Herodes Atticus, more than a name

Herodes Atticus is best known for his theater at the foot of Athens’ Acropolis. For most people, it is only a name to define this historic monument, forgetting who he was and what he achieved in life.

Herodes Atticus was born in Marathon, Greece, into a family of Athenian descent in 101 AD. He is known as an Athenian rhetorician and a Roman senator, spending time between Greece and Italy.

 

He was exceptionally wealthy and moved in the highest social circles. Emperor Hadrian, for instance, appointed him Prefect of the free cities in the Roman Province of Asia in 125 AD. A good year later, he was elected archon (high magistrate) of Athens. And in 140 AD, Emperor Antoninus Pius invited him to Rome to educate his adopted sons, the future Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. As a Roman citizen, he was appointed Consul of Rome in 143 AD.

 
When he was 40 years old, he married Appia Annia Regilla, a 14-year-old aristocrat related to the family of Antoninus Pius’ wife.
 
Herodes Atticus was a philanthropic magnate and patron of many public works. What comes immediately to mind is the theater in Athens, which he financed in 161 AD to honor his wife, Regilla. Watching a Greek play performed within these walls or attending a popular or classical concert is a gratifying experience!

However, thousands and perhaps even millions of visitors have left their marks on the white marble construction. It calls for an extensive restoration and conservation process that is expected to take at least three years. During that time, the summer Athens Epidaurus Festival will be relocated elsewhere.

 
The overall deterioration consists of cracks in the Pentelic marble due to the variations in temperature and rainwater infiltration. Another problem is the plants that root in crevices and hold water. The theater had been destroyed in 267 AD and was in ruins until the 1950s, when the seating area and orchestra were restored. These repairs are now in dire need of improvement and require a comprehensive conservation plan.
 
The list of buildings Herodes Atticus funded is quite extensive. The ancient Panathenaic Stadium in Athens,  with a capacity of 50,000 seats, for instance, was one of his projects executed in 144 AD. Elsewhere in Greece, we owe him the Theater of Corinth, the Stadium of Delphi, the Baths of Thermopylae, and a splendid Nymphaeum in Olympia.
 
I was very surprised to read Herodes Atticus' name and his wife’s in Olympia. The Nymphaeum stands at the entrance to the Stadium. The two-story-high back wall was filled with statues of Herodes Atticus and several Roman Emperors like Antoninus Pius, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and their family members. 

Most statues have been moved to the Museum of Olympia. Among them, I noticed Athenais, one of Herodes Atticus’ daughters. She married Lucius Vibullius Rufus, and the couple had six children, but only three survived to adulthood. The eldest daughter, Elpinice, was born in 142 AD and died in 165 AD. The son, Atticus Bradua, was born in 145 AD and was the only child to survive his father. Herodes Atticus was heavily disappointed by his son and left him nothing after his death.

 
Also exhibited in Olympia’s Museum is a life-size bull, which carries an inscription left by Regilla reading: "Regilla, priestess of Demeter offers the water and appendices to Zeus." This brings history to life!
 
Outside Greece, aqueducts donated by Herodes Atticus can be found in Canusium, Puglia region in Italy, and in Alexandria Troas, Asia Minor. In my blog post of February 2024, I mentioned the Baths and Gymnasium of Alexandria Troas built by Herodes Atticus in 135 AD. They were surrounded by vaulted corridors with marble walls, and water was delivered thanks to the aqueducts on the northeast side of town. Most of the building remained intact until it was destroyed by the severe earthquake in the winter of 1809-1810.
 

At the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, I encountered a statue of Polydeukes, also Vibullius Polydeukion, the adopted son of Herodes Atticus, dated to circa 150 AD. Wikipedia, however, mentions the boy as his pupil and lover in a relation resembling that of Hadrian and Antinous. Polydeukes died around 173-174 AD. His loss greatly affected Atticus, who built a Heroon in his memory.

 
Herodes Atticus lived to be 76 years old in 177 AD. Regilla had died in 160 AD, after being brutally kicked in the abdomen while eight months pregnant.  Her brother accused Herodes Atticus of having ordered one of his freedmen to beat her to death. At the trial that ensued, Herodes Atticus was acquitted by Emperor Marcus Aurelius, his former tutor.
 
