I have a soft spot for Greece.
Greece was only my second foreign country to visit (after a rowing trip to Lille in France). I got there via first my first ever flight, from London to Athens on Olympic Airways. It was 1987 I think - when I was up at Keble College, Oxford – and I was one of about 170 Oxford rowers who descended on the naval college on Poros Island to take part in the first sea-trials of a newly constructed Greek Trireme, named ‘Olympias’.
Olympias was built in Piraeus with drawings by the naval architect John F. Coates, drawn with the aid of information from his long correspondence with historian J. S. Morrison. I seem to remember that they had little physical evidence to work with. They had some fragments of pottery that showed part of a trireme, but not a whole ship. There were some literary references that helped them deduce how fast and manoeuvrable she must have been. (Greek triremes had pointed bronze hulls and were used to ram and sink other vessels, particularly those of the Persian Xerxes at the Battle of Salamis in 480BC.)
Archaeologists had also discovered some ancient preserved timber posts in the old ship yard of Piraeus. From this, they deduced the size of the boatyards and therefore the likely size of the vessels. And given a trireme has three tiers of rowers, they subsequently calculated how many oarsmen there might have been on board: 170. And where do you get 170 rowers at short notice to go to Greece? Oxford at the end of Trinity Term!
After the plane landed at Athens, we made our way to the port of Piraeus and boarded a ferry to the island. Greece was in the middle of a heatwave and it was very hot. People were dying with respiratory diseases (Athens was a very polluted city, not helped by all the shipping). I always said that you could taste Piraeus before you could see it.
The ferry steamed past the island of Aegina, and arrived at Poros, to decant us onto the baking quayside, whence we walked along to the naval college and our dormitory bunks. Olympia was moored right outside and looked amazing.
The two weeks of rowing was very hard work and energy sapping, as we did speed trials ("ramming speed”) and tried to spin her through 180 degrees as rapidly as possible. The heatwave meant that it was only really safe for us to row in the early morning and late evening. I was lucky as I was a ‘thranite’: a rower on the top-tier, with views out over the hull. The second tier down, the ‘zygites’, had a view of my lower back. And the poor ‘thalamites’, rowing in the bilges, had my socks to contend with. Or worse.
SIGN IN
When not rowing, the rest of the day we could relax in the shade, swim or take day trips to Delphi or Mycenae. We ate a very early and simple (if over-priced) breakfast at a local hotel run by a Greek man called Stavros. A bread roll, jam, fruit juice and a coffee (a sachet of instant Nescafe and a jug of warm water with which to try and dissolve the powder).
17 years later, in 2004, Alix and I arrived on Poros to start our season’s work as flotilla skipper and hostess for Setsail Holidays. Our yachts were moored stern to the quay at the eastern end of the island, and across the road was a small Ouzerie. Here, one could partake of a glass of home-made ouzo (which I like and Alix detests), and some grilled octopus straight off the barbeque grill on the street.
When I want to pay a call, I noticed, on the wall on the way to the loo, a framed photograph of a trireme. I looked more closely and could actually make out myself as one of the oarsmen in the photos. I went excitedly to the owner, and told him that I was in his photograph and had been here 17 years ago. He seemed delighted, and informed me that he had been the manager of the hotel where we had our breakfasts. He was Stavros. What a lovely coincidence and the start of a lovely friendship. I didn’t mention to him what I thought of his breakfasts! [Alix: he kept wanting to give us free ouzo after that – nooooo thank you].
One of our flotilla stops was at Aegina, on the island of Aegina. We offered the guests the opportunity to take a bus or taxi to the eastern side of the island to see the Temple of Aphaia, with its Doric columns most of which were still standing and supporting entablature. Alix took a photograph of me standing on the steps in front, in my Setsail outfit, and it made its way into the Setsail Holidays brochure of 2005! Fame at last.
Anyway, all this preamble has been an elaborate way to introduce a blog about our trip today to another Doric-style Greek temple. But this one is in western Sicily, at Segesta, just inland from our stop in Castellammare del Golfo. In fact, our stop was the port for the old settlement of Segesta.
If you have read my blog, ‘Our next stop – the island where east met west’, you will share my surprise at finding classical Greek architecture so far west. The north-east of the island (with its Ionic architecture) and centred on Naxos, was part of Magna Graecia; as was the south of the island with its main centre of Syracuse (with its Doric architecture). But I didn’t think the Greeks had got to the north-west corner, as the area was more closely linked to Carthage. So why is there a Greek temple at Segesta?
The historical evidence is flaky, but goes as follows. The local tribe, the Elmyians, were early settlers possibly from Anatolia, and possibly even from Troy. They were getting fed up of their constant disputes with their southerly neighbours from Selinunte (see map above). The Selinuntians were supported by the might of Syracuse and so had an advantage. The Elymians decided they needed some help, and asked the Athenians. The Athenians were not sure they wanted to get involved in this part of Sicily, so planned to send a delegation to Segenta to survey the wealth of the land.
In order to trick the Athenians into believing the area was indeed prosperous, the Elymians had the temple built. It was never finished: there was no roof; the Doric columns were not fluted; and tabs used for lifting the ashlar blocks were never chiselled off and finished.
Nevertheless, the request resulted in the great Athenian expedition to Sicily in 415 BCE. (This was part of the wider Peloponnesian War between Athens on one side and Sparta, Syracuse and Corinth on the other.) Instead of proceeding to Selinunte to compel the Selinuntines to surrender, the Athenians attacked Syracuse instead. The expedition ended in a devastating defeat for the Athenian forces.
Segesta was then forced to turn to Carthage for help and became its chief ally on the island. Unfortunately, Segesta then bore the brunt of some severe reverses during the Sicilian Wars (or Greco-Punic Wars): conflicts between Carthage and Greek city states led by Syracuse.
After visiting the temple, (we couldn’t see all of the site, because it is currently a film-set for a new Harrison Ford movie), we caught the shuttle bus up to the top of the hill, to see the archaeological remains of the subsequent, Roman, Arab and Norman settlements.
Strangely, the Roman remains from about 200BC seem to have stood the test of time better than the efforts of their successors. The mosque is razed flat, the Norman castle simply a few tumbledown walls, but the Roman theatre is splendid, and one can also get a good feel for how the acropolis and agora were laid out.
But the highlight of the day, remained the temple. And it was suggestive of the gradual migration of character on our Mediterranean voyage from western to eastern.
