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?

Sing Muse… The Beginning

NOTE: I was without Internet for the duration of this trip, so I typed up my blog posts in advance, while everything was still fresh.  All of them will be posted in quick succession now.

Friday August 24 ATHENS, GREECE –

Greece in August is hot as balls.  It’s actually quite remarkable.  But, setting that aside, it really is a lovely country.

I had already been to Athens and various islands before I started blogging; so my post on Athens will be admittedly lacking.  But, to catch you up…

The National Archeological Museum is definitely worth a look (my family spent about three hours just wandering the first time we visited, but then we’re really into archeological museums.) and the Forum, the Agora, and the Temple of Olympian Zeus are worth stopping by for a few minutes to take pictures (there’s really not much left of any of them). 

Those are the major sites I skipped this trip.  Retrospectively, I wish I had made the trip out to the Archeological Museum (basically everything except the Museum is within walking distance of Syntagma Square) instead of going to the Benaki Museum; but at least I now know that the Benaki museum isn’t really that interesting.

The Benaki Museum essentially takes a look at Greek art from Neolithic to modern day.  I like Classical Greek sculpture as much as the next girl (actually, considering my peer group, I like Classical Greek sculpture quite a bit more than the next girl) but I get mildly annoyed when it isn’t clearly curated.  I’m pretty good with mythology, but I don’t know all the symbols tied to each God; so it’s nice to have a sign telling me what I’m looking at.  Personally, I walk pretty quickly past the religious Icons.  I do informally study religion for my Global Scholar certificate, but I can’t even come close to keeping the saints straight and the older paintings of the Madonna and Child are kind of creepy looking, so they’re mostly lost on me.

As you work your way up, the exhibits get more and more modern.  The stuff from the Romantic period is especially interesting to me because that is the period of the Greek War for Independence.  There are lots of gloriously nationalistic paintings to be found from that period.  Interestingly, during the period of occupation by the Ottomans, the Greek Orthodox Church served as the safeguard of Greek history, culture, and language.  Most of the precious sculptures from antiquity (for example: the massive, ivory and gold statues of Pallas Athena from the Parthenon and Zeus from the Athenian temple of Olympian Zeus) were stolen away by the Ottomans and were destroyed along with most of Istanbul in a fire, but the Church protected the history of Greek culture even in the face of occupation.  So that’s pretty cool.  When I was there, there was also a special exhibit on about artists as jewelry designers, which I have to say was much more interesting solely because it was better curated.  It was very easy to figure out what I was looking at, which is always a plus.

After the Benaki Museum, I pretty much just wandered around down a few side streets.  While I can’t tell you what streets I was on, I found a few blocks of chocolate shops, a few super fancy looking jewelry stores, and a supremely creepy store run by a “poet sandal maker”.  The walls were essentially lined with pictures of famous people – and occasionally family members of famous people – who had shopped at the store, but that didn’t stop it from feeling incredibly creepy.  According to my guidebook, that particular store is a must see in Athens but I must disagree.

And, of course, I visited the Acropolis and New Parthenon Museum.  Not quite realizing how close it was to my hotel I took a needless metro ride one stop from Syntagma to Akropoli.  Trains in Athens come about every 6 minutes at around 8 AM, which, if you’ve just missed a train, seems like an interminably long period of time.  On the plus side, everything still looks very new.  To me, it’s insane that the Parthenon is still standing.  Thanks to a few architectural tricks, it has withstood a number of earthquakes, but the universe has basically worked to destroy the building since the Persians invaded Athens.  The first time the Persians came after what is now Greece, they burned down the Parthenon so Pericles (Full disclosure, I thought he was another one of Shakespeare’s inventions until I went to the Parthenon the first time I was in Athens.  Then I found out he was a real dude.) organized a campaign to rebuild a newer and better temple to Athena.  That actually stuck around for a while.  Then the Byzantine Christians came and turned it into a church.  To do this, they felt it necessary loot the place and chip off a lot of the pagan friezes and decorations.  A little later it was turned into a mosque when the Ottomans took over.  These same Ottomans later stopped using it as a mosque, and started using it to store explosive materials.  This did not end well for the walls of the temple; the ordinance exploded and took out about half of the building.  After this, the ravages of time took over.  And you know what, there’s still a building there.  The propylea and the Temple of Nike is pretty damn intact; the Estrucheon is in really good shape; the Carytids (now located in the New Museum) are in pretty good well preserved; there’s still an olive tree where Athena supposedly planted it; and the columns of the Parthenon are still standing.  Sure there’s been some restoration work done (ok a lot of restoration work), but it is amazing to me that so much is still there.

Of course so much more would be there if it hadn’t been for that asshole Lord Elgin.  It’s actually weirdly sad to walk through the New Museum (which is gorgeous) because about half of the artifacts have notation saying “reproduction, BM” because about half of the remains of the Parthenon are in the British Museum.  Now I get that the British stole their diamonds, the Rosetta Stone, and a bunch of other stuff fair and square, but I find it mildly annoying that they won’t give back the Parthenon Marbles.  Greece was never a British colony.  Those marbles need to go home.  I mean hell, the Greeks built a whole new museum for them.  They’d have a lovely home.  In fact, the way the New Museum is laid out, they’d have a better home.  In the British Museum, the marbles are basically at painting height, which (if you’re even close to on the smaller side or too shy to push through masses of people) makes them kind of hard to see through the throngs that come to look at them every day.  At the New Museum, they’re raised so that you have to look up at them.  This makes them a lot easier to see.  So, in summation: seriously England, give back the Parthenon Marbles.

Finally I will leave you with this link.  It will take you to my creative writing blog where I have told the story of the patronage of Athens for fun.  It’s definitely at the top of my list of favorite stories from Ancient Greece, so it was kind of fun to retell.  Enjoy.