This LJ is primarily a blog for me to let readers know when I add updates to my Greek travel website:



It includes my photos, diary entries, and musings on ancient Greek art and archaeology, sites and monuments, mythology, gods and goddesses, and history. I also include book and website recommendations.


Blog Catalog Blog Directory

I've gone a little crazy. There's a new feature on Squidoo that lets us create ten-question quizzes. Of course, I had to create some Greek mythology quizzes. Fresh off the press:

Easy Greek Mythology Quiz
Greek Mythology Trivia Quiz: The Gods of Olympus
Greek Mythology Quiz: Athena
Greek Mythology Quiz: Apollo
Greek Mythology Quiz: Monsters
Greek Mythology Quiz: Heroes

Try those! I'll be adding more as the mood strikes me.

I've been looking forward to making this page. The Sanctuary at Epidaurus not only has a gorgeous and well-preserved Greek theater, it is a beautiful place, a fitting sanctuary for the kind and healing god Asklepios.

Alas, I spent so much time drinking in the atmosphere that I don't have as many photos as I'd like. Nonetheless, I think I've done the place justice:

(The Sanctuary of Epidaurus)

Yep, on a roll again. Here is my visit to the Palace of Tiryns, a bronze age citadel built around the time of the Trojan War. Includes photos, a little bit of archaeology, recommended links and more.



(The Palace of Tiryns)

5th May 2005
After a long hiatus, I've started uploading my Greece Travel Diary again!

The latest stop on the tour is the Palace of Mycenae, home of Agamemnon, the king who led the expedition of Greeks (or pre-Greeks) against the Trojans in the legendary Trojan war.

(Link to Diary and Photos of Mycenae)

6th May 2005

The Mycenae Museum displays artifacts found in more recent excavations of the citadel and its surroundings: pottery, stone weights once used to anchor the warp-threads of a hanging loom, stylize clay figures of farmers ploughing behind oxen, female figurines (goddesses, worshippers or dolls?) and unusual terracotta snakes. Both snakes and figurines were found in a small cluster of religious buildings within the citadel of Mycenae.

 What did these serpents mean?
(Read on...)

Also in this section:
Mycenae  Museum Photo Gallery

Homebuying has been quite an odyssey, and will keep me busy a little longer. Right now I'm flushing out the Augean Stables!

In the meantime, let me point you to my other Greece-related lenses, each focusing on one topic:

The Trireme Olympias: Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship

Aeschylus: Father of Greek Tragedy

Sappho: Biography and Original Translations

So, what have I been doing (besides getting ready to buy a home)?

Well, the Myth of the, ahem, week column never worked quite right on the front page of Ancient Greece Odyssey. Let's own up -- I was trying to get refreshing content to bring visitors back to that page, because it helps keeps its Google search rank up. So I was changing that section. But it interrupted the flow of my travel narrative. Also, the 2500 character limit was a bit short for telling some myths.

So I've decided instead to create a separate mythology blog, and just have the RSS feed on my Greece Odyssey lenses. This means digging up all my old "Myth of the Week" columns and rewriting, reposting them, before proceeding onward with Mr. Herakles. I'm almost there.

Along the way I've included a few new non-Greek myths -- Hindu, Celtic, Chinese -- plus a write-up on Athena. So you might take a look. It's not LJ this time, but my own website; you can subscribe to it with an RSS feed or just check back now and then.

Here we are: Mythprint: All the Myth That's Fit to Print.

One... eensie... problem.

I didn't realize -- or else I'd forgotten? -- that the Mythopoetic Society's journal has that very name. I discovered this yesterday and was most dismayed, since I've put nearly a month of hard work into getting this blog kickstarted, listed on various blog catalogs, and all that nitty-gritty work one does in Web 2.0 to get web traffic. Now I may have to change the name -- and the domain name!

Stay tuned. In the meantime, please take a look; I think you'll enjoy some of the new stuff there!

Squidoo, the odd service I use to host Ancient Greece Odyssey, has a tool that tracks what phrases people have Googled to find a lens.

I noticed a lot of fact-finding queries like "ancient Greece timeline" and "pictures of Greek gods and goddesses." After a while, it became clear a lot of students were dropping by looking for Cliff Notes answers. I've got a ton of information embedded in my travel diary, but it's not organized as a quick reference; it's a story, an journey. Some people need "just the facts, ma'am."

