Monday 24 November 2014

20 november – There were the Romans


(Part of the aqueduct near Lambou Mili)

The American writer John Williams (1922-1994) left three finely written novels; their subjects differ considerably. Butchers Crossing (1960) is about the slaughtering of the buffalo in the USA, Stoner (1965), about a farm boy who became a professor at the university and his last novel Augustus (1972) is about the Roman Emperor Augustus and won in 1973 the National Book Award.

The great Augustus only had one daughter: Julia. He manipulated her marriages to gain political stability or to reinforce the position of somebody he wanted as heir to the throne. As a two year old girl Julia became engaged to Augustus’ adversary Marcus Antonius. He however fell madly in love with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra and a few years later had an illustrious death. Eventually Julia was married to her cousin Claudius Marcella. When Augustus wanted to fortify the position of his best friend Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa as heir of the Roman throne, she was then married to this much older Roman general. There was no love involved.

For centuries the Romans dominated Lesvos and its surroundings. One of the few remnants of this time is the aqueduct, whose greatest remaining part can be admired in Moria. In John Williams’ story, Julia followed Agrippa on one of his journeys across the Orient. In those times it was not ‘done’ for a general to take his wife on his tour of duty, but Julia wanted badly to see more of the exotic regions of the extended Roman Empire. As the wife of the Second Citizen of Rome and as the daughter of the emperor Julia was welcomed on some Greek islands as a goddess and the biggest reception she got was on Lesvos, where she was named after Aphrodite. This made such a big impression, that later on, when her husband had to go and defend the frontiers of the Roman Empire, she chose to wait for him on Lesvos. According to Williams’ story, she got involved in the rituals of a secret cult for women, adoring a highly secret and almighty god. Part of the ritual was a retreat for three days in a shabby hut with a young man.

I was wondering which secret god that could be. I have never read about a secret Greek god. The family of the Gods of the Olympus is already large enough.
In the book The Cults of Lesvos by Emily Ledyards Shields, the 12 main gods of Lesvos are named, and some smaller ones but no secret ones. It appears that Apollo was the most worshipped god and Artemis the most important goddess. Artemis is now known as the goddess of the hunt, but on Lesvos she used to be the goddess of the thermal baths. There used to be an important Artemis temple in Thermi. Hera also belonged to the 12 most important gods of Lesvos. For a time she was especially beloved for beauty contests. However not much remains of a temple nor writings about a cult for Aphrodite are found, although she was the protector of the neighbouring town of Troy. There are a few scientists who think that in Mesa there once was a temple for Aphrodite and another one close to Mytilini. Sappho wrote different poems for this Goddess of love and even named her daughter after her, just as Augustus’ daughter was honoured with her name.

I guess that Julia, after so many arranged and loveless marriages, finally decided to have a go. Maybe she entered a cult in honour of Aphrodite or maybe even Dionysus, who was worshipped amongst others in Mythimna (Molyvos) with a festival partly for women only, which also had some erotic elements. Whatever she did, it was so wild that it was reported to her father who ordered her back to Rome.

Parts of the book Augustus are fiction, which is also its charm. This way it became a portrait of a normal man with his dilemmas, his sadness and his health problems. Thanks to the fictional correspondences between important Roman people around Augustus, along with parts of diaries (some of them from Julia), Williams created an inspiring image of the time around the man who was worshipped as a god, yet had to ban his beloved daughter because of her lewd behaviour. The case was that Julia, once back in Rome, never forgot Lesvos and continued with an unhinged life, even though she married again after the death of Agrippa, this time to her stepbrother Tiberius. I wonder why Wiliams imagined Julia in Lesvos participating in primitive rituals, far away from the intrigues and bacchanalia in Rome? Did he think that the Greek islands then were not yet civilized?

It is indeed true that even in Roman times heroes or mighty people such as the emperor Augustus were worshipped as real gods and were honoured with festivals. But Lesvos, or Mytilene as it was called in ancient times, was in those times both cultured and wealthy, an island where orators, philosophers and scientists were often best friends with politicians, like Theophanes of Mytilene, who traveled for years with the Roman leader Pompeius the Great. This friendship saved Mytilene from severe punishment, after a war in which the Lesvian city chose to fight against the Romans. During the times of Augustus, Lesbonax, a beloved writer who wrote political discourses and historical documents about the war between Athens and Sparta, lived in Mytilene. His son Potamo was best friends with emperor Tiberius (Julia’s last husband) and was a respected visitor of Rome.

