my first stadium experience

February 12, 2007

Athens, Greece

After the incredibly cold experience at the Parthenon, yesterday I was not about to repeat my mistakes, so I dressed myself as warmly as I could, with leggings and both parts of my jacket. I needed it—a few minutes after we left the hotel on the way to the Roman Agora, the skies opened and it started raining. Although it never poured, it would continue to drizzle throughout the whole day, which not only saddened my clothes and my notebook, but made the experience a little bit more uncomfortable than usual. At one point I just decided I would not risk my notebook getting wet anymore, and notes stopped for the day. Rain for 6 hours straight is no fun.

We stopped first at the Monument of Lysikrates, which was important because it was one of the first buildings to utilize the Corinthian capitals, which were engaged in the walls of the semi-circular structure. The district we were in, located on tripod street, supposedly contained a number of these commemorative statues, dedicated by the wealthy men of Athens who were required to sponsor the plays. Called choregoi, these men would then erect tripods in honor of the victor, which at the time covered the whole street. Only the Lysikrates monument survives.

Moving on, we went to the Olympeion, stopping first at the Arch of Hadrian, dedicated to the Roman emperor who financed tons of building projects in the city of Athens. Hadrian, a stranger to modesty, placed an inscription on the side of the arch that equated himself with Theseus. No shame at all. However, Hadrian did complete building one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, so I suppose he is justified in touting himself a little bit.

One of the seven wonders of the ancient world is the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which is located in what is now a vast park that looks up at the acropolis. And, although only a handful of the original 104 columns that existed are still standing, the Temple of Zeus is probably more stunning than its more famous counterpart, the Parthenon. The columns are 17 meters high, which seem absolutely massive. The Corinthian columns too are very slender for classical order columns, which I think added to the sense of height—the Parthenon is Doric, which calls for a shorter fatter column, and the peristyle court at the Temple of Karnak called for massive and closely spaced pillars—which gave them a huge sense of size but perhaps decreased their appearance of height. These columns towered in a way that made me feel very very short. Also remarkable about this building is that it was begun in 510 BC under one of the tyrants that had control over Athens at the time, whose name was Hippias. But, the building was not completed until 600 years later, when Hadrian finally did it. A 600 year construction period, during which the unfinished building was already an ancient wonder. Today, the ruins still seem tall and majestic, and I was very happy to see them. Pictures do not do this monument justice—the columns cannot be fully appreciated even in a video shot.

The next site that we visited was the Panathenaic Stadium. Reconstructed over the ruins of a 3rd or 4th C site, the entire stadium is finished in marble and was used for the restart of the Olympics in 1896. In 2004 it was used again for the end of the Marathon race, and continues to hold various events. However, the configuration of ancient Greek stadium makes contemporary athletic events impossible to hold—this stadium is shaped like a horseshoe. To run a race, athletes ran from one end to the other, a distance of about 200m—one stadion, or would run a diaulos, which was the distance down and back. Instead of going around in circles they would turn around a post placed at the far end of the stadium. The best seats were around the finish line, which was placed at the curved part of the horseshoe. I intend to come back here and wander around and do more picture taking, but the major points that impressed me in this ancient stadium was this:

The similarity between a Greek stadium and a theatre. The seats are divided in much the same fashion, a belt dividing the upper and lower levels (I will have to look up the technical terms later) and the curved portion divided into pie shaped segments. The placement of a circular area, privileged, at the end of the track seemed analogous to me to the orchestra of the theater, and the simple manner of stepping the stone seats into the hillside struck me as a particularly Greek form of construction. I did not get close enough to see if there were special seats reserved for special spectators, as is the case in the theater of Dionysus, which we visited later. That is something I would definitely like to explore more about this stadium when I get the chance.

The Theater of Dionysus is where all of the important and still read plays were held, as part of semiannual events in honor of the god of wine and theater. Set into the hill of the acropolis, only the lower seats of the theater of Dionysus still survive, but enough of the remains are evident to indicate a humongous seating area, big enough to house large numbers of spectators. Some estimates go as high as 17,000 spectators, ten times the size of Davidson College. The interesting thing about this theater that I could relate to my studies is the position of special carved marble seats that ringed the stage, the most important one in the center. These were dedicated to the priests of Dionysus, and contained inscriptions on the back indicating whom they belonged to. Similar inscriptions could also be found on the bench-seats. However, this is a clear indication that those in positions of power could be specially delineated by the architecture of the theater, and that they were placed in a position very close to the performance. The rest of the audience sat behind these dignitaries, and above them, so the importance of the dignitaries BEING seen may not be as relevant as their proximity to the performance itself.

We also saw some small stoas on the slope, one of which was dedicated to the god of healing (I am blanking on the name right now) and contained a room where the patients could sleep while they were waiting for their miracle healing experience. ON a funny side note, we had been followed by packs of dogs the whole day (I don’t know if they can just smell sympathetic Americans or what, but they follow us wherever we go), and one of them got stuck in a hole in the orchestra floor. Brad noticed and called Dr Toumazou over to rescue it. So Toumazou jumped in the hole, to find that the dog had disappeared. We were all standing around, waiting for Toumazou to haul the dog up, when suddenly the dog pops up behind us. Apparently there are tunnels underneath the orchestra of the theater—perhaps expressly for the purpose of animal shows in Roman times… and apparently they still work!

The last two stops were the tower of the winds, which is located in the Roman agora. An odd 8 sided building, the top of it contained friezes of each of the 8 cardinal winds, and lines around the outside could be used as a sundial to read the time. Inside, a water clock could be used to measure the time exactly through a complicated system of dripping water, bobbers, and display devices. According to tradition the building was left open constantly as a place for Athenians to meet or to check the time or the wind (there was a weathervane on top of the roof). The water clock had to be reset every day by refilling one of the containers with water. I thought the whole concept was very neat—but the idea of a whole building to tell time is similar to the original notions of computers that filed an entire room… ultimately unnecessary… Still, the fact that these people thousands of years ago wanted to have a precise timing system is very impressive. Perhaps the ancient Athenians are not so different from ourselves after all.

The last stop was the Library of Hadrian, which in actuality was simply a multipurpose building that also happened to contain books. We scrambled around the ruins of columns and walls and courtyards, getting wetter and colder all of the time. By this point, I think I had ceased to appreciate the site for its beauty and only appreciated the fact that the walls did not protect from the elements. Everything was getting soaked. By now we had been in the rain since 9 am and it was nearing 4… we were ready to go home.

So we did, and I stripped from my soaking clothes to realize that the rest of my clothes had been hung on the balcony outside of my hotel room to dry, and were now wet as well. I put on my pajamas and did some homework and emailing, and some more hot chocolate and Bailey’s. At the end of the night, a bunch of folks went out to dinner. I had already eaten, so myself and Anne and Scott split some carafes of wine, and ate these very small fish which were cooked and eaten whole—a huge leap of faith for me. The wine made the rest of the evening fly by. Pretty soon, I was ready for bed, and happy to sleep.

Today was another VERY LONG day. Luckily, however, it did not rain.

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