Hello! This will be my last post for a bit – tomorrow’s my last class and the official end of winter term, and then spring term begins with its blissful nothingness. Well, not real nothingness; while other people are digging I’ll be in the library working on my dissertation. But first I’m going to Rome; I’m leaving tomorrow and will be there a little over a week.
On Tuesday I had my last Athens class of Athens and Attica. We explored the Olympieion, one of the largest temples in Greece; actually, I think it’s the largest, but it never gets credit for it because it was begun by the Peisistratids in the 6th c. BC, but wasn’t completed until Hadrian got around to it in the 2nd c. AD, so it’s not really classical. Apparently it was just a gigantic area that the Greeks got around to occasionally, but really what’s the hurry? We then took a look at Hadrian’s arch (the emperor Hadrian loved Athens a lot), which separated old Athens from the new section of the city Hadrian added, which was called Novae Athenae or ‘Hadrianopolis’. We then looked down at the Ilissos river area but did not go into it, because it’s apparently annoying to get in and out of, though that’s really never stopped us before (seriously, we were just climbing fences five days ago). From there we walked over to the Panathenaic Stadium, and the whole time we were accompanied by an Olympieion dog who walked in the middle of a busy road and occasionally ran at approaching cars; against all odds he survived. The Panathenaic Stadium was built by Herodes Atticus, another huge benefactor of Athens, and was the site of the Panathenaic games. You’ll see a picture of it, but while the modern structure is modeled on the ancient one it’s entirely rebuilt.
We were supposed to go to Aegina on Thursday, but then the Greeks decided to hold a general strike on Thursday (during general strikes most forms of transportation shut down, including ferries), so we moved it to Wednesday, and thus I found myself on a ferry the next morning making last-minutes notes on my presentation for Greek Sacred Law. It takes about an hour to get over to Aegina by ferry (only 30 minutes by hydrofoil, I hear), so we reached Aegina town around 8:30. The day was overcast and chilly, and it drizzled a bit, but it wasn’t terrible. We started at the site of Kolonna, which is huge and confusing because excavations have uncovered pieces of settlement going back about 5000 years, so there’s bits of buildings everywhere. In exciting news, though, Pindar was there (maybe – at the very least, some Pindaric odes were totally performed there). We heard some presentations and then we had an early lunch break, which was very exciting. I did not, however, purchase any pistachios (Aegina is famous for its pistachios). After lunch we drove across the island to Aphaia, where there is a beautiful temple, and a little museum/apotheke with some of the artifacts from the site. From there we drove south to Mount Oros, which we did not have to climb. I will let that sink in for a moment. Instead we saw the remains of the sanctuary of Zeus Hellanios, which are not many and which are largely overgrown. And then we were done! All that was left was to drive back to the harbor, get on the ferry, get back to Athens, and drive around for over an hour to get from the Piraeus to Loring (the trip took fifteen minutes at 6:45 am).
This morning I had Greek Sacred Law. We are all presenting the inscriptions we worked on, and I gave my presentation, so now all that’s left for me to do is go tomorrow and listen to the remaining presentations and then I will be done and on my way to Rome.
No more posts until I get back, when I should have lots of things to say and pictures to show. My pictures from this week are here.
