Transcript Perrottet on Greece

Tony Perrottet
Pagan Holiday
Greece and Turkey
Hermes’ Highways
Greece was the busiest part of the ancient
circuit
Greeks sold visions of their own distant past
Would-be guides skulked around (NB: in today’s
Greece, everybody leaves you alone)
Educated Romans knew Greek language,
thought, literature, philosophy
Since Rome now ruled Greece, however, the
relationship between tourist and local was tense
• Travel to Greece
was a rite of
passage
• Romantic poets
rekindled a love of
Greece
High Expectations
• The Acropolis
• “Marble stairways zigzagged up its sheer cliffs,
where worshipers filed like ants.” (114)
• In contrast to Rome, Athens was harmonious and
beautiful
• NB: Athens was to Rome as 2011 is to
Michelangelo’s Florence
• Philosophers argued immortality in courtyards
and tavernas
• City was full of art, theatre, poetry
Eternal Athens
• Perrottets can’t help being enthralled
• In the Plaka, (area below the Acropolis), the
ages seem to blur
• Yesterday’s bars= today’s coffee houses
• Greek symposia = drinking parties
• “Hetairai” = skilled companions
• Meanwhile, Les buys Perrottet worry beads,
enjoying the scene
Help
• Even for the Romans, Athens was a lot of info
to assimilate
• (NB: This is why I returned to Greece with a
school trip—and 2 professors)
• The genre of guidebook writing (periegeseis) is
born
• Note Pausanias’ Description of Greece--10
papyrus scrolls of info written over 20-30
years!
Ancient vs. Modern
• Wants to trace the Eleusinian Mysteries (cult
of Demeter and Persephone)
• Very scary expedition due to modern traffic.
• “I would have turned around and gone back to
our hotel if I could have found an exit from the
highway. It even made me think fondly of
Naples. Italians may be maniacs on the road,
but they’re actually good drivers.” (139)
Delphi, Greek Machu Picchu
Sparta
• Ancients visited there too, surprised to find
peasants (150)
• At the time of the Romans, the Spartans
played up their tough training
• Today in contrast, Sparta is a docile town
rarely visited
Olympia
• Pausanias devotes two volumes to Olympia’s
monuments, but the visitors mostly wanted to
watch the games
• They would put up with horrible conditions to do
so
• Lucian complains of the “endless mass of people”
but visits at least four Olympiads
• Note: Hercules founds the games in 776 BC
• To win: stepping stone to deification
• Any free man who could speak Greek could
compete
• A lot more went on than the Games, namely
prostitution and partying.
• It included one of the Seven Wonders of the
World: Phidias’ statue of Olympian Zeus.
• Note that it got buried during the Middle Ages
• Discovered by a British man in 1766; he noticed
that peasants were finding statues in their lawns
• Today: “Segments of the temple’s Doric columns
lie tumbled in the grass like limestone cogs (166)
Et in Arcadia Ego
• “I too am in Arcadia,” signifying the transitory
nature of life
• Mythic blueprint for earthly paradise, ancient
Greek’s Shangri-La, idyllic and serene
• Actually, for the Greeks it was an untamed forest
filled with beasts
• For the Romans it was the hardest place to get to
• For the Perrottets, it represented sudden, bad
weather!
The Transit of Venus
• Ancients mostly wanted to visit Rhodes and Delos
• Very hard to get around.
• The captains were given to premonition. “They
were notorious for delaying departures at the
slightest ill omen.” (191)
• Delays were unavoidable
• The biggest fear was getting shipwrecked.
• And pirates
Delos
• Pilgrims continually went to the island that
was a sanctuary, the birthplace of Apollo and
Artemis.
• Today no one is allowed to live there—it’s still
being excavated
Rhodes
• Everyone went to see the Colossus of Rhodes
• The popular myth is that it stood astride the
harbor, but that would have been impossible
given the technology of the times; instead it
would have stood erect.
• It fell in 226 BC, after standing 50 years.
• Even still, Pliny the elder thought it was a
marvel, and reported climbing inside it
Asia Minor
• The Romans got to experience another
continent without really leaving “home.”
• It was the best kind of “cultural fusion.”
• “Here was an entirely recognizable world,
where Greek was spoken and Rome’s most
civilized traditions were upheld, and yet with
hints of the Hittite, Assyrian, and Persian past
suffusing the air like unfamiliar spice at a
market.” (209)
Into Turkey
• At Halicarnassus (Bodrum), the ancients went
to see the Mausoleum, another Wonder of
the Ancient World, which “soared above the
coastline like a beached cruise liner.” (211)
• Then they pressed on to Troy
• The Perrottets can’t shake “the surreal feeling
that Turkey was far less alien than Greece—
and not just because every street sign was in
Latin” (213)
• Les feels she’s developed Stendahl’s
Syndrome, a condition caused by too much
exposure to the remote past. (Stendahl
started to feel faint after visiting one church
too many in Florence.)
• Tony, however, presses on.
Ephesus
• The Temple of Artemis was another World
Wonder
• The city was also “a nonstop carnival” with
musicians and ballerinas.
• “Everything was tolerated on Ephesus—except
narrow-minded moralizing” (215)
• Today, the site competes with Pompeii as a
supreme archaeological experience
• “Even Stendahl wouldn’t have missed
Ephesus,” I assured Les.
• Tony: No
where is it
more clear
that the past
really
happened.
The Library of Celsus
Homer’s Heroes
• Troy: site of the ten-year fight with the Greeks
as depicted in Homer’s Iliad.
• Connotation for the Romans: supposedly
some refugees escaped, sailed to Rome, and
founded the city
• “Even for those who have never read a line of
Homer, the stories of the siege remain
brilliantly alive, embedded deep in the
Western psyche.”
• Christians knew about Troy but avoided it,
crossing themselves as they passed by.
• Did Troy really happen?
• Heinrich Schliemann excavated Troy in 1870s,
but was confused as to which level he was at.
• To the untrained eye, Troy is still a confusing
site
Personal Ties
• Australia and New Zealand both claim that
they can trace their ancestors to the fight in
the Dardanelles.
• WWI: New Zealand and Australia fight a futile
battle to push back the Turks at Gallipoli, on
the peninsula opposite Troy.
• Perrottet’s uncle died in this battle; Tony goes
to find the marble panel that displays his
name