I saw quite a lot of the things on my “Pausanias check list”
today; the state burial ground and the Pompeion, where the Panathenaic
processions were kitted up and from where they set off; the ancient walls he mentions,
and several of the gates; the area by the Melitian Gate, where Thucydides was
buried; the Klepsydra spring and the Caves of Apollo and Pan; the site of the
secret stairway where the young girls serving on the Acropolis were sent down
into the dark to retrieve mysterious sacred objects in a covered basket; and
the Cave of Aglauros, and the site of the shrine of the Dioskouroi... I’ve been to the Kerameikos, and round a
section of the ancient walls, over the Hill of the Nymphs and the Pnyx. Then after lunch I spent a couple of hours
walking along the slopes on the north side of the Acropolis, right up under the
rock.
The Kerameikos; looking along the road where public servants and war heroes were buried in state
And looking along the Sacred Way. Both these pictures were taken from outside the archaeological zone, looking down from Piraeus St
It’s fascinating to realise how differently I see the city,
compared to Pausanias. For a start, modern
Athens is divided up so differently, and criss-crossed with roads and railway lines
and so forth. And (for example) to a
visitor today, the Sacred Way and the Pompeion, and the state burials along the
main road from the Dipylon Gate, automatically go together, because they’re in
the same archaeological site. To
Pausanias they are totally different things.
He clearly made his way to the Sacred Gate when he arrived from Piraeus,
since he talks about the Pompeion almost immediately and describes it as
something you see when you’re first inside the city (it’s just inside the
Sacred Gate, right where the Panathenaic Way joins the Iera Odos, the Sacred
Way to Eleusis).
The Sacred Way, with the channel of the Eridanos on the left
The remains of the Pompeion, from where sacred processions started
But the Dipylon Gate is right next door to the Sacred Gate;
the stretch of wall between them measures perhaps twenty or thirty metres at
most. Yet he writes about the state
burial ground right at the end of his section on Athens. Maybe he left by the Dipylon? Or visited them on different days? Maybe he just saw them as totally different
because to him they were?
Part of the ancient fortification wall between the Sacred and Dipylon Gates
A votive niche in the wall, beside the Sacred Gate
The Kerameikos archaeological site covers two of the ancient
city gates (the Dipylon and the Sacred Gate), a stretch of fortification wall, three
ancient roads, and a section of the great mass of tombs that lined roads out of
every city and town in Classical and Roman times. It’s a calm, green place; startlingly calm
considering that the busy traffic of Piraeus Street flows steadily all day past
one side of the dig.
The Street of Tombs
The shrine of the Tritopatores, ancestral protective spirits who bestowed fertility on newlyweds
There’s an
excellent small museum, where finds from the site are exhibited along with the
more precious original gravestones.
The farewell clasp of hands is a common motif on carved gravestones
Detail from another scene of farewell
Three marvellous new treasures in the museum are these archaic statues found during recent excavations; a lion, a kouros and a beautiful sphinx
And I just fell for this little chap, who was buried as a grave offering in something like the 7th century BC.
Then
one descends to the 5th century ground level, and wanders along
those ancient roadways, along the banks of the Eridanos river and in among the
throngs of tombs. I keep using the word
“atmospheric” as I write but it’s the best term I know for this kind of
experience. There are magnificent
sculptures among the tombs, but also a lot of characteristically plain ones
(there were a couple of periods of history when having fancy decorated
gravestones was banned). A big
part of the reason to go there is the tremendous atmosphere. Walking along the ancient roads and seeing
the tombstones among the pines and olive trees to either side is haunting.
And there are tortoises.
I thought it was remarkable when I met one in the Agora; in the
Kerameikos I met two. One was trying to
mate with the other. She didn’t seem
terribly interested, but in the end she let him. I had no idea how noisy mating tortoises are,
so I’ve learned something new today.
The female kept tucking herself in; she really wasn't keen at first...
The Eridanos was a proper river in Classical times. I know from that long-ago visit in a wet
winter that with enough rainfall it’s still quite capable of becoming a real
stream. My Mum, who was with me, can
vouch for that, and also for the prodigious quantity of frogs living there. I didn’t see any frogs this time, though
there was still a tiny trickle of water, even in this heat. Instead, there were dragonflies. I even managed to photograph one, which I’m
quite chuffed about.
