reads on the side that faces the old perimeter of the city "This is the city of Theseus" and on the side that faces the new buildings of the expanding city, "This is the city of Hadrian, and not of Theseus."

1

Hadrian's Arch

. The Theatre of Dionysos. Every play from Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes you've ever read premiered here. We sat on the marble bench seats looking down at the orchestra, the round area where the actors stood. Each year, in honor of the gods, a three-day festival of plays was held: first a trilogy of dramas, then a day of comedies, then a satyr play. Like everything in ancient Greece, it was a competition. A bowl on a tripod was awarded for the best plays, but not to the playwright, to the producer.

2. The Temple of Aesclepius. Aesclepius was a healing god whose main temple was in Epidaurus, many miles away from Athens (we're going there later in the program, so stay tuned). There was a terrible plague in Athens, and they decided to bring a statue of Aesclepius to Athens. They brought him in great procession, but the temple wasn't yet completed, so he stayed in Sophocles' house until the temple was built. When I studied the ancient Greek language in grad school, I remember we read a story in class together about a blind boy whose family takes him to the Temple of Aesclepius, where snakes lick his eyes in an effort to heal him.

3. The Odeon of Herodius Attikus. Herodius Attikus inherited an obscene amount of money from his father in Marathon. He lost his temper with his wife one day, and kicked her in the belly. She was pregnant; she miscarried and died. He spent the rest of his life spending his fortune on public works, trying to atone for his deeds. The marble seats have been restored because they still use this as a music hall. On the day we were there, for instance, there was an electrical crew setting up lights and instruments for a concert.

Theatre of Dionysos

3. The Propylaea. Now we're actually up on the top of the Acropolis (which just means "high rock," every major ancient Greek city had one as the most defensible position). This was an elaborate entrance gate, which might have been more interesting to the ancients because it was architecturally new and daring. Also it was the first art museum in the West - it housed paintings on wood in a room whose ceiling was painted blue with stars. The building was never completed when all the funding went to fighting yet another war. You can tell because the nubs used to move the blocks of marble have not yet been smoothed off.

4. The Parthenon. Indy told us some things I had already known, like the Parthenon was not really a religious center, it was actually a treasury housing money and documents. And I knew the whole thing had been painted in bright colors, but Indy explained that was because if the buildings had been left in white marble, the glare would have been so bright nobody could come up to the Acropolis in daylight. He also said the Parthenon is an expression in marble of architecture that would have been familiar in wood.

Indy went on to explain that because of the way the light hits, the corner columns look smaller than the other columns

Temple of Aesclepius

. So the corner columns are thicker than the others. Each column has 20 fluted grooves because the fluting created pleasant shadows. Round drums were cut from the marble and fluted at the top and bottom. The drums were stacked on top of one another, and then the carver would connect the line from top to bottom to complete the fluting.

Indy said that the Parthenon is special because it had sculptures that depict gods, heroes, and humans all in one building. The gods were on the pediment, the triangular space right under the roof. These pediments were hacked off and carted to London by Lord Elgin when Athens was occupied by the Ottomans, and the British Museum to this day refuses to give them back. The heroes were on the metopes, which are panels running around the top of the colonnade, bracketed by three lines called triglyphs. The metope panels depict the heroes' struggles against the forces of chaos: centaurs, amazons, giants, Trojans. The humans were on the frieze, which ran around the top of the building (inside the colonnade, where it would have been difficult to see when the roof existed). The frieze depicted the Panathenaic procession, a festival where animals were sacrificed and the statue of Athena was given a new cloak to wear.

5. The Erechtheion

Odeon of Heridius Attikus

. The Erechtheion was more sacred as a religious site than the Parthenon, and it's my favorite building on the Acropolis. The Parthenon doesn't exceptionally flip my pancakes, perhaps because it's a building dedicated to a goddess who sprang full grown and armed from the forehead of her father, her mother Metis erased from mythological memory.

The Erechtheion was a temple where Athena hosted four or five other gods, including Poseidon, against whom she contested for the patronage of Athens. Athena tried to court the city by producing the first olive tree. An olive tree has grown beside the Erechtheion ever since. Poseidon tried to court the city by striking the ground with his trident, and a spring of salt water appeared. Athena won the contest and that's why we call the city Athens instead of Poseidos, but Poseidon's trident strike is still important. The ancient Greeks interpreted the salt water spring as a symbol of their dominance over the sea. So on one porch of the Erechtheion, there is a hole in the floor, below which you can still see the cleft ground where Poseidon mythically struck his trident, and there is also a hole in the roof so his trident can poke through again and again to strike, confirming Greek sea power.

Now for the Caryatids, which are the woman-shaped columns holding up the roof of a porch on the other side of the Erechtheion

The Propylaea

. The Porch of Maidens, as it's called, is mysterious because we're not entirely sure who the women were (maybe daughters of the king, or maidens from the Peloponnesian region of Karyae where the women were renowned to be especially beautiful) or what the porch was for. Their noses have been worn down from erosion and pollution, and they used to have arms that held libation bowls out in front of them.

In her gorgeous book Dinner with Persephone, Patricia Storace recounts a modern Greek myth: In his plundering of Greek antiquities, Lord Elgin hacked one of the Caryatids off the porch, replaced her with a square column, and abducted her off to London, where he sold her to the British Museum. Legend has it that as she was being removed, you could hear horrible screaming as if a woman were being raped. The other five original Caryatids are now in the Greek National Archaeological Museum (the ones now on the Acropolis are replicas), and on quiet nights, you can hear the sound of the marble women weeping for their lost sister.

On two different walking tours now, guides have taken us to places we've never been, and then set us free at the destination without walking us back. The first time, I was lucky to hitch home with Basil. This time, three very sweet students let me walk home with them, or I would have been lost for hours

Parthenon

. Then they invited me out for sushi that night. About nine students actually showed up at the sushi restaurant, and it was one of my favorite evenings so far. I was grateful for their thoughtful invitation. It's a little bit lonely here for me. I can't really be friends with the students because of the power differential of being a professor, and I can't really be friends with the program staff because they have jobs to do. So for the students to invite me to dinner with them was very meaningful.

Unfortunately, when I got home, I discovered that after the brutal punishment inflicted on us by the sun god Helios on the Acropolis during the day, the skin between my nose and upper lip had sweated profusely and the sunscreen had disappeared, leaving me with a lovely red sunburn moustache. Don't call me, I have to keep the phone lines open in case Cosmo and Vogue need me to be their new cover model.

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Hole for Poseidon's Trident in Erechtheion Roof

Caryatids

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