I don't want to do students' homework for them, but I've prepared mini-answers to their top questions and provided links to more in-depth sites on those topics.

Here's the FAQ page: Ancient Greece Odyssey: Answers to Common Questions

Covered so far: Timeline of Ancient Greece | Chart: Roman Names of Greek Gods (with a few details about each) | List of the 12 Olympian Gods | Maps of Ancient Greece | Maps of Odysseus' Wanderings | Images of Greek Gods and Goddesses | Family Trees of Greek Gods and Heroes | Good books on Greek art, history, mythology

I've also got a place for students to submit and vote for new questions they want answered.

Last month I told you about the first of Herakles' twelve labors, slaying the fearsome Nemean Lion.

It's time for labor number two! As I mentioned before, Herakles' labors are mostly exterminator jobs, and this one is no exception. Herakles was called in to save the town of Lerna (somewhere near Sparta, I believe) from the many-headed serpent called the Hydra.

Some versions of the tale say Hera had sent the monster in yet another attempt to off her bastard stepson. However, her tests of his skill always increase his fame, his kleos, as his name hints: he is the Glory of Hera! I've always wondered if some preclassical versions of the Herakles myth had Hera more closely tied with him, and that something happened about the same time that Zeus temples were built on top of the foundations of older Hera temples all across Greece.

(Read on...)

5th May 2005

The winding mountain road threaded olive groves and lonely towns, hugging steep, bleak hillsides cropped by sheep and brown goats. Hazy blue mountains slanted down to the sea. After a few hours we crossed an incredibly long suspension bridge spanning the Gulf of Corinth from northern to southern Greece (the Peloponnese). Halfway across, we gazed westward across the Ionian Sea towards Italy. One of the islands out there was rocky Ithaka, home of Odysseus.

(Read on...)

Also in this section:
Photo Gallery, including Corinth Canal
Recommended Links, including interactive map
Items from my shop: Asklepios, god of healing

I don't know how I managed to miss one of my favorite photos of Delphi -- the first I took after getting off the bus, when my roomate and I were walking back to see the site for the first time.

I'm working on Part V: Mycenae and Nauplion right now, but I've added this photo to Part IV: Delphi, so let me share it here.



The lower slopes of Mt. Parnassos

There's olive groves studding the valley floor, far below. You can't quite tell the steep drop from here; we were standing at the edge of the road between the town and the archaelogical site, looking almost straight down.

The chariot races for the Pythian Games were once held in this valley.


Next up: The drive around the Bay of Corinth!

Hailed as Apollo Lykeios, "Wolfish Apollo," the god of reason is actually an ambiguous figure. Perhaps his nickname merely alludes to his role as protector of shepherds, who claimed him as patron; but the archer god -- like his twin sister -- has a ferocious side.

He kills the Cyclopes, smiths of Zeus, for forging the thunderbolts that slew Apollo's son Asklepios.
He slays the python, sacred serpent of Gaia. For these crimes, Apollo is polluted with miasma, blood-guilt, and must undergo purification. Apollo the murderer becomes god of law; bringer of plague, he is the god of medicine. In Euripides' Eumenides, Orestes calls on Apollo as his defense lawyer after killing his mother to avenge his father's murderer.


(Read on...)

Also in this section:
Recommended Links to English
translations of ancient sources
on Apollo in Greek myth

Oh, my, how time flies! Time to get back in the saddle and start updating my Greek Odyssey once more.

Let me shake off the rust and start with a short myth.
_________


Most people have heard of the twelve (originally ten) labors of Herakles -- Hercules in Latin. Many people also recognize him in Greek art by his lionskin and club. Where did the lionskin come from, and why did he have to do all those labors, anyway?

As usual in patriarchal Greece, the goddess Hera gets part of the blame. The Disney Hercules film deftly glossed over the fact that Herakles was yet another bastard of Zeus, persecuted by Zeus' wife Hera. At one point she afflicted Herakles with madness, and he killed his own children. When he came to his senses, he asked the Delphic Oracle how on earth to purify himself and atone for their murder. Oddly enough, the Delphic Oracle assigned him a hard taskmaster, King Eurystheus of Tiryns, who gave him various nigh-impossible labors to complete.

