The Land of Agamemnon

Saturday August 25, 2012 – NAFPLION, GREECE

There are about 40 different ways to spell Nafplion.  I’m pretty sure every road sign says something different, the guidebooks can’t agree, and Word thinks I’m trying to spell Napoleon.  For the sake of clarity, I’m just going to use Nafplion.

Nafplion was the capital of Greece until the king the rest of Europe decided Greece needed moved to Athens.  Athens took a little longer to be liberated than the Peloponnese, so this was the city the Greeks used as their capital.  When King Otto arrived (Greece had no royalty, so Europe told them a Prussian prince would be their ruler.  Come to think of it, Greece has a history of being controlled by Germany…), he decided to move the capital to Athens because he was an admirer of antiquity.  Nafplion is still pretty damn proud of the fact that they were once the capital and the people there like to remind you.  However, this region (Argolis) has a history of importance aside from the distinction of playing host to the capital for a few years…

Epidaurus, about 19 miles from Nafplion, is the legendary home of Asclepius, the god of healing.  A demigod (the son of Apollo and a mortal woman), his mother was struck dead just as he was being born thus granting him knowledge of life, death, and how to get from one state to the other.  The foundations of a labyrinth under mysterious circular temple can still be seen, which may or may not have been considered the tomb of Asclepius himself.  Another purpose is however slightly more likely: a test of faith.  In ancient Greece, healing took a full 24 hours (which seems really short by modern standards, but bear with me). At the beginning of the day, your body would have been purified in the spa.  After being physically cleansed, you would be spiritually cleansed.  In order to be worthy of healing, you had to pass a test of faith, which may or may not have been getting out of the labyrinth intact. Personally, that would be the worst of the healing ordeal; I’ve tried to do school work while sick and I don’t think I would survive any kind of test, let alone a test of faith.  After the test of faith, the sick would be moved to a stoa where they would sleep and hope to be cured by intercession with the divine powers.  Flawed though American healthcare may be, I’ll take it over a visit to the cult of Asclepius any day.

In addition to the healing center, Epidaurus features an amazingly well preserved theater.  

It supposedly has perfect acoustics. I actually got up on the center mark of the orchestra and performed my Shakespeare competition monologue and a group of Spanish tourists at the way back of the "gazing space" cheered very supportively, so I’m guessing the bit about the acoustics is true.  Theater was a holy rite for the Ancient Greeks.  In the spring for the festival of Dionysus, a tragedy competition would be held to see who could write the best play.  It is from this tradition that we get the great Greek tragedies like the Oedipus Cycle and the Oresteia (more on that one in a little bit).  However, more than a way to win a competition, the plays served as a cleansing process for the conscience of the entire city.  By watching some bad guy get their just deserts, the city as a whole learned a lesson about morality and experienced Catharsis. Through the play, the city was washed of its sins and was able to start the new year fresh. 

This region of the Peloponnese is steeped with mythic history.  It is purported to go like this: 

Pelops, a great hero, was in want of a wife. Across the Isthmus of Corinth, he heard there was a very beautiful princess; so he set off to make her his wife.  However, she had a very protective father.  Poseidon had given this King a set of invincible horses so he challenged every suitor to a chariot race for the hand of his daughter.  Since his horses could not be beaten, the suitors would invariably lose and the King would have them put to death.  Pelops, being a great hero and knowing about this trick, convinced the head of the King’s stables to help him win the hand of the princess.  Knowing he could not conquer the horses, he decided to conquer the chariot.  On the day of the race, the two men set off and the King’s chariot promptly fell to bits.  Pelops, who had replaced the proper nails with ones made of wax, won the hand of the princess and the control of her father’s kingdom.  He and the princess had two sons named Atreus and Thyestes.  Upon the death of Pelops (after whom the peninsula is named), the kingdom was split into two.  I have yet to hear of a story where dividing the kingdom ends well.  The boys fought over the fertile river valley that fell near the border between the two kingdoms.  For a variety of reasons primarily having to do with a golden fleece, Thyestes sleeps with Atreus’ wife.  Atreus, who is rightfully pissed, kills the sons of Thyestes and feeds the boys to their father.  Thyestes, also rightfully pissed, kills Atreus.  Atreus’s sons, Menelaus and Agamemnon, kill Thyestes and take over the kingdoms.  Menelaus becomes the king of Sparta while Agamemnon maintains control of Mycenae.  This whole process curses the house of Atreus for generations to come. 

