Samos and Ephesus

Today was a busy day of ruins, visiting Samos in the morning and Ephesus in the afternoon. At Samos, the chief attraction was the Vathy Museum, with its monumental kouros and the original statues from the Genelaus family complex, and, on site, the Heraion. Ephesus offered a greater number of sights, including the newly uncovered Terrace Houses and the Library of Celsus. For more on the Terrace Houses, see below. I was glad to see the last of Myrto, who persisted in providing inaccurate information (Samos was pillaged by Verres--she was confusing it with Sicily) and retelling the same myths over and over. The carelessness of the tour guides is by far the worst feature of the cruise. I keep reminding myself that they are pitching it to the lowest common denominator; but, judging by the number of academics I've encountered so far, they have badly underestimated the intelligence of the clientele. (I keep remembering the tour of Ireland after the international feminist conference in 1987, where the entire bus stopped the tour guide in the middle of her spiel about leprechauns and demanded to know about history and politics instead.)

The guide who took us to Ephesus was a Turkish male who fancied himself a comedian and flirted with the ladies, when he wasn't being condescending. His worst faux pas was making potty jokes as we toured the latrine. On the other hand, the visit to the Terrace Houses was really informative because of the extent to which the interior decoration was preserved (in some cases, better than that at Pompeii). Wall painting ranged in date from the second to fourth centuries CE. Terrace House 6, obviously that of an extremely wealthy family, had a great hall covered in marble, like that of the Domus Augustana, while Terrace House 2, which was subdivided and let to poorer renters during the fourth century, had inscribed graffiti listing prices--at some time, a taberna must have been located there. Rooms were still nicely decorated, with impressive mosaics including one of a lion and another of Neptune and Amphitrite. Painting style, although reminiscent of Pompeiian fourth style, had unusual iconography--painting on doorway passage and small allegorical female figures on white background are features I have seldom encountered before. Although we should have known better, we later went to a showing of Turkish rugs arranged by our guide. The head salesman targeted Ron while I was trying to take a photograph of the display and proceeded to try a hard sell on both of us. We got away without buying anything, but only by being rude and walking out. Although I would like to do some shopping in Istanbul, the hassle would probably be overwhelming, especially if I were to try buying jewelry.

Delos

While the ruins themselves are not as spectacular as those we are supposed to see at Ephesus and Aphrodisias, Delos is undoubtedly a place that a classical scholar has to visit at least once in her life. To perceive the barrenness of the island is to realize the paradoxical quality of its importance as celebrated in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and Callimachus' Hymn to Delos. Here is a panoramic glimpse of the site.

After returning to the ship and listening to a presentation on Ephesus--quite tepid, in contrast to the vivid and lively talks by Bill and Suzanne--I was hoping to see the windmills of Mykonos and perhaps do a little shopping. The winds, however, were fierce, making it impossible for Ron to get into the tender. We settled instead for coffee on the observation deck and our respective books. Not a particularly eventful afternoon and evening, but one can't be entertained all the time.

Rhodes

This morning's excursion to Rhodes has been one of the better experiences of the cruise (and a considerable improvement over the Knossos fiasco). Our guide Maria (tour guides vary with the locale) took us on a bus trip around the Graeco-Roman acropolis (photo-ops but no chance to get out and walk the site), then led us on a brisk walk from the reconstructed Grand Master's Headquarters in the Fortress of the Knights of St. John down the Street of the Knights to the Hospital, now the Archaeological Museum of Rhodes. The headquarters, destroyed by an explosion under the Ottoman Turks and rebuilt by the occupying Italians as a residence for the then king Victor Emmanuel III under Mussolini, features colorful late antique mosaics in an excellent state of preservation from houses and basilicas on Cos. The museum, though, was the real gem. It contains some splendid ancient sculpture, and I was excited to see the very different iconography of late antique local funerary steles, which represent individuals and families in full-body frontal position.

Of course, the great treasure there is the stele of Krito and Timarista, certainly without any Athenian parallel, as far as I know. If I ever teach Women and Gender in Antiquity again, it would be nice to use the image below as the basis of a paper question. The afternoon and evening were also a treat. We found that coffee and tea were available all day on the observation deck, a comfortable place to sit and read. In the evening we heard Bill give a superb lecture on the siege of Rhodes by Demetrios son of Antigonos the One-Eyed in 305 BCE. Our ship was moored in the harbor where the battle actually took place, lending the lecture an immediacy that AIA lectures don't normally have. Afterward, the whole AIA tour group had dinner together in the Terrace Cafe. The food was excellent, wine flowed freely, and even the least communicative found shared interests. This was without doubt the best day of the entire cruise so far. If they were all like that, I would be going on one every year.

