Made it to Athens...

Monday, July 6, 2009

But there's no internet at the hotel, and no SD card reader at this internet cafe! So no photos of ours for now!

Got to walk up the winding path to the Acropolis, which has lots of interesting things to see along the way. I think I'm the first person in at least 5 years to venture to the back of Pan's cave judging by the cobwebs that ended up in my hair and clothes.

(Acropolis, from wikipedia)

Once we got to the top we got to walk in the footsteps of Alcibiades, Socrates, Pericles... and Persian invaders.

There's alot of rebuilding going on but it wasn't as busy as we feared, so it was a pretty amazing afternoon. The ruins we see after this likely won't be as impressive but they will be just as interesting.

I'll upload photos when I get a chance.

T

At the cgy airport...

Friday, July 3, 2009

I think I am the lighter luggage packer... my stuff + the laptop is in the blue bag on the left. The rest is Claire's :)

Just saw a movie set in Greece

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

"My Life in Ruins" by the Big Fat Greek wedding lady. Lots of good, ancient greek scenery in the movie. Can't wait to go and see it for myself!
BTW it's a good light hearted romantic comedy if you're into that.

T

A little 400-500BC Greek History Part 2 - Sparta

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Sparta!

The other big player in classical Greece.

Sparta was THE superpower of Greece, mainly due to it's flagrant use of greek slaves (a real no-no to the the rest of Greece). Having alot of slaves meant Sparta could actually support a professional army. Most Greek cities' armies were made of regular citizens who donned armor and spear whenever needed. Having a fulltime professional army paid dividends as they we trained from the age of 7 to adulthood in fighting (see the agoge).

Their moment in the sun was the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC vs the Persians - this is the famous suicidal last stand of King Leonidas and his 300 hand picked spartans as well as a few thousand allies (athens, plataea, megara,?). The spartans were all killed, but they are credited with inspiring the rest of Greece to victory a year later in Plataea. We will definately check out the Thermopylae pass on our trip! Check out the movie "300" for a fictionalized version of events, but still gets the main points right (I've read Herodotus's account). The book "Gates of Fire" is also highly reccommended. It was the 300 movie that really got me started on my love of ancient greece.

After a few decades of minor skirmishes, slave revolts and earthquakes, Sparta's next big moment in history is the Peloponnesian War, which is my favorite historical event - I'm very glad Thucydides decided to write it's history! More details will come up later, but Sparta ended up wining a hollow victory over Athens thanks to it's alliance with its longtime enemy Persia.

Unfortuneately, Sparta was pretty "spartan" (where do you think the words spartan and sparse came from). They didn't believe in fancy buildings and walls, so there are not alot of ruins left for for us. Thucydides wrote:

"Suppose, for example, that the city of Sparta were to become deserted and that only the temples and foundations of buildings remained, I think that future generations would, as time passed, find it very difficult to believe that the place had really been as powerful as it was represented to be"

A little 400-500BC Greek History Part 1 - Athens

Monday, June 29, 2009

The most interesting time in human history as far as I'm concerned is around 400 - 500BC in Greece. The big players were Athens and Sparta.



I won't get into exact dates and names, that would be too much work isn't that important.

Athens was democratic (minus a few periods of hysteria), the first real democracy as far as I know.


Athens fought off the Persians in Marathon pretty much on their own (with a few allies, Thebes or Megarans I think) around 490BC. This was pretty significant, a loss here could have meant the end of western civilization right there. Sparta was too busy with religious festivals to help out (a recurring theme for them). Sparta was impressed with Athens and probably didn't like Athens becoming the big thing in Greece.


Interesting side note, the marathon race we have today is named after the run an Athenian made from Marathon to Athens to report the victory (where he died of exhaustion).


Athens' power, especially it's navy, thanks to Themosticles . Athens, Sparta and the rest of the non-Persian allied Greeks cities fought the Persians again in 480BC. They lost (see Thermopylae) but inspired Greece to victory a year later at the battle of Plataea. Athens beat the Persians at sea which was crucial to beating them on the ground.


The next big event for Athens was the Peloponnesian War where it fought Sparta for Greek supremacy. The war went back and forth but Athens ended up losing. Surprisingly, Syracuse, Sicily played a big role in this.