It Really is Greek to Me

While in Athens, we are staying with a close friend.  Ευαγγελια (Evangelia) is a lovely person who is making our stay perfect—making us amazing diners and showing us aspects of her country that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. 

The View from Poseidon's Temple

I am struggling to learn even the most basic Greek and am asking Ευαγγελια frequent questions on pronunciations and on translations.  The Greek alphabet is full of foreign sounds and shapes.  There are four different letters for “i”.  “X” is an “h”, and “Δ” is “th”.  I never thought that calculus would be useful this year, but the algebraic variables in math are pulled entirely from the Greek alphabet.  As of today, I can read most words and am only struggling with four letters—the ones with the most fantastic squiggles (ϕ, φ, ξ, ζ). 

The history spills from the land in Greece and leaves impressions everywhere.  In Athens, most houses sit on five civilizations.  The Islamic Museum is carefully built around the old wall of Athens and has glass walled rooms for its viewing.  It seems that each Greek town has an archeological temple dedicated to some other deity.  While most Greeks don’t frequent the temples, their history is a cause of pride, much like the Statue of Liberty for the Americans, or Eiffel Tower for the French. 

On our second day in Greece, Ευαγγελια drove us to the Temple of Poseidon at the southern most point of Αττικα (Attica).  The columns of gleaming white marble are perched high on a high rocky point above the sea inside a semi-reconstructed fortress wall.  In ancient times, the temple had three functions: a refuge, a beacon across the water, and a sacred area that could be seen from kilometers away.  Boats used to take refuge there during storms and ask Poseidon for a safe journey.  There are other buildings in the area now, but Poseidon’s temple is still sits alone on a rocky hill dominating the landscape. 

 

I feel closer to this temple than the Acropolis; it feels purer and less touched by the passage of centuries.  It is easy to imagine this place inhabited by Poseidon, the divine spirit of the ocean.  Between the wind that almost pushed me over, the bright blue ocean, and the gleaming pillars of stone—one adorned with Lord Byron’s name—I can easily view the landscape as it was 2000 years ago.