Delphic Hymns and ancient Greek music

My first discovery of Greek musical annotations happened in 2012 when I saw the Seikilos column at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam. This temporary exhibition held a copy of the Seikilos Epitaph from Copenhagen that showed ancient Greek music (see: Revealing ancient Greek music, the Seikilos Epitaph). It was presented as the oldest surviving example of musical composition in the world, dating back to between 200 BC and 100 AD. At that time, I learned that older Greek music inscriptions existed but only fragmentarily, as is the case for the Delphic Hymns. 

While the Seikilos Epitaph is the only complete song we have, the Delphic Hymns are simply the oldest surviving examples so far, dating from the 2^nd century BC. These Hymns were carved on the southern wall of the Treasury of the Athenians in Delphi. They contain hymns praising Apollo, his birth, his life, and his protection of Athens and Delphi, with music to be played on a shrill-sounding flute and a golden, sweet-sounding cithara. These hymns to Apollo were performed during the Pythian Games, a major venue for musical contests that originally focused on art and dance. 

The two inscriptions from the Treasury of the Athenians, now exhibited at the Museum of Delphi, belong to a series of about fifty similar hymns from ancient Greece. A study revealed that these songs of praise or triumph were composed for the Pythian Games of 128 BC, i.e., the ritual procession of the Athenians towards Delphi. Apollo is also hailed for his help in fighting the Galatians in 189 BC, as the Romans won the battle against these Celtic tribes in Asia Minor. 

Like the Seikilos inscriptions, the Delphic Hymns hold musical symbols for the instruments and other notations for the singing voice next to the lyrics. We owe the interpretation of these symbols to Alypius of Alexandria, a musicographer who lived in the 3^rd century AD. 

I followed the history of ancient Greek music and the reconstruction of ancient instruments, mainly the lyre/cithara and the flute, from 2016 onward, with several updates after Reconstructing ancient Greek music, an impossible task? We still find it difficult to accept that Homer's epics or the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides originally were sung partially or in their entirety.

The sounds produced by ancient instruments are a far cry from today’s music, even from what is considered classical music or medieval troubadours. Modern music is mostly loud, to be heard beyond the daily noises of traffic, airplanes, and too many people attending the open-air events with screaming amplifiers. It is hard to imagine a quiet, tranquil spot in nature where we could catch the sound of a faraway flute or a string instrument floating on the wind. The basic essence of musical notes no longer reaches us.

With new discoveries and future in-depth research, we may expect to learn more about the music played in antiquity that could have been familiar to Alexander. I hope.

[Pictures from the Delphi Archaeological Museum]

The Trojan War in the absence of Helen

Hector seated

The Trojan War, as recounted by Homer, is a beautiful love story of Paris and Helen set against the cruelty of war when Achilles dragged the dead body of Hector behind his chariot around the city. It is the kind of subject we can still recognize today. 

Recently, I had echoes of another version in which Helen never made it to Troy but stayed in Egypt instead. One of the sources was Herodotus’ book "Histories". 

At first, I dismissed the information, mostly because Homer’s account was so familiar. When Heinrich Schliemann discovered the walls of Troy and Priam’s gold treasury in the late 19^th century, the history of Troy and the Trojan War came back alive. 

Herodotus, a native of Halicarnassus, is described as ‘The Father of History’. He was an intrepid traveler, very inquisitive about foreign lands and customs. He journeyed widely around the Mediterranean, as far south as Elephantine on the first cataract of the River Nile and as far north as the Black Sea. He visited southern Italy and eventually settled in Thurii on the Gulf of Taranto. He may well have spent time in Cyrene and even in Babylon. 

Herodotus

This Greek historian lived in the 5^th century BC (he died in 425 BC), roughly three hundred years after Homer. Both men relied on the world around them and on the sources that were available to them.

During his stay in Egypt, Herodotus spoke to the priests of the Temple of the “Foreign Aphrodite”, meaning Astarte. They said that Helen arrived in Egypt with Paris after a severe storm had blown their ship off course. The couple was brought before the pharaoh in Memphis, who condemned Paris for taking Helen away from her husband, whether by force or not, and seizing treasures from Sparta. He granted Paris three days to leave the country to return to Troy,  but he kept Helen in Memphis. 

Questioning the priests further, Herodotus was informed about the Trojan War as told to them directly by Helen's husband, Menelaus. 

