Kerameikos in Athens

The Kerameikos site in Athens feels at first a bit of a disappointment. It’s not well signed and so not that easy to find. The Kerameikos underground station is in the middle of a business regeneration area, an old gas works that has been turned into small business units for design and tech companies. The surrounding bars are equally trendy.

The Kerameikos site contains remnants of the old city walls, two of the main gates to the city and some reconstructed grave steles. But it’s bounded to one side by a main road and enclosed by modern buildings. However, once you start to explore it, it seems to have an atmosphere all of its own and it’s full of reminders of the ancient Greeks . It also has one of the best small museums in the city.

The site is crossed by one of the best preserved sections of the ancient city wall that was built by Themistocles in 479-478 BC to protect Athens against the Persians. I really like the solidity and beautiful design of these walls, incredible considering the speed at which they were thrown up. Although destroyed by Sulla in 86 BC they were rebuilt under Justinian and lasted in total for about 1,000 years.

The site also incorporates two city gates: the Sacred Gate which was only used for processions to celebrate the Mysteries at Eleusis, and the road to Peiraias which ran through the Dyplon gate.

Originally the Kerameikos was the area of the potters who used the clay from the River Eridanos that flowed alongside the Peiraias road and then it became the place (the Demosion Sema) where notable Athenians (including Lycurgus, Pericles and Kleisthenes) and the war dead were buried. There are very few remains of the public cemetery still left, but one notable exception is a monument to the Lacedaemonians (Spartans) who were killed in 403 BC which is still in good condition (minus its top and contents). It was excavated during the First World War and the skeletons of the Spartan soldiers were found intact.

The road to Peiraias passed by Plato’s academy (now buried under the concrete of the road and buildings beyond the perimeter wall in the photograph below).

The open area to the left in the above picture was used for funeral games and was also probably the site of Pericles Funeral Oration in 430 BC in honour of the Athenians killed in the Peloponnesian Wars.

The site also contains the remains of a building called the Pompeion that dates back to 400 BC. Here those involved in the great Panathenaic festival procession (that also features in the Parthenon Marbles) were robed and pre-festival feasting took place. At one time it apparently held a bronze statue of Socrates, but the building was destroyed by Sulla in 86 BC.

The Street of the Tombs contains mainly replicas steles, the originals of many of which are in the site museum.

I think the museum is the best part of the site, particularly the grave steles. This is a cavalry soldier:

The grave stele for two sisters:

A touching stele of a mother and baby who presumably dies in childbirth:

This is an unusual one with a dead woman looking into a mirror:

and this one of a man holding some form of implement. Having recently seen some Bhangra dhol drummers performing and using curved drumsticks, I wonder whether it is actually a Greek drumstick he is looking at so intently:

I like the little dog jumping up at the youth in this one:

Here is am interesting sculpture on the side of a basin:

and a scene of horseman on the side of a sarcophagus:

There are a couple of sphynxes on display:

and a lion:

Some pottery that looks Minoan in style:

Finally, one of my favourite items is this brilliantly realised bull that originally stood on an arch stele raised in honour of Dionysios of Kallytos.

Valley of the Temples, Agrigento

The Valley of the Temples (Valle dei Templi) near Agrigento is a stunning series of monuments built by the Ancient Greek colony in Sicily. ‘Valley’ is a bit of a misnomer though as the temple complex is spread along a ridge and connected by a sacred way.

The first temple you come across was thought at one time to be dedicated to Hera (Giunone), but that’s probably not the case. It is a massive temple, with an enormous 10 step altar in front of it. It was built like most of the temples on the site in the 5th century BC from the loot taken from the Carthaginians following their defeat in 480 BC.

Along the sacred way are the remains of the settlement’s protective walls. At some point in the Christian era rock tombs were hollowed out of these walls.

The next major site along the sacred way is one of the most complete Greek temples in the world, the so-called Temple of Concordia. An inscription was found nearby with the word Concordia and this was taken to be the name of the Temple. Judging by its size it looks more like a Temple of Zeus (although there is another huge temple to Zeus at the end of the sacred way). It is in incredible condition and gives a real sense of what the temples would have looked like to their original builders.

In the 4th-5th century AD, the temple was turned into a Christian basilica by a local bishop, a common practice to Christianise pagan sites in places where the newly converted were used to gathering when they practised their old religion. Another very good example of this practice is the church dedicated to St George that was built in the Temple of Ifaistos in the Ancient Agora in Athens which is similarly extremely very well-preserved (see my earlier blog post on the Agora here).

The stone looks very crumbly and in places you can still see some of the original stucco that has helped to preserve it over the centuries.

