Greek Temple in the Oregon Woods
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2008
1
84
148
Trip End
Dec 09, 2008
Sounio,
Attica,
Greece
Thursday, October 23, 2008
As told in Aeschylus' drama Seven Against Thebes, when Oedipus abdicated his throne after learning the horrible truth about murdering his father and marrying his mother, his two sons agreed to divide the rule Thebes between themselves, switching off each year. The problem is, the first brother refused to hand off power after his year was up. So the other brother, Polynaikos, tried to recruit another king, Amphiaieius, to help him march upon the throne.
Amphiareius didn't want to go
Pine trees above, ancient ruins below
. He was a soothsayer, and he foresaw that the expedition would be disastrous and he himself would be killed. So Polynaikos decided to bribe Amphiareius' queen with the Necklace of Harmonia if she would convince her husband to go to Thebes. So Amphiareius went off to fight at Thebes, but he asked his sons to avenge his death if the prophecy does indeed come true.The fighting ranged across the seven gates of Thebes, until at the final gate, the two sons of Oedipus faced off for the throne and killed each other. Amphiareius fled, and just as a Theban was about to kill him, Zeus threw down a thunderbolt, carving a gash in the ground. Amphiareius' chariot goes into the hole and the earth closes up behind him. His sons go back home and murder their mother because she was the one who persuaded Amphiareius to go to his death. Must have been one heck of a great necklace.
Amphiareius became a deity of soothsaying and healing. You would come to this temple, sacrifice a ram, and sleep on the cleaned fleece. Your dream would reveal the cure you needed. When you woke up, you would leave coins and a votive offering at the temple. The temple complex is built on either side of a ravine, meant to symbolize the chasm Amphiareius drove his chariot into.
After almost three weeks of frustrated water clock jokes after our unsuccessful trip to the Tower of the Winds, we finally got to see a water clock in situ at Amphiaraion. The athletic and impetuous Class Clown jumped down into the water clock pit, and Fred jokingly hollered down, "It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again" [that's an allusion to both a movie and a cartoon alluding to the movie]. Fred and Mama D took Class Clown by each arm and hoisted him up vertically out of the pit -- several times, to make sure we could all get pictures.
