When God Throws You Her Car Keys: Road Trip Round The Peloponnese

God’s magic is at work…….things happen to one in Greece which can

happen nowhere else on earth. – Henry Miller

Taking Up the Gauntlet

When I started musing about another trip around The Peloponnese – this time when baggage could be strewn around the interior of a car rather than fastidiously fastened to the back of a bike, and when energy could be put into roaming the grounds of some legendary ruin rather than grinding up another mountain pass, I wanted to present myself with a challenge. This time it wouldn’t be to survive a solo bike trip through the dog-patrolled sheep paddocks of the Peloponnese mountains, it would be to make sense of Greek mythology, particularly as it intersected with Greek history. Unfortunately, a mind conditioned by monotheistic beliefs and ‘God’ with a capital has made the Greek deities, so closely modelled on human archetypes and all their flaws, seem like a cosmic joke. Take, for instance, Zeus’s philandering, Hera’s humourlessness, Athena’s spitefulness and Apollo’s heartlessness. And yet despite the absurdity of some of the tales – like Zeus being the only one of his siblings not eaten by his father, Leda, the Queen of Sparta, being seduced by Zeus, the swan, Dionysius being born (for a second time) from Zeus’s thigh – reaching God-like status preoccupied every mortal in ancient Greek society. Never mind that they would be joining a pantheon that, with every ‘coupling’ and apotheosis, gets a little more crowded and a lot more confusing! So, with this melange of gods and warriors and wannabes to come to terms with, I welcome the chance to experience “Pelop’s Island” once again. But this time I would be doing it in reverse – clockwise – and with the luxury of a car and good company, Ken.

Nafplio and Epidauros

We start in Nafplio, the former capital of Greece. Well, actually it was Athens as we let KTEL, the national bus company, take over the first leg of the journey. The capital to capital express packs them in, but the ride that Saturday afternoon in late October was pleasant and the scenery spectacular. With the sparkling Saronic Gulf giving way to the silver-tipped mountains of Laconia, we sit mesmorized by the view, happy to let the driver be the one to manoevre through the narrow mountain passes and the mayhem of small Greek towns. We would get our turn soon enough.

It turns out that, while Napflio did offer Venetian ‘relics’- the Fortress of Palamidi 900 steps above the city, and Bourtzi Castle (where the executioner of the prisoners in Palamidi used to reside!)

adrift in the waters of Napflio’s harbour – we needed to get into our waiting car to get to Epidauros and the relics we wanted. Most people don’t get past the perfect-in-every-way 20,000 seat theatre close to the entrance of this complex to realize that Epidauros is essentially a mammoth shrine to Asclepios, son of a mortal mother, and immortal father (Apollo) who became worthy of worship when it was discovered that he had a knack for curing the incurable. After the Athenian plague in 430 BCE, Epidauros became the go-to place for the thousands of infirm, crippled, deaf and blind who were quite sure that Asclepius could make them whole again (which

explains the theatre, built to entertain the masses while waiting for their audience with Asclepius). By all reports, the patients’ patience was rewarded, and after spending a night in the enkoimeterion where they might incubate their own powers of healing, Asclepius would arrive to them in a dream sprinkling those final bits of fairy dust. The fact that healing required an element of effort and self-examination on the supplicant’s part (in line with the Delphic expectation: ‘know thyself’) suggested that the Greek gods were wise to the real source of most of our ailments – ourselves! I was warming up to them……

We weave down the serpentine road high above the Argolic Gulf to get to Monemvasia on the south east coast of the Peloponnese. Ken is dumbstruck by the view.“Oh my god, you must have been in heaven when you rode this three years ago”. Yep, and with no cyclists in our rear view mirror, it is clear it still was not on the radar of the riding world. “Good,” she says to herself, “hope they stay on the bumper-to-bumper Amalfi or Dalmation coast, so this one stays wild and free!”

Magical Monemvasia and Mystras

Our hotelier in Monemvasia greets us with an upgrade, from a small, no view and no balcony room to a large sitting room with loft, built-in everything, and a balcony with an eye-popping view of the sea and ‘the rock’ somewhere on which lay the medieval town of Monemvasia. A former civil engineer, he now takes pleasure in his guests, his cats, plotting new and ingenious design ideas, and, clearly, in being part of this country’s inimitable tradition of hospitality. We have never been hungry, thirsty, lost or stranded, neglected, insulted, harassed or cheated while travelling in Greece and Theodore is obviously keen to see that continue!

There must have been some pleasure, as well, in knowing that your hotel stood at the gate to one of the most enchanting towns in Greece. Cobblestone streets huddle against the steep sides of the rock, stone buildings interweave with archways, overhangs, dovecots, and bougainvillea emptying into squares luminescent with light. You access the upper reaches of town by a path that zigzags up the mountain and peaks at the Kastro and the beautiful Byzantine church of Agia Sofia (modelled after Hagia Sofia in Istanbul). While Monemvasia was significant as a trading centre among the Franks, Venetians and Ottomans, no doubt it is a place steeped in story – stories of the fallen and the victorious, the lost and the shipwrecked, and those who had been lucky enough to call Monemvasia home!

