Athens

Before meeting up with my trekking group on Crete on October 1, I'll spend three nights on my own in Athens, reacquainting myself with a favorite city that I haven't visited for 37 years.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this will be my fourth visit to Athens.  I first visited it in 1961, as an overseas college student.  Our school had completed a field trip to Belgrade, after which we were free to do whatever we wanted for several days before classes resumed in Florence.  Kids headed in all directions -- Vienna, which still had a Graham Greene-esque Cold War appeal, seemed a favorite destination.  But three classmates and I chose to hop the Balkan Express to Athens.  The Balkan "Express."  The horror, the horror!  But that's a story for another time ...

In 1961, most Americans really didn't visit Europe unless bundled together on an American Express tour bus -- and then only to the "safe" precincts of Western Europe.  So much the better for us.  Back then. the Acropolis was just a hill covered with ruins.  You wandered up, climbed all over the Parthenon, took  photos of each other leaning against the columns, stayed as long as you liked.  Now, I understand, it's an "attraction" for which you -- along with huge crowds of fellow tourists -- pay a hefty admission fee. And it's "look, don't touch."

In any event, we were in Athens for only a day or so.  But in 1970 -- older, presumably wiser, certainly scruffier in appearance -- I returned with a backpack for a stay of several weeks in Greece.  About a week of that time was spent in Athens. 

If I had been somewhat aimless in my sightseeing while a college student, nine years later I was much more definite in my interests.  I had developed, I thought, a good feeling for the history of ancient Greece, and of ancient Athens in particular.

Why?  Well, I'd taken undergrad courses in Greek history. But mainly because I had read and re-read, like a bible, what may well be the best fictionalization of the Greek classical period ever written -- The Last of the Wine, by Mary Renault.  Ms. Renault is perhaps most famous for a trilogy of historical novels reconstructing the career of Alexander the Great.  She also wrote two novels -- discussed in posts I wrote last winter -- attempting to ground the legend of Theseus in some form of historical reality.

In her Alexander novels, she dealt with an historical figure about whom much is known.  In the Theseus novels, she constructed an entire pseudo-historical reality based on shadowy and often inconsistent legends.  In The Last of the Wine, she was less interested in interpreting the life of a person -- real or legendary -- than in helping the reader understand a city and civilization, its politics and religious beliefs and culture, and its people.  She succeeded masterfully: If the Athens portrayed in her book isn't a perfect portrayal of the actual fifth century Athens, it's probably as close as anyone could come, in popular rather than scholarly form, given the historical record available to us.

The book is narrated by a fictional young Athenian in the late fifth century B.C., from his first memories near the beginning of the Peloponnesian War to the defeat of the Thirty Tyrants about thirty years later -- the period during which many of the most famous Athenians were alive and kicking -- Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Alcibiades, Kritias.  To me, as a tourist, my reading of The Last of the Wine -- which I carried in paperback in my backpack, along with my trusty Greece on $5 a Day -- was my introduction to ancient Greece, and my inspiration for the places I planned to visit.

Fascinating places I would never have thought of visiting -- like the hill of Lycabettas -- became my destinations because of their place in Mary Renault's story.  I was the proverbial country hick, wandering around a big city, starry-eyed because he was seeing all the places he had read about in books.  And I loved it.

So, many years later, I'll return to Athens.  My small hotel is in the Plaka, in the shadow of the Acropolis.  Swooning less this time, no doubt, but still filled with an eagerness to gain, so far as possible in the two or three days I have available, a better understanding of Athens -- both the city as it is today, and the city that provided so much of the foundation of our Western civilization.  

(And I still have that dog-eared Mary Renault paperback. I'll be reading it again before I leave.)
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I've been to the Acropolis three times -- each time at sunset when it was balmy and golden. The second was my tour-book visit. The others were just for mood and daydreaming. I think I could visit it indefinitely and never tire of it. The last time, I walked down to the Areopagus after they chased us off the Acropolis, and watched the light fade and the lights come on all over the city -- and the Son et Lumiere light up the Rock. Everyone around me was French, and their voices were like music in the warm late twilight. The Areopagus is a gathering spot for young people -- some with guitars. I've walked by it at 11 p.m. and seen its silhouette serrated with heads staring off across the city.
--Journal, July 27, 1970