In spite of all this killing, Atreus’ family finds time to bury him in a tomb that can still be found today.  The Treasury of Atreus, so called because the offerings left at the tombs of the deceased were so rich as to make the tomb synonymous with treasury in ancient Greek, is a classic example of Mycenaean architecture, which was designed to melt into the landscape. 

After burying the deceased in what is essentially a reinforced hill, the people of his or her house would wait 40 days and then have a feast to celebrate the soul of the deceased making it to the afterlife.  This banquet would be held in the funnel-like pathway to the door of the tomb. Afterwards, the guests would bury the remains of the banquet so that the entrance to the tomb melted into the hill.  When someone else in the family died, everyone would get together and do the whole thing over again using the utensils they had buried after the previous funeral.  While questionably sanitary, it’s a tradition that to a certain extent lives on in Greek culture; after 40 days the family of a deceased person gets together and eats sweets, which apparently you aren’t supposed to eat while you’re in mourning.

A little up the way are the remains of the acropolis of Mycenae.  

According to myth, the city was founded by Perseus son of Zeus who enlisted the help of the Cyclops to move the colossal blocks of stone that form the walls of the city.  The ruins of the Atrides Palace (if you’re wondering why that sounds familiar, the answer is Dune; however it more or less means “of the house of Atreus”) are still visible today.  This is where Agamemnon would have ruled and also where he would have been killed in the bathtub by his wife and her lover.  Quite frankly, the myth here is more fun than the ruins, so I’m going back to that…

As I said, the house of Atreus was cursed by all the killing.  It so happened that all the kings of Ancient Greece, including the Atrides brothers, were chasing after the same woman: Helen.  Odysseus, king of Ithaca, got all the kings together and made a pact: they would be allied and let Helen choose her own husband.  He was probably hoping she would look favorably upon this gesture and pick him, but she didn’t.  She picked Menelaus.  Odysseus didn’t go home empty handed though.  He married Helen’s sister Penelope while Agamemnon married her sister Clytemnestra.  Surprisingly, things went ok for a while, until the wedding of Thetis, a goddess, and Peleus, a mortal.  It was at this wedding that Eris decided to throw out a golden apple inscribed with “For the Fairest”.  After all the women at the wedding fought over the apple, the contest came down to three: Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera.  Zeus, wisely deciding not to piss off any of the people he had to live with, delegated the task of judging the contest to Paris, a prince of Troy.  In return for choosing her as the fairest, Aphrodite promises Paris the love of the most beautiful woman in the world.  One problem:  she was married.  Paris decides to travel to Sparta to see this woman.  They fall in love with each other at first sight.  Paris spirits her away, thereby beginning the Trojan War.

Menelaus, upon waking up to find his wife gone, sets off for Mycenae to get Agamemnon and to call together all the Kings that were involved in the Helen Pact.  He brings together all the Kings and heroes and they set off for Troy.  Or at least they try to.  They end up trapped in port for an inordinately long period of time by unfavorable winds.  Agamemnon, itching to get to war, goes to the temple of Apollo to ask the God how to bring the winds back.  The answer turns out to be that he has to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia.  So Agamemnon does.  Notably, he does so without asking Clytemnestra who is rightfully pissed off with her husband for sacrificing their daughter so he could get to war faster.

Fast forward ten or so years. Achilles is dead; Menelaus got Helen back (although their marriage was never quite the same); Odysseus is heading home; and Agamemnon returns to Mycenae to lead the victory procession in a chariot accompanied by a slave girl in the place his wife should have stood in his chariot.  Clytemnestra, still kind of angry about the daughter thing, convinces her lover, Aegisthus, to kill Agamemnon so that they can rule together properly.  So he does.  Of course this has to be avenged, so Electra (Agamemnon’s other daughter) convinces her brother Orestes to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.  So he does and he is hounded by the harpies until he convinces Athena to convene the first jury to decide whether he needs to be properly punished for avenging the death of his father by committing matricide.  The jury decides that the virtue of avenging the death of his father took precedent over the sin of killing his mother, so they let him off.

And that is, more or less, the story of the Oresteia.  At least the Agamemnon bits.  Wasn’t that more interesting that me talking about rocks for a page and a half?