Athens, Page 2 ..
We hired a driver for the day, Vagelis, the same man who picked us up at the airport. He has a spotless new yellow Mercedes, speaks excellent English, (his wife is Scottish,) and was a delightful companion. We wanted to see four places, ranging from a few miles outside of Athens to 100 miles away. We might have joined a tour to those sites, or taken the bus, but this was much easier and gave us far more freedom to stay as long as we wanted and leave when we were ready.
Our first stop was the canal at Corinth, the ancient city, where St. Paul preached.
The canal was begun long before the time of Christ, using slave labor, and was eventually abandoned. Alexander the Great tried to complete it next and also failed. It was highly desirable, because it would end the necessity to sail many more miles to reach Athens. The ancients, rather than taking the long route, placed logs along the land, greased them with olive oil and then pulled the ships across. Soon, rather than go through all of that, the ships that arrived simply traded among themselves. Finally, in the 19th century, Napoleon finished the canal. Dug through hundreds of feet of solid rock, using only the tools available at the time, the completion of the canal was a phenomenal accomplishment.
Our next stop was Epidaurus, site of the ancient amphitheater, which was renowned for its perfect acoustics. The plays of Euripides and Sophocles and other great playwrights of the 5th century B.C. were produced here in their day. And today, they are still presented on this stage each summer.
We had lunch at the picturesque seaside resort town of Naflion. This was the first capital of modern Greece, after the War of Independence freed Greece from Turkish rule in the 19th century.
The two great cultures in Greece before the classical age were the Minoan, based in Crete, and the Mycenaean. Our last stop was Mycenae.
Here the powerful King Agamemnon ruled.
Agamemnon's city was entered through this "Lion's Gate." When Helen (whose beautiful face, it is said, launched a thousand ships,) was kidnapped and taken to Troy, Agamemnon vowed revenge against the Trojans. He sacrificed his own daughter to the gods, praying for fair winds, as his ships set sail for Troy. His wife, Clytemnestra, was understandably peeved.
While he was away fighting the Trojan War for ten years, she took a lover, and when Agamemnon returned, they murdered him. Later, Agamemnon’s son killed his mother and her lover to avenge his father. That was some dysfunctional family.
The archaeologist, Schliemann, excavated the site in the 19th century. He uncovered shaft graves, and found many golden treasures, including a death mask he believed to be that of the ancient king. He cabled the King of Greece, saying, “I have looked upon the face of Agamemnon!” It was discovered, however, that the mask was that of a king who lived four centuries before Agamemnon. Schliemann grumbled, “Just call him Schultz.”
“Schultz” is now in the Athens museum.