olivernmoody

(continued, funnily enough, from 15a) We don't just assume that the Greeks thought along lines similar to the modern mind, we assume even more implicitly that they expressed themselves in similar terms. Indeed, the limpid clarity of classical writing has been a model not just for our prose writers but for our poets. I myself have peddled the direct simplicity of Greek diction, unmistakable not only in tedious legal wranglers like Lysias but also in the sublime music of poets such as Sappho, Homer and, in later times, Theocritus. We tend to identify lucidity of language with lucidity of thought, and to believe that, minus a few inevitable cultural barriers, Greek is thoroughly intelligible. Oh dear. The trouble comes with dramatic poetry. The problem, I think, is that drama is a communal activity in a way ... read more

The Noble Savages Alihan Guesthouse, Selcuk - September 22nd, Evening "It is an isle under Ionian skies, Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, And - for the harbours are not safe and good - This land would have remained a solitude But for some pastoral people native there, Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, Simple and spirited; innocent and bold." (from Shelley's Epipsychidion) It is terribly easy for a young Romantic to see the Ionians as noble pioneers, flawless in character and - for form follows character - flawless in appearance, a generation of oily Apollos calling forth poetry into the wilderness with every breath. It is terribly easily forgotten that Ionians would have stood - rather sheepishly, I imagine - against the three hundred ... read more

Life Amongst the Dead Alihan Guesthouse, Selçuk - 20th September, Evening And so, at last, to Ephesus. The most famous city in Ionia has led such a many-splendoured past that it would be a bit silly to give a potted history; its life is best told by the story of its Temple of Artemis, the seventh of the Wonders of the World. First consecrated, in the latter shadows of the Bronze Age, to an equally shadowy Mother Goddess figure - most probably a conflation of Cybele, the magna mater of antiquity, and an early cult of Artemis - the temple is said by Pausanias to predate the Ionian migrations. The goddess worshipped here took form before the days of the clearly defined Pantheon cults, and is a slightly threatening mixture of mother goddess and huntress, with ... read more

Endymion Alihan Guesthouse, Selçuk - September 18th, Evening "A thing of beauty is a joy forever..." So begins Keats' Endymion, one of the marmoreal monuments of English Romantic poetry. The story is as renowned as anything else that ever came from where Helicon breaks down in cliff into the sea: the hero is born a shepherd in Latmos, fair beyond anything that the five-fingered mountain has ever beheld, the son of Zeus and the nympth Calyce. In a dream, he falls in love with the Moon herself - or possibly the god of sleep, Hypnos - and his lover secures him immortal youth, on one condition: that he while away eternity in the crystalline depths of slumber. Keats attempts a theme already sung by writers as diverse as Lyly and the bookish Apollonius Rhodius, and does ... read more

The Sunset-Touch Agora Pension, Kapıkırı (Heraklia), Lake Bafa - September 17th, Evening Genuinely a very brief entry, as I do not have any world-shattering thoughts to add to the guide book's account of Pamukkale. The bus journey from Kuşadası is, bizarrely, cheaper, faster and more fun if you break it up, and since getting from A to B by a geodesic would be anathema to me, I did just that. The road to Aydın ("City of Light" - I have come across few towns less appropriately named) snakes up into the Lydian mountains, following the southern Scamander, and I had the precipitous sides of the river valley as companions for the whole journey. From Aydın, you hop on a bus to the larger and even more disappointing city of Denizli, and thence it is a fifteen-minute ... read more

"If you dare trample on these, be free" Aspawa Pension, Pamukkale - September 16th, Evening Kuşadası may be an unashamed fleshpot, but it does make a very convenient base for tracing the lines of Greek thought back to their very inception, with a man whose name is renowned worldwide and whose thoughts are hopelessly obscured by time. Thales of Miletus, and his successors Anaximander and Anaximenes with him, are known almost universally as the first philosophers because they were the first to cast off the tyranny of the arbitrary. As anybody who has tried will know all too well, the further back the filigree'd tracery of science is taken, the more impossible it becomes to make any sure statement, and so I shall make no pretensions to incontrovertible truth. Out of a wish for brevity and ... read more

The Unseen Legislators of the World Aspawa Pension, Pamukkale - September 16th, Evening Roaring down the coastline from Seferihisar on yet another glorious day, we passed a minute sign for a turn-off to a village called Alpaslan. This hamlet, tucked away some ten miles inland, is named after the Selçuk bey who first bore the brunt of the First Crusade, thus earning his title, for - and I am shocked at C.S. Lewis' heathen sensibilities - "aslan" is the Turkish for lion. There is a greater significance to this peaceful village, however: once upon a time, it was the site of one of the most powerful cities of the Ionian decapolis, Colophon. Literally translating as "summit," Colophon commanded a formidable position over a fertile landscape, which even today is rich in vines and corn. This is ... read more

Now Reigns the Rose Anzac Pension, Kuşadası - September 14th, Afternoon Just as a footnote to the last two entries, that spectral, shuffling drumbeat was abroad at an ungodly hour in Pergamum as well. I am disappointed to discover that it is no hashish-mazed Sufi, but rather the imsak, the call to signal the beginning of the day's fast in Ramazan - or so the pension manager tells me, adding, "I tell some of my guests that I am paying him to welcome them." He is a queer, moon-led soul who sleeps on his own roof terrace at night. "Under the stars?" asks a wide-eyed Japanese girl. "I have a high ceiling," he smiles back. Before leaving Pergamum, I took a brief look at the Red Basilica, the notorious seat of the Devil. The approach is ... read more

Pergamum - The City of the Snakes Athena Pension, Bergama - September 12th, Afternoon A shortish entry today, you'll be relieved to hear, as I'm a little short on sleep and frankly there isn't a great deal that I can add to the photographs and the history books. Lofted away from the gentle breezes of the Ionian coast, the town of Bergama is about as arid as I have ever seen. The air is desiccated, the people dry, and even the vegetation seems to be out to get you. I am unsurprised that the book of Revelations insistently places the seat of the Devil in the basilica here: "To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. I know where you live - where ... read more

A Passage to Turkey Hotel Athena, Pergamon - September 11th Yesterday, I took what Milton would have called a "gaudy day." Cheerfully bobbing around in Ayvalýk's harbour are any number of large-ish boats offering a day's tour of the bay, with lunch and swimming thrown in, for the stingier part of seven pounds. Travel may bring out the snobbery in us all, but there are some things about which it is hard to be a snob, and sea-swimming is one of them. I decided to stand up Sappho and Alcaeus and have a day without thinking for once, lest I should end up like Bernard of Clairvaux, whose mind was so abstracted that he failed to notice Lake Geneva standing in front of him. And although the contents of a package tour descended on the boat, ... read more