I’m sure we’ll look at the Theater of Herodes Atticus with different eyes next time we walk through Athens.

The city of Alexandria Troas or Alexandria of the Troad

The name of Alexandria Troas has a most confusing name since it is generally thought that the city was founded by Alexander the Great, more so because of the king’s admiration for The Iliad in which Troy played such an important role. Nothing is further remote from the truth. 

[Votif relief of Psyche on a dromedary from Alexandria Troas, 

2nd century BC, Louvre Museum]

According to Strabo, the town of Sigeia was founded on this spot around 306 BC by Antigonus Monophthalmus. The name of Alexandria Troas was given to the city by Lysimachos in 301 BC, as a generous reference to Alexander. It was a double harbor in northwestern Asia Minor and the richest of the Troad and occupied a strategic position near the entrance of the Hellespont. It silted up over the centuries. 

In 188 BC, the Romans declared it a free and autonomous city that counted about 100,000 inhabitants. Emperor Augustus settled a colony of soldiers within its walls and renamed it Colonnia Alexandria Augusta Troas, in short, Troas. He lavishly embellished the city, as did the emperors Trajan and Hadrian a century later. 

Herodes Atticus, best known for his theater at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens, was appointed by Hadrian as prefect of the free cities of Asia in 125 AD, including Alexandria Troas. He may have built the aqueduct that carried water from Mount Ida, although other sources attribute the construction to Trajan. 

Alexandria Troas was surrounded by a 10-kilometer-long city wall, including fortified towers placed at regular intervals. Some parts are still visible today, together with remains of the Roman Baths and the Gymnasium, a Necropolis, a Nymphaeum, the Odeon, the Theater, and a recently discovered Stadium dating approximately from 100 BC. 

The Baths and the Gymnasium were built by Herodes Atticus in 135 AD. They were surrounded by vaulted corridors with marble walls, and water was delivered thanks to the aqueducts on the northeast side of town. The large Baths measured an impressive 123 x 84 meters. Most of the building remained intact until it was destroyed by the severe earthquake in the winter of 1809-1810. The whole project was greatly supported by Emperor Hadrian, as revealed in an inscription found in Hadrian’s Gymnasium in Athens mentioning the emperor as the sponsor of the city in 132 AD. Three more inscriptions unearthed at Alexandria Troas during excavations in 2006 confirm the emperor’s interest and the appreciation of the citizens. 

The Hellenistic theater stood at the highest point of the city, treating the spectators to a sweeping view over the city and the Aegean Sea with the island of Bozcaada.

My heart is bleeding for Allianoi

With the change of weblogs, I somehow lost track of Allianoi till I was looking for it the other day and couldn’t find it. Luckily, I still had the original texts on my tablets, and although the news is “passé” by now, I feel that it is never too late to draw attention to what has happened there and is still happening elsewhere in Turkey’s frenzy to build ever more dams. 

It was in October 2010 when I first read that the gorgeous site of Allianoi would be flooded in spite of all the pleas and contacts with "authorities" over the past three years or so. I couldn't believe my eyes, for this is no way to treat our heritage. It is like throwing away the bones of our ancestors. How dare we?

[Picture from the Art Newspaper]

For those who hear the name Allianoi for the first time, I owe some further explanation. Allianoi is located to the northeast of ancient Pergamon, in the vicinity of Izmir, and right in the middle of the Yortanlı Dam Reservoir Area.

Because of its hot springs, the place was known already in antiquity, but the big boom occurred under Roman rule. In the 2nd century AD, Allianoi was one of the largest thermal baths in that part of the Empire that attracted crowds from the nearby Asclepion in Pergamon as well as from more distant areas. In Byzantine times, most of Allianoi was taken down and the materials were reused elsewhere in the city, but the thermal Baths and the Nymphaeum, i.e., the most important buildings, continued to be used as they were. The Ottomans renamed the settlement Paşa Ilıcası (The Thermal Baths of the Pasha), but after that, Allianoi slumbered into oblivion, although the use of the hot spring continued. The nearby Roman bridge was also still used until recently as a connection on the road from Bergama and İvrindi.