The third temple on the site, the oldest, is dedicated to Ercole (Hercules) and dates back to the 6th century BC. Apart from a few remaining columns however, the site is just a jumble of massive stones.

The final temple we visited is dedicated to Zeus It’s on a massive scale, but  again it’s very hard to get a sense of what it looked like originally as it is totally in ruins.

The temperature on site on the day we visited was 30 C and there is virtually no shade. In addition, the sacred way is about 3-4 kms long, so we were very glad to hop on a shuttle bus to get back to the entrance to the site at the end of our visit.

Later that evening we dined at the nearby Re di Grigenti restaurant, the terrace of which has a spectacular view out over the Valley of the Temples.

In Montalbano country

Outside the city of Agrigento in southern Sicily, you’re in Montalbano territory. This is the area where the writer of the Montalbano stories lived and some of the local landmarks feature in the TV series. The Scala dei Turchi (Cliff of the Turks), for example, is a brilliant white, stepped basalt outcrop pictured above.

It’s a beautiful and relaxing spot: the place in the television series where Montalbano met his informer. A few miles down the road and the coastline flattens out to a sandy beach at Torre di Salsa. Further along the coast, the working port town of Porta d’Empedocle also features in the TV series, as does Agrigento police station.

As it happens, we didn’t manage to see much of central Agrigento. But our adventures in Sicilian traffic will have to wait for another post.

 

 

 

Roman mosaics of the Villa Romana Del Casale in Sicily (2)

This is my second post on the Roman mosaics of the Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily – the first can be found here.

Probably the most famous mosaic in the villa is that of the so-called ‘bikini girls’, a group of eight girls engaged in various types of sporting activity, apparently wearing bikinis. This was though apparently standard wear for girls taking part in athletics contests. It’s unusual in its subject matter and is full of life and movement. It’s quite a contrast with the formality of many of the other mosaics in the villa.

The portion of geometric patterned mosaic in the top left hand corner of the room shows that at some later date the owners decided to cover over the mosaic of the girls. In other parts of the villa some of the mosaics were also later covered with a layer of concrete. Perhaps tastes change or, in a Christian era, the mosaic was seen to be too immodest.

The girl in the middle of the bottom row  wears a laurel crown and holds a palm frond, clearly she is being crowned the victor in these games.

One of the rooms has a depiction of children fishing from boats:

Another room has a whole mosaic dedicated to the watery theme based around Poseidon

At the centre of the villa is the basilica, an audience room, where the Master of the estate would have received visitors, probably seated on a throne under the apse. Today all that is left is the floor and part of the walls.

As you can see in the picture below the floor is very uneven in places. This seems odd because none of the other floors in the villa show anything like the buckling that is evident here. Originally the floor and the walls were covered with polished marbles from all over the  Roman Empire in the Mediterranean, including Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor and Syria. Evidence once again of the power and wealth of the original builders and owners of the villa.

One room has a mosaic depicting Ulysses giving a draft of wine to the Cyclops:

In the Master or Mistress’s private rooms there are some interesting portraits:

An image in a bedroom with a bit of seaside postcard erotica:

A dining room with depictions of fruit:

Finally a couple of mosaics of children, one of them playing games

and one of them engaged in a chariot race in a hippodrome:

Apart from wealth, the original owner must have had access to very skilled craftsmen to undertake such extensive mosaic work to such a high standard. It is now believed that many of the craftsmen came from parts of the Roman Empire in Africa.

Roman mosaics of the Villa Romana Del Casale in Sicily (1)

The Villa Romana del Casale is about 5km south west of Piazza Armerina in eastern Sicily and is the site of a 4th century AD Roman estate. It was inhabited until about the 12th century when it was covered by a mudslide and was not rediscovered until the mid 20th century.

The villa has some of the most extensive and high quality mosaics in Italy. Originally, the site was the main centre of a latifundium (a large estate). It is not known who the owner/builder of the villa was, though whoever it was may have had Imperial connections. They certainly had pots of money, as it is estimated that it took 50-60 years to complete the mosaics. I’m sure we’ve all known builders like that…

At the entrance to the villa are a set of baths with dressing area, massage room and hot and cold pools. One of the most interesting mosaics shows the mistress (domina) of the house walking to the baths with two servant girls and possibly two sons or slave boys.

[Apologies for the variations in light and some of the angles of the shots – conditions were not ideal]

There’s also a communal family loo:

Some interesting geometric mosaics:

The mosaic floors also make use of intriguing trompe-l’oeil effects in the borders:

One long corridor that leads towards the basilica features a whole range of wild animals:

Thee are also some quite brutal hunting scenes which remind me of the equally savage animal depictions in the mosaics of the Great Palace in Istanbul that I covered in an earlier post.

