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My
hotel is just southeast of
the Acropolis, so I follow the street out front for two blocks until the noise and auto exhaust consume me, and then I look up
to see the Arch of Hadrien
on the other side of the busy street. The Arch was
built in 130 AD, and looks like it has been painted with a fresh coat of motor
oil ever summer since. I'm not really all that interested in the arch, but on the other
side, I see ruins through some trees, and something strange takes hold of me. A
surge of courage? This could be the confrontation I'm trying to avoid. The Acropolis can wait a
while. I walk on past the arch and enter the gate to
the temple of Olympian Zeus.
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Zeus was the natural ruler, the father of both
gods and mortals. He was heavy-thundering
and mighty voiced, known as the god of sky and weather. He hurled lightning
bolts. Religion in ancient Greece was a Zeus religion, the meaning that gave
light to life and birth to a civilization. His oracle at
Dodona north of here,
where he spoke to his priests through the rustle of the leaves of an old oak
tree, was the oldest in Greece.
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His temple here in Athens was the largest. The
tall Corinthian columns are in the center of a large flat field where my feet
raise dust as I walk. The temple was started sometime before 550 BC but work was
suspended and resumed several times and not completed until 700 years later when
Hadrian finished it. The huge columns lay tumbled
about
the site, the
few still standing jutting up from the ground to sixty feet in the air.
They’re a stark sight against the deep-blue sky with the Acropolis in the
background.
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In Greek mythology, Zeus was a very human-like father, a regal-looking man in midlife, kind, benevolent at times but could be ruthlessly
brutal, violent in his wrath.
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I'm
finding a little courage out here in the heat and dust, so I sit on a stone fence at the edge of the field
to consider the reason I came to Greece in the first place, the reason a
personal mythology is so important to me. Thirty-two years ago I had a run-in
with my father. It occurred during the
summer
of 1961, the first year of John
Kennedy’s presidency.
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I had just turned twenty and was home from college, working for my father on the
cotton farm. We locked horns one day over something that
seemed
petty to me, but I wouldn’t back down. I wasn’t a kid anymore and wanted him to
know
it. We shouted at each other, and I told him if he was going to be
like that, I’d just leave. “Okay, by God,” he thundered, “get the hell out.”
I’d been thinking about Greece anyway. Over a
few beers, a friend of mine and I’d talked about delaying college and working
our way to Greece
on a merchant ship. He had an uncle who'd done that. I
needed a push to get me started which my father had just provided. I walked down
the hall away from him, thinking I’d pack and make my exit a quick one. I felt
relieved really, wanted to be out from under his scrutiny. I heard his footsteps
heavy on the hardwood floor behind me. I turned right into my bedroom, and he
turned left into the one where he and my mother shared a bed.
My mother had witnessed the explosion between
us,
and I heard her footsteps down the hall at the same time I heard him slipping
cartridges into the magazine of the deer rifle, heard the bolt action close.
I’d fallen on my unmade bed, the cool sheets up against my face, my fingers
clutching the edge of the soft bedspread. “What are you doing?” she
asked him calmly, as if maybe he was getting ready to go sit on the porch for a
while, as if we hadn’t argued and he didn’t have a deer rifle in his hands.
“I’m going to end it all,” he said.
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I wasn’t afraid, just calm, calm in the
extreme. I wondered if he planned to kill himself or me. Him or me? Him or me?
The words kept echoing. I imagined how I’d feel when he blew his head off or
how I’d feel when the bullet ripped through my body. The question was
intellectual, theoretical. I heard the deer rifle click again
and the cartridges hit the floor, heard the rifle go back in the
closet, the closet door close, heard him crying. She closed their
bedroom door, and I don’t know what else passed between them except that
later she told me he had planned to kill himself.
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I’m not sure how I expect to come to terms with
this on my journey. In the thirty-two years since, I’ve never been conscious
it’s had an effect on me. I just find myself talking about it after I’ve had
a few beers, or I avoid confrontations when I should stand my ground. I’ve
noticed patterns in my life, an unnatural order. What seems unusual about my
reaction is that I had no feelings. How could I have no feelings about
my father almost killing himself?
I don’t expect to find some Greek seer with the
answer. I just thought I’d take that journey to Greece I contemplated
thirty-two years ago, maybe recover something I lost when I heard him clicking
the deer rifle. I’m on a journey in search of a feeling. Haphazard stumbling
about the ruins of ancient Greece is a strange approach. But I’ve tried all
the others.
This personal mythology business seems a little trite also in this context. I
don't know quite how to go about it. After stating the problem, I’ll leave it at
that. Just let it fester.
On the way back to the hotel, I stop at a
street-side restaurant and have stuffed eggplant, bread and a Sprite accompanied
by car
exhaust and the blare of motorbikes. My first food in thirteen hours. I
eat it greedily, growing duller of mind by the minute. I’ve had an hour of sleep
in the last forty-eight. Time to call it a day.
4 Oct, Monday
I rise early and walk along
Leof.
Bas. AmaliaV
Street to the National Archeological Museum, recovered somewhat from jetlag.
Traffic in
Athens is frightening. Every horn in the city blows at once. I have
to dodge a motorbike doing forty on the crowded sidewalk, hide behind the
waist-high metal poles that prevent cars from hitting pedestrians.
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The museum is overwhelming, echoing rooms
full of ancient Greek sculptures, all masterpieces. Most are made of
marble, but one stands out:
the huge bronze statue of Zeus throwing a lightning bolt.
