Truth-Loving Persians May Not Dwell Upon It...

After our trip to Rhamnous we went to Marathon, the site of the battle of Marathon, which was the battle in 490 when the Athenians and some of their allies beat the forces of Darius, the king of Persia. This is, of course, a hugely important battle in the history of western civilization. This is the view out over the plain of Marathon. The story of the battle goes something like this. In the early to mid 490s BC, the Greek cities of Ionia revolted against the Persians, and their not-too-successful rebellion was supported by the Athenians. In revenge, Darius, the then-emperor of Persia, sent a force out against the Athenians. This plain is where the battle between the Persian forces and the Athenians (and their allies the Plateians- the Athenians asked for the help of the Spartans, but since the Spartans were celebrating a religious festival, they didn't come) occurred. I'm not going to bore you with a description of the battle- if you are interested, Herodotus would be the author to consult.
The hill that we climbed to get a good view of the plain. It was cloudy that day- we were concerned that it was going to rain, but in the end it never did anything more than threaten. We did get a nice view of the plain, and we could see where most of the action took place- though we did not see Pan, Theseus, or any of the other gods and heroes reported to have fought alongside the Athenians. Tragic. And shocking.

This was an incredibly important battle for the Athenians- Aeschylus, the great Athenian tragedian, didn't want his grave to record his many great plays- he wanted it to be written that he had fought at the battle of Marathon.
The plain again! You have probably heard of Marathon before because of the Marathon, the 26-ish mile long race designed to commemorate the run of Pheidippides from Marathon to Athens. You'll be interested to hear that the source written nearest to the events in question, Herodotus, does not in fact say anything about Pheidippides running from Marathon to Athens- he ran from Athens to Sparta, meaning that he ran about 150 miles in two days. (Sometime during this run, he supposedly ran into the god Pan, who went on to help the Athenians in the battle. I'm thinking he was hallucinating.) A run from Marathon to Athens is mentioned in much later sources, but whether it actually happened is debatable. Browning wrote a poem (called "Pheidippides") about this run, which I think has probably helped to perpetuate this story about a guy making a heroic run from Marathon to Athens and then kicking it.
This is the mound where the Athenian dead were buried! According to Herodotus, 192 Athenians were killed, including Callimachus, the polemarch of Athens. At Marathon there is a nice museum with a lot of finds from the site of Marathon, but we weren't allowed to take pictures inside so I can't show any to you.
This is another view of the burial mound. You may have heard of this mound from Byron's poem Don Juan, canto 3- there's that part where he's sitting on the grave of the Persians and can't deem himself a slave? He's actually referring to this, the Athenians apparently just sort of dumped the bodies of the Persians in a trench. (you can find the whole poem at http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-greece.htm)

Rhamnous

As a class trip, we went out to Marathon and Rhamnous, two sites within Attica. I assume that you have heard of Marathon- if you haven't, there's going to be a post on it shortly- but you, like me, have probably not heard of Rhamnous a lot, other than in perhaps the occasional encounter with the name.

Rhamnous is an ancient deme site, and it is one of the most complete ones extant. During the reforms of Cleisthenes, in the late 6th century B.C., the old system of four Ionic tribes was reorganized into a system of ten tribes named after Attic heroes and each tribe was divided into three tritteis, which were composed of different demes, or towns, essentially. Rhamnous was one of those demes. Rhamnous is also heavily fortified, in part due to its location on the northern coast of Attica. Do you see those mountains off in the distance across the water in the picture below? Those are the mountains of the island of Euboea.
See, heavily fortified! This is the entrance to the city. During antiquity, there were young soldiers stationed here, where they would have trained. Rhamnous is also the site of a temple to Nemesis, which is located outside of the walls of the city and inland, up a hill.
This is a place outside the city where the young soldiers who were stationed at Rhamnous scratched a game board into the rocks. I don't know precisely what the rules were.
There is also a very nice view of the site! This part of Attica has been relatively untouched by the development that is all over the place- this is because of a law that prohibits building within a certain radius of archaeological sites. It doesn't usually get enforced- a lot of Attica is covered by sprawl from Athens- but in this case I think that there are some archaeologists who are particularly adamant about it.

