In my travels to Europe I have encountered occasions in which some of what I came to see was covered up by scaffolds and barriers erected for the restoration and preservation of the artifact. I could not view the medieval stained glass at Salisbury and Chartres due to this. In Rome temple  façades and even entire temples were covered. In Venice part of the  façade of San Marcos Basilica was covered.

Since ancient times buildings have been subjected to natural damage. Earthquakes have collapsed some of them. Parts of the Coliseum in Rome have collapsed in earthquakes. Lightning strikes have damaged buildings. Some, like much of ancient Alexandria are now under water. Fires, a regular occurrence in ancient Rome, have destroyed buildings and art. From earliest times, armies have leveled ancient cities. These include Troy, Carthage and Corinth.

Then, as now, ‘urban renewal’ leveled parts of cities, with new buildings erected on the ruble of older buildings. Not infrequently the good building materials of old buildings was stripped and used in new buildings. The exterior surface of the pyramids and Coliseum were stripped and the underlying stone, brick and concrete exposed.

For centuries ancient site have been robbed and the art removed or, in the case of gold, silver and bronze artifacts melted down for their metal.  The Romans regularly raided Greek and Asian sites for their artwork. For centuries beginning in the Renaissance artwork from ancient Greece and Rome were stolen and placed in private royal collections and museums. I have never been to Greece before, so I have never seen the Parthenon. However I have seen the frieze that ran around it. That is in the British Museum in London. The damage to the Parthenon is partly due to the natural elements, but the major structural damage was caused when the Ottoman Turks used it for an ammunition dump and the Venetians shelled it. Good thinking guys.

Also on the Acropolis is the Erchtheion, famous for the Porch of the Caryatids. There are six large statues serving as pillars upholding the roof. The statues there today are copies. Five of the originals are in the Acropolis Museum; the sixth is in the British Museum in London. The Greeks want it back.

In some respects the removal of the original stonework, such as the friezes of the Parthenon and the Temple of Poseidon in Paestum, and major artworks to museums, such as from Herculaneum and Pompeii to the Museum in Naples and from Rome to the Vatican Museum, are good because they are safer from the corrosive effects of the modern industrial atmosphere. Industrial emissions and the exhaust of internal combustion engines is bad for the health not only of humans but buildings and art. Much of the restoration and preservation work seen in England, France, Germany, Italy and Greece are to address the deterioration caused by petroleum fuels and to prevent further damage.

Getting from here to there.

The itinerary that Expedia came up with to get me to Athens is odd. I leave DFW at 7:55 AM to take an Air Canada flight to Denver. Denver? That is northwest of Dallas – Athens is east. They’ll want me at DFW 5:55 AM which means leaving home at 4:25 AM! At Denver I’ll take another Air Canada flight to Montreal. I suppose that will mean that in Denver I will have to claim my checked baggage and go through security again as I am changing from a domestic flight to an international flight.

At Montreal I suspect I’ll again have to claim my checked baggage and go through security again before boarding a third Air Canada flight, this time to Athens. I’m wondering. In Montreal will I also have to go through Canadian customs and immigration? But once I’m on the plane to Athens I’ll not have to mess with that checked bag and security again until I get to Athens, reclaim my bag for the third time and go through Greek immigration and customs.

Once through all that, I have to get from the Athens airport to my hotel. I’m currently debating. The least expensive way would be to take the train that connects to the Athens subway, take the subway to downtown Athens, transfer to another subway to get within a few blocks of the hotel and then walk to the hotel – lugging my luggage all the way. The easiest and most expensive way would be to take a taxi.

And back again.

To return I am booked on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfort, Germany. That flight leaves at 6:15 AM! That means checking in at 4:15 AM!! Rather than leaving my Athens hotel at 3:15 AM I decided to spend an expensive few hours at the airport hotel that night. I’m guessing these red-eye flights were scheduled so as to be cheaper.

I imagine that I’ll have to claim my bag and go through security again at Frankfort. At least I shouldn’t need to go through customs and immigration, as Athens and Frankfort are European Union countries. At Frankfort I’ll take another Lufthansa flight to DFW.

The Greeks didn’t (and don’t) call themselves “Greeks’ or Greece ‘Greece.’ That comes from the Latin Graecia.  In Greek Greece is Έλλάδα (Hellada), Greeks are Έλληνες (Hellenes), and Greek is Έλληνικά (Hellenika).

