I’m sorry, dear colleagues, that I haven’t posted here in several months. I went to Greece last October, the ambition of a lifetime, and my thoughts are still there rather than in these misty isles.
I went on one of those classical sites tours. All was good, but Delphi, navel of the Hellenic world, had me speechless for many hours after we left the sacred precinct.
As we wandered around the remains I had in my head that reply that an old priest is said to have sent back to the emperor Julian in the 4th C, sometime after the shrine had been sacked by the Heruli, and after Constantine the Great had made Christianity the imperial religion. Julian had reversed this, and while in Athens en route to his fatal campaign against the Parthians sent to enquire how the sacred shrine was doing. The priest replied in hexameters, as the oracle had always done:
Say to the king: in ruin the once gay courts of the temple
lie; not a shelter of boughs has the god, nor speaks in the laurel
nor in the fountain; silent is even the voice of the water.
[Tr. A.R. Burn, 1965]
When I’ve worked out how to do it (it’s late now), I’ll post up a photo I took from the stadion above the precinct, though no photo could ever do justice to the magic of the place.
It certainly is beautiful - I only ever visited Greece once on a brief stop-over but made sure I visited everything I could in the short space of time!
The only thing I found disappointing at the time was that the initial impression was that it looked just like Adelaide ! (except the hill are steeper). But once I saw all the temples and buildings and recognised so many things from history books and Greek literature I was completely hooked! I could not believe I was walking the same ground as all these people I had been reading about for so long.
I soon realised that the rest of Europe didn’t look like Adelaide (where were those blue skies?). My other favourite place was the British Museum - I was in the place so often I think the staff thought I worked there.
I am sorry to have been so long in replying to you, Romarius.
There are ruins in the bottom left quadrant of the photo; but my main objective was to give some impression of the wildness and remoteness of the place.
I have got photos of the archaeological remains, though, if you would be interested?
