Oracle of Athens

Since Sam left, I'm back to my usual routine of trying to stay at the cheapest places, eating the cheapest food, and practicing on my ukulele. It's kind of refreshing, but I'm going to miss the company and the hotels with private bathrooms. Foolishly enough, I checked into a dorm room at the same hotel that Sam's bags were stolen at. Sure it's in a bad neighborhood, but all the cheap hotels are in the neighborhood for some reason and I knew the area very well after walking around it so much. The room was a mixed blessing because it seemed clean and didn't have many beds in it, but I found some used syringes behind my bed so I don't feel so good about it anymore.

After taking Sam to the airport I decided to visit the Acropolis once more. I went there 5 years ago with my family and it's such a damn shame that I didn't get to take Sam to see it this time around. Right after I bought my ticket it started to rain so I guess that my good luck still hadn't started up again.

Everyone knows the Acropolis in Athens. It's considered the focal point of early Western culture and it's history actually does live up to it's reputation. The Acropolis that we know today was built in 449 BC after being razed in the second war with Persia. Actually, it was the Persian wars that defined the brilliance of Athens and I feel that I have to give a little explanation though I've read entire books on the subject so it's hard to be brief.

It is significant that Athens was a democracy, and it's performance in these wars came to show the power of free men and free thought. In the first war, the king of Persia, Darius, brought a large army and supporting navy to Greece and was defeated at the battle of Marathon. The Athenians had taken an easily defensible position at the mouth of the valley and were waiting on the Spartans to come back them up, Sparta being the strongest land army in Greece. The Athenians were wary of attacking the powerful Persian cavalry backed up with archers but the Persians didn't want to attack the Athenian position either. On the 5th day, Darius started loading up his cavalry on ships to go around to attack Athens city directly, with his infantry defending the maneuver. The Spartans still hadn't showed up, but with Persian forced divided, the Athenians charged their infantry under the hail of arrows and using a pincer formation, slaughtered the Persians. 6400 Persians died while the Athenians lost 192. So, Darius already being loaded onto ships for the most part, decided to move on Athens since the army was away from its city. Under forced march, the Athenians moved 10000 men 26 miles in full armor immediately after the battle and made it there before the Persians. This amazing act of endurance overwhelmed Persian morale and they sailed home to plan the next invasion.

A couple years later, Darius died and his some Xerxes took over the preparations. 3 years after that Xerxes started moving towards Greece with the largest army every assembled with warriors from every corner of the Persian empire. It's important to note that most of these warriors were conscripted and were not trained in war to the degree that the free Greeks were, though Xerxes did have many skilled units including the masked swordsmen known as the Immortals. The Greek historian Herodotus claimed that Xerxes had 1.8 million men, though this is probably a tenfold exaggeration. Still, it was a truly massive army even at 180k, not to mention the many thousands of ships in his navy. The Athenians had been preparing for this invasion for years and put their faith in assembling a massive navy and military alliances with the other Greek states. When the Persians finally did show up, they were routed at sea and on land including at the famous battle of Thermopylae depicted in the movie 300. Unfortunately for Athens the city was burned but most of its people got away and lived on board the fleet of 2000 ships. Sparta did show its military might in this war, but they led by the seat of their pants and never had any real plans or preparation unlike the Athenians. In fact, Sparta's intent was to recall all Greek settlements in Turkey and to only defend their homeland while Athens had the larger world in mind. This show of leadership on behalf of Athens led all the Greek states to voluntarily place themselves under the leadership of the Athenians in a group called the Delian League.

