Hello! I know I haven’t written an update in a while, but I haven’t done anything of interest in a while either. Classes are coming to an end, so a lot of my time recently has been spent in the library working on presentations and getting a jump on my dissertation work.
Last Friday and this past Wednesday I went to the Epigraphical Museum to work on my final project for Greek Sacred Law, which is essentialy a report on an inscription, including a transcription, translation, epigraphical commentary, textual commentary, and discussion. While numerous people were assigned huge, hundred-line inscriptions whose letters were so worn away they were barely visible, mine was seven of the clearest lines you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s broken off on the right side, but it’s also an oracle, which means it’s in hexameter, which means I have a good idea of what’s missing from each line. On the Friday session I got it transcribed, I took exemplars of all the letter forms, I measured it, I photographed it, I translated it, I scanned it (metrically)…essentially, I did everything one possibly could, and I still left early. On Wednesday I worked on a draft of my report, and Robert Pitt helped me identify some of the letters that were partially cut where the stone broke. Today my goal is to finish the report, which is really the last thing I have to do for any of my classes.
On Thursday our Athens and Attica class resumed after a mini-break, and we visited some Roman sites, namely the Roman agora, the Tower of the Winds, and Hadrian’s Library. The Roman agora is a huge marketplace set up by Julius Caesar and Augustus; the Tower of the Winds is a tower which possibly contained sundials, a water-clock, or a planetarium (by which I mean a model of the planets); and Hadrian’s Library is pretty self-explanatory.
On Friday we had a day-trip to Euboea, which is an island just off the northern coast of Attica. We started at the site of Aulis, which is on the Attic mainland opposite the island. According to legend, Aulis is where the Greeks mustered before sailing to Troy during the Trojan War; when the weather wasn’t favorable for sailing, they sacrificed Iphigeneia, the daughter of Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, to Artemis. In some versions of the myth she seems to die, while in others Artemis replaces her at the last minute with a deer and sends her to Scythia – the whole tradition is pretty complex. I presented there on the temple of Artemis and the legends of Iphigeneia, and I possibly confused everyone (I also tried to make a Stesichorus joke; apparently those don’t work with archaeologists, because they have no idea who Stesichorus is). We then drove a little further north to a point where Euboea is so close to the mainland you can just drive over a bridge to get there, and thus we entered the town of Chalcis. There was an ancient settlement there, but it hasn’t really been excavated, so we just went to the museum, which was fairly small and not particularly interesting. Then we drove on to Eretria, which also has an ancient settlement, but this one is fairly well-excavated. We started at the museum, which has some awesome stuff (you can check out my pictures, which are regrettably a bit blurry as everything was in cases) – and for those of you coming to visit me, a number of pieces are going to the National Museum in Athens next week for a special exhibition. We were then joined by Sylvian Fachard, a member of the Swiss School, which excavates at Eretria, and he showed us around the site. They have uncovered multiple houses, a theater and temple of Dionysos, a villa with mosaics, a temple to Isis, a huge temple to Apollo, parts of the agora, the city walls, and more – and all this despite the fact that the people of Eretria hate them. The tour was interesting, except it took until 3:00, and we hadn’t had lunch yet, so by the end I was pretty ready for it to be over. We had lunch on the beach (it was a beautiful day, but really windy on the beach), and then headed on to our last site, Lefkandi, where we actually had to climb over a fence to get inside, because for the first time in six months of touring Greece there was no hole. Lefkandi has a large apsidal building which dates back to the Iron Age and contained a burial of two people and two horses; the people were a man (who was cremated) and a woman (who was not), who were adorned with objects from as far away as Syria and Babylon, and were as much as a thousand years old when they were buried (archaeologists don’t quite agree as to what function the building served or on most of the details either). At that point it was about 5:30, and after hopping the fence to get back out we got back on the bus, and did not get back to Loring until 8:00. The people of Greece need to stop rioting.
Anyway, the winter term is drawing to an end. This coming week I have class on Tuesday, when we’ll check out the arch of Hadrian, the Olympeion, and the Panathenaic Stadium, then Greek Sacred Law on Wednesday when we’ll present on our inscriptions, and then a day-trip on Thursday to Aegina. I leave for Rome on Friday; everyone pray that there are no strikes so I can actually get out of the country.
Pictures are here.
