The Annals of Decimus: The Finale Christmas Special

The man came down from the frozen north
With beard and wolf he did stride forth
With boldness, braveness, barbarian blood
The Germanic ladies saw him as a stud.
But what he did lack was the stoical cool
Which made Roman Decimus nobody's fool.

"You dare to invade Athenian land?"
Decimus shouted, shield in hand.
"Herr garbley blargedool sher shugenall gled!"
The barbarous foe incomprehensibly said.
"If it's a fight you want, I'll cut out your guts!"
But knocked from his hand, his sword, the klutz.
With a slap of his shield, the axe gone too
It was hand to hand combat, brutality did ensue.
Wham bam ka-pow, slash hackity slice
The way these boys played was far from nice.
And so they stood on Athenian stone
Their bodies bloodied with broken bones.



When the wolf howled, Decimus struck;
The wolf howled no more, he ran out of luck.
The barbarian roared, rage and bile,
He mourned his companion for quite a long while.







Then it was time, the once and for all,
The barbarian hit, would Decimus fall?






This story ends, of the man from Rome
Who within Athens, was far from home.
As he watched the sun which sets
He sighed his sigh of worries and frets.
How did he do it? How did he live?
How did he survive the fight his foe did give?
"This story," he said, "'twould be hard to tell,
For 'twas not me, but him who fell.
But to tell you how I did manage
To gain the win with my disadvantage,
To be honest, 'twould strain the truth."

At this point Decimus did cease,
His story stopped, on his brow, a crease.
A single snowflake, from the sky
Touched his face below the eye.
And where it melted appeared a tear
But on his face, what's this? Good cheer!
"Well my friends," the Roman said,

"How about this, then off to bed?
The fight was long, the struggle grim,
The odds of living, from none to slim,
Yet as I clung there, on the ledge,
I had a thought which gave me the edge.
I thought of a man all decked in red,
Who gives out presents from his sled.

If you've been quite meek and mild,

And if you've been a docile child,

Well then this man, why, he'd reward you!

Whereas I, I would have gored you.

For this behavior of Santa Claus

Saps our strength and weakens our laws!

For right then, with my barbarous foe,

Weakened by Santa, I would have felt my death blow.

But I was strong with Roman ichor

And against this foe I was much quicker

I did not falter, I did not fail,

For I must catch Santa and send him to jail!

For he ruins our virtue and nurtures our vice,

And gives us the ethics of Jesus the Christ.

So I threw down the German, down to Hades my foe!

And pulled myself up, though progress was slow.

A triumph, I'd won! But for Rome there's no rest,

The outside threat's gone, but Christmas's the test."

And now we go back, to the place we call home

From Athens by bus, then by plane we'll be flown.

Though classes are over and finals are done,

To sit back and rest would be far from fun.

Yes, this chapter ends, but Decimus goes on

To vandalize reindeer on my neighbor's lawn,

And wage war against Christmas, 'till, from memory, it is long gone.

The Annals of Decimus Volume something or other: Thessaloniki, or A Threat From The North

My penultimate trip in Greece, Thessaloniki was a breath of fresh air after so many months in Athens, both figuratively and literally. Named after Thessalonike, the half-sister of Alexander and wife of Cassander, who was the ruler of Greece for a time after Alexander's death. Considering the fact that Alexander's horse and dog both had cities named after them, this isn't too bad of an origin.

First up was Pella, the ancient capitol of Macedonia. As any respectable ancient capitol ought to be, Pella was a port city. With this in mind, I was rather surprised to see this: a distinct lack of water. Pella is now many kilometers away from the sea, bay and then some having been filled in by alluvial deposits.








Pella itself is a huge site, and has one of, if not the, largest agora (central market place) of any ancient city. The excavators have spent most of their efforts excavating one side of the agora, which gave me an idea of the scope of the place but not much more. Once you've seen the floor-plan of one shop, you don't really need to see a dozen more. There were, however, pretty columns. We also got to meet the excavator, a man who enjoyed giving exceptionally long and detailed answers to simple questions.