After the Kerameikos, I followed some directions I’d copied
from John Freely’s marvellous book “Strolling through Athens” (highly
recommended!) in order to go along the line of the ancient city walls, over the
Hill of the Nymphs, past the site of the shrine of Zeus the Lookout (you can
see why the epithet; the view is very fine) and up to the Pnyx. That’s where the Assembly of citizens used to
meet to hear public speakers and vote on important issues. Only adult free-born native male citizens,
mind you. Early democracy was distinctly
limited by our standards, though still an extraordinary innovation for all
that.
A bit of stray ancient wall found during road works
The church of Agia Marina stands on the site of a shrine known as Zeus the Lookout
The view from Zeus the Lookout towards the Acropolis
The Hill of the Nymphs was sacred to the protectresses of marriage, pregnant woman and young children
The Pnyx, where the Athenian Assembly met to vote
I’m afraid I didn’t stay long on the Pnyx as it’s an
exposed, shadeless site full of bare rock reflecting the sun, and it was
scorchingly hot up there. I headed back
under the trees to stroll down into the saddle between the Hill of the Nymphs
and the Hill of the Muses. It’s lovely
along there, another of these magically peaceful spots, with the resinous
scented air full of the buzz of cicadas, and bits of the Diateichisma, the old
cross-wall between the Long Walls, popping up here and there. I took a photo of the hollow way along which
Thucydides is supposed to have been buried; apparently he was murdered just
after being recalled from exile. Plus Ça change...
Part of the cross-wall, the Diateichisma, that ran between the famous Long Walls, so that if the Piraeus fell then the heart of Athens could be cut off
The hollow below the Hill of the Nymphs. The Melitian Gate stood here and the historian Thucydides is supposed to have been buried just outside
I’d heard there was a very good cafe next to the little Byzantine
church of Agios Dimitrios Loumabardiaris, and I was heading there for
lunch. Very hot and tired, of
course. I’m sorry to report that it is
closed, and looks to have been so for a while.
It’s a good thing I’ve got into the recommended diabetic habit of
carrying a lot of snacks with me; as a result I was able to sit down and eat
the lot for my lunch. A bit on the small
side, I’ll grant you, but healthy; it set me up for the rest of the afternoon,
which is all that matters.
Agios Dimitrios Loumbardiaris
I sat in the shade by the church for a good while after my eccentric lunch. Then I headed uphill, past the Areopagus, and
into that next bit of archaeology, the north slopes. Like the Kerameikos, relatively
little-visited, but full of interest.
A thing I’m finding really sad about reading my copy of
Pausanias as I explore is the moments when there’s a gap in the text. I’m using the Penguin Classics edition, which
was translated by Peter Levi in (pause to check) 1966. I suppose it’s just possible some scholar
has discovered a more complete version since then. But for me, with this edition, this is a book
with bits missing, and there’s a frustrating hole right in the middle of the
Athens section.
The north slope of the Acropolis is full of ancient sacred
sites; Pausanias only mentions a couple (the Klepsydra spring and the Cave of
Apollo) and then there’s this lacuna, and the text continues with a story about
Pan. He must have also described the
Cave of Zeus Akraios and the Cave of Pan; they’re all in a row, great dark hollows out
of the rock, directly above the spring. The
fact he’s talking about Pan when the text resumes surely tells us that
much. But how irritating not to have
everything he’d got to say. He is (in
his rambling, chatty way!) such a mine of information.
Looking up at the cave shrines from below
Inside the Cave of Pan
The cave shrine of Apollo
The Cave of Zeus Akraios
The double entrance of the Cave of Pan
Looking down into the remains of the Klepsydra spring and fountain-house
I climbed up to the caves and sat myself down on a rock to
draw the mouths of the Cave of Pan. It
has a double entrance, with a neat and rather man-made-looking arch and a
spectacular natural cleft just in front.
I was up there for about forty minutes, sitting happily in the shade
with my sketchbook and water bottle, and didn’t see a soul. It feels an appropriate spot for a god like
Pan, a lover of wild high places.
