Today is Sunday, and the weekend has been fantastic. We have Fridays off from classes, but this week we went on a day trip to Delphi. It's a few hours' drive from Athens, so we had to leave CYA at 8:30 a.m. We stopped to eat lunch around noon, at St. Lucas' Monastery. Apparently it was an extr
emely important location during the Byzantine era, but our professor wouldn't tell us why; he wanted to wait until next week. Oh well, I took lots of pictures; the architecture was beautiful, the scenery was fantastic, and there were a lot of paintings and mosaics to see. It was apparent why the location made such an excellent hermitage, being on a hilltop above fields of farmland. I also saw th
e "remains" of St. Lucas himself, which was chilling. No one could wear shorts inside the monastery, so there were bins of elastic
waistband pants and skirts available for those among us who had dressed for hot weather. Anyway, we ate lunch at St. Lucas' and proceeded to drive to Delphi. Just some background on Delphi itself: the oracle wasn't the only reason to go there in ancient times. The place is HUGE: there is a sports arena, a theater, a bank, and multiple temples there as well. Huge festivals were held there, and because of its central location on the mainland of Greece, Delphi was a gathering place for people from many city-states. Every city-state that participated in the events there had its own treasury area for storage of their wealth (so there would have been an incentive for GRAND parades of treasure-transport upon arrival at
Delphi!) There were also "trophy" areas where markers were placed to show athletic victories for each city-state. (Now, when we got to Delphi it was raining, and since it had been sunny when we left, none of us had brought raincoats. Some of us managed to obtain garbage bags from the gift shop, but most of us weren't so lucky. However, the rain and mist around the mountainside made for a very "mystical" backdrop for the day!) Anyway, we went to the museum first to avoid getting rained on, and saw many artifacts that had been moved from the site for preservation, including parts of friezes, like this one depicting Dionysos holding a musical instrument.
Given the dichodomy that most scholars acknowledge existed between Apollo and Dionysos, it is interesting that this sculpture would be placed on the temple wall opposite one of the god Apollo, to whom the temple itself is dedicated. We walked around most of the site, and thankfully it stopped raining. Let me reiterate: the place is HUGE. And you don't go there to "get your fortune told," or whatever. In ancient times there was sometimes a woman seated on a tripod platform who, in a drugged-out trance, would give you an ambiguous answer to whatever question you asked her, but it would be insulting to dress someone up in a toga or as a gypsy and just plop her down in the middle of Delphi to read tourists' palms. Oops, this post has to end here, because I'm in someone else's apartment mooching off their neighbors' wireless internet and it's getting kind of crowded around here. I'll write more later, I promise! Cheers~
emely important location during the Byzantine era, but our professor wouldn't tell us why; he wanted to wait until next week. Oh well, I took lots of pictures; the architecture was beautiful, the scenery was fantastic, and there were a lot of paintings and mosaics to see. It was apparent why the location made such an excellent hermitage, being on a hilltop above fields of farmland. I also saw th
e "remains" of St. Lucas himself, which was chilling. No one could wear shorts inside the monastery, so there were bins of elastic 
waistband pants and skirts available for those among us who had dressed for hot weather. Anyway, we ate lunch at St. Lucas' and proceeded to drive to Delphi. Just some background on Delphi itself: the oracle wasn't the only reason to go there in ancient times. The place is HUGE: there is a sports arena, a theater, a bank, and multiple temples there as well. Huge festivals were held there, and because of its central location on the mainland of Greece, Delphi was a gathering place for people from many city-states. Every city-state that participated in the events there had its own treasury area for storage of their wealth (so there would have been an incentive for GRAND parades of treasure-transport upon arrival at
Delphi!) There were also "trophy" areas where markers were placed to show athletic victories for each city-state. (Now, when we got to Delphi it was raining, and since it had been sunny when we left, none of us had brought raincoats. Some of us managed to obtain garbage bags from the gift shop, but most of us weren't so lucky. However, the rain and mist around the mountainside made for a very "mystical" backdrop for the day!) Anyway, we went to the museum first to avoid getting rained on, and saw many artifacts that had been moved from the site for preservation, including parts of friezes, like this one depicting Dionysos holding a musical instrument. 
Given the dichodomy that most scholars acknowledge existed between Apollo and Dionysos, it is interesting that this sculpture would be placed on the temple wall opposite one of the god Apollo, to whom the temple itself is dedicated. We walked around most of the site, and thankfully it stopped raining. Let me reiterate: the place is HUGE. And you don't go there to "get your fortune told," or whatever. In ancient times there was sometimes a woman seated on a tripod platform who, in a drugged-out trance, would give you an ambiguous answer to whatever question you asked her, but it would be insulting to dress someone up in a toga or as a gypsy and just plop her down in the middle of Delphi to read tourists' palms. Oops, this post has to end here, because I'm in someone else's apartment mooching off their neighbors' wireless internet and it's getting kind of crowded around here. I'll write more later, I promise! Cheers~
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