If coastal Monemvasia was a centre of trade and commerce, the medieval city of Mystras, three hours inland by car, was the western most centre of Byzantine worship and learning. Today, terraced on the side of Taygetus mountains, the spectacular remains of Mystra read like the Samarkands of Central Asia and the Middle East, where the holy madrasas drew scholars from every corner of the continent. Stone passageways connect one monastery to another, with majestic octagonal-domed churches presiding over the courtyards of each monastic complex. Adjoining gardens, orchards, vineyards and animal pens ensured the community’s self-sufficiency and a hill-top castle its security. Though pagan beliefs by this time had long been outlawed, you are sure it was the gods who had guided people to these craggy reaches, worlds above the simple affairs of the ordinary man, just as they had led people to Delphi, to Olympia, Epidauros…..

The Wild Mani Peninsula

While we scoot past modern Sparta, Gytheio, once the main port of ancient Sparta, draws us in. As if almost staged, tidily parked fishing boats in the harbour are flanked by a ring of pastel neo-classical hotels. It’s only the sweet anticipation of a plate of savoury mezes aside a bottle of retsina on a checker-clothed table for two that we are able to peel ourselves away from the beguiling harbour view.. And likewise the next morning, when the anticipation of showing Ken the Mani – mythical, nothing-but-mountains Mani – gets us moving. A narrow peninsula at the southern tip of Greece, Mani crests at the peak of the Taygetus mountains and plunges steeply to the sea below. As the road spirals upward from the sun-sparkled waters of the Laconian Gulf, we wend past tower houses that stand tacit and austere on the cliffs above, and through villages whose only purchase to steep hillsides are the bowers of bougainvillea they are entangled within. The road is a serious cyclist’s dream – never straight, relentlessly climbing, views incandescent with sea and sky.

We continue right to the southern tip of Mani, to Cape Tenaro where Hades was rumoured to lurk. The landscape is barren and sun-stricken and we circle endlessly down dubiously paved roads to the ends of the earth (or at least, to the end of Europe), and a parking lot full of vans and Wind Spirits confirm that we have reached a significant landmark. A trail leads to a once thriving Roman city – Taenorum – with mosaic tiles to prove it, and another to the supposed cave of Hades. No fanfare nor Disneyesque set announce his liar, simply a lone beach chair and an abandoned fishing boat in the sand. Reaching the cave, the small opening in the rocks is almost comical in its understatement. Though savvy to the pretense of myths, we agree that an indistinct headland aside a slim parcel of beach was no country for old gods!

Real legends spirit us up the western side of the Mani – first to Vathia, a huddle of tower houses home to the instigators and heroes of the revolution against the Ottomans in 1820, and then to boutique Kardamyli below which lay Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor‘s not-so-bohemian hovel by the sea. Shaped to meet a writer’s needs, the estate boasted a stone-and-tile villa, a private

studio, a bathing platform nearby, a screen of cypress tress and copious space for guests and conversation late into Mediterranean nights. Bequeathed to the Benaki Museum to manage it as a writer’s retreat, it now lies in waiting for the next person who can pay the exorbitant fee to play Patrick or Joan for the night. You’ve got to wonder how many writers that included.

Kardamyli was also the other epicentre of the feared Maniots. A series of kathimerini, now popular hiking trails, lead to the cluster of towers that loom above Kardymili, and we walk to one that had belonged to a captain in the Greek revolution. Given that the Maniots were considered descendants of the ancient Spartans, it’s no surprise to find the The Mourtzinos Tower equipped for the long run. Cisterns, vegetable garden, wine press, forge and olive mill all lie tight as a drum behind the fortress’s walls.

The Castles of Messenia

Is it that Greece is simply prone to the extraordinary – give it people or events – or is it that, with its depth of documented history, it is inevitable that stories would accrue, each one more extravagant than the one before it? And if it’s not in towers or grottos or ancient ruins that these legends live on in Greece, it’s going to be in its castles. Two such castles at the south-eastern tip – Koroniand Methoni – owe their existence to the Venetians. We know that these maritime heavyweights had a huge presence on the Eastern Mediterranean after the fall of Byzantium and that, not surprisingly, points all along the Adriatic would have been among their first ports of call. As if asserting their new sovereignty over this land, presiding over the castle complex is the winged lion, symbol of St. Mark, Venice’s patron saint. Mmmm…winged lions, mosques, minarets, Italian bureaucrats – Greece had experienced it all, emerging only within the last century as the rightful sovereign of their land. True resilience, true grit.

Sites of the Ancient Hellenic Games and Mycenae

Olympia is a big deal. One moment it’s just you and a tractor on the tucked away country roads in this corner of Greece, the next moment a fleet of tour buses is bearing down on you. Forewarned, we make a point of being first through the turnstile of this World Heritage site the next morning. Truly a sacred site, nothing but copses of trees, gentle rolling terraces, and stone-strewn fields distract you from your communion with the elemental forces of nature and the gods. Getting friendly with the gods (Zeus, Hera, Rea, and Hestia all had large temples in Olympia) had its advantages, especially when one’s athletic status was at stake. Once propitiations had been made,

competing athletes continued on to the reckoning that awaited them in the stadium. Victors were celebrated and bestowed with near god-like celebrity status in their communities, like that earned by Diagoras of Rhodes (you see his statue and name everywhere on Rhodes!} who won an Olympic title in boxing.