Mighty-Walled Tiryns

After we went to the Heraion, we made our way over to the site or Tiryns, another large Mycenaean palace. This was a particularly exciting trip because my archaeology professor knew the German team excavating the site and so arranged for one of them to give us a special guided tour. Since Tiryns is a pretty big site and a lot of it is unlabelled and not open to the public, this was a very good thing. I'm not generally into taking pictures while people are talking, especially when those people are archaeologists who are taking time out of their busy schedule to show a lot of kids (many of whom are acting extremely rude and uninterested) around a site that they obviously find important and fascinating, so I don't have too many pictures of Tiryns, which is sort of tragic. It was a very nice site. It is like a lot of other Mycenaean sites that one can go to see- Cyclopean masonry, a funny layout that prevents easy visibility (this is a big deal with Minoan palaces as well- you walk up a huge staircase and the door is tiny and over to the side or something) and, in this case, big blocks from gates that are made out of the same stone as the ones at Mycenae. Coincidence? No, probably not.
A corbelled vault! This is a pretty long passageway to have one, and it must have looked very fancy-schmancy to the people living there. (Please note the technical vocabulary.)
Look, Cyclopean Masonry! Tiryns had some mighty big walls, and gets referred to in Homer as "mighty-walled Tiryns."
My group exiting through a secret passage or something. By this time, we had already all climbed over some of those ubiquitous "public keep out" barrier ropes, and the few tourists who were there (some older ladies and what appeared to be a boy scout troupe) were rather unhappy that we were getting to see those areas and they were not. At least we were in there legally this time! I think I've lost track of the number of archaeological sites where we have stepped over those ropes without official permission from the archaeological team.

The Argive Heraion

So, the Argive Heraion is a temple of Hera that's in the Argolid.

Exciting, isn't it?

Except actually it really is! This is the place where the story of Cleobis and Biton takes place!
What is this story, you may ask? Well, I could tell you... or I could let Herodotus do it for me. Let me set the scene. Solon, Athenian law giver, has wandered, during his magical journey through time and space, over to Lydia, where the King is Croesus. Croesus asks Solon who the happiest man on earth is, expecting that the answer will be "you, of course." Solon's first answer is an Athenian man- when Croesus is unsatisfied and asks who is the second happiest, this is Solon's reply. "Cleobis and Biton: for these, who were of Argos by race, possessed a sufficiency of wealth and, in addition to this, strengthof body such as I shall tell. Both equally had won prizes in thegames, and moreover the following tale is told of them:--There was a feast of Hera among the Argives and it was by all means necessary thattheir mother should be borne in a car to the temple. But since their oxen were not brought up in time from the field, the young men, barredfrom all else by lack of time, submitted themselves to the yoke anddrew the wain, their mother being borne by them upon it; and so theybrought it on for five-and-forty furlongs, and came to the temple.Then after they had done this and had been seen by the assembled crowd, there came to their life a most excellent ending; and in thisthe deity declared that it was better for man to die than to continueto live. For the Argive men were standing round and extolling thestrength of the young men, while the Argive women were extolling the mother to whose lot it had fallen to have such sons; and themother being exceedingly rejoiced both by the deed itself and by thereport made of it, took her stand in front of the image of the goddessand prayed that she would give to Cleobis and Biton her sons, who hadhonoured her greatly, that gift which is best for man to receive:and after this prayer, when they had sacrificed and feasted, the youngmen lay down to sleep within the temple itself, and never rose again,but were held bound in this last end. And the Argives made statuesin the likeness of them and dedicated them as offerings at Delphi,thinking that they had proved themselves most excellent."
That's my really cool archaeology professor.
Isn't it nifty? Also, they sure knew how to pick places to put their temples.

Translation from the Gutenberg project:

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/1hofh10.txt, book 1, chapters 27 to 31.