Crete

I was looking forward to seeing Knossos. On my first visit to Greece in 1967, I never left the mainland and only later realized that I should have taken the opportunity to explore more Bronze Age sites. So one factor in choosing this particular cruise was the prospect of a full day there. However, the itinerary put us at Crete on Monday, a day when Greek museums are closed. Thus we had no chance to see the original Knossos frescoes at the Heraklion Museum. The site itself was a sad disappointment. Like Pompeii, Knossos attracts hordes, tour groups were everywhere running into one another, and we could see just the exterior of Evans' reconstruction. The Throne Room and the Queen's Chamber could only be viewed through (dirty) plexiglass.

Marc Raynor said that when he brought his kids there several decades ago, nothing on the site was restricted and there were merely a handful of visitors. The fact that Evans' concrete walls are crumbling--again, like houses in Pompeii--comments ironically upon the great archaeologist's aspirations. Well, at least the sacral horns (left) are holding up soundly.

I was also pleased to learn the exact location of the so-called Dancing Floor of Ariadne at the end of the processional way (right). It makes the reference in Book 18 of Homer's Iliad all that more mysterious.

Monemvasia

Monemvasia, a late antiquity Laconian settlement, has no ancient sites to speak of and today is known chiefly for its Byzantine churches. Although the old buildings had charm and the streets were nice to stroll through before it became too warm, I will remember it for a very memorable lunch on the pier--Greek salad, grilled shrimps, and a half-bottle of local white wine. The olive oil was incredibly good; it put the lighter oil on the dinner salad in the cruise ship's first-class restaurant to shame. Indeed the dinner fell far short of aspirations. After dinner we attended a showing of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, an innocuous feel-good movie. I'm convinced that the food, entertainment, lectures, and even excursions are designed to be non-threatening to the clientele, whose average age, I've heard, is 67. I should say something about the Greek elections, which took place on Sunday. Opposition parties predictably won a strong victory. Two of our guides, probably in violation of tour protocol, expressed vociferous disapproval of Angela Merkell, whose policies they blamed for everything. Myrto, one guide, predicted that the elections would result in a fractured Parliament unable to agree on a prime minister. She was certainly right in foreseeing that the coalition government would lose its majority--the two mainstream parties together won only 32% of the vote. On the following day, the other guide was horrified that the neo-Nazi party had won twenty seats, or 7%. She pointed out that there were factors the foreign press, blaming Greece for its wastefulness, does not take into consideration--for example, that Greece has no heavy industry and that the average Greek worker makes one-third the wage of the average German. For what it's worth, the international news has been dominated by the French election and the ouster of Sarkozy in favor of a Socialist who has promised to renegotiate the agreements forcing indebted governments to adopt austerity measures.

Mycenae and Epidaurus

So far I have not been impressed by any of the Greek guides. They're friendly enough, but they've all been through the same training program. Hearing the identical anecdote retold twice in one day by two different persons (with slightly different details) becomes tedious. Occasionally the information provided is downright wrong, and the guide must know that. For example, at the Epidaurus Museum the guide told the group that the inscriptions on the wall were records of cures at the temple of Asclepius. They weren't; they were clearly labeled in Greek and English as records of construction expenses. On the positive side, though, Mycenae is much more accessible than it was the first time I visited there in 1967, but it hasn't lost any of its numinosity. Here is the dromos of the Treasury of Atreus.

Epidaurus, which was much less crowded, was certainly pleasant, even in the afternoon heat. The parodos of the theatre has been reconstructed, but the rest of the structure is much the same as it was in antiquity.

Cape Sounion and Embarcation

For our last land excursion before embarking on the Aegean Odyssey, we traveled out to Cape Sounion to see the Temple of Poseidon. Basically, a relaxing drive through beautiful country and an impressive sight. The ruins are quite imposing and the surrounding vistas gorgeous. Highlight of the trip was the noisy partridges that could be heard all around us and occasionally glimpsed. This fellow posed nicely for photos (below).

