Epidaurus and Sound

---

The site was inviting from the moment we drove into the park with all the oleanders and other plants and trees. We went to the museum first and it was interesting to see the many statues which were probably votives to thank Asclepius for healing them or their family. There was a plaster cast of a pair of ears attributed to Cutius, a Frankish king from 918 AD who was thanking Asclepius for healing his deafness. We then continued on to the archaeological site which was easier to visualize after having seen the site plan in the museum. The hotel was massive, much bigger than I would have thought since the ancients didn't require a lot of space to live in. The outline of the rooms was fairly large so they were probably not 'singles.' The Greek baths were on the side of the hotel we approached from while the Roman baths were on the other side. We then saw the gymnasium which has an odeum (music hall) in the center which is kind of bizarre. Exercise could be part of the cure for some people so having exercise facilities made sense but you don't stick a concert hall in the middle of your exercise facilities. Our guide, Antonis, said that the new theory is that the gymnasium was a banquet hall and that makes much more sense since they would have needed a large facility to feed the many people staying at the massive hotel.

We then went to the tholos which was an interesting round building with a 'labyrintyh' below for the holy snakes to live in. It didn't look like a very complex maze to me from the photos so may have been simply some space for the critters. The tholos had Doric columns outside for structural support and Corinthian columns inside for decoration and a checkerboard floor that someone thinks was a clever map of the universe. I'd like to see a star map with the floor plan to see whether that computes as it seems a strange thing to do in a healing center. We continued on to the Temple of Asclepius which was quite a ways from the altar. There were numerous other ruins but we ignored them and went to the theatre.

The theater is absolutely amazing. It is probably 80-90% intact, which is incredible for a rocky 'building' 2500 years old in earthquake prone Greece and the acoustics are stunning. It was built using the Golden Ratio and you could hear a coin dropped in the center way up in the 55th row of seats without amplification of any kind. We had the usual demos but towards the end of our visit a group of French youths sang the Marseillaise to their friends in the top row and it was marvelous! The sound was better than in some modern theatres that have good sound systems.

---