What happened was that after the abduction of Helen, the Greeks sent their forces to support Menelaus. The Spartan king and his delegation were received at Troy’s Palace, where they demanded the return of Helen and the stolen treasures. The Trojans responded that neither Helen nor the treasure was in their possession, but was held in Egypt instead. Obviously, the Greeks refused to believe them and laid siege to Troy. They fought each other for ten years, and all that while Helen waited in Egypt. 

When Troy fell, and there was still no trace of Helen, Menelaus sailed to Memphis. After giving the pharaoh a true account of what had happened, he was reunited with Helen, 'having suffered no evil’, and the stolen treasure was restored. 

This looks like a happy ending, but it was not. Menelaus got cross because contrary winds pinned him down in Egypt for a long time. As an offering to the gods, he took two Egyptian children, whom he offered in sacrifice. This act of disrespect turned the friendship of the Egyptians into hatred. Menelaus was pursued but managed to escape to Libya with Helen and his ships. What happened afterwards, the priests did not know. 

Herodotus was not the only one to suggest that Helen never went to Troy but stayed in Egypt during the Trojan War. 

Euripides

There was Euripides, who in 412 BC wrote his play "Helen", in which Helen is taken to Egypt by the gods. The Helen who accompanied Paris to Troy was an eidolon, a spirit-image or likeness, cursed for her infidelity by the Greeks and Trojans alike. Meanwhile, the real Helen spent the ten-year siege of Troy in Egypt! 

It is noteworthy that Euripides was born ca. 480 BC, meaning that he was 55 years old when Herodotus died in 425 BC. He definitely must have known Herodotus’ travel history and the details of his encounters. Euripides may well have given his own twist to Herodotus’ tale of Troy. 

A similar eidolon image is introduced in Stesichorus' account. This lyric poet, who lived from around 630 to 555 BC, antedates both Herodotus and Euripides. The story goes that Stesichorus was blinded because he slandered Helen, but recovered his eyesight after writing her praise. 

Helen’s eidolon image may have been introduced by Homer or Hesiod, who reached his peak in popularity around 700 BC. 

In his "Histories", Herodotus believes that Homer knew of this eidolon version keeping the real Helen in Egypt, but that he decided not to use it, preferring the more epic poetry. 

Troy walls

Interpreting this ‘eidolon’ in today’s world is very difficult. We may think that Paris believed in ghosts since, according to this story, nobody in Troy had ‘seen’ Helen. It is clear that, in antiquity, the gods played an important role in daily life. Before the outbreak of the Trojan War, Paris had built a reputation for making fair decisions, away from outside influences. For that reason, he had been appointed by Zeus to choose which of the three goddesses was the most beautiful: Athena, Aphrodite, or Hera. He elected Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In return, Aphrodite brought Helen, the most beautiful mortal, into the life of Paris, and they fell in love. The fact that Helen was already married to Menelaus, king of Sparta, and had a daughter, Hermione, did not bother Aphrodite. To alleviate the pain of Paris being separated from his beloved Helen, the goddess introduced Helen's eidolon. 

That leaves me with Alexander cherishing the Iliad to the point of keeping it at his bedside. His copy had annotations made by Aristotle, which indicates that the Iliad was well studied and discussed by both men. It is unthinkable that Aristotle was not aware of  Helen’s eidolon substitute in Troy, and this goes for Alexander as well. However, I assume that Alexander’s fascination with the Iliad was mainly because of Achilles' heroics. 

What Oxyrhynchus revealed so far

Several years ago, I was at the Getty Villa in Malibu to be treated to two theatrical plays from antiquity, one Greek, The Woman from Samos by Menander, and one Roman, Casina by Plautus.

Set at dusk in the Peristyle of the Villa from which the statues had been removed for the occasion, it was a unique setting to see an old play in the New World.

Evidently, the Greek play caught my attention, and it was explained that Menander’s The Woman from Samos had only recently been recovered from the Egyptian desert and had never been performed before. 

The Egyptian desert as the finding place was an odd fact that I could not place at the time until, one day, I learned about the papyrus heap of Oxyrhynchus (see: Hellenica Oxyrhynchia by P.J. McKechnie and S.J. Kern and Get involved with Oxyrhynchus). At this dumpsite, many Greek texts that had been lost for centuries eventually surfaced. Large fragments have been salvaged, like works by Sappho and Alcaeus, poems by Pindar, and considerable bits of authors like Euripides and Sophocles. Also recovered were the most complete diagrams from Euclid’s Elements, a life of Euripides by Satyrus the Peripatetic, and an epitome of seven of the 120 books of Livy that are otherwise lost.