Sadly, real life archaeologists are not as charming as Indiana Jones, and I have trouble imagining any of them raiding tombs with Laura Croft (I'm still holding out hope that I'll find an Egyptologist like Daniel Jackson from SG-1).













It was Thanksgiving several days after returning from Thessaloniki, and I gave thanks that toilet-technology has advanced since the Hellenistic age.
That, to the left, is a toilet.

As I mentioned earlier, Thessaloniki was a wonderful contrast to Athens, filled with friendly people, cheap food, safe cross-walks, drivers who did not seem determined to run you over, clean air, and bookstores (I bought a Virginia Woolf novel and the English poems of John Milton relatively cheaply).

On the way back to the hotel from dinner, some students and I walked into a tense protest in the middle of the street. Most of us kept walking after asking what the protest was about (the Greek government shut down a radio station or something like that) because there was every indication that something nasty was likely to occur.

There were several museums with such low lighting that I did not bother taking photos. After that, there was the (probable) site of Aristotle's famed Lyceum, where he taught young Alexander many things which young Alexander probably ignored thoroughly. It was a pleasant site with lots of trees, some caves and stone benches, but nothing more.






There was also a cat, but there have been cats at nearly every single archaeological site I've went to. I like to imagine them as following in the footsteps of great German philologists and archaeologists, feline Nietzsches and Schliemanns, piecing together the tattered and torn image of a lost civilization out of pottery fragments and the torn papyri of a literature long since written, trying to both recreate what was and to confirm their ideas of how it should have been, and how it may be again... but I only do that when I'm taking liberal advantage of Greece's drinking age.

On the return trip we took a moonlight stop at Thermopylae, which, like everything to do with the Spartans, was horribly disappointing. As you'll recall from the awful movie 300 (the historical inaccuracies of which, with the exception of that rhinoceros thing and the dude with swords for hands, actually made the whole thing seem less bad-ass than it really was), the whole point of Thermopylae was that it was a narrow pass with mountains on the one side and ocean on the other. Well, those damn alluvial deposits ruin everything again, and the ocean is now many kilometers away. At the very least, I got to see more of Leonidas than I ever needed to.

Photos and memories were not the only thing which followed me home. Out of the wilderness of the north, pouring down onto civilized Greece comes... THE BARBARIAN HORDE!

 Reveling in the Roman ruins, rejoicing in a raucous rampage, rancorous roars reverberating round and round, raving with rage, rugged, ragged and... I think that's enough of that.

Will anything stop this beast from scaling the walls of peace and justice? Is there any force that can save civilization?

Can anyone decimate this foe?

Rome (mosty just photos)

Vatican City was impressive.

 Dozens, maybe nearly a hundred statues of all sorts scattered throughout the place.

 The crowd to see the Pope was impressive, even if the actual event was not. Mostly, it was a multi-lingual shout-out to all of the pilgrims, and it went on for hours. Catholicism is not an outdoor religion, either, and without the acoustics of a cathedral, choirs just don't sound very good. The Pope himself was surprisingly soft-spoken.

 Decimus had some culture shock. "Christians? Took over? What? You're joking."

"By Jupiter you're not joking."

 In despair, Decimus attempted suicide by giant fish, but sadly statues refuse to kill.

 The statues were very pretty, though, as were the buildings.

 There was a problem with the local birds and Decimus, the results of which are too grisly for me to show on the internet.

Decimus and Claudia got along, and he even agreed to take part in a photo shoot. He's a veritable lady's man when he is not fighting barbarians.

He even insisted on being on the other end of the camera for once.

There were some issues at the Colosseum, when Decimus got a little to excited over his memories watching the fights back in the day.


Next up, a post about Northern Greece, aka Ancient Macedonia!

Peloponnese: Mostly photos

These are some photos from the Peloponnese trip from a few weeks back. There isn't much of a narrative to go along with them. Days generally started at 8:00-8:30 when we finished breakfast and hopped onto the bus, leaving the hotel behind to visit several sites in the day, which generally ended anywhere from 5:00-7:00. Long, long days.