Pericles was the leader of Athens during the peak of its power in the Delian league, which got it's name from the treasury on the island of Delos where Sam and I went the week before. This treasury of gold and bronze works of art, coin, and religious icons was a huge revenue source for Athens and was used to rebuild the Acropolis at Athens in honor of their great victory over Persia. It was in this same period of time that most of the great Greek thinkers that we know today made their home in Athens. This includes Herodotus (considered the first historian), Aeschylus (inventor theater with more than 1 character), Socrates (invented the Socratic Method, a rhetorical tool used that forces ones opponent to admit ignorance, a key to learning. Also was a seriously frustrating orator as shown in this account by Plato), Plato (a rather eccentric philosopher), and Aristotle (scientist and realist, divided up learning into fields like astronomy, anatomy, biology, etc. Also tutored Alexander the Great). These men and their writings were copied by subsequent generations and were the basis of education for over 1000 years so it's really no stretch to say that this period of time, at this place, was the basis of Western culture today. Of course, all this got seriously hamstrung when Sparta became jealous of Athens' power and defeated it 80 years later. The glory of Athens was short lived indeed but set the example for Rome and the Renaissance.

So, at the Acropolis I saw the Parthenon, a massive temple building that dominates the Acropolis. Also, I viewed the Porch of the Caryatids which is striking for it's columns modeled standing women. Oh, I also looked down on the Theater of Dionysus which is the very spot that modern theater and acting was born. Every year the Athenians would hold the Festival of Dionysus where an actor would play out the story of aforementioned god who shed his own blood for the sake of mankind in a story arc suspiciously like Jesus. Well, one year Aeschylus decided to try adding another actor to the show. It was a hit and he wrote new plays that told new stories to educate and amuse. His young rival Sophocles later added a third actor and painted scenery giving us roughly what we have today.

The next morning I awoke to the sound of shouting and chanting coming from a distance through my window. It occurred to me that I had heard something about strikes being scheduled for this day that were to shut down all the buses and ferries so I threw on some clothes and ran out to see them. Now, in any third world country I'd run the other direction as I don't want to end up in prison accused of instigating the protest, like those poor French girls in Iran, but in Greece I figured it would be safe. It was a peaceful march when I caught up to them so I just took a few pics and went back to the hotel.

At the hotel I met my new roommate, who got in from a ferry at 1 am, and we decided to go to the archaeological museum together. His name is Jordan and he's a silly fast traveler. He's been out for a month so far but has been to most of the countries in Western Europe already. The next day he flies to Egypt to see Cairo for 2.5 days and then he's meeting his family in Switzerland to tour Italy, Sicily, England, Scotland, and Ireland in just 2 weeks. On the way to the museum we passed through another protest march... they're on most of the streets through the city.

The protests are all about the debt crisis of course. The IMF has forced 'austerity measures' on the government and cut the salary of most city and government employees by at least 20%. This is made even more serious by the history of Greece adopting the Euro currency and seeing the prices for food, clothing, and other goods go up %300 to match the rest of Europe's scale. So basically, everyone has been feeling poor and now they feel broke. I hear that there was a clash with the police later in the afternoon when 10000 people were chanting 'burn the parliament' right out in front of the building.

The museum is truly great, especially since I'm so damn interesting in the material. I got yelled at when I tried to pose in front of a statue of Zeus for a picture... it turns out that because all the statues are of gods, heroes, and athletes it's improper to pose with this though you can take pictures of them alone. This rule goes for every museum in the country and makes some sense though I felt the old guy telling me about it was extremely rude and aggressive considering there are no signs.

Life size bronze statues from the classical period are extremely rare since they were seldom just 'lost' and would most often have been melted down for reuse by later generations. Still, this museum had several including one of Octavius, Zeus, and a really great one of a young jockey on a horse. They also had about a million marble busts, give or take a thousand. Also, they had a lot of gold that was dug up at Nestor's Palace and at Mycenae, both important figures in the Trojan War. Unfortunately I won't be visiting them on this trip as I want to head north to cheaper lands. Another great piece was a marble statue of Aphrodite preparing to slap Pan with her shoe to dissuade his advances.