Sunset from the Palamidi

Palamidi- Part 1

Palamidi is the Venetian fortress (I told you that the Venetians made everything!) that's near Nauplion. (Which is, by the way, pronounced Nafplion. Just so you know.) (Apparently it's also sometimes written as Nafplion. I didn't know this.)
Palamidi is a very cool place. Our trip leaders dropped us off here with instructions to catch the bus in an hour- which we blatantly failed to do. I think we were there for something closer to four hours.
Essentially, it's a big fortress on a hill with a whole lot of bastions. A bit like a large jungle gym for history nerds. Or non-history nerds. We spent most of the afternoon climbing into cisterns, prisons, underground tunnels, on parts of walls, on rocks, and on cliffs. It was very windy. We were occasionally scared for our safety.
Inside a guard tower! I told you, it's like a playground.
Josh, pointing towards freedom. Gina looking bored. (This is a reference to the fact that statues of Kolokotronis generally have him "pointing towards freedom"- it's probably funnier if you were there.)

Row, Row, Row Your Boat!

We then made our way to Epidaurus, the site of an ancient theater with amazing acoustics and of a very famous Asclepion, or sanctuary of Asclepius. We went to the theater first, and to test out the acoustics for ourselves, we conducted a little experiment. Josh, Lara and I stood in the middle of the orchestra and waited while our archaeology class dispersed throughout the theater. When they were ready, we sang "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" three times- once as loudly as possible, once at a normal volume, and once as quietly as we could manage. The first two times, everyone could hear us loud and clear- the third time, people had a bit of trouble but could still, for the most part, hear us. Also present and subjected to my singing skills- lots of random tourists and a group of German students. Oh well.
There's Gina, waiting for our concert to begin!
After the experiment was over, my professor gave us some time to climb around on the theater for ourselves. This is a huge theater, let me tell you- from the top, it was hard to make out the people in the orchestra in any detail. Certainly going to a play and sitting in the upper sections wouldn't have been a great visual experience- other than the lovely view, of course.
When we were done with the theater, we went to the Asclepion. Asclepius was a son of Apollo who became a god of medicine, and his shrines were important places of healing in the ancient world. Supplicants would go to an Asclepion and sleep on the floor of the temple for the night. In the morning, the priests of Asclepius would interpret their dreams- and since a lack of dreams was considered a very bad omen, the priests would release snakes into the temple to assist people in having dreams.

I imagine that lots of people dreamed about snakes.
Finally, we went to the modern town of Epidauros, which was pretty but extremely sleepy because it was a Sunday. Still, lovely views!

I Don't Think You're Allowed to Look That Happy Under the Lion's Gate...

Mycenae is a very cool archaeological site. It is mostly built with really huge stones- this is the "cyclopean masonry" that you hear so much about. (Well, I'm not sure how much you hear about it. In archaeology, we hear about it all the time.) We got to climb through a lot of the citadel, and it was pretty neat. There are two more tholoi at the site, as well as two grave circles, grave circle A and grave circle B. (Grave circle A is famous because it is where the mask of Agamemnon was found- though there is no way this is actually the mask of Agamemnon. It's about 300 years too old for that.)
The site from above!
It was also the windiest trip I have been on yet. Here is Gina, looking windblown. Behind her you can see some of the beautiful scenery that's characteristic of the Argolid- other than northern Greece, this was one of the most beautiful places I have been to yet.
And Gina and I under the Lion's Gate- this is a very famous gate. Josh yelled at us for looking too happy and cheerful under the Lion's Gate- apparently we ought to have been killing each other, or at least looking a bit miffed- but Gina and I were both happy and it seemed uneccessary to pretend otherwise. Josh came up with a hypothesis about how the lions are actually Simba and Scar from the Lion King- I think the reasoning behind this was that the Lion King is loosely based on Hamlet, which is loosely based on the Oresteia. (Only let's face it- the Oresteia is way more cool. Just saying.)

I Have Gazed Upon the Face of Agamemnon...