On the left here is the view from Nauplio, looking down onto the city and into the harbor. Sadly, I did not get to the little island/castle in the middle there. The gelato in this town was delicious like nobody's business.

On the left is the temple to Apollo in Ancient Korinth.
On the right is the view from Akrokorinth, the acropolis of Korinth which is probably three or four times as big as Athens' Acropolis.

Below is the theater at the sanctuary to Asklepius, which had acoustics which were so good that you could literally hear a penny drop in the center of the stage from all the way at the top. I sang a Tom Lehrer song and recited some Plautus in front of a rather frightening group of old German tourists who kept shushing everyone whenever someone was on the stage. Good acoustics means that you don't have to be quiet, because everyone can hear you! I got applause and smiles from them, so I considered myself a successful performer.

The Mycenaean were all over the Peloponnese. Essentially, they were the precursors to the Classical Greeks as we know them, and lots of old Greek myths are traceable back to the Mycenaeans. In addition to being before the Greeks, they also built citadels and awesome tombs. This is one of those awesome tombs, a burial mound. Inside of that is a round, hollow chamber made out of stones which is holding the hill above it up.

Here we have the view from another Mycenaean citadel. Inside this citadel was found many, many tablets with Linear B inscriptions on them, all of which survived because they were baked and hardened when the palace was burnt down.
One of the tablets read: "We are sending troops to the north, because they are coming."
Ominous. Off in the distance you can see Sphacteria, which for us Classicists was important due to a battle fought between Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian war.

Sphacteria, seen here from Pylos, was where a bunch of idiotic Spartans were stranded when they landed on the island in order to blockade the water entrances to Pylos. I asked Decimus, who is wise in all matters military, why the Spartans would think that land-based forces could block ships from sailing? Decimus, in his infinite wisdom, replied that "Spartani stulti sunt. Stultissimi sunt." When Athenian ships arrived to break the blockade and captured the entire Spartan fleet, the land-based Spartans were stranded.

Whatever window tinting they had on the bus windows made the picture look weird, but as you can clearly see, I also saw the Eiffel Tower.
No, seriously. Some town in the Peloponnese has a scale model of the Eiffel Tower in it.
I'm not kidding.
I have no idea why.

Passing that piece of confusion by, we arrived at Olympia, home of the Olympic games. Astonishingly, Olympia was filled with marble columns!

And more marble columns!

And, of course, the Olympic stadium, looking about what it would look like back in antiquity. Thankfully, those low hanging storm clouds did not interrupt the games too much.

Then, of course, there was Delphi, home of the famous Oracle (about as useful as a fortune cookie if you ask me) and the belly-button of the world! Which I am clearly standing next to. An outy, from the looks of it. The Ancient Greeks considered this to be the absolute center of the world, the point where the two eagles Zeus released from the East and West met. Feel free to make a joke about naval gazing.

Before reaching Delphi, I had a bizarre glimpse of home. No, that is not the Bunker Hill bridge. I was thrown for such a loop when I saw it, though. I haven't taken the time to look up the architect and see who designed it, and if there is any connection to my beloved bridge back home.

More photos and words to come (I hope)!

Further strikes, protests, a mailbomb and the military

All of this, for the most part, is perfectly normal and everyone takes it in stride: buying tickets for a concert, I walked past several protests -- one appeared to be about jobs, another had Ahmadinejad and Papandreiou in a photo -- and the military/national guard drilling in the National Gardens. There was a mailbomb that went off in Pangrati, the neighborhood where I live, injuring the mailcarrier. The newspapers pointed out that leftist groups send those to people once in a while. And all of this is normal, and people keep carrying on, and I can't figure out if everyone's nervous stoicism causes this atmosphere or is caused by it. Police in riot gear, chanting protesters, and mailbombs all have the threat of violence, but the worry caused by that is pushed back into my head because, again, it is normal, actual violence is there, but I stillw alk around with my muscles a bit tighter, and a bit more on edge, than I normally would.

