Canicus in Athens: Day 9 (18 September 2013)
Today I thought I would check out the Odeon at the base of the Acropolis. It turns out that it is open only for performances. And what, you might ask, is an Odeon. It is somewhat like an amphitheater although smaller and covered. It was used for musical performances. I saw the first century Roman Odeon in Lyon, France, last year. So not being able to get it wasn’t all that big a disappointment.
So I walked a bit further and took in the Theater of Dionysus, which is very much what you think of when you think of a Greek theater. It is a semicircular affair. There is a flat orchestra where the action mostly occurred surrounded by banked seating. The upper levels are missing, but it apparent where they were. The VIP seating is stone chairs in the first, lowest row next to the orchestra. In the center of this row are what we might call ‘box seats’ for the VVIPs. The most important of these seats was reserved for the god Dionysus himself. There was a temple of Dionysus behind the proscenion and scene. An image of the god would be carried from the temple to his reserved seat before the play began. As seems to always be the case with these ruins, the proscenion and scene are pretty much gone except for the foundations. Some of the play action would have occurred on these structures and they might provide scenery or even mechanisms such as those used for a deus ex machina intervention of a god or a floating Socrates in Aristophanes’ The Clouds. This theater would have seen ‘World Premieres of playwrights like Sophocles and Euripides.
After that I encountered a man playing a concert cimbalom. I took about a minutes worth of video of him. I succeeded in uploading it to YouTube. (http://youtu.be/l-eJf0f10mk) Uploading video is painful. This took nearly two hours to upload!
I enjoyed a frappe with cinnamon ice cream near the Acropolis Museum. I then took a ‘train ride’ on one of those silly park motor trains. It wandered around parts of Athens I had seen before. But it went through some very narrow streets where you could buy nearly anything. There were shops selling everything you might need to equip a Greek Orthodox Church including vestments. There were jewelry shops, Rug shops. Soccer uniform shops. Musical instrument shops. (I might have bought one if I had a way to take it home with me. Etc., etc., etc. The train went through the flea market, past the Tower of the Winds and the old Roman Forum – where you could even buy a red Che Guevara flag.
Before I left some folks expressed fears that I might encounter riots and demonstrations because of the economic crises. I told them I wasn’t worried because those would not be in the tourist areas – which has been almost completely true. There are a few painted announcements of a hunger strike around the Acropolis. But no demonstrations. Until today. This train got delayed at the square in front of the Parliament because there was a big demonstration going on. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of men and women marching around the square. Many wore orange tee shirts (no this wasn’t an extension of the Texas women’s demonstrations against the Texas legislature’s restrictive abortion measures) and flags. They also carried big signs which, as they were in Greek, I couldn’t decipher. There were also a few blue flags and shirts and even few red flags and shirt. There was also singing. The demonstration was entirely orderly; there was no rioting or the like. I did see some EMS type personnel on the fringes, but no particular presence of police or military. I asked the lady who sold tickets for the train what the demonstration was about – she said ‘jobs, money, the economy.’ I asked her if it was in support of the current Greek government (which is attempting to ease the austerity measures) and she said yes.
Tomorrow I’ll pack and transfer to the airport hotel in readiness to fly to Frankfort at (ugh) 6:15 AM Friday morning. I figure it is better to sleep an hour later instead of taking a taxi from this hotel at 3 AM to do the check in at 4:15. I’m wondering though. In past years when I have had these ungodly red eye flights out of Paris and Rome there was no one working at the supposed check in time. I’ve always ended up waiting for the shift to come on duty.
Canicus Modius