The Potter's Cemetery
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2008
1
130
148
Trip End
Dec 09, 2008
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Athens,
Attica,
Greece
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Aristocratic families in antiquity would show their wealth and might here on funeral occasions, hiring mourners for the funeral procession to wail and scratch their faces, and erecting elaborate funerary monuments for the deceased. One young man, Dexileos the aristocratic equestrian, actually had three memorial statues - a private family one, a public one, and a rhetorical one meant to distance himself from the hated Thirty Tyrants. My favorite sculpture, however, was a large monument depicting two women wearing veils. The deceased is always depicted as the one seated, and she is attended by the living mourner, perhaps a mother or sister, she left behind.
The lavish processions were eventually outlawed, and more austere stelae were the only monuments permitted to be erected in memory of the loved ones. Indy called the austerity stelae "cigarette butt" monuments.
As usual, we were greeted at this historical site by its resident pooch, this time a stray with more than a little German shepherd in him. He got plenty of lovins from the students, and Spencer and Groom's fiancée even scratched him gently with their shoes until he was rolling on the sidewalk with joy.
After our tour of the cemetery and its attendant museum, there was no time for the lunch in Monasteraki or Plaka I had been hoping for - the students had to race back to make it to the classroom in time for their Greek quiz. Thanks to the guidance of Papia and Traveling Pants (who, along with Class Clown and Mama D and a few others are becoming my genuine friends, not just students), I made it home by way of two Metro rides and a tram trip and then the last leg slooooowly on foot. The Greeks should change the design of their flag to a pair of throbbing feet.