My absolute favorite item was the Antikythera Mechanism that I had read about several times before and didn't realize was on display here. It's a clockwork device made around 100 BC, that's about as advanced as what started showing up in Europe in the 14th century. It's basically a mechanical calculator, with over 30 gears, that can be used to predict the positions of planets, the moon, solar eclipses, the correct times for Olympic games, and other things. You should read some more about this thing. It blows my mind.

Jordan and I got some beers at a pub near the Acropolis, but later on he stayed to write his journal and I went back to the hostel to work on my blog. While I was there I met a couple other backpackers, Ju from South Korea and Carla from Argentina, and we decided to go out to some pubs later that night as soon as Jordan got back to the hostel. I told them what foul luck Sam and I had the last few days, and they were pretty shocked how bad things went. Sam was such a good travel partner up until then and I was pretty damn impressed how tough she had been... I don't go too slow when touring about town. Well, Jordan too too long coming back so we went out to walk around the trendy restaurants and shops near the Acropolis and to drink beers in the street. It's a really beautiful place at night.

I took a bus to the city of Delphi the next morning since it's north of town and on the way to cheaper places. We rode for a few hours, and then reach a very cute town on a steep mountain cliff which I assumed was Delphi so when the bus stopped and some people got off I did too... only to learn it was a different town 10km from Delphi. I hitched the rest of the way with a nice young French couple touring Europe in a camper. I spent the rest of the day reading and relaxing since I thought it would be too late to see the ruins.

I made it out to the ruins the next morning. They're actually pretty large despite being located on a rather steep mountainside and the size and quality of the buildings speaks to the great importance of this seemingly remote location. There are natural gases that emanate from cracks on the mountainside, and when inhaled can render people incoherent, shivering, wrecks. This was surely the work of the gods, though modern tests have found methane coming from the rocks which can have dangerous side effects. So, this mountain became the site of the oracle, a young woman (13 years old) who would inhale the power of the gods (probably Apollo) and a priest would interpret her mumblings in hexameter verse in answer to a question posed. For instance, the king Croesus asked what would be the outcome of a war with Persia (before the Greek/Persian wars) and was told that he would cross into enemy territory and that a great empire would fall. Amusingly it was his own.

Of course, the oracle often did give good advice and was considered the most truthful of the many oracles in the world. This is probably because the organization behind the Delphic Oracle had scholars all over the Greek world gathering information and was better informed than most any other group. So many kingdoms would come here to gain information that they eventually set up a version of the UN with representatives from every kingdom visiting annually to discuss shared interests. This too was very profitable and there were several wars fought over Delphi. The good times didn't last forever and Oracle lost a lot of prestige with it's almost treasonous/defeatist attitude towards the Persians and later the Romans didn't put much stock in it either.

The most common buildings at the site are the many treasuries. Each major city would build their own marble treasury building to house the many fine gifts that would be donated to the oracle in return for preferential treatment in the doling out of prophecies. Most of the gifts were 'tripods', basically an elaborate cauldron with legs, as this was the favorite symbol of Apollo, god of prophecy. Other gifts included life size statues, elaborate columns, mirrors, etc.

The site also had a theater, a small stadium for athletic events, several temples the largest of which was to Apollo. His temple was rectangular and sported huge columns though not much of it is left. The area tends to suffer from landslides. One of the most famous buildings there is a round temple for Athena.

While wandering around the complex I met a rotund Greek man named Chris who is an actor out of Athens that's come to town to perform in a series of comedies from ancient Greece. He invited me to come to the first of the shows 2 nights from then and I accepted as I needed a place to lay low and to get some writing done. The rest of the day I spend finishing the last blog post and starting this one.

The next day, today, I just wandered around town admiring the fine view of the valley and sea below from the deck of cafe with wifi. There has been sporadic rain for the last couple days so hopefully I'm not rained out of the open air theater tonight. I'll let you know how the show is, though it's in Greek so I'm hoping that I understand the jokes. Chris said that I would get it.