The most impressive mosaic is one huge, continuous scene in the corridor in front of the basilica (the reception room of the villa). It depicts the hunting, capture and transfer from Africa to Rome of a huge variety of wild animals for display and combat in the Circus games.

 

‘Take that, for letting that valuable specimen get away!”

They obviously packed the animals carefully to protect them on the sea journey to Rome.

Obviously some animals were more difficult than others to bring on board ship:

At one part of the mosaic there are two richly dressed figures surveying the scene. It is possible that the one on the left is the owner of the villa:

Delphi Museum

I’ve blogged recently about my visit to the archaeological site of Delphi and previously about the remarkable bronze statue of the Charioteer of Delphi in the site museum. Now I would like to write about some of the other exhibits in the museum.

The sculpture in the picture above is on the path that leads to the museum and intrigued me when I looked at it. Sometimes objects just draw your attention without you quite knowing why. It’s something to do with the repetition of the shell shapes, the stylised leaves and whirls, and that strange flower at the top with what appears to be handles half way up the stem. I’ve read somewhere that shells were sometimes used in frescoes to indicate death. In the famous mosaic of Theodora in San Vitale in Ravenna she is shown standing under a scallop-shaped building which some people have taken to mean that the mosaic was made after her death.

A 4th century BC head of a woman (supposedly influenced by Praxiteles):

I liked the next head too, not for any merit in the sculpting, but because it still bears traces of colour from the original paint. Looking at perfect white sculptures in museums today, it is easy to forget that many were painted when they were originally made and that the paint has worn off over the centuries or (as in the case of the Parthenon marbles) been cleaned off to conform to a false concept of what classical sculpture should look like.

A statue described as a ‘philosopher’:

The column of the Dancing Girls was donated to Delphi by Athens in 330BC. It consisted a drum column, on top of which sat this sculpture of girls in dancing attitudes.

Above the statue of the girls originally sat a cauldron and above that an omphalos (the marble original of which is now lost) in a woollen net with precious jewels set at the intersections of the net. On top of the cauldron perched a double eagle. It must have been spectacular!

A statue of Antinoos, lover of the Emperor Hadrian who drowned in the Nile in 130AD in mysterious circumstances.

Various metopes from the Treasury of the Siphnians showing the Gigantomachy (Battle of the Gods against the Giants):

One of my favourite pieces from the museum is this Sphynx donated by the island of Naxos. Originally it stood on a 12.5m marble column next to the Rock of the Sybil. 

This pair of kouroi, a gift from Argos in 580BC, are thought to depict two brother Cleobis and Biton. Their story is rather odd. They dragged their mother in her cart to Argos to worship at the temple of Hera when the oxen were not available. At the temple the mother asked Hera for a gift for her sons and she granted them a peaceful death in their sleep.  A case of be careful what you ask for – especially when your mother is involved. Alternatively they could represent the dioskouroi, Castor and Pollux (twin brothers of Helen and Clytemnestra) and the children of Leda.

I can’t remember what this group is, but I really like their slightly sinister smiley faces and the way the artist has captured the figures in movement.

The following two figures are remarkable chryselephantine statues. The first one is possibly 6th century BC and depicts Apollo:

The second, also possibly 6th century BC, depicts Artemis.

The next statue is thought to depict Dionysus, originally holding a lyre, from the west pediment of the temple of Apollo (4th century BC):

A winged Victory figure with leg raised in a running pose:

The face of a rather cuddly looking lion:

A badly damaged 6th century BC Apollo sitting rather uncomfortably on a tripod, from the east pediment of his temple. Originally he would have been holding a myrtle branch and a flat cup (symbols of his oracle) and accompanied on either side by the Muses:

Finally, one of the star exhibits, a statue of a bull originally made from three silver sheets by an Ionian artist in 6th century BC:

Looking towards the Mani

These shots were taken from Zarga beach in Koroni looking across to the Mani.

The call of Delphi

From Athens it’s about a 200km drive to Delphi. Turning off the motorway towards Eleusis and passing through the outskirts of Thiva (Thebes) towards Lefkadeia ia like driving through ancient Greek history.  Between Thiva and Lefkadeia the long, straight road crosses a flat plain.

