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Spring Break on the Saronic Gulf
by Rick Kennedy |
  Pausanius's Guide to Greece, a travel
handbook written in the second century AD, begins at
the south-eastern tip of Attica: "Sail round the
cape and you come to a harbour; on the cape is a
Temple of Athene of Sounion. Sailing further you
will make Lavrion where Athenians once had silver
mines. On March 5, 2006, at 3:30 pm, some students
and my family were doing just that. The ruins of the
temple loomed on our port as we cinched in to reach
around Cape Sounio. Soon we rounded up into the
wind, took in our sails, and motored into the harbor
at Lavrio.
We had come as an Ancient Historians class from
Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego on
Spring Break. In the prior two months the small
seminar class had plowed through Herodotus on the
Persian Wars and Thucydides on the Peloponnesian
War. Here we were on March 5th sailing the route
Herodotus tells us that the commodore/queen
Artemesia followed before and after the Battle of
Salamis. We were rounding up where Thucydides has
the Spartans rounding up on their way to take Lavrio
from the Athenians. Aside from the two founding
Greek historians, we also had on board two Roman
guide books: the Penquin Classic version of
Pausanias' Guide to Greece and photocopies of
sections of Strabo's Geography in which he describes
the region of the Saronic Gulf.
We were sailing a
51' sloop from
Royal Eagle Charters in Marina Alimos in
Athens. Our boat, appropriate for a history class,
was named Cronos. Our ultimate goal was to think
through the links between history and geography. The
practical goal was to avoid smashing the boat
against cement quays when executing a
Mediterranean-style stern-tie. This was the
skipper/professor's first charter outside of
Southern California. He, two students, and an
ex-Navy adjunct professor discussed every course and
approach thoroughly. Backing a boat up to a cement
wall was a bit breathless, but everybody did their
part.
The cruise began with a short sail northwest from
Marina Alimos to the ancient open roadstead of
Faliron. Here was the closest a boat could get to
ancient Athens. The Acropolis was visible a few
miles inland. I read aloud to the students a scene
from the historian Xenophon who tells of the
underhanded and rightly-paranoid Alcibiades
anchoring near where we were, scanning the crowd on
the beach that was waiting for him. Are the
Athenians going to execute him or follow him?
Alcibiades sees his friends in the crowd and decides
to go ashore.
Every port on the Saronic Gulf has deep historical
associations. From Lavrio, on March 6th we sailed on
strong southerly winds across the mouth of the gulf
to the island of
Poros, which was called Kaluria in
ancient times. Kaluria was part of Troezen and today
the port at Poros has the only moorings in the
region. Troezen and Poros were the birthplace and
youthful playground of Theseus who killed the
minotaur and founded Athens. Somewhere along the
cliffs of Attica, maybe at Cape Sounio, Theseus'
father, Aegis, threw himself into the sea in despair
over the supposed death of his son. The son,
however, was not dead, and the sea has ever since
been called the Aegean. An ancient king of Troezen
named Saron was such a determined hunter that he
chased a deer into the waters between Troezen and
Poros. The deer kept swimming and so did Saron until
he finally drowned. The
Saronic Gulf is named for
him.
Those stories are part of a deep past beyond clear
categories of credibility. We were interested in the
more reliable investigations of later Greeks and
Romans which have collateral evidence in ruins and
geography. We hiked to the top of Poros to see the
ruins of a sanctuary dedicated to Poseidon. The
Athenian loyalist Demosthenes drank poison here
rather than submit to the imperialist order of the
Macedonians. From high over Poros we could see much
of the Saronic Gulf including the well-protected,
well-watered, flatlands of Troezen where Herodotus
tells us that the Athenian women and children fled
when the Persian Xerxes conquered Athens. We could
easily trace the route of the triremes of Troezen on
their way to Aegina where they would join with
others before rallying at the island of Salamis for
what is one of the most famous sea battles in
history.
When we had arrived at Poros, violent gusts of
southerly winds were blowing through the narrow east
entry to the
harbor. Much gnashing of teeth was
required before we decided not to try a stern-to at
the quay in heavy cross winds. We found at the west
end a tourist dingy dock that was empty in the off
season.
