Day four; Saturday 12th September. The Romans in Athens

The Library of Hadrian was only opened to visitors for the first time in 2004, according to the timeline in the excellent tiny museum there.  I can remember, back in 1994 or whenever it was, looking down into it from the road and thinking how huge it must have been.   Now that one can get inside, it seems even bigger.  It’s enormous.

The marble façade of the Library of Hadrian

Imagine being the most powerful man in the Empire and choosing to build a public library for your favourite place, just because you could; a library housing almost 17,000 books, with reading rooms, lecture theatres, and a giant courtyard shaded by arcades and cooled by fountains...  What a wonderful thing to do. 

The façade again

Detail of a column base

General view of Hadrian's Library and the remains of the Byzantine church of the Virgin

It seems the courtyard alone was a good hundred metres across.  I imagine it must have been a haven of peace and quiet; but I suppose it might equally have been the busiest and most fashionable venue in town. 

A game-board carved into one of the marble steps round the courtyard.  I like the idea of ancient Roman gents sitting in the shade here, chatting and playing some kind of game with counters; just like modern old gentlemen with their backgammon sets, in cafes all over the Mediterranean...

 

In Byzantine times a whole good-sized church was built inside the courtyard.  There are parts of this still standing, as well as some lovely fragments of the mosaic floor and stacks of Byzantine masonry work, just piled up to one side.

 

 

Pausanias seems to rather like the emperor Hadrian, and I’m inclined to agree.  He endowed public works of every kind, all over the Empire (including of course our very own Wall, back in Britain, albeit that was for slightly different reasons).  In Athens he built this library, a temple of all the Gods , a decorative gateway between the old and new parts of town, and an aqueduct and reservoir system, and finished the building of the new forum and the temple of Olympian Zeus.  And he’s rather a romantic figure; one of the most significant facts we know about his life is a love story.  Unfortunately it’s a tragic love story.  Hadrian lost the love of his life, a young Greek man named Antinous (who drowned in the River Nile, poor chap).  He never got over it, and spent the rest of his life commemorating him everywhere he went.   Maybe I’m just a sentimentalist, but I find that heartbreaking.  And he was a bit more consistently constructive with his grief than Alexander, who went in for a certain amount of trashing stuff after Hephaistion died. 

A portrait bust of the Emperor Hadrian, in the small site museum

Also in the museum; a Roman statue of Nike

And a fragment of painted wall plaster showing an actor

My apologies; I’m digressing.  AKA rambling.  A bad habit, and coincidentally one which I share with our friend Pausanias. 

It’s one of the reasons I like him, to be honest.  He’s such a natterer.  He’s easily distracted.  He goes off on tangents.  He’s sceptical about some stories and completely convinced of others, and deeply pious about the Mysteries and his vow of silence as an initiate.  He gets enthusiastic talking about snakes or locusts or unusual orchids.  He repeats tall tales and then excuses himself with “That’s what they say in those parts, anyway”.  He’ll suddenly set out to elaborate on someone’s ancestry, or tell a complicated bit of history (his digression on the career of Pyrrhos of Epiros runs to ten pages in the Penguin edition).  And then he’ll say “But now to get back to the point...” hastily.  He really has a very informal way of writing.  I’m not sure he’s that great a stylist, but his voice is all the more fresh and human because of that.  It’s rather like reading a blog; only one written by a blogger from the 2^nd century.  And because I share a lot of his interests (history, mythology, statues, buildings, art and artists, religion, natural history...) I find him very agreeable company.  I can’t write a proper Guide to Greece.  But like Pausanias, I can ramble for England, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, sorry, that was rambling again, wasn’t it?

I spent an hour this morning in the Library of Hadrian and I’m now in the Roman Agora excavation.   I’m writing this sitting on a wall in the shade of a grey marble pillar. 

The Gate of Athena Archegetis, the formal west entrance to the Roman Agora

Close-up of the base of a pillar on the gate, showing the marks where at some point there were actual gates or grilles fixed across the entrance

Both these Roman sites are really impressive.  They have that Roman sense of scale and solidity.  Where the ancient Agora would have been an organic, crowded space full of shrines and stoas and statues, built of every kind of stone and sunbaked brick and wood, the Roman one was all shiny new marble, a big square portico with matching arcades of shops all round.  It must have seemed tremendously neat and new and well-organised in comparison. 

Contrasting marble used in the arcades of the Roman Agora

It's also the home of the extraordinary Tower of the Winds, AKA the Horologion of Andronikos Kyrrhestes (I think I've spelled that right).  This was a tower topped with weather vanes and sundials, and housing a water clock; it's under restoration at the moment.  It's another thing Pausanias doesn't bother about.  It was probably built only a decade or so before he visited, and he's not often interested in anything new.  Besides, to him, it may have been quite a commonplace object; the equivalent of the clock and temperature display you see sometimes outside a pharmacy.

The eastern entrance, with a monumental marble staircase and the Tower of the Winds (under wraps for restoration) beyond

 

Pausanias doesn’t even mention the Roman Agora as a whole.  I don’t suppose he found anything very interesting in the equivalent of a large new shopping mall; whereas Hadrian’s Library gets his enthusiastic praise. 

One of the long arcades, which would have been lined with shops

 

Today it’s a fairly quiet site, lined with graceful Ionic columns and full of bees and mayflies.  I didn't manage to photograph any of the mayflies this time!  There’s still water flowing out of the channel at the fountain house on the south side (hence the mayflies, I imagine).  I expect I’ll see a tortoise sooner or later.  I’ve seen four so far, as there was one in the Library as well. 

Wildflowers (some sort of milfoil, I think?)

The latest tortoise!

Remains of the Roman public toilets; these could probably seat around 60 people, on long communal benches with holes

 

The magnificent carved basin of the fountain house on the south side of the Roman Agora

And a trickle of water still flowing through this outlet channel

I’m tired, I have to admit.  I’ve been ruin-visiting pretty solidly for three days, and walking almost non-stop as a result.  My feet are decidedly sore today.  I think I may call time on my multi-site pass after this, instead of trying to get the Temple of Olympian Zeus before three pm.  It’s one-thirty now and I’d like some lunch; the needs of the body, and all that.  Although there’s a bit of cloud cover today, it’s still very hot (about 35 degrees C at the moment, that’s something like 95 in old money) and it does get a bit shattering after a while walking around in that.  I’ve been sitting very peacefully here in the shade, on a slab in one of the Roman shop arcades.  But lunch is calling me.

Later; back at the Veranda restaurant.

Very full of horta (a kind of cooked salad, I think mostly spinach beet by the taste) and stuffed tomato.  It’s getting more muggy.  I almost wonder if it may be going to rain.  It would be rather welcome, to be honest, provided I had time to shut my laptop down.  It might cool me off.

After my food I’ve spent a while sketching the tourists passing by, and drawing a couple of details of the buildings on Panos St.  I’ve bought myself a basic drawing pen as an experiment.  Usually I draw in pencil but this is a stronger, sharper line.  It isn’t as sympathetic a medium in some ways, for example getting any kind of shading is tricky; but it disciplines me to take care and not scribble.  I’m fairly pleased with the results.  But I have to admit, getting some drawing done is chiefly making me aware of how little drawing I’ve been doing in recent years.

 

All the more reason to get back in practice, then.

Later; just to add, no, it didn't rain!