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All this is from the
Iron Age, after 1200 BC. Downstairs I run into the Mycenaean exhibit from the
Bronze Age, prior to 1200 BC. On the wall across from the gold “Mask of Agamemnon” is a huge, blown-up photograph taken in 1876 of Heinrich Schliemann and his wife at the dig
at Mycenae, his archeological crew posed about the site. Before Schliemann, few believed a Bronze Age civilization of any significance really existed. Most
scholars had for centuries thought Homer’s epic poetry an elaborately
developed fiction, but Schliemann, an amateur archeologist, believed Homer wrote
about the exploits of real people. He was so bold as to suggest he could find
the ruins of their ancient kingdoms using Homer’s text.
By 1873 Schliemann had uncovered the ancient city
of Troy and located what he believed to be the grave site of Agamemnon at
Mycenae.
Schliemann’s archeological finds rocked not only the world of
archaeology but classical literature as well. Legends of the ancient Greeks were
viewed with a new respect. The names Theseus, Oedipus, Odysseus, Agamemnon took
on a dimension heretofore only realized by those of the Bible. And ancient
Greek religion took on a new respectability as well.
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I walk through the exhibit of gold death masks,
emerald-studded
jewelry, shields, bronze spears inlaid with gold and silver and
blackened with age, decorated vases. The Bronze Age came to an abrupt end during
the years following the Trojan War, around 1200 BC. War spread, palaces burned
throughout the region. The people were uprooted, and a great migration to the
eastern coast of Asia Minor (Turkey) occurred.
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The cause of the end of the
ancient Greek civilization in the Aegean is still a mystery. A four hundred year
“Dark Age” followed where people
lived in poverty and lost the ability to
write. Out of it emerged classical Greece: Homer, Hesiod, and later Sappho,
Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.
I’m not sure what to make of all this. The
ancient myths are not literally true in all respects, but Schliemann’s
archaeological finds have me convinced it all fits together. Myth is married to
the landscape and the Bronze Age civilization. Classical Greece, seven hundred
years later, accepted the myths as truth. Our modern civilization has been
heavily influence by them. But Schliemann has become somewhat of a mythical
character himself. The biographical details of his early years have come under
question, and some even believe the gold he supposedly found at Troy and Mycenae
were counterfeits made from gold he picked up in the hills of California during
the gold rush. He was rather
low on ethics, making much of his money from shady
dealings during the Crimean War. No one is quite sure who he was or what he did,
how much of his own life he fabricated to gain publicity. Still, his impact on
archaeology is profound.
The ruins of Mycenae, Agamemnon’s kingdom, are
in the Peloponnese not far from here.
I sit on my patio eating a peach and a bunch of
grapes while mountainous thunderheads move in from the Aegean. Zeus, god of
weather, on the move this morning. In the hotel lobby, I watch a CNN broadcast
with a Greek voice-over
of Boris Yeltsin moving on the Russian white house to
clear out the 100 parliament members holed up there. I ask the man at the desk
what happened, and he tells me what he can, about the gunshots and some of those
inside dying. Yeltsin is in control
and all is quiet. He can’t tell me more, he says, because he doesn’t know
enough English. My Greek certainly isn’t up to the task, but I wish it were.
Russia isn’t so far from Greece.
The Greek national election is this Sunday.
Posters are everywhere and posters posted on top of posters. The wind
distributes them. Three parties are in the running, the New Democrats, the
Socialists, and the Communists, the KKE (Kappa Kappa Epsilon). Their insignia is
the red hammer and sickle. The New Democrats are currently in power but have
lost the necessary votes in Parliament to govern. The New Democrats came to
power when the previous Socialist president, Andreas Papandreou, was accused of
embezzling $200 million. But Papandreou has cleared himself and is again the
Socialist candidate.[1]
[Kaplan,
273]
He’s seventy-four and has a young wife, Dimitra Liani, half his age. She used
to be an Olympic Airlines hostess but is referred to now as the “official
mistress.” Supporters of Papandreou see this young lady as a sign of his vigor
and manliness. I hear people arguing about politics everywhere I go. Greeks take
their sexy politics seriously.
In the evening I descend into the dull dreamy
world of jetlag but still manage the energy to take my first bolta (volta,
evening promenade) in Plaka. The volta is popular throughout Europe and was
invented here in Greece thousands of years ago. The narrow streets are filled
with foreign shoppers (Germans, English, Japanese, American) buying Greek vases,
leather purses, T-shirts, jewelry. The shop owners stand out front of their
stores inviting the tourists inside. And now I know why I feel that my hotel is
on the corner of Motorbike and Truck streets. I’m staying at the entrance to
Plaka. In the evening, taxies drop off their customers in the little courtyard
beneath my window. Not only do I get the sounds of the vehicles, I also get the
voices. In spite of all else Greeks have given western civilization, they
didn’t invent the whisper.
For dinner, I buy a feta cheese and tomato crepe
at a little pastry shop and watch the woman make it in front of the open service
window. She must know how fascinated I am with her because she smiles
continuously but never looks
at me as she pours the thick pale batter and
spreads it on the circular grill. Her dark-brown hair hangs straight and curls
forward on her cheek. She bites her bottom lip.
The dark-haired Greek women in Athens are
gorgeous. They have smooth olive skin, wear dark skirts, white blouses. I’ll
be walking down the street under attack from exhaust fumes when a beautiful
woman, one of these gorgeous dark-haired brunettes, will pass by and a whiff of
perfume, sweet as candy cane at Christmas, will surface through the ocean of
smoke and soot.
