(Methymna)
There was a time when the small town of Molyvos – which used to be
called Methymna – had its own king and even its own bishop. It was the second
city of Lesvos and as a citystate it quarrelled for a long time with the other
big town of the island: Mytilini. Regularly soldiers were sent back and forth
and they even conquered other states; Arisva (now Kalloni) belonged for some
time to Methymna.
During the Peloponnesian war (431 – 404 BC) Methymna choose to side with
Athens, while the other Lesvorian citystates sided with Sparta. Did Methymna
choose Athens for political reasons or was it being faithful to the Goddess
Athena, who gave Athens its name and was much depicted on ancient coins and
pottery as the Goddess of war.
Lesvos is not far away from the regions where the first Western coins
were minted – the island of
Aegina, where the oldest drachma, which depicts a land turtle, was found (about
700 BC), and Ephesus, then part of the kingdom of Lydia, the cradle where the
first coins originated. The prosperous citystates of Mytilini and Methymna eventually
followed and two centuries later minted their own coins: see this interesting collection
of coins from Methymna.
In the fourth century BC the Gods of Olympus were still venerated in
Greece and when Zeus was angry with Methymna he released heavy thunderstorms.
To appease this God the villagers threw a virgin into the sea. Zeus might have
had plenty of reason to be angry with Methymna. For a certain period this citystate
was seen as a Sodom and Gomorrah, due to its plenitude of prostitutes who, like
their clients, hit the bottle pretty hard and took their time to sleep off the
booze. Around 442 – 443 BC the new king Kleomenis having had enough of this
debauchery, arrested all the pimps, had them tied in sacks and thrown into the
sea – a clear sign for the whores to quit their jobs.
In those times you would find land turtles depicted on the coins of
Methymna. This animal was seen as a symbol for fertility and was one of the
favourites of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. The head of Silenus was regularly
minted into the coins too. This bearded man was the drinking buddy of Dionysus,
the God of the wine. He was known for his love for the nymphs and for the
donkey he rode which would chase giants while braying. Other people thought
Silenus was the teacher of Dionysus, and that he was a foolish but wise man and
thus loved by Greek sages.
You could often also find a gorgon’s heads on the coins, the head of a
monstrous goddess with a nest of snakes as her hair. You might think that this
head was a symbol for the sorry state of Methymna and its whores, but in fact it
was the symbol of protection against the evil eye, a phenomenon still existing
in today’s world.
Later the coins became more serious and depicted bunches of grapes or
drinking cups. You could read this as yet more symbols for bad drinking, but in
those times wine making had become very popular and by the time the Romans
conquered Greece, Lesvos was reknowned for its good wine, and the one from
Methymna was praised as the best.
The citystates eventually disappeared, quarrels were ended because
mighty enemies had to be fought together. Lesvos was ruled by many foreign
states and when in 1922 it became Greek again, it was divided into different
municipalities. This lasted until today’s crisis hit the country and three
years ago thousands of municipalities had to be assembled into bigger units and
as such Lesvos became one big municipality.
The municipality of Lesvos has very little or no money: none to clean
the island (that’s done by the inhabitants), none to repair roads (some of them
impossible to use) and none to replace lamps in the lampposts (streets are becoming
dark). Even so, many taxes are being paid, nobody knows what that money is used
for nor where it is. The big municipality is in chaos.
Last year, when the tourist season started, lots of people believed the
crazy stories that came through the grapevine, for instance, that no money
would come out of ATM’s, that nothing would function and that the island (and
the rest of Greece) was like a big battlefield with riots and tear-gas on every
street corner. How stupid can people be.
Although I am talking about a chaotic municipality with broken lampposts,
I don’t mean that the island is in darkness. There still is sufficient light on
the streets and there still are plenty of people who do everything to keep life
normal. For instance last Sunday children and the elder citizens of Molyvos
cleaned the streets and beaches around the city.
The plan to install a customhouse in Petra for boats to come and go to
Turkey from the north of the island has still not worked out. Is this due to a
lack of money or is Mytilini afraid to loose this everincreasing number of
tourists to Molyvos and Petra? The Turkish tourists arriving in Mytilini mainly
come for just one or two days and a visit to the idyllic medieval town of
Molyvos entails a pretty long bus journey, an incentive to remain in Mytilini, where
the shops do great business.
If Methymna still had its own king and an army, I am sure that they
would by now have attacked Mytilini, because it is said that they keep the
municipality money and that they prevent the Turks from sailing straight to
Molyvos. If new coins were to be minted, one side would again depict a helmeted
Athena, ready for the battle and on the other side you could find a tourist bus
– because Molyvos still boasts of its ancient Methymnesian fame and remains the
most visited tourist place of the island.
(with thanks to Mary Staples)
© Smitaki 2013
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