Escape to Asclepieion! On Visiting Greece at the Right Time

With Dr L. Papadopoulos and Sarah Poynder

Despite unprecedented Brexit/Trump shithousery at home, or perhaps because I had escaped it physically, this was my best week of 2018 so far. The theatre at Epidauros as usual took my breath away, even though my scheduled lecture in the Small Theatre was doomed by a sudden thunderstorm to be relocated, inappropriately, to an indoor baseball stadium with a tin roof. 

Lecturing at 1000 Decibels

This meant I literally had to shout my lecture on Why are the Erinyes/Furies Gendered Female? at the very top of my voice. My international audience didn’t look as terrified as they should have. 

Then to Rhodes where hundreds of Australian lawyers of Greek ancestry had invited me, along with Profs. Paul Cartledge and Adriaan Lanni, to tell them about the Athenians’ amazingly democratic legal system. Up first, I chose the comedic tactic and enacted, solo, all the roles in the trial in Aristophanes’ Wasps in which one household hound prosecutes another for stealing a Sicilian cheese. 

Cleon-Dog accuses Labes-Dog in Wasps

The Chief Witness is the kitchen’s Cheesegrater, who witnessed the crime being perpetrated and is Chief of Household Accounts. This is actually our best evidence for procedure in fifth-century Athenian courts. Since the death of our wonderful cat Sam last month, which upset me far more than I anticipated, we now have only one cat and one dog, but I intend to reenact the scene upon return home tomorrow.

Hygieia with Head

Then a strange night in a demotic bar watching Croatian footballers hammer Englishmen. I was in company with a Croat, my English daughter, several Australians and many Greeks (a night in which I gradually started supporting the Croatians because of their True Grit). The fun started when I discovered the best thing in Rhodes Archaeological Museum: THE STATUES HAVE HEADS ON. Most were guillotined by iconoclastic early Christians, but on Rhodes they considerately left the heads lying around to be stuck on again later.

Hippocrates, Asclepius, a Koan on Kos

In Kos, founded by Asclepios-worshipping Epidaurians long ago, I took my arthritic left knee to show to the Healing God in his magnificent sanctuary, where Hippocrates, the great medic of the Greek Enlightenment, practised his craft. I did not have time to sleep over ("incubate") in the Asclepieion and experience visitations from gods in my dreams, but my knee has felt better today. 

Kitten under Hippocrates' Plane Tree in Kos

Nor did I have a cock to sacrifice there, like the women in a little-known poem (no. 4) by the Koan poet Herodas who describe Asclepios’ Koan altar, but my conversation with one of many local ginger tomcats seems to have done the trick.

Now watching the World Cup final in Fiumicino Airport, Rome, before returning to Blighty and Brexit Blues later tonight. I have suspended Reality for nine whole days. “It” may not be coming home, but I am, albeit reluctantly.