The red soil is clearly very fertile and there are many vegetables being grown, but also a curious plant about 18″ high with dark green potato-like leaves from which hang small round balls that look like some sort of fruit. It’s only later that we discover that the mystery crop is cotton: Greece is one of the world’s top cotton producers, and one of only two cotton-growing countries in Europe (the other being Spain). Lefkadeia is a cotton spinning town and the mills we see in increasing numbers as we approach the town turn the cotton hulls into animal feed. Also on the outskirts of the town there are a lot of temporary accommodation structures, presumably for the migrant workers we have seen working in the fields.

After a quick stop-off at Arakhova a ski station village, we push on to Delphi about 6 miles down the road to find our hotel, the Acropole. From our balcony we have a great view down the sacred valley towards the Gulf of Corinth and the towns of Itea and Galaxidi.

The hotel owner advises us to go to the museum in the evening as it stay open to 8.00pm and it is much quieter once the coaches have left for the day. I’ll cover the museum in a separate post as it has a remarkable collection of finds from the site.

So, the first question is: what is the appeal of Delphi? Well, primarily it’s because of its place in ancient history, and not just Greek history. For a thousand years from its first emergence in the 8th century BC to when it finally fell silent in the 4th century AD, it was a focal point for much of the ancient world. It was visited by emperors, kings, philosophers, writers, representatives of countries, city states and islands from all over the Mediterranean, as well as ordinary folk. The common link was a desire to find a solution to a problem.

The next question is then, why did the ancient Greeks, who developed philosophy and the basis of law and who prized reason, go out of their way to listen to the ravings of an old woman on the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere? That’s much more difficult to answer. Of course, there was an ancient tradition in Greece of consulting oracles (eg Dodoni – equally remote in the Epiros region of NW Greece). But there must have been something about the accuracy of the oracles at Delphi that made people trust it.

Some historians (eg Professor Michael Scott) have argued that it functioned a bit like management consultancy for communities which had reached a bit of a stalemate over a course of action. Consultations could take months. First of all, they had to decide what question to ask and then it took time to get to Delphi. Secondly, the oracle only functioned on a very limited number of days a year (the 7th day of the month and only for 9 months a year).  Thirdly the consultation process wasn’t straightforward. Ritual purification had to take place and a procession to the Temple of Apollo. Your place in the queue for the consultation depended on your community’s standing with Delphi. Some states were able to queue jump because they had promanteia (higher priority) thanks to their donations to the sanctuary.

Then again before the oracle started the priests sprinkled a goat with water: if it shivered, then the oracular consultation could go ahead. If it didn’t there would be no consultations at all that day, which meant another month’s wait. On one famous occasion, the priests emptied a load of cold water over the goat in an attempt to make it shiver and the Pythian priestess (oracle) started raving so much that it caused panic and people fled from the temple.

So, by the time the community got the oracle’s response it had more time to reflect on the matter and apply this to the interpretation of what could often be an ambiguous response.

Parking the car on the road, beneath the Phaidriades (the shining rocks), two limestone cliffs:

between which rises the Castalian spring where the Pythian priestess and supplicants would come for ritual purification.

In the early 1st century BC the stone pool you see today was replaced by one further back from the road in the cliff face. However today access is closed off by a wire fence due to the danger of rock falls. The stone pool is dry now but a spring still rises to the side of it.

The site itself is on a steep slope and is huge but you can’t see much of it from the road, mainly because it is obscured by trees, over 35,000 of which were planted by the French Archaeological School when they excavated the site.

The entrance to the site is through the 2nd century Roman agora.

Delphi was originally dedicated to the worship of the Earth goddess (Gi) until it became associated with the myth of Apollo in the 8th century BC. The Sacred Way up the Temple of Apollo today follows a zig-zag path, but this is a bit misleading as it was only cut during the excavations to facilitate the railway track laid down to take away soil. In ancient times there were multiple access routes to the temple.

These routes were strewn with statues, columns, votive offerings and treasuries (that held the often valuable offerings made by city states). It must have been like walking through a huge outdoor museum. Indeed it was a site where the rivalry between countries and city states played out through the siting and magnificence of their dedications. It was also a place where history could be re-interpreted and even re-written in later times to suit the victors.

At a crossroads where the road tuns right towards the temple complex there are a trio of treasuries: the Sikyonian, the Siphnian and the Athenian.

The Athenian treasury is the most complete building on the site, originally built out of Parian marble in the early 5th century to commemorate the Athenian victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490BC:

However, it only looks remarkable complete because it was rebuilt using the original stones by Athens in the 1950s. The walls bear inscriptions and two paeans to Apollo with the original musical notation (some of the earliest musical notation found to date). Later in the 2nd century AD it functioned as the Delphi pawnbroker’s – a bit of a come down. But in spite of the fact that it’s reconstructed, it gives a very good idea of what it would have been like to visit Delphi at the height of its fame.