I feel drawn to these women. I was married for
eighteen years, and after my
wife left I felt like a boat without a steering oar. Somehow I'm drawn to women
seeking a sense of direction. When I met JoAnn aboard the flight into Athens, I
latched onto her, let her pass me off to the others she'd met when she left me.
Strange. I'll see her again before leaving Athens.
I can’t get to sleep. I’m still thinking
about the Greek girl, thinking about the difference between the dark-haired,
olive-skinned
Greeks of today and those of mythology, the fair-haired,
light-complexioned Achaians.
5 Oct, Tuesday
I wake slowly on my third morning in Athens but
with renewed excitement and step out of my room with my camera for a walk around
Plaka.
Jet lag still has a death grip on me. The air is thick with humidity, the
dark-gray buildings and streets slick with moisture. No one is out except
shopkeepers sweeping trash and putting out produce, boxes of vegetables and
fruit. The sounds are the swish of brooms and the rustling, fussy noises of
sparrows and finches in trees. I pick up a kilo of peaches and grapes.
Occasionally a Greek walks by purposefully with head down. My good-natured
“kalhmera” doesn’t get even a blink.
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A monk sits in a chair in front of the 14th
century Byzantine Church of St. Catherine
next to the hotel. The domed church is
in a small park with palm trees and the ruins of a Roman colonnade. The monk has
a long gray fan of a beard and wears the gray smock of the clergy over black
pants cinched tight with a black belt. His expression is severe, but he
straightens while I take his picture.
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I decide to visit the Akropolis which I’ve been
avoiding because of the tourists. As I approach it, I walk off the road through
evergreens and up a rocky path to the ruins of the theatre of Dionysus lying in
a natural hollow in the side of the hill. I rest on a large hot stone shaped by
the hands of some ancient Greek, wishing I had on shorts instead of Levis. The
touch of fall in Colorado is definitely absent in Athens.
 |
The theatre is 2500 years old and lies before me
like a section of a gigantic eggshell. The birth of European theatre occurred in
Athens in the 6th century BC. Thespis was the first playwright. Then, theatre was
not entertainment as we view it today but religious, a metaphor of
the
divine experience whose richly-varied play was mythology. It was also political,
the new democracy's method of educating the populace on being a good citizen. The tragedy, even today,
holds for the human imagination a tension between that which is morally
acceptable and the destructive, darkly fascinating.[2]
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Each spring during the 5th century BC, the
eight-day Festival of Dionysus was held in this theatre. Aeschylus, Sophocles
and Euripides, among others, presented their tragedies in the competition.
Before the festivities began, a goat was sacrificed. The word “tragedy”
means “song of the goat.” Shedding the goat’s blood set the tone for the
murder and suicide which followed. The festivities started at sunup and
continued
all day. The theatre seated 17,000, enough for the entire Athenian
population and any others who might flock to the festival. Women were allowed to
attend but only permitted to sit in the last few rows.
Dionysus was the patron deity of theatre and god of the mask. In vase paintings, other gods were more
frequently shown in profile, whereas Dionysus was shown face-on, his entire
large-eyed terrible face staring down the viewer. His face was the mask donned
by the actors for their performance. Behind the mask dwelled
the world of
spirits,[3]
everything creative and destructive,
infinite rapture and terror. When he came, he brought pandemonium, bloodthirsty
madness.
But
the single most important aspect of Dionysus was his ability to simultaneously
hold in suspension illusion and reality. That is the essence of theatre. For the
audience to make anything at all of a play, it must deal with the reality of
their lives as they sit there, and at the same time believe in the illusion on
stage. This phenomenon is Dionysus. The concept has an extension. Shakespeare
wrote:
All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...
(As You Like It Act 2, Scene 7)
The
ancient Greeks also knew that life itself has its realities and illusions. We're
never quite sure which is which. The Greeks presented myth on stage. Thus myth
was the illusion, yet it was based on the reality of the lives of the heroes
they portrayed. I've heard it said that we are mythical beings. At times then,
our lives must parallel myth. That being true, the personal mythology I'm
searching for on this journey is the illusion, the myth my life was following
when my father loaded the deer rifle.
The
gods of old are illusive now. Yet, the ancient Greek encountered them as a
highly-personal experience, forces in the “now of life” shaping his own
will. To know them was to know himself.[4]
For us to experience the ancient Greek gods, we must reassemble them from what
we see of their ancient temples and the words of those who wrote about them,
work similar to that of an archaeologist. We then learn to recognize the
presence of the god, and perhaps realize in retrospect, the impact he has had on
our lives. It is essential that we bring these ancient gods to us as we create our own personal mythology.[5]
You can't get there
without divine influence.
Thirty-two years ago at a two-year college in
Bakersfield, California in a small theatre patterned after this great theatre, I
watched Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, a play about a king who
unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. The confrontation with my
father followed close on the heels of seeing that play, my near tragedy echoing
elements of Oedipus’ tragedy. I came close to causing the death of my
father, and the bizarre life of Oedipus has haunted me ever since. You might
say, I’d been visited by Dionysus. Thinking about the events of my life in juxtaposition with the ancient myths
gives them a new weight.
I feel a little better now about what I'm doing here in Greece.
