19 October 2008

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!

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