The Persian Arrow

It was my first visit to Greece  --  when I yet went to places because you were supposed to  --  and I one day took a bus from Athens to the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, where tourists have been going since at least the time when Lord Byron carved his name in the soft stone of the temple in that not-that-long-ago time when such vandalism was considered part of the historical process.
    I saw his graffito  --  appallingly large and deep  --  took a few photographs and tried to take in the lay of the land, or rather of the water, as it was here, in 480 B.C., at the temple at Sounion that Xerxes had set his camp in order to observe what would develop into the Battle of Salamis, fought in the straits below, wherein the bold and maneuverable Greeks destroyed the huge Persian armada and yet again saved the West from oriental despotism.
    While that had been a full day’s work for the Greeks and the Persians, I thought I had extracted as much from it as I was likely to in about a half-hour and found I then had several hours to amuse myself until the next bus came.
    There had been a number of tourists on the bus with me, but they seemed to be getting more out of looking at the temple and surveying the Straights of Salamis than I.  Fortunately, they seemed to find their interest on the south slope of the Cape and once I crossed the road to the north side I found I had the place to myself.
    The north side of the Cape sloped down in little ravines that formed pleasant little half-moon beaches, most of them by this time of the afternoon partially shaded, so I slid down a ravine to one of the little beaches and found myself a patch of shade and had a snack and wrote in my journal and gazed off across the water and otherwise had a perfectly fine time.  Eventually, I saw that it was time for the bus and I made my way back up the ravine toward the road.
    The ravine was fairly steep and I had slid down it and now had to make my way back up more or less on all fours, which meant I was facing down and so, part way up, in the loose pebbles and earth of the scree, my eye caught a familiar shape: an arrowhead.  A stone arrowhead.

In New World, where we are only a few hundred years away from the Stone Age, it is not uncommon for people who live in the country to find stone tools and arrowheads, and I have found a number myself when walking a plowed field or along a roadside cut.  In Europe, where the Stone Age is thousands of years removed, stone arrowheads are a rarer find.
    The Greeks seem to have emerged into history with bronze.  No one we think of as Greek used stone tools.  But here, beside the temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, in the heart of classical Greece, I found a stone arrowhead.

While I might like to carry on a while about the mystery, I had a pretty good idea what it might be.  In his history of the Persian Wars, Herodotus reports that among the great host that Xerxes brought with him on his invasion of Greece were troops of semi-civilized allies from the mountains, so backward that they were armed with stone weapons.
    That seems to me the simplest and most likely explanation for my stone arrow point.  It was dropped by one of the Great King’s rustic auxiliaries, the last Stone Age warriors to invade Europe  --  that the last person who had touched this artifact had seen Xerxes in the flesh and witnessed with his own eyes the waters below us littered with broken ships and thick with drowning sailors  --  and my arrowhead dated precisely to the year 480 B.C.

Kouros

A kouros is a lord.  In modern usage the word refers to those statues of young Greek men, life-sized or larger, put up by the ancients.  These young men, these kouroi, are portrayed nude and upright, shoulders back, sometimes stepping forward, and on their face the serene and confident smile of a young lord.  There are beautiful ones in the National Museum in Athens and on the island of Naxos there are two left abandoned in an ancient quarry.
    The young men all seem about the same age, around twenty, and in the full flower of youth and health, their body strong and supple, not yet hardened by years.  If some might remind you of the golden young Lord Apollo, it would be no accident.
    It would appear that these were placed over the grave of the man they are meant to represent, however old he may have been when he died, to remind those who came after what he had been like in those excellent years of his young manhood, when he held life so fine, a precious gift of the gods which, once bestowed, could be held fast in memory against the machinations of time and fate.

Downstairs from my room was the taverna.  On a cooling case, beside a display of wine bottles and a carving of some unrecognizable animal, was a framed photograph.  I recognized the man in the picture.  He was Patrone, my host, as a young man, not unhandsome, in an old-fashioned army uniform. 
    You were a soldier, I said.  Yes, he answered, a soldier.
    But it was sad for me to see Patrone as he was now  --  a dumpy old man with a dumpy old wife, and he part-paralyzed on one side  --  and Patrone then  --  a fine young man in the prime of health and youth, in his fresh new uniform and all the world before him.
    Had life been good or bad to Patrone, or was it simply as it was? Things are as they are, said one of the old Greeks, and will come out as they must.  So do I mourn Patrone for what he has become, or celebrate him for what he once was?  Mourning would be easy, but I think wrong. It is foolish to judge a life by what it looks like in the end, as we most look badly in the end.  So I ought be glad for Patrone and the blessings of life that I see in the photograph of that young man in an old-fashioned uniform, and choose to remember Patrone, a kouros.

a Word from Our Sponsor

Today's post is not about travel, but wanders around the problem of blogs that carry ads.

