Athens – Mythology, Democracy – and Souvlaki
According to Greek Mythology, Athena was the goddess of skill and the arts (among other things) and was worshipped for her cunning, creativity and craft. However, this reverence was not universal. Arachne, a maid from northern Greece, was a weaver of prodigious precision and her ability was matched only by her conceit and hubris. She quickly amassed an army of acolytes convinced that her abilities represented the apogee of human endeavour but such acclaim was not enough for Arachne. Awash with arrogance, she ultimately challenged Athena herself to a weaving competition.
Athena readily accepted and both set about weaving the most stunning work they could. While Athena wove a picture of the Parthenon, Arachne wove pictures of the gods that mocked them as weak and cowardly. Upon presenting such blasphemous content to Athena, the goddess was outraged and immediately turned Arachne into a small, ugly 8 legged invertebrate, cursed to be forever trapped within her own web.
The story has obvious etymological appeal given that spiders are the most prominent order of what we refer to today as ‘arachnids’. Most importantly however, the myth shows that Athena was prone to bouts of rage just like a mortal. To my mind, the myth also serves as a metaphor for Athena’s eponymous city. The wisdom of the Athenian citizenry has made an inestimable contribution to human society. However, on occasion it is a city laced with rage and fury, traits exacerbated by the remnants of the 2008 economic catastrophe.
Athens is dotted with ancient ruins of formidable cultural pre-eminence. Aristotle’s Lyceum claims to be the most culturally significant place on earth, a superlative not entirely without merit given the great thinker’s School of Philosophy duly ignited a quest for knowledge and devotion to the sciences which has brought modern society so much. Across the city the Pnyz, once the focal point of Athenian democracy, still overlooks the Agora and reminds all-comers that it was here that representative democracy was born. Over 2,000 years later, Winston Churchill would describe it as ‘the worst form of Government apart from all the others’ and efforts of other European powers to improve upon it have routinely ended in ignominy.
However, the most noteworthy artifact of Athenian grandeur is the Parthenon. Perched above the city with a glorious view of its surroundings, it is the most dominant and discernible temple on the Acropolis. It serves as a powerful and bracing ambassador of Ancient Athens and the fact that it remains standing is all the more impressive given the destitute state of much of the city’s other ancient ruins. Not quite as destitute as the knowledge of the tourists that visit them however.
Athens is, of course, besotted by tourists. And that’s great. Crawling through Athenian bars would be far less fun had my interlocutors all liaised exclusively in Greek and at a more prosaic level, tourist tickets maintain these wonders. I get that. I embrace it. However, had Zeus afforded me one of his thunderbolts to do as I please, the brazen ignorance of day-trippers would not have lasted long. On several occasions I heard people assert with crippling levels of confidence that the Parthenon was “at least 100 years old”. It’s older than that. A lot older. In fact it was ticking towards its 2,500th birthday when I struck it off my bucket list. Another egregious offender was a teenager who wondered aloud whether he would be able to buy “fries and shakes and stuff” at the ancient Athenian forum. No buddy, you won’t. Nor will you be able to watch the Lakers and Warriors play ball at the Panatheniaic Stadium and, shocking as it sounds, Big Macs are pretty scarce at the Temple of Olympian Zeus. I can’t imagine how he survived such Sisyphean suffering. Hopefully someone had the foresight to ensure he was sedated when letting him know that there’s no Applebee’s perched on the Acropolis either.
However, even a man with patience as paltry as yours truly can tolerate such lamentable outbursts at a site like the Acropolis. Indeed, most of my time there was not spent examining the temple itself, nor castigating the obtuseness of those I brushed shoulders with. Most of my time was actually spent gazing, perhaps even drooling, over the city that lay before me.
I am self aware enough to realise that this is a travel blog and that being profligate with my praise of views, city-scapes and sun-set boulevards somewhat devalues the currency of said praise. Feel free to discount the compliments I lavish on the scenery of other cities but the view from the Acropolis is fully deserving of such assiduous adoration. It is as complete and captivating a panorama as you can hope for as your gaze rambles through the city’s cobbled and crooked streets before being dragged wider to take in the Forum, the Agora and the Temple of Zeus. Each are impressive in their own right but are truly remarkable when assembled in the same virtuoso vista.