Pausanias doesn’t mention the precinct of Aphrodite at all,
which is a bit further round, and full of rock-cut niches where votive
offerings would have been placed. I saw
some of those yesterday, in the Acropolis Museum.
The shrine of Aphrodite
He refers obliquely to the secret stairway when he’s writing
about the shrines on the Acropolis; that’s when he talks about the rite with
the covered basket.
The opening of the Mycenaean spring, reached by a secret stairway from the top of the Acropolis; now blocked off, which at least saves a few visitors' necks each year...
He doesn’t mention one of the things I found most amazing,
the spot near there where there’s a massive disk of white marble, six feet
across, just lying on the ground; one of the column drums of the unfinished
“Pre-Parthenon”. After the invading
Persians had sacked and burned the Acropolis in 480BC, the Athenians decided to
rebuild the Mycenaean-era fortification walls; and being in a hurry they used
whatever came to hand, including building stone from the uncompleted new temple
which had just been burned to the ground.
There’s a whole section of the Acropolis wall on the north side that’s
composed of stone column drums laid side by side (& very odd it looks
too).
Wall section built of giant column drums
It would seem they dropped one.
I’ve sat on it. I’ve
sat on part of the unfinished first Parthenon.
It’s a lousy photograph, though.
I didn't check if this had come out okay, and found I'd managed to cut my head off.
The Cave of Aglauros is right at the eastern end of the
rock. Aglauros has a pretty
extraordinary mythology.
The story goes that the goddess Athena was
sexually assaulted one day by her half-brother Hephaistos. She fought him off, of course, being the warrior goddess, but some of
his semen fell on the ground and a monster child appeared; Erichthonios, whose
body ended in two fat snakes instead of legs.
Athena had compassion for him, despite his unpleasant origins. She picked him up and put him in a basket,
covered it, and gave it to King Pandion of Athens, instructing him to take care
of the contents but not to look at them at all (don’t ask, I know this isn’t
remotely logical). Pandion promptly gave
the basket to his three daughters. One
of them, Pandrosos, obediently didn’t look; the other two, Herse and Aglauros,
peeked, and saw the baby with the snake-legs.
Pausanias tells us they were punished by going mad with
fear, and threw themselves off the top of the Acropolis.
But the information board at the foot of the
cave sanctuary says that Aglauros jumped off the rock after a prophecy had said
Athens would be saved from a siege if one of the royal family laid down their
life of their own free will.
I think I
prefer that version. It makes
sense that Aglauros would have a sacred shrine if she had done a noble deed, rather
than if she had been disobedient and insane. And how come Herse doesn’t merit a shrine, or
a share in the shrine, if she also went mad and jumped? The other version
has a narrative consistency that pleases me.
Also it ties up with all the many other folk tales and traditions of a willing self-sacrifice being needed to ensure
victory. Another legendary king of
Athens, Kodros, is supposed to have done the exact same thing, for one.
But of course, I did read Mary Renault’s “The King Must Die”
at an impressionable age. Also highly
recommended; but it may be influencing my thinking just a wee bit here...
Apparently the shrine of the Dioskouroi was just below the
shrine of Aglauros and a bit to the side; in his footnotes Peter Levi suggests
it was probably near the little Byzantine church of the Metamorphosis, which I
visited and lit a candle in earlier. So
without realising it, I’ve already been there.
The Kerameikos and the north slope of the Acropolis were
both included in my multi-site pass. I
don’t know whether to be glad or sad that even so, both seem still to be very
little visited. After all, only
yesterday I was sighing over how much busier the Theatre of Dionysos has become
and wondering if the extra visitors are part of what has lessened its
atmosphere.
Yet if no-one does visit these “minor” places, the
justification for keeping them open becomes doubtful. And they are fascinating; I’m absolutely
thrilled to be able to see them. Plus,
each of these sites is keeping several people in employment (a couple of ticket
officers, a couple of site guards, a cleaner for the museums and loos) and that
is surely a good thing.
It’s been another terrific day. But once again I’m pretty tired. Tomorrow I really must make an effort to take
things a bit more slowly.
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