After returning to the hotel, we boarded a bus for the Piraeus and transferred to the Aegean Odyssey. Though this ship is relatively small as cruise ships go, it certainly has all the amenities. While our stateroom is tiny, we don't find it confining. Chris, our steward, is extremely attentive. We didn't see any of our fellow AIA voyagers the first evening, which I spent in the Charleston Lounge, having a drink and updating this journal. I discovered, however, that in the rush of morning packing I had left Averil Cameron's book on late antiquity, borrowed from the University library, back in the hotel room. Internet on the ship is incredibly slow, but I finally managed to contact the hotel staff and ask them to mail the book back to me, charging my VISA for the postage. They were very courteous and reassuring. While spending a couple of expensive hours on the Internet, I also gave permission as one of the co-editors to send the proofs of Narrating Desire to press. Getting that manuscript into production was a miserable process, involving much wasted and reduplicated effort. Even if there are still a few typos, I'll be happy to hear no more of it. When I return to Tucson, the first priority, finally, will be finishing off Sexuality!

Meeting the Tour Group; Visiting the Acropolis and the Cycladic Museum

At breakfast on Thursday, we finally met Bill and Suzanne Murray and the rest of the tour participants. I had been hoping to maintain relative anonymity, but it turns out that Bill knew my name and work--a student of his had quoted my Sexuality book in a paper on Plutarch. There is at least one other academic among the participants, a British medievalist retired from U of Denver, and I like his commitment to learning more about related and corollary fields of interest. First excursion, in the morning, was to the new Acropolis Museum. Some familiar items from the archaic temple of Athena have been moved there, but for the most part what strikes you is the plaster casts where the Elgin Marbles should be. It is very postclassical and very sterile.
Unfortunately, the climb up to the Acropolis was a little too much for a number of people, including Ron. When I was in my twenties, I remember, the ascent did not seem all that steep. The visitors at the time were far fewer and the accessibility to all the monuments greater. Yet I still recall reacting to the behavior of the crowds then: "Not so loud; this is a holy place." The mob yesterday reminded me of my last experience visiting the Vatican Museums, being shepherded in a long roped-off queue past someone's idea of what tourists should be seeing. I swore off the Vatican Museums then as I swore off Pompeii before that, and I'm swearing off the Athenian Acropolis now. Nothing will make me go back. As it is, Ron gave out before reaching the Propylon Gate, and I had no regrets abandoning the climb and walking him back to the bus boarding area. On the way up, though, I got a couple of excellent photographs of Herodes Atticus' Odeon, which I may be able to include in the second version of Sexuality, in the context of the Second Sophistic subsection.
The Cycladic Museum visit in the afternoon convinced me that I will never again go on an organized tour to any part of Greece, even if I don't know the locales. As everyone knows, Greek law provides that explanations of sites have to be given by Greek-trained guides: tour leaders, no matter their scholarly credentials, just stand to one side. At the Acropolis Museum in the morning, I heard the guide speak in all seriousness about pre-Greek matriarchy. OK, I'm tolerant of feminist extremism. However, I expected an honest and trained tour guide taking a group around the Cycladic Museum to bring up the issue of fakes, if only to warn interested collectors. Not one mention of the "f---" word. Worse, she raised the topic of Greek homosexuality in the context of showing viewers a red-figure vase depicting two Greek youths energetically dancing with two other figures wearing the sakkos--the iconographic symbol of a courtesan. If tour guides are abandoning scholarly rigor in order to indulge in sensationalism, any attempts we might make to educate the public are doomed. In the evening, we had one serendipitous experience. As we were walking in what we hoped was the general direction of the Plaka, a gentleman asked me if he could help out with directions. When I said that we were going to have dinner, he immediately suggested a good fish restaurant in the area and offered to walk us there. Well, OK, at first you figure the con is on. But it turned out that he sold shoes at a neighborhood store, his wife was from New Jersey, and he apparently wanted to do a couple of Americans a favor. He took us to a restaurant called Ithaki, introduced us to the manager, and asked him to give us some really fresh fish. Ron ordered salmon, I ordered grouper (which I had just seen, pink and healthy, on ice in the fish case). That and a great Greek salad with tangy Feta cheese, plus an interesting bottle of Greek chardonnay, made for a really outstanding dinner. An after-dinner drink at the hotel rooftop bar topped off a memorable visit to a local neighborhood restaurant--which we learned of from a chance meeting.