Wandering the inner corridors of Blogger I learn that since, as a blogger, I am sharing my passions with the world, and some of those passions might include Brands and Products, and what better way to share that passion but let Blogger place tasteful ads on my site for those brands and products I feel passionate about, or at least indifferent enough that I did not affirmatively object to them.
    Most every site I visit regularly carries ads and they don’t bother me, but for myself I feel somewhat as I might if I were including a display ad in a personal letter or mentioning how much a particular brand’s product added to my heart-felt experience.  It changes things, somehow.
    Of course I also cannot think of any Brand or Product that I happen to feel passionate about at the moment.  Were I more strenuous, I might have some item of gear that had impressed me by its rugged dependability, but I am a slow-moving creature who makes few demands on the things I travel with.  I do not keep my notes in a Moleskine nor write with a Mont Blanc.  In the early days I mostly wore custom-made orthopedic shoes which, comfortable as they were, I would not wish on anyone.  My clothes were once Banana Republic, but this was in its early manifestation, when it stocked the quirky and unusual  --  when it sold shirts made from mattress ticking originally manufactured for Spanish prisons or spiffy Italian Waiters’ Jackets that made us look like Italian waiters  --  not as it is today, when it has become Ralph Laurenish. 

In Greece, I remember loving the taste of Nescafé, but back home it tastes like it always has.  Do they have some special blend they sell overseas, or was it just being in Greece, where even the paper clips and rubber bands seemed more exciting?

When it comes to sitting quietly in the shade, one Brand is pretty much as good as any other.  Most of the little gadgets I have picked up lately seem to have been manufactured in China and probably contain mercury or depleted uranium.

Someday I may carry ads, just as someday I may put up photos or use something other than this stock template.  I appreciate bloggers who have put the effort into making their sites visually interesting, though photographs and design are not enough to keep me coming back.  Think of the great travel books: most don’t have photographs and in those that do, the photos are unremarkable.  Thesiger was an outstanding photographer, but none of the others were.  And even if Thesiger hadn’t been, he would still be one of the great travelers because of the stories that he told.  The important thing is the story.  At least that is what I am trying to do here and I worry that ads might cause me to make changes just to attract readers and we shouldn’t be doing that, now, should we?  For example, a trivial post months ago that mentioned Mayan Vampires continues to attract a regular stream of visitors, but I am mindful of what has happened to History Channel and don’t want to go down that road.  (Though I do have a Greek vampire story that I may get to eventually, but if I do it will be a legitimate part of the incident being described.)

This post has wandered far enough.  Go out and buy something: it will make you feel better.  But take your time and go to obscure shops with dusty shelves and dark corners and buy something that no one else has.  Something beautiful and exotic from long ago and far away.  Something that might even have a curse on it.  Something that will make your life more interesting.  I would carry an ad for something like that, but they don’t advertise because it’s the only one that there is.

Mosaic

I had rented a car in Athens and was driving, in no particular hurry and with no particular destination, through the hills of the Peloponnese.  It was summer and I was driving slowly and stopping often.  In most of the little towns the best shade had already been appropriated by men talking and watching the world go by.  In most cases I seemed to be the only part of the world going by, so I would stop for a soft drink and carry on some sort of conversation to the extent of our mutual language ability.  Since this was usually where-are-you-from and families and news of the day  --  and “yes” was almost always a safe answer  --  I got along fairly well.  At one point I became confused when one fellow started talking about how much he admired Oregon, but I eventually figured out that he was saying “O Reagan”  --  “the Reagan”  --  meaning our President.  Since I had heard that the Peloponnese was a bastion of Royalist sentiment, I was not surprised that they should be well-disposed toward Mr. Reagan.

I had read in the accounts of earlier travelers about the social conservatism of the rural Peloponnese, particularly as it related to concern about family honor and the sexual purity of young women.  According to these sources it had until recently been the custom that if you interfered with the purity of a maiden that her brothers were honor-bound to kill both of you, though even then the practice was said to be in decline.  I haven’t heard anything about it lately, so I suppose it is another of those traditional customs that have passed by the way.  And in any event, I thought I could enjoy Greece quite well without interfering with anyone’s purity.

At one town a young fellow asked if I would like to see something interesting.  I didn’t catch what it was, but I think I should always say “yes” when offered hospitality.

He motioned me to follow him down a path between the houses, all the time busily talking, though I wasn’t getting much of what he was saying.  As we went along he scooped up some water in an old tin and picked up a broom.  He led me to a small field beyond the houses where he swept away some debris and poured out the water and stood back for me to see.  And there, coming out of the dry brown earth, were the beautiful colors of a mosaic floor.

It was a fragment, maybe two square yards; its colors sharp and bright.

I exclaimed how beautiful it was, much to the pleasure of my host.

I asked how old it was.  Very old, he said.  Ancient.

In my honest delight at being shown this little treasure I fear I was not as sensitive to context as I might have been and, pointing to the pattern of the border, I said, “See, there is a cross.  It is Christian.”  I assumed it was possibly the floor of a ruined church.

My host was not pleased at my inference.  His demeanor, formerly garrulous and friendly, stiffened.

“No,” he said sternly.  “It is very ancient.  It is not Christian.”

“True, true,” I said.  “Not Christian.”  But too late.  The damage was done.  I had defamed his antiquity.  I had denigrated the dignity of his village’s ruins.

We returned in silence and no matter how effusive I was in my thanks and compliments to his hospitality, I had plainly botched things up and if I stayed around any longer he would probably bring up American aid to Turkey, so I left town under a cloud.  As I drove away I looked in the rear-view mirror: he did not even watch me leave.