Historians sometimes debate when history begins. There was a theory that history begins when there are written records. So the Stone Age occupants 12 millennia ago don’t count. Besides those peoples aren’t the ancestors of historical Greeks.

Another civilization flourished in the area in the 34^th through 21^st centuries – the Minoans (of King Minos fame).  The 21^st century BC is as far removed from the advent of the Christ as we are.

Around the 21^st century BC the Mycenaeans moved into the area. They were ‘Greek speaking.’ The center of this civilization, which dominated the eastern Mediterranean was Mycenae in the Peloponnese, that part of Greece that extends south of the Gulf of Corinth which nearly divides northern and southern Greece. I hope to do a day trip from Athens to visit that site, famous for its walls and Lion Gate. There are some early written records, but they consist mostly of inventories and tax records. And some are in a script which hasn’t been deciphered yet.

That civilization was followed by the Early Iron Age, sometimes referred to as the ‘Greek Dark Ages’ – mostly because we don’t know much about it. During this period writing seems to have disappeared.

In the 8^th century BC Greece began to emerge from that ‘Dark Age’ into an age known as ‘Archaic Greece.’ Written records reappear.

The major period that interest most of us is known as ‘Classical Greece.’ This is a roughly 200 year period in the 5^th and 4^th centuries BC. This is the era of the philosophers Socrates and Plato; of Greek tragic and comic drama, of the famous politicians such as Pericles and of democracy. It began with the Persian Wars in which the Greeks successfully repulsed the attempts of Persia to conquer the Greeks. Herodotus is generally credited with writing the first history – an account of the Persian Wars. (Marathon and Thermopylae are the famous battles.) Toward the end it saw the Athens controlled Delian League that dominated the Mediterranean. Toward the end of the period Greece underwent a kind of civil war (war among different Greek city states) known as the Peloponnesian War – recorded by another early historian – Thucydides.

Classical Greece came to an end with the conquests of the Macedonian Alexander the Great. That era is known as ‘Hellenistic Greece’ and the influence of Greece in that period is known as ‘Hellenization.’ (There are a couple of words deriving from the name the Greeks used for themselves coming into our language. In this period the Greek Greeks really do fade into the historical background as the focus of history shifts to Asia and Egypt – the areas conquered by Alexander.

Greece proper was drawn into the growing empire of the Roman Republic in the 2^nd century BC. Roman domination of Greece continued into the 4^th century AD. During this Roman period, Athens was sort of a ‘university town.’ Romans went there for advanced education. But it wasn’t all that important politically and certainly not militarily.

In 324 Constantine the Great divided the administration of the Roman Empire into Roman west and the east governed from his new capitol, Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey). Greece went with this eastern area and we refer to this as ‘Byzantine’ – Constantinople having been built on the site of the previous city, Byzantium. The Byzantine Empire finally fell to Islamic rulers in 1453. Greece was as much a victim of the Crusades as the Middle East. The Crusaders did more to weaken the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire as the armies of Islam that finally ended Byzantine rule.

This was followed by domination and control by the Ottoman Empire that lasted until 1821 when Greece won its independence for the first time since the Romans made it a province of their Empire. Modern Greece suffered during both World Wars. Liberation following WWII resulted in a communist regime and eventually civil war. A democratic government was established in 1974 which continues today.

I have transferred the blogs from the old website to this blog.

Canicus in Italia: Day 4 (3 July 2012) about Herculaneum is out of order. Sorry about that. After I had transferred everything else I noticed that I had missed that blog.

The photos from my previous travels are in the archives at http://canicusmodius.com/.

I will actually depart from DFW on Monday and the first blog from Greece should be sometime Tuesday evening. There will be a few preliminary blogs from Dallas before I leave; this is one.

Athens is 8 hours ahead of Dallas. In other words 8 PM in Athens is noon in Dallas.

My hotel has an outdoor swimming pool and the highs in Athens should be perfect for swimming. The online reviews also say that there is a rooftop terrace with a spectacular view of the Acropolis. Right now that plus a nap looks like the plan after a hotel check in hotel Tuesday afternoon.

The photo journals will be using the JavaScript webpage I wrote and used last year. I may post a few on my FB page. I’m guessing the free hotel WiFi will be slow and it is faster to FTP to my website than to create albums on FB.

