Greece: Civilization 1.0

I've (Bill) always wanted to go to Greece. As a kid I had dabbled a bit in Greek myths and found them fascinating at the time. In the interim, I have forgotten pretty much everything but the mythos of Greece being the center of amazing and imaginative stories remained lodged in my brain. Warning: this will be another force feeding of info so as usual, I'll put in lots of pictures to keep the scroll wheel moving. Please pardon the occasional discord between the text and pictures.

Hanging out at the Parthenon

Between childhood and now, I had heard that Athens was dirty, overrun with stray dogs, and then they got in all kinds of financial trouble, and now there's a refugee crisis. But I'm here to report that all that is simply a product of a media that reports the worst of things (although it's worth checking out This American's Life's two podcast episodes on the refugees in Greece:1 and 2.)

Column leading toward the Parthenon, a Kenzi added for scale.

Athens is cleaned up substantially, we saw very few stray dogs, hardly any really, disturbingly we have no idea where they went... Athens wasn't the cleanest city I've even been to, but I've seen dirtier streets in San Francisco, so it's hard to fault them on that. And we really didn't see any impact of the refugees. Very pleasant as far as I'm concerned. Kenzi wasn't a huge fan because of the level of "dirty" but was easily able to look past it.

Soldiers at Greek Parliament guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier 

But that's not what really struck me. My big takeaway started to take shape as we were stomping around Rome. In Italy, if you pay attention, any of good the early sculptures, like anything before 500 AD are all Roman copies of Greek sculptures. By good I mean life-like. In other words, until the Renaissance the best sculpture to be found was Greek, not Roman, not Italian, but Greek. The Greeks had figured how to make sculpture look good. The Romans were able to copy it, but not really expand on it, and once the Roman Empire fell, good sculpture wasn't really to be found until 1000 years later when the Renaissance came along.

Greek Flag on the Acropolis. During WWII, this is where a Greek soldier that was forced to remove the flag by the Nazis, calmly brought down the flag, wrapped himself in it, and leaped to his death.

So roughly 2500 years ago, during the Greek Golden Age, what I want to call "Civilization Version 1.0", sculpture was about as good as it was going to get for the next 2000 years. For sure, this initial release of civilization had all kinds of issues, but a lot like the first Macintosh in 1984, with a mouse and graphical user interface, you could see a lot of features that would stand the test of time. It's not all flowers and candy though, the Greeks still treated women like second class citizens, or non citizens really. They had slavery, capital punishment, and I'm sure tons of other awful practices that would make even the most backward current civilization recoil in horror. But anyway, concentrating on the features that had staying power, you have to check out their art.

Greek Sculpture Before the Greek Golden Age

This basically looks like an Egyptian copy. It's very stiff looking, and isn't really a convincing replica of someone doing something that they would do in real life. There is some realism in the legs but it's almost like a stick figure. Yeah, I get that it's a person, but beyond that what's the point? This is probably the inspiration for the bad zombie mummy movies. Click on any of these pictures for an enlarged view.

Greek Sculpture before the Golden Age (before 500BC): stilted, labored, and boring  

Greek Sculpture at the dawn of the Golden Age

You can see some life in this! Zeus (or maybe Poseidon; they don't know) is about to kill something. You can really see that. They call this the "severe" style because it's a bit reserved and understated. Unlike the last one you get the idea that something is happening, something that could happen in real life.

Greek Sculpture a the beginning of the Golden Age (around 500BC)

Greek Sculpture at the height of the Golden Age

Once you get a new toy you can't help but push it to the next level. Here we have some examples of exaggerated expression of motion. Pictures really don't do it justice:

Here is a very casual movement that looks pretty natural

A boy riding a horse with terrified look on his face, horse is in full stride, exaggerated but not so much that it loses realism

A very gentle depiction of Emperor Augustus

Anguish! A fighting Gaul, aware that he's finished but not yet finished fighting

Unknown philosopher with a pretty awesome beard. See any resemblance? 

If we want to get into the game of potshots at later civilizations you'll notice that "art in 800 AD" doesn't turn up much, and when you do find something, it looks something like this hideous garbage.... moving right along.

More features of Civilization 1.0: Democracy

But wait! There's more to Civilization 1.0... the Greeks had implemented a fledgling democracy.

It wasn't perfect, women couldn't vote, and they also voted to ostracize people but the point is they had some level of self determination. Let that sink in, 2500 years ago the Greek men could direct their government, something that really didn't take hold until like 2000 years later. Why? Sorry, that's another blog, but it's still depressing that for 2000 years the means to peacefully pass power between leaders was there... just not used. Also, it's hard to show this in pictures other than scraps of pottery they used for ballots.