But among the pile of papyri, Menander benefited most from the finds at Oxyrhynchus, with fragments of Misoumenos, Dis Exapaton, Epitrepontes, Karchedonios, Dyskolos (The Bad-Tempered Man or The Malcontent), and Kolax. At last, we have enough works to recognize his status in the Greek theater.

Menander was an Athenian tragedian who lived in the 4th century BC. He was born around 342 BC, and who knows, Alexander may have heard of him or even seen one of his plays while he was in Asia. Menander was a prolific and much-imitated writer whose success was recognized for centuries after his death. The Romans scrambled to collect unknown plays, which they adapted and translated into Latin. Unfortunately, none of Menander’s plays survived until this chance discovery in the Egyptian desert. 

As I was flipping through a pile of papers, the very program from the Getty Villa fell into my hands again – a most gratifying rekindling of memories. It had been an evening I would never forget.

The popular The Woman from Samos is a play of deception and misunderstanding in which a marriage that everyone desires almost fails to happen, two women and a baby are almost ruined, and a loving father almost loses his only son, because the people at home and the people abroad have both been doing things behind each other's backs - but somehow everything ends happily after all. It is a complicated story, yet played in such a way that it keeps our attention on edge. It was, of course, executed in English translation. 

Horses buried upright in Thracian tomb

Thracian horses were famous throughout antiquity, and Homer, who probably lived in the 8^th century BC, already mentions that Rhesos, the mythical king of Thrace possessed massive horses, “whiter than snow”. That must have been quite a sight for sore eyes!

Tragedians like Sophocles and Euripides label the Thracians as loving their horses, while Hesiod refers to the horse-breeding qualities of the Thracians. It is not surprising to find the horse portrayed on their coins and on those of the Greek colonies in Thrace.

Alexander and his father, before him, were well aware of this high-quality breed. We will remember the incident when, in 339 BC, Philip returned home after capturing the Athenian corn ships. On his way, he thought it would be a good idea to secure his eastern front and subdue the ruling Scythians. Besides the slaves, he got hold of some twenty thousand thoroughbred horses. But his success did not last long as the Triballi, an independent Thracian tribe, attacked and stole the precious horses from the king before he could reach Macedonia. (see: Philip’s campaigns east (342 BC) and the Fourth Sacred War (339 BC)).

It is therefore not surprising to find horses buried next to their wealthy owners and leaders (see: Thracian Tombs at Doxipara, Greece) or depicted on the walls of their burial chamber (see: Valley of the Thracian Kings, Bulgaria).

Today, wild horses still roam in Thrace, which now extends over most of Bulgaria, as well as the eastern corner of Greece and the western part of Turkey.

Recent excavations in Svestari in north-east Bulgaria have exposed the remains of a Thracian carriage pulled by two horses that apparently were buried standing upright. Scholars believe that the chariot was led over a ramp into the pit. The horses wore their festive trimmings and elaborate harnesses.

[Picture from Sofia News Agency]

A couple of years ago, a similar chariot was found, complete with a seat, together with two horses in the village of Borissvovo, dating from the Roman era. In this case, the chariot was supported by stones to keep it in position, giving the archaeologists a unique opportunity to study how the vehicle was put together.

A closer look at Euripides

Several years ago, most of the collection of Hellenistic art at the Louvre was housed in one of the larger ground-floor rooms. The lighting there was relatively poor, and in my memory, the statues were only touched by the changing moods of daylight.

There were no huge crowds in those days, although this is where we would find the Resting youth by Polycleitus; the elegant Aphrodite said to be a replica of Callimachus’ original; a young satyr playing the flute, a replica of an original Praxiteles; the touching elderly Faun holding a Child; a copy of Hermes attaching his sandal; the Hunting Diana in full swing; the Eros ready to shoot his arrow which is a replica of Lysippos as well as the famous Azara Hermes of Alexander the Great another replica of an original Lysippos, and several others. I often sighed that the statues were so dusty, itching to get some water and soap out to wash them off. Despite all this, the unique atmosphere in that half-lit room made you feel close to times long gone. 

Almost lost in a corner near one of the large windows stood the small statuette of a seated Euripides staring out into a world that was not his. However, it caught my attention because the back panel of this statuette listed 32 of his plays. Exhibited at eye level, I would read the titles one by one, and it was as if each name disclosed an entire shelf of papyri ready to be unscrolled.

Then the room was closed for years until the entire collection was moved elsewhere and arranged in a way that complied with the demands of today’s visitors, where each piece of art is highlighted in appropriate floodlights. There was, however, no trace of “my” Euripides, and I wondered what had happened to him. Maybe he was moved to a different room to fit another topic. Who knows?

