Letizia is ready to return, but I coax her on up the mountain to the northeast. I’ve busted my butt to get here, and I’m going to see what I came to see. Finally, we sit on the very top of the Acrocorinth looking north over the ruins of the ancient city far below and beyond to the Gulf of Corinth. I’m well into my water bottle and feeling better.

 I stare off into the distance with the cool breeze whipping about me and the earth falling away just beyond my feet to the ground 300 meters below. I take another long swing with Letizia chiding me not to drink so much. She’s sitting just a few feet from me, her arms folded about her knees, still protesting the climb up here.

“This was the site of Aphrodite’s most important temple,” I tell her. She’s not impressed.

Sitting suspended in air on this precipice overlooking the countryside, I see past both the ancient and new towns of Corinth to the water of the Gulf and on its opposite bank, the small town of Itea masked by haze, seeing it from the southeast now as I had from the northeast while in Delphi. I make out the valley north of Itea and just to the east, a glimmer of white against the distant mountainside, Delphi. I imagine young Oedipus standing here 3300 years ago, looking over this same landscape. The view must have been clear in his day without all the motorbikes and cars pumping exhaust into the air.

I imagined him sitting here brooding the morning following the banquet during which the drunk raised the question concerning his parentage. Perhaps he came to the Acrocorinth after talking to his father, the king, but was still convinced there was some truth in the drunk’s wild accusation that he was not the  biological son of his mother and father. He must have seen Delphi off in the distance, as I can now. Perhaps he had an inspiration: he would go to Delphi and get the final word concerning his parentage from the Oracle. Apollo would surely tell him the truth.

What interests me about this stage of Oedipus’ life is the uncertainty the words of the drunk unleashed. You’d think he would have brushed the cheap shot about his parentage aside or perhaps gone into a rage and beat the man. Oedipus was certainly prone to violence. But he didn’t. Since Oedipus is our Rosette stone for unlocking our own inner secrets, here is the birth of uncertainty leading us on our quest for self-knowledge and eventual self-destruction.

From here at Corinth Oedipus went to Delphi, which taken metaphorically tells us that the ancient gods hold the key to self-knowledge.  Sigmund Freud took his psychoanalytic technique from the Oedipus myth, the quest for self. But his student, colleague, and later, professional enemy, Carl Jung, went a step further and proclaimed all mythology, and in particular the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, the key to understanding human nature. He envisioned them as archetypes of human behavior, postulating they exist within each of us.

All the great religions tell us that to find God, we must look within. But what the ancient Greeks, and even the major religions of today, would have recognized as a divine presence within themselves, the psychological community recognizes as our own emotions. Whether or not it is then possible to separate religion from psychology has become one of the more interesting questions facing us as we enter the 21st century. Because of this, many psychologists have proclaimed god dead. With the birth of psychology, we have the rise of atheism.

That night in Berkeley when I came home from the coffeehouse and tried to fall asleep, I interpreted my near-hallucinatory experience as imminent insanity. It was all I had to explain it. If I had been an ancient Greek, I would have recognized the experience as the epiphany of a god, perhaps of several, Pan, Dionysus, the Furies. They all hang out together. During my uncle’s bouts with schizophrenia, when he lost his mind completely, he proclaimed he was God.

We might well ask the question: Does the ancient Greek religion then lead us only to the discovery of ourselves and say nothing about spirituality? At this point in my journey, I don’t have the answer.

I still have my eyes fixed on that white speck on Mt. Parnassos, which I suspect to be Delphi. Getting to Delphi from Corinth overland would be an arduous journey. I don’t believe Oedipus went over land but walked to the Isthmus, just a few kilometers from here and, as the prince of Corinth, commandeered one of the boats being pulled across on wheeled platforms. My theory is that he sailed the waters of the gulf to Itea where he started the journey by foot up the slope to Delphi. He was probably with friends who helped him chat away the miles.

Whatever the case, after visiting Delphi, Apollo having ignored his question and instead told him he was to kill his father and marry his mother, Oedipus decided not to return to Corinth, said good-bye to his friends and his old life and sought a new one in another land. He was alone when he had the dispute with Laios over the right of way and killed him and three of his four companions.

I must see the site where Oedipus committed the four murders. Tomorrow I’ll try again to rent a car and drive to the Cleft Way. I cannot possibly leave Greece without seeing it.

Letizia says she’s going back down the mountain. She’s slipped on her black daypack and stands looking at me defiantly. Off in the distance I hear the yelling and sawing of a mule. On the bus back to new Corinth, I ask her to have dinner with me, but she smiles bashfully, turns her head away. “We’ll see,” she says.