The camera I will be taking is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200. It takes good HD videos as well as photos. So if I find some interesting action I may do some videos. Those probably will go on YouTube, if I can tolerate the slow upload. Otherwise they may wait until I return and can upload faster at home. Right now the only ‘action’ I can think of is the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Things like the Parthenon tend not to move around much.

I have set up a Twitter account — @canicusmodius — I’ll try to tweet some. Don’t look for much political commentary on my FB page, here or on Twitter. I’ll be focused 2,500 years ago. But then, Athens was the birthplace of democracy then.

Originally posted on July 3, 2012 by Canicus

Herculaneum

Herculaneum is actually a Greek colony, although thoroughly Romanized by the first century. It was one of the cities destroyed by the historic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD – on of several disasters to hit during Trajan’s reign.

From Naples it is quickly reached from Naples by the Circumvenusian railroad. I was worried about where to get off. There are numerous stops, all named in Italian. I did manage to decode “Ercolonoco” as Herculaneum, so I got off at the right place. The view from the train is not good. You cannot see the ruins, and I could not see Vesuvius. Early in the morning it is a nice walk from the rail station to the archeological site – all downhill. It was morning and not terribly hot.

There is a further major descent, still pleasant in the morning, to the level of the city. Herculaneum, unlike Pompeii, was covered by a pyroclastic surge which left it buried under about 65 feet of volcanic rock. The cities were rediscovered in the Renaissance by accident and essentially mined for ancient statuary, mosaics and wall paintings. Archeology has improved in the subsequent centuries and there is considerable effort to preserve and restore the site that continue today.

Originally it was thought that the people of Herculaneum escaped the disaster because, unlike Pompeii no human remains were found in early excavations. However, when the boathouses were discovered along what was then the coast of the Bay of Naples, hundreds of skeletal remains of people that had been instantaneously carbonized by the pyroclastic surge. Apparently fairly early in the eruption, they had fled to these boathouses in hopes of escaping, but help never arrived.

We know that Pliny the Elder, who was the commander of the Roman fleet based at Miseneum at the extreme western part of the Bay, had led the fleet in a rescue attempt but could not approach Herculaneum (or Pompeii) because of the winds, current and volcanic ash (which reduced visibility and risked setting ships on fire) and so went to Stabiae.

One interesting exotic field is archeological botany. Most of us know how in Pompeii “hollows” were found in the pumice and ash that were left by people and animals killed in the disaster. These were filled with plaster and images of dead recovered. Well, the archeological botanist looked for holes in the grounds of gardens in Herculaneum filled them with plaster, dug the result out and identified the plants that had grown in the gardens. Reconstructions today are based on those findings.

Leaving Herculaneum is all uphill. So as soon as I got out of the archeological site I took a three euro cab ride to the train station.

Today the pedometer shows 2,748 steps, for 1.30 miles. Somehow I thought it would be more. It says 119 calories were burned. Average pace was 3.1 mph and actual time 24 minutes 27 seconds, which I know is wrong.

Canicus Modus

Originally posted on July 22, 2012 by Canicus

Final Report

This was a long day. I woke at 5 AM in Rome. (It was midnight in Dallas.) I seemed to do that while in Europe. I have no idea why. It did, however, make it easier to catch early morning trains and flights. But this morning’s flight out of Rome wasn’t all that early. I didn’t really need to check in until 8 AM, and I was already at the airport — or at least the Hilton Rome Airport which is connected by a long Sky Walk to Terminal 1. I had no idea which terminal I needed to go to, so when I checked out of the hotel at 7 AM I asked which terminal I needed. “Terminal 5. Take the shuttle parked out in front.” So I actually arrived at the check in counter before they opened. It seems, though, that Terminal 5 is just check in and security clearance for international travelers. After clearing security, they put us on another bus to take us to another building that had boarding gates.

The flight to Charlotte, N.C., was uneventful, and we arrived about 15 minutes ahead of schedule. The nasty thing about this is that since I was entering the U.S. I had to retrieve my checked bag (which always seems to be the last unloaded), clear immigration where there were hundreds of people queued up, go through customs (which was pretty quick), recheck the bag and then find the gate for my flight to DFW.

To get the gate we had to go up a long flight of stairs — the elevator and escalator were both shut down. When we reached the top of the stairs we were greeted by a uniformed security guard wanting to know why we came up that way. It was the only way we could see on the lower level. He was vary concerned because we came into an area undergoing remodeling and there was stuff strewn all over the place.

