Yesterday’s arrival in Athens brought me for a second time into a city stamped, more deeply than any in the ancient world, with the imprint of lofty human aspirations. In some places the mark of the ideal shines gloriously. In too many other locales the bleak, jarring absence of the venerable–overrun by the crass, makeshift necessities of newly arrived millions–lends the old districts of the polis even greater stature by comparison.
We left Marmaris by ferry on Monday and spent two nights in Rhodes. Marmaris was mostly a way station en route to Rhodes, for it caters principally to sun-worshipping beach-lovers and offers little else of lasting interest. I enjoyed a quiet Sunday on Father’s Day, spending part of the morning with Michele and Zachary at the beach and most of the afternoon relaxing at the hotel. And for all of us, students included, Marmaris provided an opportunity for reading, study, and rest following our full travel days.
My Father’s Day reading was apropos of the holiday. I reread Plato’s Laches, a dialogue concerned from start to finish with the question of the best way for fathers to teach virtue to their sons. Its many good questions, raised trenchantly in the Meno and the Protagoras as well, bear asking again and again. Can virtue be taught? Where are the teachers of virtue? Who has been improved by way of their instruction? In both the Laches and the Protagoras fathers in particular are impugned for their failures to educate their sons in the most important things, those that are connected to the care and improvement of the soul. A good as Pericles, Thucydides, and Aristides were, none of them had sons that measured up to their goodness or their greatness. The students with whom I’ve been reading these dialogues have much to think about in these regards, as I also do.
In Rhodes we had a quick driving tour around the city with our least capable guide of the trip. She took too little time with us and gave us a canned set of tour bus observations. To our dismay she also asked us to pay for entry to the Palace of the Grand Masters in the Old City, even though we had contracted specifically with the tour company to have all transportation and entry fees covered as part of the overall trip fees. Given the exemplary care and service of both Tutku Tours in Izmir and Aristotle Travel in Athens, I’m convinced that the error was all hers. If I recalled her forgettable name, I’d put it here for the record.
We made up for the first day’s deprivation by going together as a group to the Palace of the Grand Masters the following morning. I know of no other place that so fully expresses everything I imagine a medieval castle to be. Its defensive walls and other fortifications, its capacious halls and cavernous fireplaces, its floor mosaics and tapestries, and so much more combine to bring it alive. No doubt it gained a great deal through its extensive twentieth-century reconstruction, but the character given it by the Knights of St. John during its earliest fourteenth-century beginnings remains.
Yesterday afternoon and most of today were spent near the Acropolis. Both of our guides, Michaelina and Theoni, were superb. Yesterday we saw the Odeon of Herod Atticus, the Areopagus, and the ancient agora under the tutelage of Michaelina, and today in Theoni’s care we went up to the top of the acropolis to see all its temples (the Propylaea, Athena Nike, the Erechtheum, and the Parthenon), followed by a good stretch of time in the New Acropolis Museum and a leisurely lunch at Dionysius’ taverna in the Plaka. Even though I had visited all of these places before, having a professional, private tour guide as resource makes a remarkable difference in the quality of the experience.
We arrived back at the hotel around 3:30 p.m., dropped off hats and backpacks in the room, and took the metro to Panepistemiou, across from the university’s excellent neoclassical central buildings, for a combined coffee and bookstore excursion. Eleutheroudakes (?) is the best bookstore, at least in terms of comprehensiveness, that I’ve found in Athens, and it was great to visit it again.
I bought a Knopf Mapguide of Athens to replace the poorer map I’ve been using along with Michael Scott’s From Democrats to Kings: The Downfall of Athens to the Epic Rise of Alexander the Great. Zachary, not to be left out, got two books of his own in a series called Great Beasts and Heroes. They’re at a level that he should be able to read on his own, and he’s even more excited to get started with his books than I am with mine. Passing along to one’s children such a thing as bibliophilia is far, far from sufficient for training in virtue, but it is necessary, I believe, in our time. At least I’m helping Zachary along in this regard.
