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Rhamnous

Athenian Agora

Athens and Marathon/Rhamnous

view from inside the Erechthion on the Acropolis

Rhamnous (I think)

what you read this blog for

Nemea and Kenchreai

We went to Epidauros but I have little to say on it. It was brutally hot and they don't let you sing in the amphitheater anymore. It is amazing the first time but I felt a little jaded due to the heat. Read Henry Miller for  a good romanticized description of the site.

Temple of Zeus at Nemea

We went to Nemea and had a good tour by the Director of the site, and did the obligatory class race in the stadium. It felt home-y, since we lived in Isthmia for a few weeks in 2008 training for the revived Nemean games. It felt even weirder going to the beach at Kenchreai, and passing the sign for the Kalamaki Beach Hotel on the way. I waved at it.

above and below: submerged foundations at the Kenchreai beach

Isthmia

yeah, so I'm gonna start every post with a sleepy dog photo. It's why you read this, right?

The sanctuary of Isthmia looks out primarily toward the east to the Saronic Gulf with and eye on the Corinthian Gulf to the west. The site itself is important but has the appearance of emptiness, as the construction of the Hexamillian, the wall built across the isthmus in the 5th century, caused most of the blocks to get up and walk away to be repurposed. Here the little fences that so often surround antiquities, giving the impression of buildings in jail, are actually helpful in delineating temples that are mostly robbed out.

part of a huge, amazing mosaic in the Roman baths at Isthmia

Archaeologists have to be an imaginative bunch. Much like turning a cardboard box into a fort or a rocketship as kid, you must look at a haphazard outline of stones and build up a building, a palace complex, an entire city. When you look at white marble friezes you must paint on the rich hues of antiquity that are so often forgotten by we who are only overexposed to their surviving marble bones. (Guy Sanders says the painted marble was "pretty....tacky.")

Cute dogs and old rocks

Hey all, we are currently in Naufplion, a Venetian city in the Peloponnese. We're about halfway through our Peloponnese trip, and internet has been and continues to be sketchy, so I will run through a few of the places we've been so far. I'll break it up into a few separate posts so you don't feel like you're reading a novel.

cute dog at Corinth

We were shown around Corinth by the director there, Guy Sanders. He is one of the many characters in archaeology. I fear I love archaeologists as much as I love archaeology. He is very British and very engaging and is one of the few tour guides we've had that I actually was enraptured by. The best guides give you stories and the tone of a place, without a bunch of facts with no context, and remind you that we don't know everything and that there's always the chance we don't actually know anything. He showed us a sacred spring, a secret passageway. He made plant life evoke specific goddesses and prompted us to think about who is Helen, really?

Corinth with a view of Acrocorinth

He talked about the Turkish cemetery and hospital on the site and all the gruesome awesome ailments/causes of death they have found evidence of, including: anemia, arthritis, childbirth, brucellosis (from eating feta that hasn't been aged enough, "if you're lucky it kills you in five days), trepanation, a spine missing either the axis (C2) vertebrae or the axis's odontoid process (it was unclear from his explanation), a man that has been identified as a horseback-riding Mongolian bowman, a man who died from not going to the dentist (an untreated abscess led to blood poisoning), a cut achilles tendon (my greatest fear next to being buried alive), and evidence of a frontal attack with a sharp implement (sliced skull, cut off fingers from the victim defending their head with their hands). For this last death he amused himself by describing it in vivid detail, to the extent that he discussed the pooling blood rippling from the still-twitching fingers. At this point I was muffling my mouth with my hand because I was hysterically laughing. A student warily asked, "How...do we know about the puddle of blood?" To which Guy replied, "We don't! But isn't it gruesome?" He's my kind of archaeologist.

a tiny vessel depicting the bibasis (athletic competition where you jump and kick your butt)

votive arms left at the Asklepion (healing shrine of the cult of the healer Asklepius)

Then we hiked up Acro-Corinth. WOOF. Slippery cobblestones up to the sky. Of course the burning muscles were worth it once we reached a peak housing the ruins of a temple to Aphrodite and had a 360 view.

in which Miller is more eloquent than I can ever be

"It was one of the few times in my life that I was fully aware of being on the brink of a great experience. And not only aware but grateful, grateful for being alive, grateful for having eyes, for being sound in wind and limb, for having rolled in the gutter, for having gone hungry, for having been humiliated, for having done everything that I did do since at last it had culminated in this moment of bliss."
-Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi