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A day out of Athens
Nov. 27th, 2018 03:32 pmBrauron: a sanctuary of Artemis grown up around a sacred cave and spring. Unlike many of the other places we've been seeing, (the Parthenon was a church, a mosque, and blown up by gunpowder), the site of Brauron was lost in the early centuries AD and not found again till the 20th century. Women would bring votive clothing there after safe childbirth, or the clothing of women who died in childbirth would be left to Iphigeneia in hope of protection. (That version of Iphigeneia may have begun as one of Artemis' names and separated, or begun as a more substantial goddess and been partially subsumed - or Euripides may have made her association with Brauron up, and the remains explained by archaeologists in terms of that connection are something else). Athenian girls would go to Brauron for a year (some of them, from the wealthier families) to be Artemis' bears and cross the line to adulthood. (Artemis had a bear which hunters killed, and this was reparation).
The place is beautiful to wander in. Conifers and the foundations of the temple on a rise of limestone. Then green lawn before the pillars of the old stoa, marshy in places. The oldest bridge in the world is there, if Diana is to be trusted: a shallow wide one, over the stream from the sacred spring.
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Thorikos: one of the places Athens' silver came from. One of the worse places to be a slave. The only place we've yet been where nobody was nearby and nothing was roped off, if you wanted to sit in the theatre (we did) or climb on top of the remains of grave monuments (we didn't). Though the mine shaft had a gate. If you somehow pick the lock on that and get in, said Isaac the Honours student presenting Thorikos to the group, it goes back a hundred metres and narrows to crawlspace. I've seen pictures of unhappy excavators in there. And if you manage to do that and get out again, added Diana, I will kill you.
Isaac is the bounciest possible site guide. He never addressed us from below a wedge of limestone if he could jump on top of it instead. And Thorikos supplies a lot of wedges of limestone, also marble - we walked over its quarry. (One block of limestone's extraction would have snapped ten chisels. The forge they used to repair the chisels is still visible.) Having told me earlier that his site was too big and he thought he'd mostly stay in one bit of it, Isaac ran to and fro with radiant enthusiasm, speaking loudly enough to be heard at the back of the theater. Previous days' presentations have tended to the droning. This is a new high bar. Note to self: when in Corinth, bounce.
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Sounion: temple of Poseidon, on a peninsula with a steep drop down to the sea. Very photogenic, especially with the sun behind it. Byron wrote his name on a pillar. Some of the group prefer its bone-white ironless marble. I prefer the Erechtheion's honey-glow. But the place! On the rocky flat around the temple, purple saffron flowers grow. I spent more than half the time we had there after the presentation looking out to sea. Astonishing wind. The sea was bright blue and white where it hit the cliff, dark elsewhere, and the wind coming in off it in buffets. I like strong winds anywhere, the kind you can lean into - as long as there's a possibility of retreat - but nowhere else would I be inclined to imagine Poseidon behind them. When I walk out of a wind like that I feel happy and quieted, ready to sit still a while. As on a bus, back into Athens.
The place is beautiful to wander in. Conifers and the foundations of the temple on a rise of limestone. Then green lawn before the pillars of the old stoa, marshy in places. The oldest bridge in the world is there, if Diana is to be trusted: a shallow wide one, over the stream from the sacred spring.
...
Thorikos: one of the places Athens' silver came from. One of the worse places to be a slave. The only place we've yet been where nobody was nearby and nothing was roped off, if you wanted to sit in the theatre (we did) or climb on top of the remains of grave monuments (we didn't). Though the mine shaft had a gate. If you somehow pick the lock on that and get in, said Isaac the Honours student presenting Thorikos to the group, it goes back a hundred metres and narrows to crawlspace. I've seen pictures of unhappy excavators in there. And if you manage to do that and get out again, added Diana, I will kill you.
Isaac is the bounciest possible site guide. He never addressed us from below a wedge of limestone if he could jump on top of it instead. And Thorikos supplies a lot of wedges of limestone, also marble - we walked over its quarry. (One block of limestone's extraction would have snapped ten chisels. The forge they used to repair the chisels is still visible.) Having told me earlier that his site was too big and he thought he'd mostly stay in one bit of it, Isaac ran to and fro with radiant enthusiasm, speaking loudly enough to be heard at the back of the theater. Previous days' presentations have tended to the droning. This is a new high bar. Note to self: when in Corinth, bounce.
...
Sounion: temple of Poseidon, on a peninsula with a steep drop down to the sea. Very photogenic, especially with the sun behind it. Byron wrote his name on a pillar. Some of the group prefer its bone-white ironless marble. I prefer the Erechtheion's honey-glow. But the place! On the rocky flat around the temple, purple saffron flowers grow. I spent more than half the time we had there after the presentation looking out to sea. Astonishing wind. The sea was bright blue and white where it hit the cliff, dark elsewhere, and the wind coming in off it in buffets. I like strong winds anywhere, the kind you can lean into - as long as there's a possibility of retreat - but nowhere else would I be inclined to imagine Poseidon behind them. When I walk out of a wind like that I feel happy and quieted, ready to sit still a while. As on a bus, back into Athens.