The Romans were master builders, as we know. They built the Bath Complex on both sides of the Ilya Creek, and in order to control its flow, they diverted the water to run through a vaulted tunnel. The hot spring has a nearly ideal temperature of about 45-50˚C. The Roman baths, like all other buildings on the site, date from the 2nd century AD. The brave archaeologists have discovered and uncovered many of them, only to be unfortunately buried again. Allianoi counted at least four insulae, a beautiful Nymphaeum much like the one dedicated to Herodes Atticus in Olympia, Greece, a Propylon, an unknown Cult Building, and a so-called Connection Building, along with several streets and the bridge over the creek I mentioned above. Also, remains of a Byzantine Basilica from the 9th century measuring no less than 19 x 21 meters have been located. And yet, all these jewels will disappear forever!

It is quite frustrating to find out that everything on this planet has to make way for politics and money. The average lifespan of any dam is 80 years, I learned, and this one is calculated to last only for 50 years. Is it really worth being built? What will we do fifty years from now? Dismantle the barrage and excavate Allianoi again, at huge costs once more? Haven’t we learned anything from our past dam building? The irrigated lands remain fertile for a short time only, seven to ten years maximum. After that, the soil is highly alkaline, and crops are hardly worth the effort of planting. As always, when it comes to politics, nobody listens to the environmentalists, and nobody takes their analysis seriously. In this case, nobody listens to the archaeologists either.

But that is only one aspect of building a dam. Here at Allianoi, we are voluntarily burying our heritage. Old stones have to make way for new concrete, yet we forget that our concrete will not survive 2,500 years like this old city did. One would expect that enough damage has been done already to other locations, for instance at Zeugma, Turkey, a unique site at the frontier of the Roman Empire on the banks of the Euphrates River. Archaeologists were able to save a handful of gorgeous mosaics and some wall frescos that have found shelter at the Museum of Gaziantep, but they are taken out of their context, and the proud city no longer awaits our embrace.

What will it take to stop this madness of building dams that, in the end, only scar and deplete the land? Water is vital to our life, I agree, but barrages are not the one and only solution, and their lifespan is not as eternal as governments all over the world want us to believe. What will happen in 50 or 100 years from now when this barrage and so many others give way? No water then, no crops, no dam, nobody to take responsibility, and sadly, no cities like Allianoi to be revived from underneath the sediments. 

Meanwhile, the site of Allianoi has been filled up with sand in an impossible dream that this measure will safeguard the precious remains of this two-thousand-year-old wealthy spa resort. The theory is that at the death of the dam, Allianoi can still be re-excavated, but what about the heavy layers of silt deposited on top of these remains? What damage will they have done?

A sad day for Allianoi. My heart is bleeding indeed…

Hopes may have been high still, but by March 2011, the dies were cast. A painful picture of a man sitting on the edge of the 2nd-century Roman bridge in the middle of a nearly flooded city publicized in the Christian Science Monitor says it all. In spite of the pleas and protests formulated by UNESCO, ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites), and Europa Nostra (the pan-European Federation for Cultural Heritage), it didn’t take long before the entire site disappeared to the bottom of the new reservoir at the foot of the irrigation dam, covered beneath nearly 100 feet of water and silt. The Yortanli Dam is part of another huge hydro-engineering program aiming to keep up with the country's rapid economic development – that is at least what the officials say. 

The positive news is that archaeologists have been able to salvage some 11,000 artifacts after uncovering only about 20 percent of the site that is now lost forever – a rather poor consolation if any. The beautiful mosaic floors of this ancient health center, believed to be one of the largest and best preserved in the world, have disappeared once again. The Turkish government doesn’t seem to care or not to care enough; the race to double their power output by 2020 prevails over the preservation of the country’s and the world’s history.

The site was first filled with sand in an attempt to protect the ruins, although archaeologists disagree. In the last days of 2010, the flooding was set in motion. The water, according to the latest news of early 2011, has risen approximately 6 feet but will eventually reach 100 feet. I am not aware of a more recent update on the site if any. I could only trace this picture of the flooded area taken in June 2012 (from Alberti's Window). Regretfully, we’ll never know the full meaning and extent of Allianoi. Sadly, this is only one example among so many others. How many more will follow?

Click here for the complete article Dams power Turkey’s future, but drown its rich history by Alexander Christie-Miller, which also maps other natural and culturally threatened areas all over Turkey. National Geographic offers some meaningful pictures on this link.