Perhaps something will come of it after all.
 |
I reluctantly leave the theatre and trudge
through the hot sun, belly-to-belly and shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists in
shorts and tanktops, up the winding footpath of the huge Acropolis crag and sit
on a stone wall at the precipitous edge overlooking Athens.
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The first
inhabitants of the Acropolis came here around 3000 BC. Originally the Acropolis
was a royal fortress, but through the centuries became a religious stronghold, a
tribute to Athena, patron goddess of the city. The Akropolis is a flat
limestone rock standing 160 meters above the plain, 270 meters in length,
almost three football fields, and 160 meters wide. The surface is hard and
covered with chips and crumblings of marble and stone.
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No vegetation grows here.
It’s a tribute to sunlight. The October heat on the Acropolis is startling.
I’m very tired and dripping sweat, but I dry in the hot breeze whipping about
me as it swirls tourists’ voices. |
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My guidebooks talk about the massive
architecture, the creamy-marble Parthenon, the Erechtheion with its tribune of
caryatids that stand before me, but the view of Athens behind stretching to
the horizon is simply mind-blowing, the tan buildings swallowing the landscape,
overrunning the hills and merging into the pastel sea of pollution. Athens is a
city of four million. Yet, a quietness sits on this flat mountain, broken by a
whisper coming from below, a murmur, an echo of the city’s voice returned by
the rocky peaks jutting up in the distance.
Athens was the domain of Athena. She was a virgin
goddess, daughter of Zeus and Metis, wisest of all gods and mortals. Zeus was
afraid of Metis’ wisdom and coerced her into making herself small and
swallowed her. Zeus then gave birth to Athena through his head, a rather bizarre
act accomplished by the blow of an ax. Since she was not born of a woman, she
bonded with her father and, in addition to being the protectress of cities,
gray-eyed Athena was the “weariless leader of armies, dreaded and mighty
goddess, who stirs men to battle and is thrilled by the clash of arms.”[6]
Athena carried the aegis, the shield of Zeus, and had his courage and her
mother’s wise council. She forever remained a virgin. Athena’s favorite
animal was the wise old owl, a remnant of her mother, the wisest of all
immortals.
To become the patron deity of Athens, she
competed with Poseidon, the bellicose, trident-bearing god of the sea, who
wanted the city for himself. Kekrops, the first king of Athens who was an
earth-born primordial being with a man’s body and a snake’s tail for legs,
judged the competition. Poseidon struck his trident on the Akropolis and a
saltwater spring gushed forth. But Athena caused the first olive tree to grow.
Understandably Kekrops judged the olive tree more useful and awarded the city to
her. She also invented the plow and was known as the bringer of civilization.
 |
Parthenon,
the most prominent and famous building on the
Acropolis, took nine years to build and was
completed in 431 BC.
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 |
“Parthenon,” or in ancientGreek, ParqenoV,
means maiden, virgin. It is
Athena’s most important temple and the site of the great Panathenic festival
honoring her birthday, Hekatombaeon 28 (mid August). Inside was one of the most
glorious statues in all Greece. Pausanias, a doctor who traveled Greece for
twenty years during the 2nd century AD while all the temples were still intact,
described the twelve meter, ivory and gold statue:
She has a sphinx in the middle
of her helmet, and griffins worked on either side of it. ... Athene stands
upright in an ankle-length tunic with the head of Medusa carved in ivory on her
breast. She has a Victory about eight feet high, and a spear in her hand and a
shield at her feet, and a snake beside the shield ... The plinth of the statue
is carved with the birth of Pandora [the first woman].[7]
I stand at the northern edge of the
Acropolis and
look down over the city. Just to the west, I see the jumbled ruins of the
ancient Agora,
the market place, and beyond it, the Dipylon, the double-gated
exit through the wall that surrounded the city.
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The Panathenic festival started
there, came through the Agora along the Panathenic Way and ended here on the
Acropolis at the Erechtheion which originally was also a temple of Athena.
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The
Erechtheion housed a wooden statue of the goddess that had fallen from heaven.
The purpose of the procession was to bring the peplos, a cloak or long robe, to
the wood statue and dress her in it. The procession consisted of maidens
carrying vessels followed by sacrificial animals, youths, musicians, and old men
carrying olive branches. The woven, saffron-colored peplos, embroidered with
scenes from the gods' battle with the giants, was in a chariot bringing up the
rear.[8]
The
woven peplos was a symbol of Athena's civilizing influence which the Greeks saw
as coming not from confrontation but through a weaving of differing wills.
This city is a tribute to the goddess's civilizing
influence.
Yet
Athena’s love of the battle cry and the clash
of arms, led men on bloody paths. I'll not ignore Athena and her civilizing
influence. That she invented the plow reminds me of my own upbringing on the
farm. She championed Odysseus, the man of many wiles
who fought at Troy and wandered the Mediterranean for ten years. Perhaps I
should visit
his home on Ithaca. If I do, I’ll deal with Athena again.
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I look off to the southwest through the haze to
Peiraias, the seaport which has been in use since ancient times. The smog is so
thick, I can barely make out the coastline. By the end of the month, after a
wide swing around the Greek mainland, I hope to be in Peiraias on my way to the
islands.
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In the evening, I walk the streets of Plaka, have
a feta cheese and tomato crepe again at the same shop I ate at last night. I’m
in love with the girl who waits on me. It’s her dark eyes, olive skin, dark
hair and beautiful smile. I’ve never seen so many clear-skinned people.
