Where, you might ask, is the Peloponnese? All you know about it is something to do with a war, and maybe those Spartans. Or maybe you know a whole lot more than that. Maybe YOU should be teaching in Greece instead of me.
Sorry. Those were some very silly, very snappish videos.
The Peloponnese is, of course, the large southern peninsula of mainland Greece, just across the isthmus of Corinth from Attica. The French-fueled canal-building frenzy of the late 19th century also produced the Corinthian canal, turning the Peloponnese into an island of sorts.
There was a very in-your-face little old lady at the canal rest stop, urging everyone in sight, in no uncertain terms, to buy her little...um...grass....things. Sort of hanging down and twirly. Michael and Vassia had no idea what they were either, but said she'd been in business there for a very long time. I think this is a perfect symbol of something to do with the Greek economy, but I can't quite work it out at the moment--maybe later.
The original schedule for our four-day trip was disrupted by the second round of elections on Sunday, which meant the closing of a couple of sites, so we had a very busy first day, including our next stop, Mycenea. Yes, THAT Mycenea. In another of those spectacular mountain locations. It rained off and on, blew Vassia's umbrella out, but later in the day the sun finally came out, and the weather was decent for the rest of our trip. I guess we must have been appropriately respectful at Mycenea.
Unlike these dogs. Michael tolerated these very cute, friendly, and muddy dogs doing their best to compete with his commmentary. But it looked to me like these pups transgressed the boundaries of appropriate archeological-site behavior. I didn't get a picture of one of them digging under a protective tarp, but I did capture these two playing on top of a roof over part of the lower palace site, where we were not even allowed to go. All I can say is, Bad Doggie!
That top picture is of the famous Lion Gate, which is much more impressive in person. I for one would not have wanted to try to capture Mycenea while that gate was being defended. I took pictures when I could, in between squalls, sneaking the camera out from under my jacket and trying to balance the umbrella while aiming the lens.
The little pointy hill in the background of the first shot is ancient Argos, and between lies the fertile Argive plain, noisily disputed by Mycenea and Argos in the Bronze Age as well as by their Iron Age successors among the Greek city-states. The second and third shots are exterior and interior views of the massive tholos tomb known as the Treasury of Atreus. This had long ago been cleaned out by grave robbers when archeologists came on the scene. The vast hoard of gold objects found at Mycenea and currently almost all at the National Archeological Museum in Athens (where we saw them with Galen) were found in less architecturally impressive shaft tombs up in the fortifications. But even empty this tomb was daunting, a measure, along with the lion gate, of the scale of buildings and of men in the Bronze Age. Exactly as they would have wanted us to remember them, no doubt.
As I said, most of the loot here was shipped off to Athens, but the museum on site was still interesting. I absolutely loved these little hand-held or stick-mounted idols, or whatever they were (Michael's not sure, and so I'm not sure), which were not fancy or expensive or massive (about 18 inches high), but nevertheless evoked something about this culture and this religion that made me I wish I knew more about it.
Check out those platform shoes!
The museum had all kinds of smaller objects from two millenia of pre-history and history recovered at this site, sometimes randomly preserved, like a cache of double axe-heads that someone hid from the attackers and never got back to dig up. I liked the museum's chronological design. As usual, Michael moved quickly, hitting only the high points, but the bits of fresco and ceramic and gold and bronze, weapons and pots and offerings, were all the more interesting because by this point in the term I actually had some idea what I was looking at. Not enough to pass Michael's final, probably, but enough to enjoy the exhibits. Like this one, proof that the Myceneans liked their souvlaki as much as modern Greeks.
I'll leave you with just one picture from the next site we visited, Epidavros, the sanctuary of Asclipeus the healer. This was not even remotely the end of our fun day, but it's enough for now. The temples at Epidavros have been reconstructed with horrific enthusiasm, although work stopped partway when somebody who knew better got a look at the ratio of original to reconstruction--or what our students like to call "real" and "not real." But the site still had plenty of authentic dazzle. This is Annabel at center stage of the theater of Dionysus (which is redundant, since all the real Greek theaters belonged to Dionysus), a place whose acoustics even in its dilapidated state allow a stage whisper to be heard in the very back of the house. They still perform here, and Annabel is making plans to return, this time in a professional capacity.
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