Aspendos, the unfaithful

It seems that the people of Aspendos were not too happy with their Persian ruler, for when, in 333 BC, they heard that Alexander the Great was on his way, they set out to greet him and surrendered their city on the sole condition that Alexander would not leave a Macedonian garrison behind. Alexander agreed but demanded payment of fifty talents and the same number of horses as they usually delivered to the Persian King.

Once this agreement was reached, Alexander moved onward to Side and from there westwards to Sillyum, which resisted. While he was in full siege, he was informed that Aspendos had no intention at all to keep their promises. They had called their citizens inside the city walls, and the gates were slammed in the face of Alexander’s ambassadors. The city was bracing itself for an attack. They evidently underestimated Alexander and never expected him to show up in person or so quickly – most probably in a great state.

Entirely surprised and totally bewildered by their opponent’s quick action, Aspendos was forced to ratify the previously made agreement and promised solemnly to pay the fifty talents they had agreed on before. Alexander was smart enough to accept this gesture of goodwill because the city was a strongly defended fortress that could withstand a lengthy siege. But he claimed an extra fifty talents, hostages from prominent families, and the payment of a yearly contribution to Macedonia. No kidding!

The oldest name for Aspendos is Estwediiys, a city probably founded by Mopsus around 1200 BC. As early as the fifth century BC, the city minted its own silver coins – with Side the only one in Pamphylia to do so. In the days of Alexander, Aspendos was flourishing and was best known for its horses. The Persians had the exclusive rights to these noble animals, but now it was Alexander’s turn to claim that contribution, and four thousand horses were promptly delivered to his army – quite a stock, I would say.

After Alexander’s death, Aspendos was taken in turn by the Seleucids and the Egyptian Ptolemies, and in the 3rd century AD, it became the third city of Pamphylia. Under the Roman Emperors, it was an important trade center for salt that was collected from the nearby Lake Capria, which, according to Strabo, dried up in summer, enabling an easy harvest. The commerce of wine and horses also flourished till the city finally shared the same ill fate as its neighbors. The Byzantine Emperors organized and reorganized Asia Minor time and again, joining Lycia to Pamphylia and separating it again in the end, allowing each to be an independent province. Later, we find the Arabs’ and the Crusaders’ conquests till the area was absorbed by the Ottoman Empire.

Nothing much is left to see of the old harbor of Aspendos. There is the Seljuk bridge over the Eurymedon River (now Köprü River), which is said to rest on old Roman foundations. You have to be very alert after leaving the D400 towards Aspendos to notice this bridge on your right, but if you can make a halt there, it is definitely worth the visit. The bridge, restored as recently as 1996-1998, is about 225 meters long and reaches the opposite bank after a slight bend. Somehow, it reminds me of the famous bridge in Mostar, the same vault construction, but here it is repeated seven times. It is the achievement of the Seljuk Emperor Aladdin Keybatt (1219-1236), who saw the true value of this (re-)construction. You’ll easily find the Roman base in the fast-flowing water. It is as easy to imagine how, in antiquity, ships passed under this bridge (which was higher in those days) to deliver their goods in Aspendos before the harbor silted up.

The absolute highlight of Aspendos is, of course, the theater, one of the best preserved in the world. Like most of the buildings, it dates from the 2nd century AD, probably built during the rule of Marcus Aurelius. According to the inscriptions, the side entrances were mandated to architect Zenon by two brothers, Curtius Crispinus and Curtius Auspicatus. Officially, the theater offers seating for at least 20,000 visitors, but rumors have it that, at times, twice as many were crowded inside! It is quite unique to see the well-preserved stage wall, which somehow may remind the visitor of the Theatre of Herodes Atticus in Athens, but this one is in much better condition. I walk the entire width of the podium, which originally was much wider because it had a wooden extension, staring up at all the decorations, garlands, and figures around the niches framed with slender columns, and which once held statues of important citizens. Under the baldachins of what could be the second level, I discover a series of lovely faces, all different in expression and appearance. It’s like the past staring back at me. In the middle of this back wall, a relief of Dionysus fills the triangle of a pediment. On a previous visit, the entire stage was hidden because the theatre was still used for performances, now luckily forbidden. So these details are quite a revelation!

