The Agora

The following morning, Friday July 6, we rose at dawn in an unsuccessful bid to beat the heat. Sam proposed to guide us first through the Ancient Agora, then to the top of the Acropolis, then to the new Acropolis Museum, and finally to the Athens National Museum.  It was expected to take all day long, with a break for lunch at a bookstore café.

 

We started by ignoring Hadrian’s Library, which although it was right across the street from our hotel, was no good, because Hadrian was a Roman, and we are not into Roman ruins, only Greek ruins, even though Hadrian was a grecophile Roman who built future Roman ruins in the classical Greek style.

 

At the Ancient Agora, we purchased a combination ticket that included eight different attractions, including the Agora, the Acropolis, and Hadrian’s Library, even though we had already rejected that one.

 

We toured the Agora for a long time and saw many things, including a full-scale replica of the ancient marketplace at the Agora, which currently houses a museum of Agora artifacts, such as the random-selection device used to select juries (jurors would place ID tabs into slots on a grid, and each row of potential jurors would randomly be assigned a black or white marble, indicating selection or exclusion).

 

Archeologists and archeology students were busy in roped off areas washing and sorting shards of stone and ceramic – the Agora remains an active excavation.

 

The first surprising thing about the ancient Agora is that although “Agora” means marketplace, and there is a marketplace there, it is inaccurate to characterize Athens’ Agora as a marketplace.  Instead, it is more akin to what we mean by “Downtown” or the “Business District.” The Agora includes not only a market place, but also government buildings, theaters, monuments, festival locations, and even barbecue facilities. The Agora is something bigger than “town square,” and certainly bigger than “marketplace.”

 

The second surprising thing is that almost everything in the agora is pulverized. Not everything – there is a large temple on a hill above it that is so intact that it still has its original roof. We also walked between the great statues that had supported the arches above the entrance to an ancient theater. But you’re more likely in the Agora to see a pedestal than a statue, and a place where a building or monument once was than the actual thing.

 

Sam was patient with our peppering him with every kind of question, even though he was not a professional tour guide. He was not our professional tour guide because professional tour guides are not allowed in the Agora. It’s okay if it’s your daughter’s knowledgeable fiancé explaining to you why there was a statue in the first place and where it went, but it’s not okay if it’s someone who makes a living telling people about classical culture and ruins, or who was plied with a free Mediterranean cruise in exchange for a tour of ancient Athens.

 

As it turns out, the one temple that survived was able to survive because it had been transformed into a Christian church during the relevant period -- the collapse of the Roman Empire.

 

Barbarians from the north laid siege to Athens, and the collapsing Roman Empire was not able to provide a defense, so the citizens of Athens mounted their own defense by building their own barricades from whatever pieces of stone could be moved and piled up, including, with a tragic disregard for their own history, just about every the arch, statue, and temple that could be lifted and piled, but not the Christian temple.

 

Thousands of years after the barbarian threat had passed, we watched a small army of archeologists still trying to piece the Agora back together.

 

The Acropolis

Next we headed up the hill to the Acropolis (“High City”). This is where all tourists go.

 

Up, up, up the streets, up the hill, and finally out of the last remaining bits of shade. The morning sun turned us into fruit leather quickly enough, even if the afternoon sun could have done it a few seconds more quickly.

 

The crowds were substantial, but inconsequential, because there was room enough for everyone to bake on the giant cookie sheet or kiln that is the Acropolis.

 

We saw a great amphitheater, and two great temples, and then the Parthenon itself. You couldn’t go inside any of the buildings, but you could get close enough to the edges and walk all around them, and look inside to where the great statues no longer were, and look up to where the great roofs no longer were. 

 

But there were great pillars, and bits of remaining frieze showing the head of the raging horse that pulled the sun’s chariot back into the sea. The scale of the thing, built in such a way, in such a place, high above the rest of the city, was a shock. Later, in the Acropolis Museum, a movie gave us a vivid look at what was destroyed, when, and how.

 

Next we climbed down the hill to the Theater of Dionysius, a great amphitheater still in use.

 

The Agora, the Acropolis, and the Theater of Dionysius were surrounded by blocks, columns, and arches, laid out neatly on the ground, patiently waiting for the time when they might be reassembled. For every vertical column there were a hundred horizontal columns, arches, and wall fragments lying nearby. The experience of walking through the area was much like what an insect might feel navigating a table on which a 10,000-piece jig saw puzzle had been laid out, but with no one necessarily planning to finish the puzzle.

 

Bookshop Cafe

We had exhausted our water supply, and the sun was vaporizing our sunscreen, so it was time to take a break. Sam led us to a bookshop café with a shady courtyard and all the free liters of water we could drink. In contrast to the Swiss bastards who wanted $9 for a liter of water, the Athenians were solicitous of their guests and served as many liters of ice water as we wanted for no charge at all, and in the grateful glow of that good will we freely ordered smoothies, alcoholic beverages, and a meat-and-cheese plate.

 

Sam found books in the bookstore; I found a talented canary.

 

The Acropolis Museum

Next we went to the great new Acropolis Museum to get some perspective on what we had seen in the high city. Sam had taken time to point out the old Acropolis Museum, small and defunct, although probably nicer than average for museums. But small compared to the NEW Acropolis Museum, which was a Museum worthy of the Acropolis – spacious, multi-storied, elegant, and multi-media-enhanced.

