tony perrottet pagan holiday greece and turkey. hermes’ highways greece was the busiest part of...

Tony PerrottetPagan Holiday

Greece and Turkey

Hermes’ Highways

Greece was the busiest part of the ancient circuitGreeks sold visions of their own distant pastWould-be guides skulked around (NB: in today’s Greece, everybody leaves you alone)Educated Romans knew Greek language, thought, literature, philosophySince 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