Scaling the Acropolis entails a more strenuous hike than I had anticipated, a strain only compounded by the searing summer heat although given the food Athens offers, such exertions were more than welcome.
Just as our continental cousins would yelp ‘Guinness!’ when shown a map of Ireland, Greek salad would break all kinds of records should a map of Greece be introduced to this oddly conceived Rorschach test. Rarely is a pre-conceived conviction so divorced from reality. A week subsisting on feta cheese and olives would have hardly been tortuous but such a possibility became remote faster than you can say ‘gyros with extra cheese’ when I realised the myriad of dishes on offer in Greece made the country’s name seem all the more apposite. Souvlaki is one such delight, my favourite incarnation consisting of pork skewers served with pita bread, fried potatoes and so much yogurt I feared that a ludicrously concentrated snowstorm had beset the kitchen. It is a maelstrom of tastes, textures and temperatures and it’s worth noting that this paragraph has taken far longer to write than it should have purely due to how mesmeric I find its picture.
Gyros is another Greek culinary gift for which we are all indebted. If you’re the type of person that tastes a kebab and questions why the meat has only been garnished with grease and not coated in it, or why the bread is a light wrap rather than a thick pita then Gyros are for you. Athens is laced with street-side restaurants devoted to them as countless Gyros are basted on grills so well oiled it’s remarkable that the USA has not yet invaded. This may not be the food of kings (or dietitians) but given the location, food of the gods feels more apt. And that’s good enough for me.
Given that fatty foods appear so central to Athenian life, it is a wonder that here too was the site of the first modern Olympic Games, in 1896. Per Greek mythology, Hercules named them in honour of the gods of Olympus and, given the remarkable foothold the Games enjoy in international consciousness, I’d imagine Zeus is very grateful indeed. The 1896 Games were held in what is now called the ‘Panatheniaic Stadium’, the only stadium in the world made entirely of marble and the site where the 2004 Olympic marathon finished. Its historical significance alone justifies a visit and upon arriving it does feel like a place of deeper import than its pedigree as a mere sporting venue would suggest.
I’ve been to several stadia that foster meaning more accurately described as spiritual than sporting. The Maracana in Rio is one. Ireland’s own Croke Park another. It is remarkable how such places leverage mere bricks and mortar (or marble) to transcend the intentions for which they were initially built. Maybe such claims are daft, maybe my reverence for certain stadia projects a grandeur on them that is unique to me. Maybe they really are just lumps of concrete. Maybe. But it is undeniable how palpable and imposing a stadium can be and the Panatheniaic Stadium is a particularly discerning example.
I made reference in my introduction to the more nefarious side of contemporary Athens and my time there coincided with a particularly tangible manifestation of it. I was in Athens for Labour Day. All afternoon I could peer through my dorm window to see thousands of people march through the city demanding better pay, more amendable conditions and lower taxes. There was a chilling and tangible anger etched on people’s faces. Nobody was hit harder by the European debt crisis than the Greeks but their response to such a radical economic contraction has been admirable. They responded with protest. Aggressive and visceral but peaceful nonetheless. The city that gave the world democracy was not about to give up on it.
In his book ‘How Democracy Ends’, David Runciman makes the case that should democracy fail in the near future, it is unlikely to do so in the same ways that it has failed in the past. Greece is a case in point. A military Coup d’Etat usurped Greek democracy in 1967 to replace it with a military junta whose reign lasted just 7 years before a more resolute form of democracy was established. An independent judiciary. Divisions of power. Checks and balances. Runciman is quick to point out that despite the Greek economy contracting by over 25% following the 2008 crash, a military maneuver á la 1967 never seemed likely. The Greeks have learned to heed political theorist Alexis De Toequeville’s advice in that while it is true that more fires are started in a democracy, more fires get put out, too.
Had Greece been able to monetize the benefits of a principled scientific education, the importance of rigorous representative democracy and the international acclaim afforded by the Olympic Games then phrases like ‘debt forgiveness’ and ‘austerity’ would not have entered the Greek vernacular following its Troika bailouts in 2010, 2012 and 2015.
However, it will hopefully be the virtues of those wondrous exports that ensure Greece can extinguish its current woes just as it has done with previous ones.