 

Professor Cooper explained to us the significance of the Korous and Kore – statues of somewhat idealized young men and young women that were commonly commissioned. Sam showed us the evolution of the Korai, as the sculptors mastered the intricate shape of the knee bones, and exposed more and more of the calf and thigh musculature. The Korai always bore the same inexplicably bemused smile. The originals were colorfully painted – indeed, the eyes looked eerily hollow without pupils and irises painted on. The women’s hair was combed and braided.

 

An Athenian nearby appeared to be listening to Professor Cooper’s lecture, but in fact was preparing to expound himself, without the benefit of the speaker’s platform we had seen in the Agora. Women today could learn a lot from these Korai, he told us. He challenged me to find myself a spouse as perfect as these ancient Athenian examples. We assured him that I already had one, and he urged me to tell my wife to just for a single day try to look as presentable at these Korai. Women today do not take care of their appearance, they do not comb their hair daily.  We tried to exit the situation as quickly as possible.

 

The museum held ancient statues and friezes and the fragments of a towering winged statue partially reassembled, as well as a well-preserved depiction of a lion dramatically killing a bull.

 

But the best part was perhaps the movie detailing the history of the Parthenon, with many computer-generated animations showing the building, and all of its original artwork in each of the various sections.

 

Sam explained to us how the scholars knew what the Parthenon actually had looked like, given that every stage of the Parthenon’s destruction had occurred before the advent of photography. Some of the pieces had been plundered by the British and were being held illegally in British “museums” of contraband – and thus we have just photos of those, and replicas, and bitter feelings.

 

But the greatest destruction occurred not during the sacking of Rome, but much more recently, when the Parthenon was being used as an armory in the age of gunpowder. A lucky shot by raiders set off an explosion that brought down the roof.

 

The video showed recreations of ancient era looters who had scaled the building with hammers and chisels to remove the artwork – or, as depicted in the movie – to carelessly let a few pieces fall to the ground and shatter.  Whoops.  It was an effective piece of anti-looter propaganda.  I was ready to do some serious damage to those haughty and irresponsible animated looters, if I only had the chance.  And then when the animated hand grenade set off the explosion that took down most of the building, I was ready to do in the animators themselves if necessary.

 

Sam explained to us which of the relics were original, which were accurate recreations, which were extremely reliable guesses, and which were only good guesses.

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The National Museum

 

We returned to the hotel to freshen up, then continued on our journey through antiquity when Sam took us by subway to the National Museum, which had “all the best pieces,” including just about anything that could be carried from the sites of antiquity, anything portable.

 

And indeed it did.

 

We saw statues and urns and pottery and frescos, and rhyta, even though before we went in we didn’t even know what rhyta were (besides deadly Jotto words).  There were models of ancient ships, and previews of pieces that we WOULD learn about in a couple days at the ruins of Akrotiri, but were previewing now, because they had been relocated from Akrotiri to the National Museum.

 

After having seen the ancient Agora, the Acropolis, and the Acropolis Museum, it felt like we had seen everything, but the National Museum showed us that we had seen almost nothing.

 

Probably the most interesting and amazing exhibits in the National Museum involved the Mycenean civilization, which flourished around 1600 BCE, more than a thousand years before Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle walked the streets of classical Greece.

 

More than a thousand years before classical Greece, the Myceneans were creating elaborate death masks of hammered gold, and forged swords with blades and hilts whose intricacy is apparent almost four thousand years later.

 

Historians know little of the Myceneans, because the civilization did not have advanced written language, and because there is that much less of their civilization that has survived the thousands of years. 

 

There is a good chance that the mega-eruption that destroyed Akrotiri and turned Santorini into just a caldera-rim in the sea also did in the Myceneans, especially in nearby Crete. A few days later, when I asserted this proposition in a different context, Gianna rebutted it and said the timing was not right. We both turned to Sam to umpire the dispute, and Sam said, “You two are an ancient history conference.”

 

And there were relics from even older civilizations than the Myceneans – thousands of years BC – and these were cruder than Mycenean work, like a clay horse that looked more like a giraffe, but still better than I could do.

 

Another interesting discovery was that the few sculptures that survived the centuries best – basically in perfect condition – were those that were lost in ancient shipwrecks.  It turns out that the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea is a great place to put your statues for safekeeping for a dozen-or-so centuries.  The bronzes recovered from ancient shipwrecks were in perfect condition. 

 

It must have been heartbreaking for someone to have lost those pieces to a stormy sea one ancient day, but I imagine it would have been a comfort to the artists, if not the owners, to know that the statues would as a result be among the best preserved and therefore most sought-after and cared for of the antiquities.

 

Aaron had skipped the National Gallery for one of the World Cup matches, but he arrived after awhile by foot, instead of by subway, and thus when we rendezvoused he was able to tell us what we had missed above ground during our subway ride, which was a political demonstration in which the future citizens of Free Athens complained of some condition – possibly the wrongful imprisonment of 35 of their comrades.

 

The police arrived and broke up the demonstration after someone started throwing things.

 

That Aaron “passed by” the demonstration long enough to have such a detailed account of what went wrong and what happened next suggests who actually started the trouble.

 

The physical exhaustion of the day resulted in 20,000 steps and 24 flights climbed for me – even more for Aaron and Toni who consistently found extra ways to burn energy, like an additional hike around Athens late at night, or walking instead of taking the subway – and so we all slept like rocks that night.

 

We slept like rocks that were awoken by the drumming in the Piazza, which ended at precisely 2:35am.

 

Except for Gianna, who did not hear the drumming that night.