(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 thou [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 S [View Full Entry]

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"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 kn [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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