They’re immune to blemishes. I wonder if a connection exists between all this
noise, all this pollution and the olive skin, the smooth complexions, the
gorgeous women. Is there something organic, healthy about all this carelessness?
6 Oct,
Wednesday
I wake during the early morning hours and watch
the sparkling stars of Orion slowly traverse the heavens. I have insomnia.
Quietness has finally come to the plateia. I hear my first Greek
cricket. He’s persistent. A car followed by quiet, the screech of a
cat.
I
came to Greece with a rough plan for the places I'd visit. I even thought of
going north to Mt. Olympus and hiking its summit. But that seems too risky now.
What if I stumbled and sprained an ankle? I'm still trying to
get my
bearings, find the settings that will foster this personal mythology. Perhaps I
should move on the Thebes. After visiting the ancient theatre, I've grown more
and more interested in Dionysus. He was born there. Oedipus, who killed his father
and married his mother, was also king of Thebes. Sounds like the perfect place
for me.
I rise at daybreak and walk the cold stone
streets to a little cafe, have my first Greek coffee which comes in a tiny white
ceramic cup. Even though the woman asks and I say, “Oci,” my coffee is still
sweet. Greek coffee is strong as motor oil. The fine sand-like grounds sit in a
glob at the bottom. Since the coffee is so thick to begin with, you don’t know
you’re drinking grounds until you notice a fine grit in your teeth. That means
you didn’t quit soon enough. My greasy cheese omelet comes with warmed white
bread, pepper and sea salt.
While having breakfast, I mull over my
comfortableness here in Athens. I must move on to Thebes tomorrow. If I get
settled in here, with all my insecurities I may never leave. I decide to hike to the tourist office near
Syntagma for information on the bus and to visit JoAnn, the American woman with
the bushy brown hair, round face and rosy red lips I met on my flight into
Athens. Her friend’s family owns the Pericles Bead Shop in the Monastriaki
district just north of the ruins of the ancient Agora.
JoAnn and her Greek friend have just returned
from a quick car trip to Corinth. JoAnn walks me to a taverna. “Watch,” she
says, “I’ll be the only woman in the place.” We talk of her plans for the
next two weeks here in Athens and my journey through Greece. “Tomorrow
afternoon I leave for Thebes,” I tell her, testing my own resolve. "But I
am feeling a little insecure." She smiles, “No wonder. You’re brave to
be traveling alone.”
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Her concern adds to mine. “Athens seems safe,” I
protest, “and it’s supposed to have the most problems of any city in
Greece.” She shakes her head. “I mean the loneliness. Look, if you do run
into trouble, trouble of any kind, come here to the Pericles Bead Shop. My
friends will help.”
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How
right she is. Loneliness is the central issue. And already I'm dreading leaving
her. How great it would be to have a traveling companion. She senses that I've
misread her. She asks the waiter for our bill, looks at me
straight. “I’m paying and won’t even discuss it.” She knows I’ve been
out of work since the first of the year. She is right about being the only woman
in the taverna. “Greek women don’t invade the male world,” she says.
As we part she says one more time, "Don't forget, if you need any
help..."
I can’t believe how much I like that married
woman from Southern California, and I feel sad, lonely after leaving her. But my
loneliness is short lived. After I return to my room, I hear English mixed with
laughter out in the plateia below my balcony and run down to see who’s making
all the noise. It’s a young American couple, Chris and Janine. They’re
Christian evangelists from Bucharest, Romania where they’ve lived for the past
year but are now vacationing with their two kids and another young American
missionary, Justin. They are on their way to speak to a travel agent. I can't
resist being with all these people, so I walk along with them, glad to delay the
inevitable solitude.
While they talk to an
agent about a short cruise
in the Saronic Gulf, I talk to a man about going by ferry from Crete to Rhodes
and Rhodes to Patmos in mid November. Seeing Patmos is important because I
promised my mother a picture of the Cave of the Apocalypse where St. John spent
eighteen months in exile. The man is emphatic. “No,” he says. “It can’t
be done. You can’t go from Crete to the Dodecanese without returning to
Athens.” I may have to rethink my trip to the islands. Even though I don’t
expect a straight answer, I ask him about a ferry from Samos to Turkey. I’m
concerned about going to Turkey because political relations between the two
countries are not good. “The ferries to Turkey are all Turkish, very
unreliable,” he tells me. “And in late November... Oci.”
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The missionaries
would like for me to join them for dinner, and in my current unsettled condition
I'm more than happy to oblige. After
scouring Plaka we settle on an old restaurant beneath the Acropolis and eat
upstairs
overlooking city lights. Our waiter pushes three card-tables together,
and we sit in folding chairs. He brings a huge platter with plates of meatballs,
stuffed vine leaves, stuffed tomatoes, stuffed eggplant, fish, kalamari, large
salatas with tomato wedges, cucumbers, olives, and big blocks of feta cheese.
The dark-blue fish has been gutted and scaled but not decapitated.
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Sitting here at this mini banquet, all gathered
around the creaky card table in uncomfortable chairs, we seem one large family.