As I entered the floor I could see out the windows of the building for the first time and there were dark clouds forming up outside. Sure enough, in a few minutes there was a thunderstorm. It was fairly brief, but what it did was delay the plane that was to take me to DFW. When it did arrive, we boarded. Then we were told we didn’t have clearance to take off because of the weather at DFW. So we sat about 40 minutes waiting for clearance.

The flight to Dallas took exactly two hours, as promised. So essentially I arrived an hour later than scheduled. One observation about flying this year: the food is worse than ever. I don’t know if that is simply U.S. Airways, or system wide. In the past I always did British Airways; so it may just be the difference in companies. There is talk that American (in bankruptcy and being advised by Bain Capital) may merge with US. They deserve each other.

I took a taxi to a hot apartment, turned on the air-conditioner, ate a quick microwaved supper and went to bed.

Canicus Modius

Originally posted on July 19, 2012 by Canicus

Transition from Lyon to Rome

All Europe is populated by C Programmers. Thus the first floor is Floor 0. This works out fairly rationally because it means that if there is a basement, it will be Floor -1; if there is a subbasement it will be -2. But all this means that the second floor (the one above the ground floor) is Floor 1; and the third floor is floor 2.

Now, in case you are confused, consider the hotel where I stayed in Lyon. The first (ground) Floor is 0. (There was a basement where taxis lurked, but you could not access it by elevator — supposedly that would be -1.) Now the hotel lobby was not on the ground floor — Floor 0; you had to take an elevator to the second floor, Floor 1, to get to the lobby.

But the hotel elevators were on this second floor, but those elevators designated the second floor as Floor 0. My hotel room was located on Floor 3 — that being the fifth floor of the building. To get to ground level I had to take the hotel elevator to Floor 0, transfer to another elevator and, because as far as that elevator was concerned I was on the second floor (1), I had to take it to the first floor (0).

Nothing much to report. I packed in the morning — pretty much for the last time. It was a short walk to Gare Part-Dieu to catch the Rhônexpress to Aéroport Lyon Saint-Exupéry. It is an hour 30 minute flight to Aeroporto Internazionale Leonardo da Vinci di Fiumicino (Rome’s major airport).

I’m spending the night in the Hilton Rome Airport. Too expensive and, obviously, the most “American” hotel this trip. But I figured that taking the Leonardo Express from Fiumicino to Rome, spending one night in a cheap hotel, being sure to wake early enough to take the Leonardo Express back to the airport to catch an 11 AM flight to the U.S. would end up being a bigger mess and not a lot cheaper.

I figure I have to check out of the hotel by 8 AM (instead of 7 AM had I stayed in Rome) in order to find where in which terminal I need to be by 9 to get the boarding pass, check my bag, go through security and find my gate.

Canicus Modius

Originally posted on July 18, 2012 by Canicus

Lyon

Today is effectively the last day of the Grand Tour this year. I’ve managed Venice, Naples, Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabiae, Paestum, Rome, Ostia and Lyon in the three weeks since leaving Dallas. Today is sort of a transition in time of some 1,500 years from ancient Rome to the modern world.

Lyon was a Gallic dudum before Caesar’s Gallic Wars began. It retained its Gallic name of Lugdunum (Dunum of Lug, a Gallic god) even when it became a part of the Roman empire and, for all intents and purposes, a Roman city. I’m not quite sure how linguistically one gets from Lugdunum to Lyon, though I suppose over centuries of slurred speech (and maybe lots of Gallic beer, Roman wine and eventually the French) one can get from one to the other. Lyon does make a thing about lions though. They are somewhat symbolic for the city.

Much of Lyon is a very modern city, although there are sections that retain not only the Roman but the medieval, renaissance and later characteristics. What it does not seem to be is a tourist city. I decided to visit the Tourist Center in the Place Bellecour, which the hotel literature indicates is where the tourist action is. There is a tourist center run by the transit authority. You can book tours of the city and region there. But there is none of that highly competitive on/off sightseeing bus bit you see in Rome or Paris. Nor are there the legions of hawkers selling all sorts of stuff on the streets as is the case in Venice, Naples and Rome. There is a lot of high class shopping around the Place Bellecour and a lot of sidewalk restaurants. I did eat at one, but decided not to hang around for a couple of hours for the next tour bus.