First Day in Athens: Shopping for Necessities and Visiting the Plaka

We had an excuse to go out, even if we had been traveling for twenty-four hours. In my haste to make sure I had packed all the right clothes and set up my computer to download and organize images from my new Nikon digital camera, I forgot to take my green travel bag with toothpaste, toothbrush, and dental floss. Ron was expecting me to bring toothpaste, so he had none either. You would think it easy to find toiletries in downtown Athens. Wrong. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, stores close at 3:00 p.m., even in the central area, and don't reopen until the next day. Ron and I walked the streets looking for a 7-11, a mom-and-pop grocery store, a Boots, a Walgreen's--nothing. Where, incidentally, do you buy toothpaste in Greece? Not in an expensive pharmacy, which seemed to sell only perfumes, not in a high-end department store selling even more expensive perfumes, not from a street-corner kiosk, although I did find the right Greek word (odontokrema) in my I-pod "Essential Greek" app. Finally I sent Ron home and set out on my own, following the main street running south from the square. I turned down a side street just to get a closer look at an interesting Byzantine church, and lo and behold I was in the Plaka, where everything was open. Found a neighborhood pharmacy that did stock toiletries, found a stand selling hats (another thing I had forgotten to pack) and then wandered around the Plaka, looking at shops I would like to come back and visit. For example, a display of hand-embroidered linens caught my eye.

Back at the hotel, we decided on a restaurant around the corner, Pasaji, which was offering a free glass of Prosecco and a 20% dinner discount on Voyages to Antiquity travel participants. We were the only ones to take advantage of the offer. The waiter was a newbie and, unfortunately, a klutz. The first thing he did was spill a glass of Prosecco all over the table--not on us, thank goodness, but the menus and tablecloth were through for the night. After we were reseated, reassuring him that we had suffered no injury, we ordered two very good fish entrees and a glass each of premium wine in addition to the Prosecco. Total bill was only 47 euros!

We finished the evening on the rooftop bar of the Grande Bretagne hotel, where we watched the setting sun reflected off the Parthenon marble, or what remains of it, and had our pictures taken to prove we were there.

Getting to Athens

We left Tucson for our trip to Athens and cruise around the Greek Islands and Turkey on Monday, April 30, around 4:00 p.m. Drove up to Phoenix, where we parked our car for the duration at Best Western Tempe. First shock came when I double-checked our itinerary and discovered that our previously scheduled 7:15 a.m. departure had been changed to 6:00 a.m. Early wakeup call notwithstanding, we had a nice dinner at Marti's, a famous old restaurant near the ASU Tempe campus. Photo on left shows aircraft in Phoenix ready for departure.

No problem catching our first and second flights, but we had scarcely an hour and a half between landing in Paris and boarding our flight to Athens, and during that time we had to clear customs, go through a second security inspection, and walk miles through the airport and even outside to catch the bus that would take us to our aircraft. We made the plane with five minutes to spare. Harrowing.

Some marvelous sights in transit: dawn over France, with lights of the cities immediately below and sun rising in the East (left) and flying into Athens over Greece, seeing mountains in the foreground and the sea in the distance (right). After landing in Athens, we were met by representatives of the tour group Voyages to Antiquity and taken to the Hotel Grande Bretagne on Syntagma Square.

En route, we were warned repeatedly that this was a first-class hotel in a convenient location, but--Syntagma Square, across from the Greek Parliament, had been the scene of repeated mass anti-government demonstrations. Since the national elections to choose a new parliament were scheduled for Sunday, disturbances could take place (more on the elections later). As it turned out, though, the one demonstration planned for the evening of May 3 completely fizzled--when we walked past the square on the way home, I saw only a few flares sent up as indications that anything unusual was going on. Our room was comfortable and cool. The accommodations were really first-class, particularly the breakfasts on the roof garden of the hotel and the friendly atmosphere of the bar in the evenings. After unpacking and showering, we felt ready to see the town--jet lag notwithstanding!

Introduction: Aegean Odyssey Cruise 2012

To start the blog going, I will post a series of consecutive journal entries written on a recent cruise from Athens to Istanbul and back on the ship Aegean Odyssey. This trip was sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), which hosts a number of antiquity-themed excursions every year. Although I had been to mainland Greece before, I had never visited any of the islands nor been to Turkey, and cruising was also a new experience. My husband Ron, who did a lot of sailing when he was younger, loves the sea and had always wanted to go to Greece. This was a dream trip for both of us--let's see how it worked out.