Reminds me of family get-togethers at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think about the ancient
Greeks, their spirited conversation while reclining comfortably and their table
manners. Our table is set with knives and forks with a dispenser of white
napkins. Etiquette in Athens has changed considerably in 2500 years:
... the reclining guests
having neither knives nor forks, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides ate with
their fingers; and though neither fingers nor cupped hands could replace spoons
for dealing with sauces and gravies, the spoon most in use at table was a piece
of bread hollowed out as occasion required. There being no napkins, bread was
used also for wiping the fingers, and then tossed to dogs awaiting their share
at the diners’ elbows. Remembering the garbage-littered alleys we shall not be
astonished that the bare floor of the banqueting chamber was the regular
depository for the scraps. I hasten to add that they were not left there
indefinitely, but before the meal was over were punctiliously swept
out--probably into the street.[9]
We have another man with us tonight. The
missionaries have known him only a few days. He’s originally from Romania. He
tells a unsettling story. Fifteen years ago when he was eight, his father was a
Romanian diplomat who got into trouble with the government and felt compelled to
leave his life of privilege and flee the country. He came to the United States
with his wife and daughter and left his son behind in Romania, so as not to
raise the suspicions of the authorities. They told everyone, including their
son, they were leaving on a one-week vacation in England. As the days past and
they didn’t return, the son realized he had been abandoned. He was devastated.
An entire year passed without word. He was laughed at, cursed, beat up, and
suffered other indignities because he didn’t have a family. Meanwhile, his
parents were frantically working with US authorities to get him released by the
Romanian government. It took a year.
The Romanian, a huge healthy-looking guy, has the
fish. It swims in oil which the waiter flamboyantly lights with a cigarette
lighter. It sizzles and pops in the blue and yellow flame.
As I watch the Romanian eat, I consider the abandonment he suffered, and
it brings to mind the loneliness I felt after my confrontation with my father.
That one incident seemed to separate me not only from my own feelings, but also
from my family. I never felt the same afterward. I felt like a stranger among
them, a stranger to myself.
After dinner we climb through the dark up
Areopagos (Ares Hill) with the illuminated Acropolis just to the east, the
marble Parthenon a glowing beacon in the darkness. The Areopagos has been the
hill of judgment since prehistoric times and is where the ancient council of
Athens tried murderers. It was named for Ares, the Greek god of war, who was the
first tried for murder here. St. Paul was also here and preached to the heathen
in the Agora below.
I sit on a rock still warm from the sun, using my
flashlight to write in my journal while listening to the murmur of voices from
the host of sightseers scattered about in the magnificent darkness. The hill is
one rock, jagged and slick as glass forcing us from the edge and into a tight
little group. How cozy it seems. City lights surround us. I try to
imagine Athens at night during the time of Sophocles. Lights would have come
from fires. I imagine a strong smell of smoke. Athens in antiquity was not a
plush utopia, but a slum. The lofty temples of marble on the majestic Acropolis
stood in stark contrast to “the wilderness
of crooked, narrow streets, squalid alleys, and expressionless houses”[10]
where the common people lived.
The first king of Athens who really claims a
prominent place in Greek mythology is Theseus who was king around 1300 BC, one
hundred years before the Trojan War. Theseus united all the townships of Attica
into one city-state by promising “a commonwealth without monarchy, a democracy
or people’s government.”[11]
Thus according to legend, the oldest experiment with democracy started with him.
Though Poseidon lost Athens to Athena, he
maintained a presence here and one of the ways he did was through Theseus.
Theseus was of illegitimate and uncertain parentage, his mother Aethra having
laid with both Aegeus, the king of Athens for whom the Aegean is named, and
Poseidon on the night Theseus was conceived.[12]
Theseus was raised by his mother and his grandfather in Troezen, in the
southeastern Peloponnese. When he grew to manhood, his mother sent him to Athens
to meet his earthly father for the first time, and he eventually became king.
Athens lies before us in a huge valley covered by
a bowl of stars, an absolute sea of light glowing neon with the eight or so
hills dressed in black about us, the apex of each lit with a startling spray of
luminescence. The haze of pollution spreads the glow. The Areopagos is a site a
goddess would seek, a high promontory to view her city. Athens has a voice, a murmur which mixes with the gentle sounds
of a soft breeze, the sweet-smelling breath of the city. The daytime mask of Athens has been
removed, and the city has come alive, its incandescence revealing a raw
lustiness.
After leaving Areopagos, we walk Plaka. Justin,
the young missionary, keeps up a continuous stream of words about Jesus, how
close He wants us to be to Him. We return to our hotel, and just as we top the
stairs on the second floor, Justin asks an embarrassing question. “Are you a
Christian?” I’m not that interested in organized religion and get defensive
when someone questions me about my beliefs. “Yes,” I say, finally, “I am a
Christian.” Immediately I wonder if I’ve told the truth, or if I’ve lied
to save face. Justin loans me a book I’m to return tomorrow morning. Its
title: With Christ in the School of Obedience. Becoming a Faithful Follower,
written by Andrew Murray. “Obedience” and “following” are not two of my
favorite words.
Years ago, I had a confrontation with my mother.
My father was always the practical one, hard work and determination I got from
him. My mother provided a philosophical framework for my intellectual
development, and much of what she taught came wrapped in Christianity. I was
receptive and tried hard to live up to her standards. But one day, she came to
me carrying her big black Bible and told me to sit beside her. She read the
story of Abraham and Isaac, of God asking Abraham to kill his beloved son as
proof of faith. To my horror, Abraham didn’t protest but took his son into the
mountains and drew his knife to slit Isaac’s throat, at which point God sent
an angel to stay Abraham’s hand. When I complained about Abraham to my mother,
she got mad, told me I needed a revelation. I’ve had mixed feelings about
religion ever since. What kind of God would ask a man to sacrifice his innocent
son? What kind of father would grant such a request, and what kind of mother
would read such a story to her own son? This event created a distance between me
and both my parents. I was eight years old. I wasn’t literally abandoned like
the man from Romania, but I felt a remoteness from that point forward which
never went away.
