Friday 25th; Ancient Asini - ’Ασíνην τε...

I must have been about sixteen when I first pulled it out of one of my mother's bookcases; a battered uncorrected proof copy of the Bodley Head edition of collected poems of George Seferis, translated, if memory serves me, by Rex Warner.  Beautiful haunting poems that look at the past and present and what we are to make of them, and are melancholy and unflinching and know how to make connections.

One of his most famous poems, "The King of Asini", is partly about a trip to the ancient citadel of Asini, which I visited today.  You can read a good translation here; http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181850

I've wanted to go there ever since I read that poem, so for me this was a double pilgrimage.  Pausanias mentions it, although it was in ruins when he visited, and Seferis' poem gave it a tantalising resonance.  Homer mentions it too; just two words, in the catalogue of ships in the Iliad.  ’Ασíνην τε, "...and Asini" - one place name in a long list, one name among all those who sent ships to Troy with Agamemnon. 

The rock of Asini, seen from the bus stop

The first thing you see as you come down towards the site is this massive chunk of 3rd century BC fortification wall

 

 

But then you see this as well

It's a beautiful spot and fully as haunting as I'd dared to dream.  It's been re-excavated in recent years, and a major project to tidy the site up and make access easier and safer is almost completed. 

Mind you, the first thing I did when I arrived on the bus from Nafplio was to get in my bikini and go for a swim.  It's a stunning beach, small coloured shingle sloping into crystal-clear water, with the rocky promontory of the ancient city to one side and a smaller ridge of land the other way which cuts it off from the sandier but more developed beach of Tolon.

Tolon in the distance; contrary to my snobbish expectation, Tolon actually looks rather nice

But this is nicer...

 

That took me very pleasantly to lunch-time, so I then went up to the little tavern overlooking the beach and ate anchovies and salad, and was buttered-up-to by the two resident cats.  Eating freshly-cooked fish sitting twenty feet from the sea is pretty paradisal.

 

 

 

A quick sketch of the view from my table

 

Then I headed up into the site.  It must have been another of these small seaside cities that today wouldn't seem more than a big village, like ancient Aigina.  But where Aigina was a low hill, this is a dramatic rock, almost sheer in places. 

The views are stunning

 

Part of the town was right in the heights and part was lower down, above the harbour and spreading across a saddle of land which connects the promontory to the neighbouring Barbouna Hill.  On the hill was a shrine of Apollo Pythaieus, with cemeteries and other shrines below it, and then the walls would have cut off the main town on its rock above the sea.

The Barbouna Hill, site of the Temple of Apollo Pausanias mentions

The shrine was respected and left untouched when Argos sacked Asini in the Classical era, but sadly has been completely destroyed in modern times, along with most of the ruined city excavated in the 1920s.  The Asini promontory was used as an artillery base by the occupying Italian army during the second World War, and they demolished quite a lot for building stone, and built on top of some of the rest.  The site of the Apollo temple is apparently now a gun emplacement.  I couldn't get up there, the Barbouna Hill is fenced off and clearly private property. 

But a good clear path has been laid out through the site itself, so that you can see all the extant remains and avoid turning an ankle scrambling freestyle.  The walls are the most impressive sight; Hellenistic, with patchings-up from the Byzantine era, they're built of massive cyclopean masonry and in places still stand seven or eight metres high. 

There are the remains of cisterns, dozens of them, clearly it was a dry place as it seems every household had at least a couple.  There are remains of wine presses.  There are rock-cut stairways that must have functioned like stepped streets, and scanty foundations of buildings here and there. 

Part of a ruined wine press

Then there are remains left by the Italians - gun emplacements, a badly smashed pill-box, some tunnels (signposted "No entry" firmly), another emplacement of some sort tumbled whole onto the beach below... 

The concrete platform of a machine gun emplacement

Tunnels, by the looks of it under excavation at present 

The remains of a pill box, looking out to sea

Drepano Beach, with an unidentifiable (by me at least) broken concrete structure in the foreground

Beside the road is a very pretty small church, the Dormition of the Virgin, next to some quite well-preserved Roman baths. 

There are the inevitable wildflowers and insect life, and lizards, though this time I didn't manage to photograph any lizards. 

 

I did get a grasshopper though!

 

So another of those quiet, atmospheric places that give me, romantic that I am, a real sense of touching the past.  And as you can see, another beautifully sunny day.