Traversing two weeks

The last two weeks have been filled with travel. There was the week-long school-sponsored bus tour of the Peloponnese, the highlights of which included Olympia (ran the track), Messene (best archaeological site I've ever seen), several Mycenaean palaces (a tablet was found in one which read: we have sent troops to the north because they are coming. the palace was destroyed soon after that was written), Epidauros (a sanctuary to Asklepius which had a fully preserved Greek theater), and Delphi (holy water of Apollo is so refreshing). Sparta sucked like a lone Persian warrior facing a Phalanx of red-cloaked semi-nude warriors.
After a day of rest and laundry in Athens, I went off to Rome, saw the Pope speak (his face ominously cloaked in shadow, but otherwise soft-spoken and kind of friendly seeming), hung out in the Vatican with Decimus and a friend from the program, spent lots and lots of time with Claudia (pulcherrima), chilled in the Colosseum, went to the Forum (nothing funny happened on the way) and generally had a Roman holiday sans Audrey Hepburn. Now I'm back, resting, recovering, and catching up on correspondence (and homework). Proper posts are in the work, along with pictures, but that will all come later!

Experience and Communication

In the National Gardens, behind the Parliament, I found a baby turtle just past a guard post. I held it in my palm for a while, the turtle hiding in its silver dollar sized shell, thought about showing it to the child and grandmother 20 paces back, put it down and walked away.

I didn't have my camera with me, or Decimus, but I still thought about how I could have posed him and the turtle, written something funny, and posted it all here. This is different than with tourist sites, where I have to take into account how my gaze affects the Greeks, and the site itself, bu I can also hide behind that concern and ot question how the ways I situate myself in relation to what I view affects me. The turtle doesn't give a damn about how I see it. But what happens to me when I turn every moment worth noting and paying attention to into an object of consumption for the rest of the world? I risk running around only as a potential producer of Memorable Moments and not as (to put it crassly) a consumer of experiences. Existence then becomes noteworthy only when I can photograph it, comment on it and then share it publically, and not as something I'm actually engaging with myself.

This isn't a problem when the experience is not memorable before I produce it, like when I photograph pigeons with Decimus in ways that tell a story I can share. The birds wouldn't have impacted me in any way otherwise, so I wasn't corrupting something (or altering it, if you want a value-neutral term).

Back to the camera. I had a very clear reason for purchasing it: I wanted to teach myself how to see, in the same way I listened to Bach's Goldberg Variations hundreds of times until I could start hearing the individual melodies separately and together. Think of Remy from Ratatouille teaching his brother about taste. The turtle is something I already saw clearly, something I didn't need help or some filter to help me see.

But why not capture what you can see, what you can experience, and share it with others? Here I don't have a good answer, not something articulate and clear. I can only discuss this in vague abstractions. I think that there isa value in silence and letting the ephemeral remain fleeting. I don't think it is accidental that we talk about photography in terms of capturing a moment or view or scene or person. There's a great risk of sapping something of its vividness and vitality by caging it. The depths of an experience can be flattened out by recording it. Photographing the turtle would have made it explicit, would have given it the appearance of being known, maing it much harder to try to grasp the inexplicable aspects inherent in all experiences, because the best I can do to reach it is with not quite the right words in not quite the right order, and it becomes so much easier with a picture to say "no, that's just a turtle, see the picture? it is just a turtle, don't go beyond that."

If I want to travel throughout my life (and I do), I'm going to be struggling with these issues, and I'm going to be struggling with narrating my life to everyone who are thousands of miles from me, who I won't see for months or years. Thinking about all of this means there might be less photos and anecdotes about exotic locales I go to, or there might be more. This blog is set up as a public space to talk about private experiences and reflections, and if you've spent much time with me you know I'm no good at using even private spaces for private dialogues. So I'll keep experimenting with this because if I don't figure all this out to at least some degree, I'll have to end up choosing between the communities of friends I have and my desire to explore the world.