Yet, all was not lost! At times, it takes patience, and the reward came last year when I visited a temporary exhibition at the Louvre-Lens called Music, Echoes from Antiquity. Many old musical instruments had been brought together, not only from the Greek and Roman era but also from Egyptian, Persian, Sogdian, Assyrian, and Sumerian times. To complement the instruments, several paintings, vases, reliefs, and statues represent the musicians in action.

For no apparent reason, it was here that I suddenly found my precious Euripides! The reason for this presence among the vases and small musicians was not obvious, except that Greek theater plays included choral songs that told the story. I was overjoyed to find my friend sitting in front of this oversized window presiding over his oeuvre.  

Euripides was by far the most prolific tragedian of his time, producing more than his contemporaries Aeschylus and Sophocles together. During his lifetime (ca. 480 - ca. 406 BC), he stayed in Pella at the court of King Archelaus, Alexander’s great-grandfather, and at least two of his plays were performed in Macedonia, one of which is the Bacchae. It tells the story of the  king of Thebes, Pentheus, who is killed by his mother and other women in a maenadic frenzy.

It seems no coincidence that the Bacchae is being performed this summer at the theater of the Getty Villa in Malibu, California. This production is directed by Anne Bogart (one of the three Co-Artistic Directors of the SITI Company and Professor at Columbia University)  and translated by Aaron Poochigian (who earned a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University). This is an excellent opportunity to immerse ourselves in history and watch a play that Alexander must have seen more than once!

It is not surprising that Alexander grew up with an intimate knowledge and great love for theatrical performances, which he loved to organize all through his eastern campaigns – often inviting celebrated actors from Athens for the occasion.

Isn’t it amazing how much one small statuette has to tell?

An insight into Ancient Greek Music

What ancient Greek music truly sounded like remains generally shrouded in mystery. Only occasional finds and inscriptions shed some light on the matter.

As developed earlier in the post Another reconstruction of ancient Greek music, I inserted a soundtrack composed by David Creese, a classist from the University of Newcastle.

Today, I traced what is called the “pre-final edition” of the first choral performance with aulos of a composition by Athenaeus’ of his Delphic Paean from 127 BC and another one written by Euripides for his chorus in Orestes from 408 BC.

The explanation is given by Armand D'Angour, whom I quoted in my earlier post Reconstructing ancient Greek Music, an impossible task?  Enjoy!

Bringing Greek theater and Euripides back to life

The classical theater of the Getty Villa and the English translation of Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides is for many of us the closest we can get to sitting in a real Greek theater and watching a true Greek tragedy.

Euripides was well-known to Alexander, who could quote parts of his many plays. He was a prolific writer, and about ninety of his plays are known to us, although only nineteen of them have survived.

It was only one year after Euripides’ death that his Iphigenia in Aulis was performed for the first time in Athens during the Great Dionysus Festival. Aristotle kindly referred to Euripides as “the most tragic of poets,” which I find not surprising, remembering how I couldn’t help weeping the first time I saw the film version of Iphigenia, directed by Michael Cacoyannis with music by Mikis Theodorakis.

The scene is set on the shores of Aulis, where Agamemnon, king of Sparta, is ready to sail his fleet to Troy in order to assist his brother Menelaus in recovering his wife, the beautiful Helen. Agamemnon’s ships are, however, waiting in vain for favorable winds to blow them east to Troy. The goddess Artemis is consulted, and in order for the winds to return, she demands the ultimate sacrifice from Agamemnon: he is to sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia. It is a family tragedy played to the extreme that moved people then and still moves us now, so many centuries onwards.

From September 7 to September 30, 2017, this tragedy will be performed every Thursday and every Saturday at the Getty Villa. For more information, please click on the Getty Villa site.

[Poster is from Getty Villa]

Another reconstruction of ancient Greek music

In one of my earlier posts on the subject, Reconstructing ancient Greek music, an impossible task? I spoke about Armand D’Angour, a musician and tutor in classics at Oxford University, who reminded us that the epics of Homer, the love poems of Sappho, and the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides originally were music. This means that pieces composed between 750 and 400 BC were to be sung partially or in their totality, accompanied by the lyre, reed pipes, and some percussion instruments.