This theater is definitely Roman, a perfect half-circle with a wide gutter at the feet of the lowest row of seats that could be filled with water to enhance the acoustics. I wonder about the need for increased acoustic effect, for I’m deafened by the cacophony of people of all nationalities and several busloads of children from local schools. I climb the stairs to the diazoma, the walkway separating the lower and upper parts of the theater, and from here, the staircases are doubled. It’s lovely to visit the connecting corridors in the back, which only served to support the construction and had no specific function – still in such good condition. Back in the blazing sunlight, I have an entirely different look at the stage wall as some of the features are now at eye level. I can clearly see the holes that once served to hold the wooden beams for the roof, which covered the stage only and were meant to enhance the acoustics –so clever. Higher up are other holes that could hold the wooden poles used to fix the awning, which protected the theater-goers from rain and sun. How dare we think that we invented the notion of comfort! Another exceptional feature is the stylish porticus that crowns the upper rows behind the very last seats, which usually doesn’t survive in these ancient theaters. I walk underneath arches in near-perfect condition along a closed wall to the outside, while on the inside, the walkway opens into the theater. Marble blocks and columns frame the separation between one arch and the next. About three of such arches have been carefully restored and blend in entirely with the surviving parts. It does not take a lot of imagination to taste the atmosphere that must have reigned here with so many Roman sandals scraping the pavement.

I also venture inside one of the corner towers that frame the podium. The basement was generally used as a foyer for the audience, but the meaning of the staircase above it is not known. This is, however, a magnificent example of how the Romans built their staircases. In the very center of this tower, a square pillar was constructed, and all they had to do was to fit a large slab of stone, one for each step, resting on the outside wall and on the central column. It is so simple, yet you have to come up with the idea, of course. The outside walls of the right-hand tower still hold traces of painted plaster of white and red lozenges, I suppose from Byzantine times or maybe even from the Middle Ages. Anyway, a clear sign that the theater was used for a pretty long time.

Next to these towers, above an arched entrance, I find a “royal loge.” I wonder about the exclusivity of this seating because it only offers a sideways view of the stage.

All in all, this is a magnificent construction used till recently when summer opera festivals or performances of The Fire of Anatolia were performed here – now moved to a new theater in Roman style built outside the town. A good alternative to spare this unique antique site.

For most visitors, this is where their visit ends, but I venture into the antique city over a path that starts between the theater and the toilets. I walk over a paved road near one of the city gates, where the city’s sewage is covered with broad flat slabs. Occasionally, one such slab is missing, but that makes it even more exciting because spots like these offer an inside view. I estimate the cavity at about 1x1 meters - a sewage system that will not easily clog up!

On the left, I feel the shade of the large Basilica, the center of commerce that originally was more than 90 meters long. Only the walls’ foundations have been preserved, but they allow a good estimate of the dimensions. The part I see from my path is only an annex, but definitely a sturdy one with walls 15 meters high and almost two meters thick. Next stands an Odeon, which is, according to my map, but because of the high overgrowth, I cannot see it – such a shame, but inevitable, I suppose. On the other hand, I can access the 15-meter-high Nymphaeum in front, but it has lost most of its decorations, and it takes quite a fertile imagination to picture this fountain in full glory. For those who have seen the Nymphaeums of Side, Perge, or Sagalassos, mental reconstruction is much easier. It now appears as a mere wall, although 37 meters long and 1,8 meters thick – not bad. The Basilica wall runs at the right angle with this Nymphaeum, and in between, we should picture the Agora, now entirely overgrown also. The two-storied shops on the opposite side of the Agora are, however, clearly visible.

After the Agora, I can stare into the depths towards the gate through which Alexander entered the city. I scramble down, and to my great surprise, I discover that this gate also was round, exactly what I had seen in Perge and in Sillyum. I probably read that somewhere, of course, but seeing it with my own eyes is another ballgame altogether. Inside the curves, I can still see the niches that once must have held important statues – quite plushy in those days. There are more remains of the Roman city wall between the trees further down the slope. The archaeologists still have work to do if they want to.

I get back to the top of the plateau and walk to the edge to admire the other attraction of Aspendos, its famous aqueduct that spans the entire once swampy valley. This is an ideal spot for a good overview of the entire project, but of course, I’ll visit the remains afterward.