I’ve been planning to visit Patmos, where St.
John wrote Revelations, for my mother, but now I have my own reason for going.
I’m looking for an answer to a question that’s been simmering for forty-four
years. I didn’t plan to get into this on my journey, but here it is.
It came to me, as if it’s been stalking me.
The evening air from the Aegean enters my bedroom
cool and refreshing, without a hint of fumes. I listen to dogs barking out front
while I mull over my guilt I’ve felt from the confrontation with my father,
his near suicide. I feel as though I almost killed him myself. But I did
something else right afterward, during that same hot summer day, that worries me
even more.
This is the end of my fourth day in
Athens, and I'm more reluctant than ever to leave. I dread trying to find the
right bus to Thebes. What if I get on the wrong one? But I
must move on. The sights of Athens could fill a lifetime. Perhaps at the end of my
journey, I’ll return for a few days.
It’s almost midnight. I hear girls giggling in
the courtyard.
7 Oct, Thursday
I wake before sunrise and burn a trail to the
International Telephone Exchange. I walk past Hadrian’s Arch with the morning
star burning brightly as the first golden fingertips of dawn rise through the
deep-blue Aegean sky. I haven’t seen a cloud in days. The sidewalks are vacant
of pedestrians if not the trash from yesterday and the day before, and the day
before that. The pedestrian lights have been turned off and stare with dark
blank faces. I'm always irritable in the morning and that seems to help a little
with my insecurity.
I tell my brother I’ve made it to Greece and
that today I’ll leave for Thebes. I pump him for information about our family,
our elderly parents. My father has been to the doctor about his arthritic hip
but the doctor told him he was a long ways from needing it replaced. He’s
doing fine in spite of his complaints. My mother’s heart problem,
which she kept from us for months, is also under control. My older brother’s
heart, which had unaccountably accelerated on him, has stabilized. All the
health problems in my family seem magnified this far from home. I feel like
I’m holding my breath, sort of a deathwatch.
I have breakfast with Justin, the young single
man who kept pressuring me about Jesus last night, and I return his book without
comment. The Carter family joins us a little later, the bright faces of the kids
looking shiny clean. We don’t see the guy from Romania.
After breakfast, though I should be on my way to
Thebes, I can't let these American’s go and walk with them to the
ancient
Agora where the Apostle Paul preached to the multitude. The entrance is
in the Monastiraki district where I met JoAnn yesterday. During the Bronze Age,
it was a cemetery but was converted to a market place in the 6th century BC.
This site is different from any other I’ve seen in Athens. Trees make the
difference. They stand throughout the Agora, pines, oaks, maple trees. They
absorb sound and leave a sense of serenity, the giant stones standing stark and
quiet among them.
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Chris is a preacher, and now he
stands on the same spot where
Paul preached and preaches a little himself while Justin harasses him from the
audience.
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But the big attraction is the temple
of Hephaestus, a large marble structure standing on a hill overlooking the ruins
and rivaling the Parthenon on the Akropolis.
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Of all the ancient Greek gods and
goddesses, Hephaestus is my favorite, the god who fell to Earth. He is the god
of fire. His
birth was motivated by jealousy.
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Zeus’ first wife was Metis, but after he
swallowed her, he married his sister, Hera. Hera was jealous of Zeus giving
birth to Athena, so she contrived to have a child by herself. But when she gave
birth to Hephaestus, his legs were deformed, the soles of his feet turned front
to back. He walked with a limp, his body executing a forward rolling motion.[13]
Hera was ashamed of him. When Zeus and Hera quarreled, Hephaestus took the side
of his mother. This irritated Zeus so much he threw Hephaestus out of heaven. He
fell for an entire day, landing on the island of Lemnos at sunset.
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According to Homer, Hephaestus was actually
a son of Zeus, who wouldn’t claimed him because of his deformity. Thus born of a
critical mother and a rejecting father, he makes his life on Earth instead of
Olympos with the other gods. He is an artisan and blacksmith and has many
workshops, the most famous located in the volcano of ever-smoking Mt. Aetna in
Sicily where he works with the monstrous, one-eyed Cyclops. He is the only god
who works, a master craftsman and consummate artist. When Zeus wished to punish
man for Prometheus stealing Hephaestus’ fire and giving it to them, he turned
to Hephaestus to form the first woman, Pandora, out of water and clay. He asked
Aphrodite, goddess of erotic love, to give her “stinging desire and
limb-gnawing passion” and Hermes, herald of the gods, to give her “the mind
of a bitch and a thievish nature.”[14]
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But the beautiful form of woman was first shaped by Hephaestus.
The god of fire, though crippled, was no dud when
it came to women. He was married to the beautiful but unfaithful Aphrodite.
Athena has a dual nature, one not so well known,
but closely associated with Hephaestus. In addition to the virgin hotheaded
warrior woman, lover of the sound of clashing arms, protectress of cities, she
is a mother goddess, the gentle nurse of children. Her nurturing nature is
further revealed as the goddess of crafts, weavers and the arts. The origin of
this second nature is told in the little-known story about the marriage of
Athena, generally a virgin goddess, to Hephaestus.