Getting friendly with Zeus was of even greater importance to athletes competing in the Ancient

Nemea Games, a few days journey (in the ancient world!) east of Olympia. His temple with its colonnade of colossal columns dwarves even the stadium, and today is the site’s chief drawing card. Equally auspicious to the athletes was the presence of Heracles who had performed the first of his twelve labours here, slaying the Neamean lion that Hera had sent to destroy the city (out of jealous rage over Zeus’s infidelities). Channeling their inner Heracles no doubt became critical to an athlete’s success at Nemea!

Another mythological hero – Agamemnon – can be found just down the road from where Heracles slew the lion. Agamemnon’s claim to fame? Reputed king of the Myceneans, brother of Menelaus, brother in law of Helen (of Troy), main commander of the Acheans in the Battle of Troy, and inspiration for the most famous death mask in history. What remains of his original fortress, the House of Atreus, wraps around a hill high above the Laconian plain. A pair of lions guard the entrance, beyond which lies the castle hall where Agamemnon was allegedly murdered, the workshops of the artisans

and the castle ‘support staff’ and the cleverly designed underground cisterns. Abundant archeological finds are displayed in the adjoining museum, many of them brilliantly crafted, like Agememnon’s mask, in gold. Arete (loosely, the pursuit of excellence), in its artistic manifestation, was clearly valued by the Myceneans, well before it was sanctioned by Homer and Plato.

Laying Down the Gauntlet

As we return the car in Nafplio, I recall the words of travel writer Jeff Greenwald: “Every time I see

out on a journey, I feel like God has just thrown me the keys to her car”, and how perfectly they described our road trip round the Peloponnese. She steered the car towards the Cave of Diros, so that I, as a claustrophobic, could duck stalagmites in the dark waterways deep inside a mountain with a sense of awe, not

terror. She let me out so I could hike the Menalon Trail between the fairytale villages of Dimitsana and Stemnitsa, and she drove us to Gillian Tomlinson’s art studio so I could learn how a few deft strokes of blue can evoke the essence of Greece. And she let me park awhile, so I had time to untangle the threads I’d been meaning to untangle about gods,lesser gods, demi-gods, heroes, and amazing humans…..

This is what she told me. Like many other ancient cultures, the Minoan, Dorian, and Mycenean response to the mysterious unknown was to give these forces recognizable human and/or animal form (the character of which grew with each telling). Reverence towards these gods assured the less powerful mortals of mercy, or, at best, some favour. The more powerful the God, the more attention and solicitation they received (hence the ubiquitous temples to Zeus, Apollo, Hera), though those who had a more specialized role (like Hecate who had a particular bead on evil spirits and death) were also appealed to when the need arose.

While becoming more familiar with each character, their power, and the symbology behind who ‘lay’ with whom or with what is a relatively straightforward task, teasing out where the fabulous fiction ended and the equally fantabulous reality began, is not. For instance, who was a god, and who was human, and could they straddle both worlds? Yes, they could. Demi-gods, i.e., those who were offspring of a union between god and a mortal (such as Heracles and Asclepius) had feet in both worlds. Those amazing humans, whose feats approached those of the gods, likewise had claims to both worlds. And as the gods were believed to have invented the humans we encounter in mythology (the finger is usually pointed at Prometheus or Athena for this), these humans retained some connection to their creators. For instance, Odysseus, in a lineage that can be traced back to Hermes and Chione, had access to some super-human powers. And conversely, as so many of the gods seemed to be lacking in emotional intelligence, it’s often too easy to mistake them for humans!

With the bus back to Athens locked in traffic returning after a long weekend, I have time to confront what had been the core challenge: how does mythology fit into Greek history? From what I had gleaned, I think it best to assume the mythological origins and functions of most well-known characters in the Greek ‘story’ unless they are mentioned in the annals of the ever present reporters in Greek history, such as Herodotus or Pausanias (one still needs to remember however, that even some historical figures, such as Alexander the Great, gain some other-worldly notoriety or cult following). Through these characters, every theme important, yet inexplicable to the ancients – fertility, love, grief, death, natural events, tragedy, heroic action – was imaginatively explored, giving compelling directives that guided, structured and unified Greek society for thousands of years.

BUT, given the incredible shape-shifting nature of the gods and the legends around them, all understanding of Greek mythology must be considered provisional. Trying to determine who was a God and who wasn’t and what purpose they served will always be an elusive goal. As the liminal spaces between the sacred and mundane, myth and reality were ambiguous in the ancient Greek worldview, so was there a fluidity in the boundaries between gods, legends, humans and history. It’s comforting to realize that confusion about the Greek gods, then, can be as much a sign of knowledge, as it is a lack of it!!