After a cool shower and change of clothes, I hobble down to dinner at a large outdoor restaurant at the waterfront, my knees aching after today’s strenuous hike. I’m the only customer among rows and rows of tables and chairs sheltered by a plastic partition from the breeze, which blows in from the Gulf. Nearby a group of Greek men watch a basketball game on TV.

Shortly after the waiter seats me, Letizia arrives. Her hair is still a little wet but her face radiates youth, energy, drawing a stark contrast to my flushed face, exhaustion and pain-pulsing knees.

Corinth’s main street is at the edge of our table, and the sound of traffic is consuming, motorbikes, cars, trucks, the exhaust. The restaurant is across the street, next to Letizia’s hotel, so the waiter has to bring our food through the traffic. In addition to the olive oil on our salatas, they have an extra topping of motor oil. A gray cat slinks close to our table, eyeing my kalamari. Our waiter crosses the street to shoo him away, but soon she’s back, surveying my plate and crying mournfully.

“Tomorrow I’m renting a car and driving into Boeotia,” I tell her. “Why don’t you come with me? I’ll show you where Oedipus killed his father. We can see the canal cut across the Isthmus on the way.”

She swallows a big bite of bread. “I saw the canal when I came into Corinth by train. I’m going to the temple of Hera tomorrow.”

The cool sea breeze flaps the clear plastic partition. A car horn starts two blocks away, stops for a second, starts again. The occupants are dressed in suits, a large bouquet of flowers tied to the antenna. Letizia’s gaze follows the car down the street. “A wedding,” she says. The cat hops into one of the extra chairs and sticks her head above the tabletop. Letizia shoves him away.

My Greek salata is very good, the usual large wedges of tomatoes, olives, sliced onions, cucumber wedges and a large block of tart feta cheese. The eight oval kalamari of various sizes are lightly breaded and fried but still a little slick, absolutely delicious and served with a lemon wedge. They remind me of small boiled eggs but are a little tough to chew. Letezia stuffs bread into her mouth.

After dinner we stroll the dock browsing the boats. I hobble around after her. “Go for a walk around the city with me,” she says.

“I can’t," I admit. "You walked me into the ground today. My left knee is killing me.” My condition is severe or I’d certainly not pass up this invitation. She smiles and walks off down the street.

As I enter the hotel, loud music from the bar attracts my attention, and I maneuver through the crowded doorway to the bar, order an ouzo, my first. It tastes strong of liquorish. I expected a disco from the blaring bouzouki music and laughter, and I guess it is a sort of disco. A sleek Greek in dark pants and white shirt dances by himself in the middle of the crowded room. Where are the girls? I’ve heard Greece called the world’s largest men’s club, and this bar is certainly a testament to that sentiment. But they are singing. No doubt this is one happy group. They’re singing to each other.

I wake at midnight. Sleep in the Hotel Acti never progresses beyond a doze. The music from the taverna beneath my room comes to me unattenuated; cigarette smoke seeps up the walls. Motorbikes stop at the traffic light just below my window and when they take off, fairly blow the walls out of this hotel room. The lights in Corinth dim every couple of minutes. Occasionally they go completely out.

My leathery ear feels better now that I’m using my athlete’s foot medicine on it. If I have to go to the pharmacy for more, how will I say “athlete’s foot” in Greek? AdlhtikoV podi (athlitikos pothi) is as close as I can come using my dictionary. The gender of the words may not match, but maybe they’ll do the job. I hope I don’t catch anything from the bed I’m sleeping in here.

I’m so sleepy, I believe I can shut out the noise and smoke for a few more minutes and doze again.

25 Oct, Monday

I’ve rented a Subaru, and I’m off to the Cleft Way with a detour by Mt. Kithaeron where three-day-old Oedipus was exposed on the mountainside. First I stop at the Isthmus which separates the Gulf of Corinth from the Saronic Gulf. Except for the Isthmus, the Peloponnese would be a large maple leaf-shaped island. When Sisyphus died he was buried in a secret grave no one has ever found.

A canal across the Isthmus had been envisioned as far back as the 7th century BC.[6] At that time, sailors who wished to avoid the sudden violent storms at the southern tip of the Peloponnese, unloaded their boats onto a tram and dragged them across the six kilometer Isthmus on a paved road called the diolkos, deep grooves cut into stone.[7] Nero started a canal in AD 67 using Hebrew slaves but work was abandoned when he died. A French company took up the challenge in 1882 but ran out of money in 1889. It took determined Greek engineers to finally finish the job in 1893, one hundred years ago, officially making the Peloponnese an island.