At present, he and other scholars claim to be able to reconstruct and perform those ancient songs with 100% accuracy. Hereunder is a rendering by David Creese, a classicist from the University of Newcastle. This is an ancient Greek song composed by Seikilos (see: Revealing ancient Greek music, the Seikilos Epitaph) and performed on an eight-string zither-like instrument with movable bridges. 

 

  So, how about that for a lazy afternoon listening?

Ptolemais, heritage of the Ptolemies in the Cyrenaica (eastern Libya)

The origin of Ptolemais (or Barca) of the Libyan Pentapolis (see: Apollonia in Cyrenaica (eastern Libya) after Alexander) goes back to the middle of the 6th century BC. Still, the name Ptolemais was probably given by Ptolemy III Euergetes, the grandson of Ptolemy I, who, in 322 BC, added the city to his realm after becoming the ruler of Egypt as successor to Alexander the Great. When the Romans annexed Egypt in the first century BC, they granted Ptolemais the status of a separate province. Since the city had no local water supply, the Roman architects managed to bring in water from the surrounding hills and store it in seventeen huge cisterns under the Forum. It was a flourishing city until it was struck by the destructive earthquake of 365 AD, which caused the entire North African coast to drop by about 4 meters. The invasion of the Vandals in 428 probably gave the final blow. The Byzantines moved their military governor to Apollonia, and the Arabs ensured the city was abandoned.

It still looks abandoned today, a mere flat site thrown with stones and rocks, with a sporadic tree to bring in some color. The access road to ancient Ptolemais is not inviting either, as it runs through a solid row of abandoned houses that the Italians built last century – a proper ghost town known as Tolmeitha. It is an eerie feeling to drive over this straight road flanked by colorful facades with cast-iron decorations, which, for some reason, made me think of the Via Appia in Rome, where the tombs are replaced by empty houses.

The city of Ptolemais is no more than a field on a gentle slope from the Mediterranean up to the mountains, where even the Hippodamian plan is hard to figure out. I am happy to be pointed to the familiar Decumanus and Cardo once I’ve reached the crossroad where a piece of wall and a lonely column are all that remains of the Arch of Constantine from 312 AD. The Decumanus has been promoted to Monument Street or Via Porticata, with on one side the Roman Baths and on the other side the remains of a private house. It was on this road that the Edict of Diocletian from 301 AD was found, setting the prices for the trade goods now in the local museum.

At the next crossroad, marked with Four Columns, I turn right to visit the imposing remains of the so-called Palazzo delle Colonne, meaning the “Villa with the Columns.” Since this is about the only reconstructed building, it can hardly be missed. The Villa lies here in all its splendor, and it is generally accepted that it was built according to the then-prevailing fashion in Alexandria (Egypt). This theory is hard to verify since old Alexandria is still buried deep under the modern city, and an excellent example of such a villa has never been found, but I like the idea. In any case, the owner was not a poor man.

We owe the qualification of Palazzo to the Italian archaeologists of the last century, who found that it covered an entire street block (600 sqm) and counted two levels. The rear of the building, the living quarters, is resting on a plateau from where the owner had a panoramic view over the city, and I can see all the way to the seafront. This part had an upper level, probably the sleeping quarters. In front of these quarters below me, there is space for eight shops opening into the street, with, in the back, their own storage rooms. This storage lies next to a large patio and a complete bathing complex, including a Caldarium, Tepidarium, and Frigidarium, probably for the master of the house and his family. A separate staircase leads from the house directly to the patio below.

The re-erected columns are not well restored, with big blobs of cement in between, but they give an excellent idea of the past glory. The leaves at the bottom of the columns are quite exceptional, a subtle hint to Egypt – hence the name oecus aegyptius used to name this room. It takes some imagination to crown these columns with the capitals (now at the local museum) of the Corinthian order, with the heads of Jupiter and Mars staring down from between the acanthus leaves.

Behind this room and in the center of this complex lies the Atrium, including the earthen pipes that led the water to the bubbling fountain in the center of the pool. The Atrium was surrounded by a covered gallery resting on Ionic columns and paved with black and white mosaics, now carefully covered with plastic and soil. However, the edges are still exposed here and there. Central in this Atrium is the summer dining room that offers a view over the inside garden, and the water basin, once paved with magnificent mosaics. More protected from the elements lies, on the right-hand side, the winter dining room adjacent to the so-called Medusa room, after the mosaic found here, which has also been moved to the museum.

I am quite impressed by this Palazzo delle Colonne, not only because of its location, which is striking by itself, but also by the entire combination of these unique columns with their decoration and paintings, the many mosaic floors in color as well as black and white, and the many statues that enhanced these rooms because the Venus and Bacchus from the museum certainly were not the only ones found here. This Villa, in my opinion, goes beyond what has been found in Pompeii or Herculaneum, although they have other characteristics.