Nearby stand a replica of the omphalos (navel) a stone which was supposed to mark the centre of the world. It relates to the Story of Zeus who released two eagles to fly in opposite directions round the world to find the location of its centre at the point where the two eagles met. That point was Delphi – hence its description as the navel of the world.

Just above the Athenian treasury is the Rock of the Sibyl, one of the oldest parts of the site where the original oracle may have made her pronouncements.

Also near here stood the Naxian sphynx (now in he museum). Sphynxes were associated with old Greek religious cults and as the protector of tombs and sanctuaries.

A little further on stand four columns – all that remain of the Stoa of the Athenians which was built to commemorate Athenian naval victories in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC.

The Athenian Stoa stands hard against the retaining wall of the base of the Temple of Apollo. The wall is an amazing piece of construction which uses polygonal stones to give the wall a stronger bind: it also happens to be a beautiful piece of design:

On the retaining wall, dating back to the 1st and 2nd centuries BC there are some 1300 inscriptions of manumissions (declarations of freedom for slaves) carved in small letters which are now very hard to decipher. A German archaeologist in the 19th century died from sunstroke as a result of spending a long time in the heat trying to decipher the inscriptions.

 On the right as you go up the steps towards the temple, stands the replica of the lower portion of a bronze column of a three-headed serpent which was originally surmounted by a tripod. It was a dedication by the Athenians following their victory over the Persians at Plataea in 479BC. Constantine had it removed to the Hippodrome in Constantinople in 330AD. Part of it is still there though the serpent heads aren’t: they were cut off by a French cavalry office with a sabre in the 19th century.

On the left, and in front of the temple itself, stands the enormous altar that was a gift to Delphi from the island of Chios (and partially restored by the Chiots in the 1930s).

What we see today is the remains of the third temple built on this site and dates from 4th century BC. A few columns have been raised to give some idea of what it must have looked like.

It was here that were inscribed on the pronaos the famous gnomic utterances: ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ (know yourself ), ΜΗΔΕΝ ΑΓΑΝ (nothing in excess) and the mysterious letter Ε (no one knows what it meant – even by Plutarch’s time in 2nd century AD its meaning had been forgotten).

There has been much debate about where the Pythian priestess sat and how she made her pronouncements. Some people have argued there was a chasm over which she sat in her tripod (uncomfortable, I would imagine) and that the fumes from the chasm put her into an altered state of consciousness from which she made her pronouncements. I would have thought that one look at the consumers of psychotropic substances in the 1960s and their pronouncements might have undermined that particular theory. Why would she had said anything of an import while off her head on drugs, least of all anything that you might rely on for a life or death decision? However, no chasm has ever been found underneath the temple – although earthquakes to which the area is prone may have closed it up. Apparently geologists have found very low doses of psychotropic substances in the water supply. Other explanations for the Pythia’s prophetic gifts include chewing laurel leaves and burning oleander leaves.

The curve in the stones on the left hand side of the above picture show the extent to which the foundations of the temple have been moved by earthquake activity.

The most likely place where the Pythia sat is in the adyton on the far side of the temple in the picture below, while those next in the queue sat in a separate part of the temple cella nearby:

Above the Temple is the theatre where festivities for the Pythian games (one of the four main games in Ancient Greece) were celebrated. Originally built in 4th century BC, it was restored for Nero’s visit in 37AD. It could hold 5,000 people.

Finally on the site there is a long and steep climb to the stadium where the Pythian games took place.

When Delphi finally fell silent and it was forgotten and covered over by earthquakes and landslides, it wasn’t discovered again (by western Europeans at least) until an Italian merchant called Cyriac of Ancona visited the site in 1436. However it wasn’t until the late 18th century that it started to become more well-known, as would be visits to Italy for the Grand Tour were curtailed by the Napoleonic Wars and people started to come to Greece instead. Archaeological interest in the site started from the 1830s, but it wasn’t until the 1890s that the French Archaeological School got formal approval from the Greek government to excavate properly.

Amazingly a whole village called Kastri had been built over the site, through which stuck up some of the ruins of the ancient site. The inhabitants had to be relocated to new homes in the modern town of Delphi so that the site could be fully excavated.

Delphi is a beautiful spot and very atmospheric in spite of the number of visitors. I certainly felt that Apollo was in residence that day. It was 36 C on site, and despite the number of trees there isn’t a lot of shade for most of the site. I am not normally affected by the heat, but  because I didn’t drink enough water, it took me a good 24 hours to rehydrate.