The Greek Odyssey arrived in Athens from Delphi on Tuesday afternoon. After checking into our hotel (full showers, AC, television, refrigerators, all the good stuff) we went to the ancient Agora where Socrates cajoled his fellow citizens about "the unexamined life" being "not worth living" and urged them to "care for the soul." Then they killed him. We saw the Royal Stoa where he met Euthyphro while he was on his way to answer charges leveled against him by Meletus. We saw the Stoa of Zeus where he met his friends daily and where, gad fly that he was, he prodded them to think critically, to test their assumptions and search for the truth. And we saw the law court where he was tried and the prison where he drank the fatal hemlock. Socrates' spirit haunts the agora still. It was a great laboratory for ideas, the cradle of rational thought in the western world, and a sober reminder to us of what can happen to someone who challenges the ideas of a timid and intolerant authority.

Above the Agora we saw the Areopagas -- the rock on which any Athenian could speak his mind. It was here that St. Paul spoke to the Athenians in 59 AD and reminded them that their "democratic" religious beliefs should tolerate the consideration of a a god unknown to them. It was this site, the Areopagas, that Milton had in mind in his own defense of free speech and freedom of the press, "The Areopagitica," when he wrote: "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue that will not sally out and meet its adversary in the dust and heat of the battle, but slinks out of the race where the immortal garland is to be won."

Today, Wednesday, we climbed to the Acropolis with its great monuments to the "golden age" of Athens in the middle of the 5th century BC. "Acropolis" means "high city" or "top city" and every ancient Greek city had one. It is usually where the religious monuments are placed, after earlier occupations which used the sites as fortresses. On the Athenian acropolis the Parthenon remains one of the most significant architectural structures in western art -- it is intricately and subtly designed to reflect the dynamic forces of nature; it is constructed on a curved base that suggests a living form ready to rise from its foundation. It is filled with variety (of column style, sculptured figures, variance of distance between columns, etc.) that reflects both the organic richness of nature and the political democracy of the time. The architect, Phidias, was primarily a sculptor, and so he designed the building to function like a statue, with human proportions and an animation and movement that mimics the human.

The Acropolis Museum contains many important works, many of which were found buried on the Acropolis and date from the period from before the classical age. Lord Elgin, of course, removed most of the classical sculpture from the Parthenon and other buildings in the 19th century and they are now in the British Museum. But before rebuilding the Acropolis after the Persians destroyed it in the early 5th century BC, the Athenians buried the rubble in commemoration of the men who had died in that struggle. These pieces were later found and now are in this museum. Among them is the famous Kritios Boy which marks the transition from the post-archaic Severe sculptural style to the high classical. The archaic smile is gone and the weight shift to one leg heralds the naturalism that will characterize classical art all the way down to Michelangelo's David.

There are also metopes from the Parthenon and segments of the famous Panathenaic frieze that decorated the pediments of the interior Ionic colonnade. Also on display are the original Caryatids (the maidens that function as columns to support the south porch of the Erectheum on the Acropolis). The "Nike Fixing Her Sandal" figure from the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis is also here -- a brilliant use of drapery to suggest the female body beneath, probably one of the first studies of the female nude form in Greek art.

We left the Acropolis to the chants and shouts of a demonstration of museum workers and guides who are temporarily employed during the high tourist season. They were demonstrating for full time employment and benefits. Sound familiar? (We left them our card and told them to contact Human Resources at Queens!) In town later on, we saw another large demonstration moving down 28 October St. Police and the army with riot gear were out in full force. But shoppers just walked on by as if this were a daily occurrence. As it should be in the cradle of democracy and free speech. 

After leaving the Acropolis, we visited the Theatre of Dionysus on its southern slope where the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were first performed in the yearly competitions during the Festival of Dionysus. Laura Letteau was particularly transfixed by the experience. She has been chronicling our visits to ancient Greek theatres on the trip. This was the last one and the most important, if not the best preserved (i.e., Epidarus).

That was a very full morning -- significant architecture, magnificent sculpture, and the most important theatre in the western dramatic tradition. But that's pretty much what the Greek Odyssey has been. One remarkable event after another. Two days ago the Sanctuary at Delphi was "awe-inspiring." Now the Acropolis is (pardon the pun) "tops." 

Pictures will follow. I don't have my camera with me right now.

R. Goode