The next house block is entirely occupied by the Forum, paved with small slabs of marble and surrounded by columns, a few of which have (not too well) been restored. Under this Forum from the second century AD (in Greek times, this was a Gymnasium), the true treasure of Ptolemais lies buried: its water cisterns. Eight such huge galleries run north-south over a total length of 50 meters, and nine run east-west over 20 meters. I have seen such cisterns in cities like Termessos and Sillyum in Turkey, but not of this size. The oldest cisterns are from Hellenistic times, and when I climb down the stairs in the center of the Forum, I can clearly see the marks where supporting beams held the flat wooden roof of that period. The Romans later covered the entire system with vaulted ceilings and, in the process, more than doubled the storage capacity to reach as much as six million liters! It is a unique experience to walk through these vaulted galleries!

Right behind the Forum lies the Odeon – a somewhat controversial building. Originally built as a Bouleuterion, this Odeon dates from the 4th-5th century AD but might as well be a small theatre since the half-circular orchestra could be filled with water. However, the water supply is too far away from the theatre to be used as such, and even if this space could be filled with water, to what purpose was it used? Some archaeologists opt for miniature sea battles, while others think the water would be used to improve the acoustics. For the time being, this remains a mystery.

At the far end to the left, on the west side, one can discern the contours of the Teucheira city gate from the 5th century AD, but the entire extent in between seems still in dire need of excavation. Ptolemais definitely was an important city.

On my way back, walking over the westerly Cardo to the exit, I stopped at the Roman Villa where the mosaic of the Four Seasons was found (now at the local museum). Not much to see except that this building deserves to be called a villa. Noteworthy is that the colonnade around the Atrium ends in a horseshoe shape – an exception to the standard square pattern. Simple, smooth columns surround the central area, neatly restored without the blobs of cement the Italians used elsewhere.

The local museum is nothing more than a large storage room, but it is nice to have it so close to the excavation site (Now, a few years after the fall of Gaddafi, I wonder what has become of this place). I marvel at the fine mosaics apparently imported from Alexandria, framed with rougher mosaics laid by local craftsmen. The Medusa-mosaic from the Palazzo delle Colonne steals the show, next to two fragments with hens and fishes, and another large mosaic carpet showing the Four Seasons with two panthers underneath. True gems!

Next to a beheaded Bacchus and an elegant Venus with the head of Demeter (a strange combination), both from the 2nd century AD and found at the above-mentioned Villa, there are several painted and artistically carved Corinthian capitals revealing the heads of Jupiter and Mars. Interesting also are the aerial views of the villas I just visited. In a corner, I find the remains of a sarcophagus with an image of Achilles and, standing behind him, his mother, Thetis. An intriguing discovery, although I need help understanding what they are doing here.

One of the masterpieces is the slightly damaged panel from the Via Porticata, which shows several goods and their respective prices according to the Edict of Diocletian from 301 AD. That such legislation existed at all is quite impressive! Next to it stands a particularly graceful relief with six dancing Maenads found on the same avenue. The Maenads were a favorite subject in antiquity, and this relief has enhanced the base supporting a statue of the dramatist Euripides. The original statue was sculpted in Athens in 405 BC, but this is the best (Roman) copy. The ecstatic Maenads, followers of Dionysus, are particularly elegant in their floating robes, waving the thyrsus staff and shaking their tambourines. Such a pity that in later years, the piece was used around a well, for otherwise, it is relatively well-preserved.

Once more, this is a city that owes its glory to Alexander and his successors, as it lived on for another 700 years. Ptolemais definitely deserves to be added to the list of Alexander’s achievements.

If we pay more attention than usual, we find much more than the sites and buildings we are pointed towards. It happened to me while driving out of Ptolemais, as I noticed the remains of a Hellenistic tomb, clearly inspired by the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. It is no more than a lonely square in the middle of an abandoned field used as a garbage dump, although fenced off with barbed wire, planks, and corrugated roofing. The original tomb must have been much higher than the remaining 11 meters, but the floor plan of 12 x 12 meters is still intact. This tomb belongs to the 2nd century BC, Ptolemaic times, and still carries the alternating motives of triglyphs and metopes along the top edge, although the friezes have long since disappeared, just like the steps at the base. As elsewhere, it was common practice to dismantle old buildings to reuse the recuperated stone blocks in new constructions (spolia).