Pre-Funk and Tower of the Winds
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2008
1
63
148
Trip End
Dec 09, 2008
Athens,
Attica,
Greece
Monday, October 6, 2008
I wanted to see the Tower of the Winds because of the water clock. Greek citizens gained power by speaking on their own behalf in the courts and presenting legislation in the assemblies. So oratory became crucial for political survival. The water clocks were used to time the public speeches.
Indy told us that the Greeks filled a bowl with water and when the water had dripped out of the bowl, the speaker's time was up
Tower of the Winds in the ancient Roman Agora
. You could ask the judge to "put your finger on the clock" to stop the dripping in order to read official documents into your court testimony. But the water emptied unevenly. Thus, there was a device to regulate the water flow, and a device to regulate the refilling of the bowl.Ancient Greeks had little concept of minutes and seconds since they didn't really have a mechanism for reliably measuring or standardizing them. The Olympic races, for instance, were not timed, they just crowned the frontrunner. They had concepts like "first light" and "midday," but hours were longer in summer and shorter in winter.
Indy threw in the juicy anecdote of a fourth-century BCE prostitute who was nicknamed "The Water Clock" because she used the mechanism to time her sessions with her clients.
We posed for a class picture at the door of the Tower of the Winds. Unfortunately, when I requested to make this excursion, nobody told me the door is locked and you can't get in, so we came all that way and didn't actually get to see the water clock. As my student Papia put it, "Dude, where's my water clock?"
On the way home, I learned some new vocabulary from the students
Best location in the world for Persuasion class
. We stopped at a creperie. The men observed that the establishment had a good atmosphere and would be a good "pre-funk" location. Pre-funk? It turns out that pre-funk is the practice of going to a place to drink, dance, and talk in preparation for going to a night club. You don't want to show up at a club without having already had some drinks and loosened up. Alcohol culture -- they live in an alien world."Dank" seems to be the newest word equivalent to great, cool, nice, wonderful. They are aware of the denotation of dank as "uncomfortably moist," but the slang connotation is of something particularly excellent. I aspire to dank-nacity. ;->
Comments
Oh. My. Goodness.
I just read more than 20 of your posts in a row, catching up. You are having a GREAT time, aren't you??? I have having such fun just reading about it! Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting so much and sharing it with us!
-DianeS
Re: Oh. My. Goodness.
Thanks for your kind words of support about the blog. I think in later years, having a daily record of what we did and who we were as a group will be a great way to prevent memories from blurring and fading. And I feel like the friends who read the posts are right here with me. I'm especially grateful to friends who have written comments - I open them like little presents each morning and read each of them several times over to savor your words. You're right, Diane, I'm having the time of my life here in Greece, and I wish we could all be here together.
Dankness
May all of you reach the level of danknacity to which you aspire whether your pre-funk is naturally- or retsina-induced.