The Allure of Greek Temples

 



The glory yet burden of living in Greece can be the very richness of classical beauty here, there, and everywhere.

The burden is especially heavy for those, such as myself, forever smitten with Classical Greece and compulsive

about seeing and doing whatever I think I should.

During my four years living there—plus various vacations there before and after my residence—there was always

one more temple or archaeological site that had to be visited. The only thing I didn’t like about them was

that they were always atop high hills and climbing in up the eternal heat was hard!

It took me several years in residence just to be content to settle down on Kolonaki Square in Athens

and sip iced coffee and flirt with the waiter.

Ah, but those ancient temples!

Following, in no order except prominence in my memory and heart, are some of my favorites:

  • Epidavros Theatre, near Naphlion, where I lived for a summer, in north Peloponnese. Ancient theatre with fantastic acoustics, every summer live performances held there. During my summer, Royal Shakespeare Theatre from England performed Shakespeare. I remember it as the most magnificent theatre I’ve ever seen.  Magic!

  • Temple of Delphi, mid-Greece, Mt. Parnassus. Visited on my first trip to Greece and Europe. Site of the Oracle, consulted by the ancients. I recall it as the first time I was overwhelmed by the mystique and energy of an ancient site. Will never forget it.

  • Acropolis in Athens. Again, saw it first during my first visit to Greece just after college. The most graceful archaeological site I’ve ever seen.  But years later, when I lived in Athens, which was a hot, congested city, with air pollution that made me gasp, I’d be trudging up one of the many hills with heavy packages, and I’d turn around, and gasp again – for there was the Acropolis.  And yes, my heart would sing.  It was those stolen glances that made me love the Acropolis. So beautiful!

  • Aphrodite Temple in Paphos, Cyprus. One of my books is set in Cyprus, and I spend quality time in this Temple of Love. I found it quiet and entrancing, more serene lifelong love than crazy passion.

  • Asclepieion on the island of Kos, near Turkish center of medicine and healing. I remember being intent on visiting this site, as I was on my way on a ferryboat to the coast of Turkey.   A guide lectured on Greek medicine.  I was fascinated. In my later years, when I became a board-certified chaplain after two years of medical residency, I dated my interest in medicine from my explorations of this site.

  • Rhodos, Island of Rhodes.  The old center for the Knights Templars.  Here I could satisfy my unquenchable desire to visit museums, trek through sites, and buy interesting metalwork that still hangs on my walls. Historically, the sites here tend to be Crusader oriented, rather than older Classical Greek.

  • Sparta, mid-Peloponnese. Site of the rival city-state of Athens. As I recall, this was one of the most organized and accessible sites. But militarism does not appeal to me, and neither did this important but to me soulless site.

  • Other sites may have dazzled me at the time, but over the years their particulars have become a jumble of white columns, and remembered difficulties in finding or enjoying. Troy was wonderful and moving but was on the coast of Turkey now, not Greece.  I also remember a long and difficult trip with a friend to Macedonia in Northern Greece to see an important tomb, maybe Alexander’s father—lots of gold artifacts.  But mostly I remember how hard it was to get there.  Crete I visited from London years before I moved to Greece; it was a long boat ride and I didn’t go back when I lived there, although I wanted to.  Also, several islands—Santorini and Mykonos especially—stick in my mind for their physical beauty rather than classical sites.

I recall also that near the end of my Greek sojourn, someone academic from the States was visiting, and when she asked about my archaeological visits, I airily said had seen them all.

“Really?” she said.  “All of them?  In what, four years?”

I recanted, as for a moment I swam in the old feeling that all of Greece was an archaeological site.  “No,” I said.  “But I loved the ones I did see.”

And I still do.

                                                                                                                ------Laurie Devine, Author  


Kronos is now available on Amazon KDP

Image by Nanci Arvizu created on Adobe Firefly

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