Pausanius had written that in spring in the western
passage out of Troezen "the Sirocco rages in from
the Saronic Gulf." The Penguin Classics editorial
footnote asks: "How can a Sirocco rage in from the
Saronic Gulf. It blows from Africa but the Saronic
Gulf lies North?" The editor thinks Pausanias makes
a mistake here. But we found Pausanias correct! On
March 7, sailing west out of Poros then north along
Methana, we carried only a jib and were being pushed
by what we on boat agreed could easily be called "a
raging Sirocco" coming at us from where Pausanias
had said King Saron had succumbed to the sea.
Our goal that day was to get to the ancient port of
Epidaurus. There is a "new" Epidaurus, an "old"
Epidaurus, and the famous Theater of Epidaurus ten
miles into the hills behind old Epidaurus. Pausanias
called the region Epidauria. To further complicate
things, any Epidaurus is called on Greek maps
Epidhavros. Everywhere we went there was a confusion
of names and spellings. Aside from the obvious
reason of transliteration of the Greek alphabet, the
confusion of names manifest the history of what was
first a loose and feisty region of Greek cities that
became unified under the Roman Empire. The Greek
"Epidhavros" became the Roman "Epidaurus."
 Palaia Epidhavros was for several hundred years the
thriving port of the health cult of the god
Asklepios. 10 miles up into the hills are the ruins
of a large campus offering wealthy Greeks a
combination spa, medical research facility, and arts
festival. Palaia Epidhavros thrived as the port for
that facility in the hills. Today it is still mostly
a tourist village. A hotel/café? owner told my wife
and me that World War II and the following civil
wars had disrupted the life of the village so much
that his parents had moved to Canada. He and his
brother had returned to revive the family business.
In March we were the only customers in the café?;
however, after Easter there would be plenty of
visitors. The tourist economy of the town was again
thriving because of the theater up in the hills.
We stayed two nights in Palaia Epidhavros so as to
have a day-trip inland to visit the theater, Mycenae
(Mikines), and Corinth. It snowed on us at the
theater and an icy wind blew the whole day. The
weather in early March was fickle. Several days were
pleasant in the high sixties. Other days and some
nights were near freezing. The Saronic Gulf sits at
the same latitude of the San Francisco Bay. We did
not expect it to be warm, but snow in the hills
caught us off guard. Winds were strong from the
South all day long most days. One local told us he
thought the climate was changing with Spring getting
colder with more winds from the South.
On March 9 there was no wind in the morning and we
motored over to
Aegina, an island that Strabo
declared was once "mistress of the sea." Aegina in
the 5th and 4th centuries BC was a major power among
the disparate city-states of Hellas. Aegina appears
as a rival to Athens in both the histories by
Herodotus and Thucydides. Aegina leads alliances
with Troezen and Epidhavros. Stand on top the island
at its temple ruins and on a clear day, I suppose,
one can see the Athenian Acropolis in the distance.
It was hazy the day we were there, and we only saw
the sprawl of modern Athens. Like late-medieval
hill-top towns in central Italy, bitter rivals lived
for centuries in sight of each other. Xenophon saw
"uncertainty and confusion" prevailing in ancient
Greece. Herodotus and Thucydides would have
concurred. Some semblance of unity comes only with
being threatened or conquered.
The dominant deity of the gulf was Poseidon. The
temple at Cape Sounio is dedicated to
Poseidon-Pausanius was wrong to say Athena. On the
top of Poros are the ruins of another temple to
Poseidon. These two temples oversaw the east
entrance to the gulf. Pausanius noted that the
Isthmus of Corinth belonged to Poseidon. A temple
stood there, and a bronze statue of Poseidon stood
on the sea wall at Corinth's Saronic port in
Kenchreai. Worship of Poseidon ringed the gulf. We
talked about Poseidon on our boat. Poseidon was the
son of Cronos. We remembered Poseidon's antagonism
to Odysseus, a story that advises humility in
sailors.
On March 10 there was again no morning wind so we
motored the short passage to Athens. To the north we
could see tankers lined up along the island of
Salamis. There would be no fun trying to sail the
industrial waters of the great battlefield. We would
do best to enjoy Athens. The charter company gave us
an extra night on the boat since it was off-season.
The trip was a success. The best historians have
traveled with those they study. We had traveled the
Saronic Gulf with the words of the ancients in our
hands. We had traveled like they had travelled: by
boat. |
About the author
Rick Kennedy is Professor of History at Point Loma
Nazarene University, San Diego, CA 92106 |
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