Tomorrow I pack for an afternoon, non-stop this time, to Rome. Online booking seems a bit strange. The train booking I took from Rome to Venice had a transfer at Bologne; the train booking from Venice to Naples was direct to Rome but with a transfer at Rome. I had originally planned on doing the train from Rome to Lyon, the idea being that on the return I could do a night train that would eliminate a night in a hotel. But that turned out to involve a three country rail pass (Italy, Switzerland and France) and a number of transfers. So I ended up booking a flight and a night at a Leonardo airport. The fight to Lyon involved a transfer at Milan; but the return in direct and non-stop. Go figure. A taxi driver here told me I should have flown to Paris, and then take trains to Venice, Naples, Rome, Lyon and back to Paris to fly home. He probably is right.

Canicus Modius

Originally posted on July 17, 2012 by Canicus

Musee Gallo Romain

This is what I came to Lyon to see. The area around Lyon is quite flat, except for this hill. On top of the hill is where the Gauls before Caesar had their town, which the Romans took over and made a center for the new province of Gaul. Lyon is a major city in France these days, and the hill contains a lot of “modern” structures. But there are the remains of an amphitheater and odion (a music hall) dating back to the days of Augustus Caesar.

The French have built into the side of the hill a museum. Architecturally it is interesting in itself. From the outside it is a concrete blockhouse. So plain, in fact, that the taxi driver who took me there didn’t recognize it or where the entrance is. But inside you gradually descend five floors in a spiral from the top (roughly the top of the amphitheater) to the bottom. All along the way there are displays of historical materials of Lyon going back to the stone age down to the late Roman Empire.

A lot of the material is epigraphical – inscriptions of various monuments. But there is a good deal of other things including everyday objects such as ladies’ toilet objects, game pieces, tool, weapons, pottery, glassware etc. There are also some spectacular moasics.

I’m finding Lyon a rather “normal” city after all the tourist bits in Venice, Naples and Rome. There are obviously tourists. But none of the street venders selling souvenirs. I did spot some buses that obviously are for tourists – both of the open top variety and the closed buses with big windows. In Rome you had vendors constantly attempting to sell tickets to those buses all over the place. But I can’t find any of that sort of activity here. Tomorrow, I may try again to locate one just to take a tour of the city. Or I may try to go to Vienne, which is nearby and which also has some Roman ruins. Or I may do neither.

The weather here is not what I expected. I really did think I would experience Texas like heat. But the air is on the cool side if you are in the shade. Standing in the sun, though, can be quite hot.

Canicus Modius

Originally posted on July 16, 2012 by Canicus

From Rome to Lyon

Today was the transfer from Rome, Italy, to Lyon, France. No photos today, although I guess I could have gotten some airplane window shots of the snow-capped Alps. Then there could have been some shots of the architecture of the corn, harvested hay and industry between Saint-Exuprey and Gare Part-Dieu.

Lyon was once known as Lugdunum, established as a Roman administrative center by Julius Caesar. This was also one of the cities in which Rome operated mints, a few of which coins have ended up in my collection.

Lyon also has an important connection in Christian history. It was here that Irenaeus was bishop. One of the 2nd century Greek Fathers (that is, he wrote in Greek) he knew Polycarp who, it is said, knew the apostle John. This sort of apostolic connection plays a role in one of Irenaeus’ works, “Against Heresies” in which he refutes Gnostic heresies. One of his arguments is that one must look to those sees where the tradition received from the apostles is taught. He uses the Church of Rome as an example. He also argues for the evidence of the four gospels as preserving the apostolic faith. At one time scholars rejected the descriptions of Gnostic belief.

Tomorrow I hope to visit some of the Roman remains in Lyon and the Roman Museum here.

Hotel stories. I left wake up calls at the two previous hotels to be sure I was up early enough to catch my transportation to the next city. Neither actually made the calls. Fortunately, I woke up on my own without the calls.

This seems to be the nicest hotel so far. But like the hotel in Rome, the lobby isn’t on the ground floor. The hotel in Rome was in a building with three hotels. There was no lobby for any of them on the ground floor – which is floor 0 in Europe. The lobbies for the hotels were on floors 1, 2 and 5. (I think there was a floor 6.) The hotel in Lyon has an elevator on floor 0 to the lobby, which is on floor 1. Different elevators go to the other floors of the hotel. To make life interesting floor 1 (the lobby floor) is floor 0 for the hotel. My room is on floor 3, which means I am on the fifth floor.

WiFi is free here, but seem to be flaky. It was working before I went to dinner, but now I can’t connect. I may have to try the lobby to post this.

Canicus Modius