Melissa and Talia came up Lykabettos this morning with Abi and me! Always great to expand the team. Hazy again, but the sun was mostly yellow orange. It takes around 60-90 seconds to clear the mountains completely and sitting in silence when it does is the most peaceful.
Once we had returned, we had a full hour for breakfast because our speaker, Dr. Joel Allen, met us at the gate and walked down to the site with us. Our first stop was the Tower of the Winds, a building we have seen many, many times while walking to various sites, but never entered. The octagonal tower functioned as a weathervane, housed a water clock, and displayed sun dials on each of its eight faces. The workings of the water clock have been hypothesized, but nothing is known about them beyond the grooves in the floor of the tower.
The Tower. The small black sticks are the restored sundial indicators
Sitting on the steps near the tower, we also discussed the Roman Agora. The Roman Agora is set up along classic Roman rectilinear lines in sharp contrast to the confusing muddle of the Athenian Agora. The area is isolated from the space around it by walls and gates and contains a fountain house for public use. There are even divots cut into the ground level stones to measure quantities of goods, which seems impractical. The sekomata we've seen elsewhere were on tables and enabled not just dry goods, but also liquids to be measured.
The tiny sekoma. Much less impressive than the ones at Messene, but cool nonetheless.
We walked to the Library of Hadrian next. The massive structure contained a reflecting pool that ran most of the length of the building, as well as rooms for lectures and reading. Inside the site, you can see the size of the entire footprint of the building and it is gargantuan. I have to imagine it would have looked like one of the soaring lobbies of modern skyscrapers, just way larger. The grandiosity is best preserved in the west facade, which has gorgeous Phrygian marble columns. During the first millennium CE, a church was built on the inside of the library and doesn't even fill a third of the footprint. The library really showcases just how big the Romans built.
The facade of the library. The columns are monolithic - solid pieces of marble.
Our final lecture took place at the National Museum, which we first visited on Day Five of the program. After a brisk walk up Aeolou Street, which runs directly to the National Museum from the Library of Hadrian, we met Dr. Xenophon Moussas in the Antikythera Mechanism gallery. Dr. Moussas is one of three experts on the device and we were incredibly lucky to get to talk to him. His background is mostly in physics and more specifically astronomy, but it's very apparent he know most, if not everything there is to know regarding ancient astronomers and mechanical timekeeping.
The Antikythera Mechanism is a unique artifact. We literally do not know of the corporeal existence of a similar item. The device is an analog computer of multiple different calendar periods and predicts eclipses and the movements of the planets. Within ~.4% accuracy, it lines up with Kepler’s Second Law regarding the speed at which planets move, too. Such a device speaks to the incredible amount of theoretical mathematics and astronomical knowledge available to the ancients who created the device. It's hard to explain how important this artifact is. It's better at predicting celestial movements than similar devices that existed in 16th and 17th century Europe. And the survival of one does not mean that more were not created. I think the Antikythera Mechanism and the information we have about ancient trade networks are the two salient fields that are unknown such that the general populace tends to underestimate the technological level of the ancients. The lecture made it abundantly clear how advanced the inventors’ knowledge was.
And that was it. We walked back to Loring Hall, home for just one more night. Like I mentioned yesterday, I'm sad to be moving on, but also excited to be doing something new. And I'll be in Greece for five more days, so I won't be fully gone just yet.
Conclusions
Blog plans: I lose access to the iPad after tonight. Thank you to Asia for being impossibly gracious in letting me use it. I won't have access to anything bigger than a phone until August 9/10 when I return home. At that point, the post session content will start to roll out. I'll post the five days I'm about to have in Greece with my mom as one big post, then move on to wrapping up the summer session with fun lists and longer form posts about things that should stay or change. After that, essays about general...stuff will follow. Some introductory classics posts, some things related to topics from the trip concerning classics, and then topics that I enjoy. That should get me well through the end of the month, to be honest. I also have to put photos on the blog and curate the pictures I took in general.
Thank you to everyone who made this experience possible. My parents, my recommenders, and the University of Chicago Classics Department are all owed great debts for helping me go on this life changing trip. Amy, for implementing the schedule and for being a steadfast voice of reasoned advice on every topic. And to you, the readers of the blog. I honestly think that writing all of this stuff down made me appreciate the trip more and become more introspective about what we did each day.
Again, next post probably not until August 9 or 10, but I might finagle something small in the gap.
Thanks for reading.
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