Astounding Architecture

Athens also has the Acropolis. While many cities had an elevated spot where they plunked their temples, Athens had THE high spot. On that high spot they put several temples but the grand daddy of them all is the Parthenon, 432 BC:

So despite being before the #hashtag and credit default swaps, the Greeks figured out some impressive architectural tricks to make the buildings look "better." They had the long lines of the steps bow up ever so slightly, and the columns bulged out ever so slightly making them look a bit life like, showing that they were bearing significant weight. People debate whether or not this was intentional, what isn't up for debate is that the building stood pretty much intact until 1687 when it was being used to store ordinance, got hit by a shell, huge explosion ensued, and it was turned into the ruin that it is now. It was built to house a statue of Athena holding Nike (goddess of victory) in the palm of her hand, and here is a replica of that statue:

What they think the Athena statue looked like in the Parthenon

Art that captures slices of life, architecture that stands the test of time and pleases the eye, and finally democracy that passes power peacefully and keeps the ruler in tune with the ruled: Civilization 1.0, not perfect by any means but a lot of good in there.

More to the end of the Greeks not being perfect we also checked out Delphi, home of the famous fortune-telling oracle. Delphi, which we probably would pronounce like Del in Delaware, and fi in financial. Well, the locals say something closer to Del-fee. Which makes sense, the letter φ is in it, which is pronounced fee, some times phi (but never foe or fum).

Crazy road leading out of Delphi, take away: the path to Civilization is not always straightforward... 

Which brings up the second reason that Greece has been fun: I actually learned the Greek Alphabet in college when I was a in a Greek fraternity. Now a gazillion years later, if given some time and thought I can sort of, almost, sound out some of the words because a lot of the letters are direct replacements for our beloved Latin alphabet and a few others are pretty close to combos of our sounds. That doesn't even come close to making me a Greek reader or speaker but it does make understanding what's on a street sign a bit easier... sometimes. It's especially useful for cognates, words that sound the same between the two languages, like μουσείο, which at first glance looks impenetrable for an English speaker but the first letter is Mu, pronounced mew, then skip a few letters and there is a σ, that's an "s", followed by eio, what do we have?

After taking some giant liberties: Museum!

It also helps when you know you're looking at a museum... but seriously, knowing the mapping between Greek and Latin letters is pretty useful. Αθήνα doesn't look so foreign if you know that θ is THeta, ή is e, ν is n, α is a, pretty soon you realize that it's Athena, it also helps if you know you're in Athens...

The treasury in Delphi, where they put the valuable stuff, ancient equivalent of a bank I guess. 

Anyway, Delphi. This is the site of the oracle who would give advice to anyone well heeled enough to pay for it. It was also thought to be the middle, or navel, of the world. Legend has it that Zeus (Δίας, or Diaz in Greek, suspiciously like the word for God in a bunch of other languages), released eagles from the ends of the earth, they flew toward each other and met over Delphi.

The center or "navel", as they put it, for the Ancient Greeks of the World

While I saw no eagles over Delphi, we did have a fantastic dinner overlooking the valley below and I have to say it's quite a nice place.

View from our dinner spot in Delphi

We're traveling toward the end of tourist season and so the crowds are minimal and the service has been great. Nearby modern Delphi are ruins that are left over from when the ancients would come for advice. Evidently before the session with the oracle the subject would get interviewed and this would prepared the priests to give relevant answers. The oracle herself would only speak a sort of gibberish after being forced into a hallucinogenic state by either incense or volcanic gasses coming up from the earth. The priests were there to interpret... or gain intelligence from every wealthy person who paid them a visit... from emperors to aristocrats, the priests knew what was going on everywhere.

Any city had to have Drainage... some stand the test of time

Delphi, like any other well appointed ancient Greek city had a stadium:

And a theater:

A temple of Zeus:

The temple of Zeus here in Delphi brings up another point that is worthwhile mentioning, slaves were occasionally freed and when that happened an inscription was put on this wall, chiseled in stone saying so. I have to say, if I was a freed slave I'd want to have that written in stone too.

Look close for the "Manumission" script, that is writing that recorded the freeing of a slave

Also worth mentioning: Just like most other buildings built by the Greeks, it's ~2500 years later and this wall is straight as an arrow.

Looking down the wall of the temple of Zeus, ~2500 years and still straight as an arrow

That's all I've got, sorry for the force feeding of info, it hurts me just as much as it hurts you... All kidding aside, thanks for reading.

Next up - more mainland Greece and the Peloponnese.