Athens - the major ruins

Athens is a place where history confronts you at every turn.  History that is thousands of years old.  History that has changed how the world works.  It surfaces from the ground, it hits you at every corner, it flows from every pore of every rock.  I am not kidding. Do not look down on any rock - it was very likely some part of a building that once housed Socrates or King Agamemnon or Archimedes or Pythagoras.  Yup, a rock here has had more impact to the development of Western civilisation than you.  

At the Hellenic Cosmos, an educational center for children with a mathematics and science center, and some awesome 3D presentations on ancient Greek cities but the latter gave us all a very bad headache and nausea.  

Every time the Greeks begins construction of a building, they find some ruins or other, e.g. burial grounds, sewers, heating systems, building foundations, potteries, etc.  These end up on display in the new buildings when they are up, because, I guess, they don't have enough space in their museums for everything they find.  So a trip on the metro is a mini museum excursion.  Even the Athens airport has its own museum (and being the geeks we are, we spent a good half hour there while waiting to board our flight).  Yup, the whole city is a museum.

Hadrian's Library, just round the corner from the Monastiraki metro station, near the Plaka area.  It is 2000 years old - you know, the minimum standard around here - and built by the Roman emperor Hadrian to house papyrus rolls.

Temple of the Olympian Zeus, with the Acropolis and the Parthenon in the background.  Construction of this place dedicated to Zeus began in 6th century BC.  All that is left are these fifteen Corinthian columns.  The sixteenth column lays on the ground in pieces after being struck by lightning in 1852.  What's a few hundred years in a 8000-year old place?  I am sure they will get around to cleaning it up in the next couple of hundred years...

Parthenon, on the Acropolis.  

An acropolis is a generic term referring to city walls.  It is usually a settlement built on elevated ground which surrounds the original or main city as a form of protection.  The most famous acropolis is the Acropolis - spelled with a capital "A" - in Athens. 

By the way, the definition above came from Sophie while we were in Athens.  She was an amazing little walking and talking authority on Greek mythology and history.  We knew she was reading up on the topic months before our trip.  We knew she badgered us every now and then with little tales on Greek gods.  But we really didn't realise the extent of her knowledge until the trip.  My guide book has a small section on Greek gods & mythology, but she was a much better alternative!  (Now I know how YL feels when we go traveling and I do all the explaining while he snaps away)

Once, I was reading a description in my guide book and struggling to pronounce the name.  

"King A-ga-mem-non, Aga-men-mon, ..."

"Oh, King Agamemnon! He's the king who led the Spartans in the Trojan War!  They went to save Helen of Troy," she announced in a matter-of-fact, and then went back to her souvlaki dinner. 

I threw a frightened glance at YL and then back at that little alien creature with the face of my daughter.  OK, perhaps I suck at Greek history, but is she going to solve physics equations next? (By the way, I suck at physics, too)

She impressed our tour guide in Delphi, when we were in the Delphi Archaeological Museum looking at all the ruins they had salvaged from the Temple of Apollo (more on this later), by answering all the questions on the gods.  She looked at the statues and carvings, recognised them, and then recounted some bizarre story - Greek mythology are all incestuous or twisted, aren't they? - about them.

A detail from a pediment from one of the treasury buildings at the sanctuary of Delphi. 

Hey Soph, which story is this again? Oh yah, it's the Nemean lion in the story of the 7 labours of Hercules Heracles (she tells me that Hercules is the Roman form for Heracles).

Naturally, we were very glad we could immerse her into the very living heart of her current pet topic.  She gasped, wide-eyed with excitement and disbelief, when she recognises some character or other, and then regaled us with more stories.  Now if we could only channel that energy to Chinese culture and history next...

Going back to the Acropolis, it is an ancient citadel that thrived starting from the 5th century BC, and today contains the ruins of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, including the Parthenon (dedicated to the goddess Athena), Propylaia (entrance to the Acropolis), the Erechtheion (built perhaps in honour of King Erectheus) and the temple of Athena Nike (a small temple dedicated to the goddess Athena worshiped in the form of goddess of victory).  

Inside the New Acropolis Museum.  It is a beaoooutifoool building, very light, very bright, and oriented to match the Parthenon in the background.  The artefacts are very well-presented in English and Greek.  Shame on the French museums on this point. 

One of thousands of panels that make up the frieze

Explanation in English & Greek

The lower galleries of the museum do not allow photography.  I was reprimanded by the guards for taking this shot, so you lucky readers can see what it looks like

What's left of the carvings and statues on the Parthenon are displayed to mimic exactly their position on the actual building, which you can see from the wide windows on the left. The gaps are due to pieces that have been destroyed by time, wars and religious persecution, or lost, or taken away (specifically, by Lord Elgin, and now housed in the British Museum).  

Lord Elgin, British ambassador to Greece during the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire in the early part of the 19th century, obtained permission to enter the Acropolis to document the sculptures.  He eventually removed more than half of the pieces and shipped them back to England, and sold them to the British Museum.  

Whether he had the right to remove them from the site, to sell them, and whether the British Museum should now rightly return them is an ongoing controversy.

A model of the East Pediment from the Parthenon, showing the birth of Athena.  Zeus gave birth to Athena, goddess of war and wisdom, after a terrible headache prompted him to summon Hephaestus' (god of fire and the forge) assistance.  Hephaestus struck Zeus with his hammer, Zeus' head split open, and Athena popped out fully grown and in full armour. 

I told you the Greeks are bizarre.

Close-up of the pediment showing Athena and Zeus in the center

You can see where the pediment once belonged in the picture of Sophie in front of the Parthenon above.  It is basically the triangular section on the top of the Parthenon.

And now we venture further to Delphi, a 3-hour drive from Athens.  Perhaps one of the most famous oracles - divine fortune tellers, if you wish - is the Oracle of Delphi, based in the Temple of Apollo up in the Parnassos mountains.  It reached its pinnacle in the 6th century, and no political decisions around that time were taken without the consent of the oracle.  It is also the site for the Pythian Games.  We all know about the Olympic Games, but in fact there were three other important pan-Hellenic games in Ancient Greece: the Pythian games held in Delphi in honour of Apollo's slaying of the Python Dragon, the Nemean games, and the Isthmian games.

The Delphi oracle - always a woman - was a medium through which the god Apollo spoke.  She sits in a cauldron on a tripod placed over a chasm on the ground inside the temple where vapours rise from beneath the ground.  It is said that the vapours are of the decomposing body of the monster Python slain by Apollo, and it allows the oracle to go into a trance where she receives answers from Apollo to questions asked by worshipers.  Her answers in gibberish would be interpreted by a priest of the temple and then relayed to the worshipers who wait outside.  

Today, the theory is that ethylene and other gases from underground volcanic activity causes one to go into a hallucinosis.  Science always comes along to spoil the fun, doesn't it?

Ruins of the Temple of Apollo.  The oracle is at the back of the temple (right side of the complex you see in the picture), while worshipers wait at the entrance.  

It was raining heavily when we arrived at the site, but fortunately subsided after a half-hour wait.  It turned out to be a blessing, because the site was almost deserted, and the peace and magic in that majestic setting was palpable.  It reminded me of our pilgrimage to Machu Picchu.  

Inside the Delphi Archaelogical Museum.  These are 6.5-metre statues of the brothers Kleovis and Biton who pulled their mother in a chariot for 8km to a sanctuary where she was to worship.  She asked the gods to reward their dedication by giving them the best gift a god can give a mortal.  The gods asked the boys to rest in the temple after the feast, and they died in their sleep, thus making them heroes forever. 

Lesson: Be specific what you ask of Greek gods.