I stand on the bridge spanning the canal looking down into the water one hundred meters below. The canal is only thirty meters wide at the waterline and is a thin blue stripe at the bottom of the tan cliffs cut through the earth. The bridge is a metal truss structure, a gigantic erector set, which rattles and shakes when cars and trucks cross.

I eat a chocolate pie and a ham-and-cheese croissant, watching crumbs fall from my mouth into the water below. I look south trying to see the small town of Kenchreai where the Apostle Paul caught a ship bound for Ephesus on the western coast of Asia Minor (Turkey), but Kenchreai isn’t visible from here nor is the Temple of Poseidon where the Ismithian Games were held. So little time, so many tough choices.

Oedipus may have stood here where I now stand and commandeered a boat for the short trip to Itea. Undoubtedly he would have envied my trip by car. I should be at the Cleft Way by late afternoon. First I’ll take a drive up the mystery-shadowed mountain where he was left to die as a child of three days, Mt. Kithaeron.

To get there, I drive the freeway along the south side of the Isthmus, past Megara to a turnoff just before Eleusis. Megara is where the seer Calchas lived. Agamemnon respected him enough to go to his home to convince him to go to Troy with the Greek fleet. But Agamemnon grew to hate Calchas because it was he who divined that Agamemnon must sacrifice Iphigenia to get favorable winds to sail to Troy. After the turnoff just before Eleusis, I head north to Mt. Kithaeron. Eleusis at the edge of the sea is where Theseus buried the Argos generals who died in the battle of  Seven Against Thebes.

A sign, “KiqairwnaV” (Kithaeronas), points to a paved side road. On the switchbacks up the side of the mountain, I see the strangest goats, large, dark-brown creatures with black flat horns. When seen on edge, the horns give the goats a Spanish look, as if they’ve donned sombreros. Could be they donned hats to go out this afternoon to visit dance-loving Pan, the goat god. An old male chases a young female, and I imagine the fun he’ll have with her. 

According to Greek tradition the goat “is the most efficient in copulation.” [8] Just the animal I’d expect Pan to hang out with.

I pull off the side of the road halfway up the mountain to snap a picture but have to get back in my car quickly because of the smell. Just off the edge of the road where it falls away down the mountainside, people have dumped trash and animal remains. The smell of the dead is simply unbearable.  

Once on top, I stand on the apex of Kithaeron looking northeast at small cities and villages spread around Boeotia. Far in the distance, Thebes is a flat scattering of white specks. The top of the mountain has been hewn off and leveled.

A government facility stands nearby, a bland cement building with big dish antennas. Could be a military installation, but it’s deserted, m Subaru the only car on the mountain.  

Of the many atrocities committed on this mountain, none is more infamous than those occurring during the women’s rites in worship of Dionysus. During these orgiastic rites, they ripped apart wild animals and ate their flesh raw.

They carried fire in their hair and remained unscorched.[9] During one such ceremony, Pentheus, Oedipus’ great grandfather, also a king of Thebes, was killed and dismembered by the maenads, the same fate experienced by Dionysus at the hands of the Titans. Pentheus’ own mother, who had lost her senses during the ceremony, returned to Thebes with her son's blood-dripping head on her thyrsus. She became hysterical when her reason returned.

Kithaeron also played a part in relaying news of the Greek victory at Troy. The night Troy fell, the Greeks sent a signal to Mycenae. A series of fires on mountaintops, starting with Mt. Ida in Troy and ending with Mt. Aigiplanctos in the Argolis, told of their triumph. One of those fires was right here high atop Kithaeron, an echo of the fire ravaging Troy as the Greeks murdered, raped and looted. Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon opens at night with a watchman trying to stay awake, staring out into the darkness for a glimmer of firelight as he had been all year. Finally the flame in the distance appeared, and he woke the entire city to celebrate the victory. Mt. Kithaeron got its signal from Mt. Messapion and relayed it to Mt. Aigiplanctos where it was visible to the Mycenaean watchman standing in the city’s tower called the Spider’s Crag. Klytemnestra describes the sequence of fires and tells of that on Kithaeron:

And onward still, not failing nor aswoon,
across the Asopus like a beaming moon
The great word leapt, and on Kithairon’s height
Uproused a new relay of racing light.
His watchers knew the wandering flame, nor hid
Their welcome, burning higher than was bid.
Out over Lake Gorgopis then it floats,
To Aigiplanctos, waking the wild goats,
Crying for “Fire, more fire!”[10]

On the brighter side, Zeus and Hera were married on this peak. He carried her here from Euboea, the long thin island to the east of Attica, which was Hera’s and know as “the good cow country.”[11] Hera was a little girl and Zeus’ sister. She struggled against his advances until he promised to marry her. This type of incestuous behavior was reserved for the immortals, and incestuous mortals punished unmercifully as Oedipus found out.