From the treasury of Atreus, we went up the road to the citadel of Mycenae, which is by far my favorite of all the archaeological sites that I have been to so far. It's a lovely site- the citadel was built on a hill for strategic purposes, but it affords a lovely view of the surrounding valley. The Argolid is a very pretty place. Mycenae is a very exciting place. The city gives its name to an entire civilization, the Mycenaean civilization, which was a dominant power in Greece at the end of the Bronze age, and, on account of that, to several time periods (Mycenaean, subMycenaean, etc.) The city appears in Homer as the home of Agamemnon, the brother of Menelaus and the husband of Clytemnestra, making him the brother-in-law of Helen. In the age of heroes it was the home of the house of Atreus, possibly one of the most dysfunctional families in all of history.
This is a mountain right next to Mycenae, and if you know your Aeschylus, you'll know why it's really cool- at the top of it, there is an old beacon. If you don't know the Agamemnon, what you need to know is that there is a part where Clytemnestra tells the chorus that her husband, Agamemnon, will be returning later that day- the chorus scoffs at her, until a messenger comes and says that Agamemnon will be returning that day. Clytemnestra then explains that she knew this because she was alerted by a series of beacons, going across the islands and to Mycenae.
Then we went down into an ancient cistern! It was very dark and the steps were very slippery, which is why I have a lot of pictures like this- we were using the flash from my camera to light the way. This cistern was dug into the rock, and would have provided water for the palace during seige conditions. At the bottom of the cistern! I like how Josh looks manic and Gina is making an awkward face. As usual. At least they look happy?

Ancient graffiti!

The Treasury of Atreus!

The treasury of Atreus, for those of you who don't know, is a very famous tholos tomb that is named after the father of Agamemnon. A tholos is the name for a specific type of ancient tomb- they're round, and shaped like a beehive. They're also very cool. (In my blog posts from Crete, I think there is a more complete explanation.) The treasury of Atreus is cool because it is a huge tholos- you can fit a ton of people inside there- and very complete. This is the dromos, or the road leading up to the tomb- you can see the entrance, and how much taller than all the people it is.
The doorway! That triangle is called a relieving triangle- it distributes the weight of the blocks so that the lintel, which is made with one huge stone, won't crack. It would have been filled in ancient times, and probably decorated- unfortunately, this tomb was found by tomb robbers, and so what remains is really only the stone.
From the inside! You can see how the triangle is filled in.
This is for some idea of scale- that there is the entrance to the tomb. The ceiling is ridiculously high, and there were a ton of people inside the tomb, but it still wasn't too crowded. Unfortunately, a pushy Italian tour guide wasn't allowing us to talk, so we had to remain silent- because of the shape of the tomb, sounds carry very well.
A copy of some of the plays of Aeschylus (in the original Greek!) on the floor of the treasury of Atreus. This was the book that we used when reading the Agamemnon on top of the tomb of Clytemnestra. Yes, it was a bit like a cult initiation. Into the cult of classics.

The Corinthian Canal

Once upon a time, there were only two ways to get a boat across the isthmus of Corinth. The first was to get out of your boat and wheel the thing across the land over a road called the diolkos, a paved road made by the tyrants of Corinth, or to sail all the way around the Peloponnese. Efforts to dig a canal across the isthmus have been talked about since the seventh century B.C. and began as early as the reign of Nero, but the canal itself was not actually made until the late 1800s, due to the technical difficulty and cost associated with such an undertaking. These days the canal isn't used for many ships- it is very narrow, after all- but it's still there and still pretty cool to look at.

Eleusis- It's All a Mystery to Me!

Eleusis, which is actually still a part of Attica, was the place where people were initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, a mystery cult devoted to the goddess Demeter. It lies at the end of the sacred way, a road which runs from Athens to Eleusis (modern day Elefsina) and has ruins that are expansive and very interesting to look at, contrary to what my guidebook so glibly says. (Which is basically that they aren't worth visiting. Lies, my friends! Absolute lies.) It's a pretty cool place.
The goddess herself- conveniently labeled "thea" so everyone can know who she is. Demeter is a goddess of agriculture, and she was very important to the Ancient Greeks, who lived in an agrarian society. It was believed that the initiates into the mystery cult would enjoy a much happier afterlife.
This is where the Eleusinian mysteries took place!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just how secret were the Eleusinian mysteries? The answer is: very. So much so that we don't actually know exactly what occurred at the initiation ceremony. There are some very educated guesses, but none of the ancient sources actually record what went on there.
The site- that big cave thing is part of a sanctuary of Hades.
Next stop- Mycenae! (Not really. But close.) On the bus ride, and at the actual site of Mycenae, we read the Agamemnon out loud in Ancient Greek. It was very bad-ass. And nerdy. I was Clytemnestra.