Hephaestus first enters Athen’s life as the
“midwife” of Zeus at Athena’s birth. Hephaestus was the god who split
Zeus’ head with an ax so Athena could be born. Later Athena came to him for
forged weapons. Hephaestus had been abandoned by Aphrodite and was filled with
desire for Athena. He chased her and even though hindered by his lameness, he
caught her on the Akropolis. But Athena didn’t wish to lose her virginity and
wouldn’t submit. Hephaestus ejaculated prematurely on her leg. Repulsed,
Athena wiped off his sperm with a piece of wool and threw it on the ground. A
son was then born from the earth, and Athena raised him but kept him hidden in a
basket. Thus Athena and Hephaestus had a son, but she remained a virgin. Her son
was named Erichthonius. He became king of Athens. The temple of Erichthonius on
the Akropolis, where Athen’s temple once stood, is his burial site. The
Panathenic Procession ended there. But Athena was a virgin goddess and this
episode with Hephaestus was an aberration not often mentioned. She was
associated with the moon, her birthday always at the new or hidden moon. Thus
she was perpetually renewed, her virginity restored.
I
hope to pay tribute to Hephaestus by visiting a
volcano, the island of Santorini. I hope to be there by the end of the month. As
hotheaded as I am, visiting a place that blows its stack once in a while will be
appropriate.
After shaking hands and saying farewell to the
missionaries, I sit in the Agora in the shade of an old oak tree, once again
feeling lost and alone in a foreign country. Just to my
right are the ruins of the temple of Ares, god of war. Ares wasn’t much
appreciated by the other gods and goddess or the ancient Greeks. This is one of
the few temples dedicated to him. He loved war, the flow of blood, the butchery.
Since the ancient Greeks dedicated few temples to
Ares, he is the sleeping god who wakes suddenly and unexpectedly to heap
destruction on the civilized world. Once set into motion, he’s not easily put
back to sleep. No one wants to believe he resides inside them. But the ancient
Greeks knew he was inside all of us.
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I've
finally decided on a plan for my journey, and Ares will fit into it well. I’ll pay tribute to him
by visiting the most famous battlefield in
history, Troy. Perhaps the travel agent we talked to yesterday will be right,
and I won’t be able to get into Turkey, but I’ll still give it a shot. The plan
I've formulated for this journey is to first visit Thebes and Delphi, the most
famous oracle in antiquity, and then visit many of the homes of those who
fought at Troy, round them up and go to war.
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It’s ten o’clock, and all the tourists are
all gone from the Agora. I’m alone again, sitting in the shadow of the giant
oak
sacred to Zeus, it’s leaves whispering to me as the gentle
breeze rustles them.
As I leave Athens, I can’t help but think again
of Theseus, the ancient king of this marvelous city, his ruin. He lost favor in
Athens because he kidnapped and raped a twelve year old girl from Sparta, Helen,
the woman who would one day cause the Trojan War. She was the most beautiful
woman in the world, the face that launched a thousand ships. A war with Sparta
resulted that filled Athens with blood. Theseus was exiled and went to the
island of Scyrus where his paternal grandfather had once ruled. There he was
murdered. Not far from here at the center of the ancient city is a gymnasium
where Theseus’ bones lie. They were returned to Athens in 469 BC after his
ghost was seen leading the Athenian army at the battle of Marathon.
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After checking out of my room and hiking back to
Syntagma, I board a bus for Terminal B in north Athens where I must change to an
intra-city bus for the ride to Thebes. Finding the right bus was a struggle
because of the uncooperative ticket agents, but finally I'm aboard. At least
that fear is behind me. The city bus is crammed with people
standing in the isles around the overflowing bench seats. Everyone is either
working or shopping and here I am, the old tourista, sweating profusely from the
uphill walk, my big pack creating a nuisance.
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As
time passes and the bus thins, I worry that I don’t know where to
get off for Terminal B. I try to ask some of my fellow passengers but can make
none of them understand my question. Sure enough, the next thing I know the bus is almost
empty, and we’re out in the country at the end of the line, feels like the end
of the world. I get off with the two remaining passengers,
astounded at the mistake I’ve made. What does this say about my
ability to get around in Greece by myself?
I
stand at the side of the road in the hot sun waiting to be mugged. What am I to
do now? This journey is a mistake. How could I possibly hope to get along alone?
Just then I notice a group of men sitting at an outdoor table under a tree not
far from me. How could I miss seeing them before? If they find out I'm lost,
will they mug me? I take the big chance and try a little of my
Greek. The men are charmed with this lost, very confused American. What will
they do to me when their amusement is satisfied?
And
then the miraculous happens. One of them is
a bus driver. He smiles, motions for me to follow him. He takes me to his bus
and makes a special run
back through town just for me, picking up a few passengers along the way. He
talks to one of them and motions for me to get off with him. I thank the driver
profusely but he brushes me aside. Then I follow the other guy,
humping it as fast as I can with my heavy pack. He gradually puts some distance
between us, and I loose sight of him just as I see Terminal B. He doesn't even
give me the opportunity to thank him.
The terminal is a huge,
a drab barn-like building
with a drab waiting room and a dark hanger-like enclosure with rows of
fumes-belching buses and hordes of milling Greeks. I enter it out of breath and
sweating profusely. The young woman behind the counter is full of smiles, as if
she’s been waiting just for me, and shortly I have my ticket in hand. I’m
the only tourist in the place. I have only five minutes to catch my bus to
Thebes, but I enter the snack bar anyway. If I don’t get something to drink, I
won’t live to see Thebes. I buy two cold Sprites, and down each of them in one
long gulp.