Most were search-and-destroy missions, rooting out this or that mythical beastie that was ravaging the countryside. One such monster was the Nemean Lion, named after the town of Nemea where it was eating most of its victims.

Herakles soon discovered that this lion's hide was so tough that arrows wouldn't pierce it (which later proved handy). As in most of his labors, Herakles had to come up with some sort of workaround; he never succeeded by brute force alone. In this case, Herakles located its lair, blocked up all the entrances but one, clubbed it at the exit and then simply grabbed it by the neck and wrestled it until he strangled it. So yes, brute force helped too.

He skinned it and wore the skin (according to some ancient scholars) from then on, making it easy to spot him in Greek art.

Herakles' physical prowess was later celebrated by athletes competing in the Nemean Games, one of four local sports festivals that alternated from year to year: the Nemean, Pythian, Isthmian, and, most famous of all, the Olympic Games.

Also in this section:
~ Photos of Herakles in Greek art

Wee update... I'm healing from surgery, yay!

We've all heard of the Trojan War -- but why were all the Greeks over there fighting Trojans, anyway? What was in it for them... well, besides fame, booty, captive slave girls, and generally running amock without the missus around to nag?

(Read on...)

The rest of the group headed off to lunch in a nearby town, but I'm never satisfied with the modern world when the ancient beckons. The museum closed at three. So I returned with one couple and gave them the best guided tour I could manage, lavishing love on familiar old sculptures and helping them pick out mythological scenes. "Ah, here's Hercules killing the lion!" and "here's Theseus offing some robber he met on the road to Athens," and "hey, look at this tiny Odysseus clinging to a sheep."

Afterwards we took a taxi to the next town and had a late lunch of fried feta cheese(!) in a lovely rooftop cafe overlooking the valley, Greek music playing. I snapped a few photos of the stone village with its stairs, cheese shops...

(Read on...)

Also in this section:
Delphi Photo Gallery, with a
heck of a lot of details about
the archaelogical site tucked
into the photo descriptions

4th May 2005

An early morning trek to the Delphi Museum on the hill below the site landed us in the mob of a French cruise ship moored in the Bay of Corinth at the mouth the valley below. However, the museum offered up its treasures as well as people:

• the Siphnean Treasury, an early classical building whose sculptures stand at the beginning of Greek art's golden age
• a giant Sphinx from Naxos, originally towering over the site on a great column
• Kleobis and Biton, whose myth I'll explain below
• Many charming votives (small pieces of art offered to the gods)
• A fine kylix (flattened vase) decorated with an image of the god Apollo
  
• Gold and ivory statues of Apollo and his sister Artemis, burned black in an ancient fire
  
• The bronze Delphi charioteer (right), a famous example of the early classical style
  
• Yet another Antinoos (emperor Hadrian's late lamented lover), this one styled as a strapping bodybuilder

(Read on...)

Also in this section:
Photo Gallery of the Museum
The Myth of Kleobis and Biton
Recommended Links and Books on Delphi
More on the Oracle of Delphi

Many people have heard of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece, but where did the Fleece come from?

It all started (as so often in societies taught to fear and devalue women) with a wicked stepmother.

(Read on...)

Whew. My Cafepress store has looked boring-basic-bland ugly ever since I started it a few years ago.

Much like customizing a Livejournal template, tweaking Cafepress shops is not for the faint of heart. I kept wimping out. I have finally untangled the large pile of graphics, garments, and goodies into a neatly ordered collection, and created the best interface I can manage. It's not as nice as this one, but...

Ahhh... MUCH better.

Sorry for the delay on the Delphi chapter, but the Christmas rush is beginning. I really needed to spend some time on the business end of things enough to make it resemble a business.

I finally got around to doing a few T-shirt/card/mug/gift designs for some of the male gods, twits that they are.

Er, well, one of these isn't a twit. I like Asklepios.

Anyway, there's a cute "Get Well Soon!" card with the Greek god of healing, and I finally broke down and made a Zeus design because I happened to get a good photograph of that Bronze Zeus Whose Proper Name I Can Never Remember.

Here they be:



For these and the rest of my ancient Greece photo art gifts, check out my It's All Greek To Me! online shop.