Returning to my steps, I encounter a panel pointing to a “temple hill.” I have no idea what this means, and decide to follow the general direction. At the top of the low hill, I do indeed find remains that seem to refer to a temple, but these are mere foundations. Yet the view from here, now on the other side of the high plateau, is worth the detour. The Basilica behind me commands the picture like a medieval fortress in front of which I can now clearly see the Odeon. Higher up lies the Nymphaeum I passed earlier, with the shops belonging to the Agora to its right. Behind me, way down in the valley, I discover the outlines of the Stadium, and I decide to explore it. Without this eagle’s view, I would never have found the vaults that carried the seating area among the exuberant, blossoming trees and luscious bushes. The east side seems to be the best-preserved part, but it is hard to get proper bearings, although I am sure this Stadium can’t beat the one of Perge.

Time to turn my attention to the Aqueduct, a masterpiece of Roman architecture that can only compete with the Pont du Gard in France and the Aqueduct of Volubilis in Morocco, however much less dramatic. According to an inscription from the second century AD, a certain Tiberius Claudius Italicus presented it to Aspendos for the astronomical amount of two million denarii! Expensive water …

The water had to come from the other side of the valley, and the aqueduct is a most impressive work of art and still a most impressive ruin in the landscape. The inverted siphon of this aqueduct was 1670 meters long and carried the water from two different springs at respectively 400m and 550m height all the way across the valley to the acropolis of Aspendos situated at an altitude of 60 meters. This inverted siphon is unique because of its excellent state of preservation, using three “venter bridges.” For the technical explanation of these bridges, I quote Wikipedia: “Where particularly deep or lengthy depressions had to be crossed, inverted siphons could be used instead; here, the conduit terminated in a header tank which fed the water into pipes. These crossed the valley at lower level, supported by a low "venter" bridge, rose to a receiving tank at a slightly lower elevation and discharged into another conduit; the overall gradient was maintained. Siphon pipes were usually made of soldered lead, sometimes reinforced by concrete encasements or stone sleeves. Less often, the pipes themselves were stone or ceramic, jointed as male-female and sealed with lead.” In the case of Aspendos, the pipes consisted of 3400 blocks of limestone that were sealed together with a mixture of lime and olive oil that expanded when wet. There are still plenty of these pipes lying around at the feet of the aqueduct, enough to kindle your imagination. At each end of the valley, we can still see the thirty-meter-high tower (without a roof) in which the water would settle down and re-oxygenate itself before flowing onward. Today, a motor road runs underneath each tower, making a close look very tempting and highly rewarding. 

By the time I wrap up my inspection tour, the sun is setting. The entire valley is set afire with this natural floodlight, and I feel privileged as if the performance is for me alone. I’m certain the Romans would never understand my exaltation for these two-thousand-year-old ruins!

Experiencing the perfection of a Greek temple

It was back in the early 1970s when I saw my very first Greek temple and that happened in Paestum, Italy. Until then I had only seen spare pictures, mostly black and white, and some rare color illustrations on luxury calendars as were fashionable back then. Today this is hard to believe we once lived without digital photography or even color TV. As I traveled to southern Italy in mid-winter I was about the only tourist there and I could take all my time to mentally reconstruct this magnificent city, once part of Magna Graecia.

Walking in and around Paestum, I couldn't miss the main landmarks, i.e., the three absolutely mind-blowing temples! The oldest temple (c. 550 BC), the so-called Basilica, was labeled as an odd one since it counted nine columns on its small side (width), a rare exception since their numbers are supposed to always be even. Next, there was the splendid Temple of Poseidon (c. 450 BC) with on the inside two rows of columns one on top of the other – I couldn’t believe something like this existed at all. The Temple of Ceres (c. 500 BC) was more austere and did little to trigger my imagination, but overall I couldn't get enough of the sun and shadows playing with the columns and their projection against the blue skies although I perfectly realized that I was marveling at something the ancient Greeks would probably have torn down. In their eyes, it would have been nothing more than an empty skeleton as the sacred naos of the temple was gone and none of its decorations had survived. Yet, my curiosity was awakened and the foundation for my enthusiasm for Greek architecture, especially temples, was established once and for all.