In his book Rom und Mytilini, Conrad Cichorius writes about the relations Lesvos had with the Roman empire and about which Romans lived on the island. The book also contains lots and lots of names of archaeologists and important Romans, which I do not know so well, so I became a bit dizzy reading all of it. This is a book for scientists. But just a casual reading gives a great revelation into how scientists reconstruct ancient history and with a little effort you even can imagine how life was during the Roman Empire on Lesvos. Not bad at all, because plenty of people chose the island as a place to study or to sit out their exile. And if we believe John Williams, also a place to go crazy.

(with thanks to Mary Staples)

© Smitaki 2014

Sunday 9 November 2014

November 6 – Fire signals


(A pyramid near Nifida)

A cold wind and more than a week of leaden grey clouds has made it clear: winter is on its way. The last tourists have all left the island shivering. Some weather prophets predict that the inclement weather forewarns the coldest winter ever in Greece; but that is what they say each year.

 The sun took some effort to blow away all those clouds, but she finally managed. Now the sky and the sea are again competing for the best colour blue and the dominating green colour on the land begins to cede more and more to the yellows and the reds: fancy autumn has arrived and when you look out over the sunny landscape you will notice more than one plume of smoke reaching for heaven. That means that people are cleaning their fields and preparing for the olive harvest.

The Greeks were not the inventor of the telephone an apparatus that nowadays for some people seems to be the extension of an arm but they had in ancient times other smart ways to communicate. For instance the message of the victory over the Persians at the battle at Marathon in 490 BC was brought to Athens by the running courier Philippides who ran so fast that he dropped death after reporting the message. In his honour the marathon runs were created, a sporting events that is nowadays especially popular.

Somewhat less known, was the system that was used many centuries earlier during the Trojan war (12th or 13th century BC), as described by Homer, Aeschylus and Vergil. In a few hours the Greek victory was reported to the city of Mycene, some 600 kilometres away, using fire signals, a system called fryktories. I can imagine that the Lesvorians had plenty to say about what was going on in Troy: the fire signals line began right opposite Lesvos, starting at the top of the mount Ida (the Kaz Dagi in Turkey) and the signals carried along to mountaintops on Lemnos, Athos, Makistos (now Kandilion on Evvia) towards the mainland and to the mythical city of Mycene (that used to be a little down from Corinth). I am not sure if they were then using the ingenious system of the two towers with five torches, which enabled them to write the whole alphabet.

But it is a fact that fire signals have been used for centuries. The fryktories were the precursors of the lighthouses. They were not only used to help ship navigation but also as a warning system against enemies. The Greek islands especially were for centuries threatened by pirates and on the neighbouring island of Chios there remain plenty of old watchtowers. They must also have been on Lesvos and probably you can find some remnants of such towers in various places.

When last week we were driving around a little and at Nifidia beach, we took an unkown path which seemed to go towards the very end of the Gulf of Kalloni. On a mountaintop I thought I saw a pyramid. It was no optical illusion because when the road reached the coast again there was the very same construction: a six sided massive tower. Further on there were even more. When we looked around we also discovered three other pyramid-like buildings on the other side of the water. What were they? Were they some kind of platform on which to light a fire? The flat top however was not spacious enough for any firewood. And I can imagine that, on a windy day making atop a fire, may cause the surroundings to go up in flames.

Were these constructions part of a warning system against for example pirates? This seems to me a bit odd because from the rest of the island you could hardly see them. Or was it a system of beacons for the ships to pass safely through the opening of the Gulf of Kalloni? While most of these towers stood at the seaside, one of them was a bit higher, pressed against a rocky hill, another one stood high on a mountaintop, and one on the other side of the Gulf overlooked the water from high on a ridge. If this was a beacon system for the seafarers it must have been a very clever system for them to safely reach a harbour.

A few local fishermen have confirmed that it was a beacon system. It was very old, so old that the towers are now restored with plenty of cement. Whatever they are, and from whatever period, I am sure that these outstanding pyramids of Lesvos spread out in the rough landscape of red stones were a kind a communication system.

During the summer there was some annoyance about the lasers that were nightly sent into the air by the discotheque OXI. I am wondering what is the point of these lights: are the lasers meant to be a beacon in the night for clubbers? It might be an idea to, instead of using these sky piercing polluters, to build some of these pyramid towers along the roads going to the OXI. That would be less of a nuisance and also a nice tribute to history.

The plumes of smoke you can now see everywhere in the Lesvorian landscape, can be interpreted as the message 'here is work going on', but of course they are not meant as fire signals. Or maybe there are farmers, who by the means of a smoke column, warn their wives back home that they are soon coming home, so the food must be on the table. This could be the case, because a modern mobile phone does not work in all places on the island, so you have to be inventive. Now just consider what amazing things the ancient Greeks did!

(with thanks to Mary Staples)

© Smitaki 2014