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?