Only a couple of years later, I was lucky enough to make it to Greece and I rushed straight to Athens, which for me was the core of everything that was Greek, the city crowned by its unique Acropolis that reigned over the Greek world for eons.

This was a trip that I had thoroughly prepared, writing to the various tourist offices, museums, and other institutions to obtain their catalogs and informative guidebooks as we did in times before the internet. I had studied the pictures and maps, and I knew exactly at what time of the day this or that monument would stand out to give the best perspectives and evidently the best photos. I remember how nervously excited I was, striding upwards through the Propylaea and setting eyes for the very first time on the huge complex with the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, the Temple of Niké, and others. My legs were shaking and I felt dizzy, not knowing where to start or how to properly take in this amazing site. It was like a meeting with the gods. The place was crowded, of course, but that was nothing compared to today's hordes led by yelling guides in scores of languages. On one occasion I was there in the very early morning with only a dozen other early birds, a rare opportunity to let myself slide back in time.

The crown jewel of the Acropolis is evidently the Parthenon (c. 440 BC), which we oddly enough meet from the wrong side, yet in all its majesty. What amazed me most and still amazes me is the sheer perfection of this temple – perfection that has never been surpassed in later Greek sanctuaries. In my mind, it is clear, for instance, that there are no Roman temples, they are all Greek but built by the Romans since every copy, Roman or other, can only compete in beauty when this same Greek perfection is being met.

Strangely enough, the true secret of this perfection lies in the fact that the eye is being tricked for there is not a single straight line in the entire construction! Well, maybe this is an overstatement on my part but still not too far from the truth. To start with, the crepidoma (base) of the temple is not entirely flat but slightly bulging in its center; the architrave (the part running just above the capitals of the columns) is bulging also. The walls of the cella (the actual heart of the temple) and the outside columns are leaning a fraction inwards. These same columns slowly taper off towards the top in a slight inward curve and the fluting is deeper at the bottom than higher up. Most mysterious of all is the inter-relationship between its height, width, and depth. I am not familiar with architecture but there are lots of arithmetic and geometric correlation in the calculation of the proportions. The love of the Greeks for these proportions will certainly have contributed to creating such perfect measurements. In any case, it took us more than two thousand years to figure this out. It is hard to believe that in those heydays of antiquity, architects knew how to make these complicated calculations or had the tools to do so! But once you give them the credit they deserve, you'll look at a temple with greater respect and higher consideration – I can assure you!

But returning to my visit of some forty years ago, there was another surprise awaiting me. I could walk freely inside the Parthenon and the other monuments of the Acropolis – a unique opportunity to let my mind and imagination run back to the days of Pericles, Demosthenes and evidently Alexander the Great. I could take all the time I wanted to uncover every corner, every single frieze, and every sculpture still left in situ. It felt as if I were sharing the Parthenon's intimate secrets as I looked up to this fabulous masterpiece, just like the people of Athens had done over the centuries, and with them all of Greece and the rest of the known world.

The absolute climax was my calculated visit by full moon, a feast that is no longer available to today's pilgrim. For three consecutive nights, you could stroll over the entire Acropolis! All the floodlights were extinguished, and after buying my entrance ticket at the poorly lit booth, I was plunged into this surreal moon-lit stone island. I thought I was seeing the Acropolis just like the ancient Greeks did by the full moon, but at the same time, I was aware that the temples and other sanctuaries must have looked quite different in their full glory. The reflection of the moonlight on the pure marble was absolutely breathtaking, more from an alien planet than from the real world. The handful of people who shared this timeless moment with me moved like shadows and spoke in low whispering voices.  I walked over to the southern edge of the plateau, right above the Plaka with its many restaurants and bars. The sounds must have been familiar to the ancient Greeks, with the people talking, laughing, and singing to the music streaming out of the local taverns. It came and went in waves, carried by gentle summery winds into the darkness of the night. It was pure magic … My steps then led me past the very entrance of the Parthenon to the northern edge of the Acropolis, from where I had a plunging view into the Theater of Herodes Atticus and that of Dionysus. No memories here of the common people chatting and chanting, but instead of a performance even older than this sacred area, that of a Greek play in a perfect setting and performed as only the full-blooded Greeks can. What a thrilling and timeless experience this was!