The top of Kithaeron is above the smog and layer of pollution, which extends from ground level to the clouds. But still, it's an impressive site in all directions, Kithaeron 1409 meters above sea level. The Gulf of Corinth, to the southwest, lies like a blue mirror with its face to the sky. To the north lies the valley of Boeotia with its network of roads and towns, Plataea at the base of the mountain just underneath me, Erithrai further out and Thebes in the distance.

Baby Oedipus would have met his death on this mountain if it hadn’t been for the kind-heartedness of two shepherds. Jocasta gave her three-day-old child to a trusted shepherd (an act which she denied) with instructions to expose him on Mt. Kithaeron. The baby’s ankles had been pierced and pinned together by Laios. Kithaeron is a good day’s journey by foot from Thebes, so I imagine the shepherd received the baby in the morning and traveled all day with the baby in his arms until he reached the slopes of Kithaeron. But he didn’t have the heart to set the baby out to die, and perhaps met the shepherd from Corinth that first night. I imagine them sitting around the campfire soothing the baby’s swollen ankles and discussing his fate. The other shepherd, a trusted member of the Corinthian royal household, knew his king and queen could have no children and, since the baby was of royal lineage, decided he would make them a present of the child.

I leave Kithaeron sooner than I would like in a terrible rush to get to the site where Oedipus killed Laios before nightfall. According to Pausanias, after Oedipus killed Laios and his companions, Damesistratos, the king of Plataea, found the bodies and buried them at the Cleft way.[12] I will be at the gravesite shortly. Perhaps by the time I return to Corinth this evening I’ll have seen the Cleft Way that I’ve been past three times on the bus but so far has eluded me on foot.  

On the road again, I go up the grade toward Thebes, past the ruins of Eleutherai where the common soldiers of Argos, killed in the battle of Seven Against Thebes, are buried.

Theseus retrieved the Argive dead by force from Thebes, stopping short of sacking the city. He cremated them in the shadow of Eleutherai’s cliff on the dry-grassed hillside just off to the right of the road. I pass through the quiet outskirts of Thebes along the road next to the Fountain of Dirce, that I stood before a little more than two weeks  ago, and then travel along the road through Levadia. 

By the  time I approach the stony crack of Mt. Parnassos a few kilometers in the distance, the sun hangs close to the crest of Kithaeron. I see a sign pointing to Daulia off to the right and slow, pull of the road onto the dirt.

I exit the car, and finally stand on a dirt path at the Cleft Way. In front of me is a small ravine and on the other side, up the opposite slope, is a small square patch of golden grass, a small patch of alfalfa with a lone olive tree growing in its middle as a quiet simple symbol of peace. The field is on fire with dying sunlight. 

The dirt road, a  trail really, winds around the mountain close to the bottom of the ravine, the very path  where Oedipus and Laios approached each other. The trail is cluttered with tracks and droppings of sheep and goats.

 To the north, the hill rises and is lush with brush. I see the white speckles of sheep on a far slope. The sight of sheep calls to mind the words of Hesiod concerning the many races of men, and in particular the fourth that died in a war over Oedipus’ flocks:

Zeus, son of Kronos, made upon the nourishing land
yet another race--the fourth one--better and more just.
They were the divine race of heroes, who are called
demigods; they preceded us on this boundless earth.
Evil war and dreadful battle wiped them all out,
some fighting over the flocks of Oidipous...[13]

At this narrow gap between hills, Oedipus would not give way to the chariot, so Laios struck him with a two headed goad and Oedipus flew into a murderous rage, killing not only Laios but three of his four companions as well. The fourth escaped back to Thebes and years later was the missing link in Oedipus’ quest for the identity of the murderer. Red-haired Oedipus was so enraged even after killing Laios that he bit him and spat out the blood.[14] I see no sign of the graves dug by king Damesistratos.

I imagine Oedipus wandering down the Sacred Way from Delphi, disgusted with his life, the uncertainty in it since receiving the words of Apollo, maybe kicking dust as he went, when he came to this narrow ravine where a horse-drawn carriage suddenly sprang up before him. As issues go, this should not have been a major one, and who can deny that at a tight place in the road the right-of-way would go to the horse and carriage instead of a lone man on foot. One can well imagine a reasonable man tipping his hat and stepping aside as the carriage sped passed. But not irritable Oedipus. He would not yield and neither would Laios, two men made of the same stubborn stuff. Euripides describes the action using the words of Jocasta herself:

Then Laius’ charioteer commanded him [Oedipus] --
“Stand clear, man, from the pathway of a prince.”
Proudly he strode on, answering not. The steeds
Spurned with their hoofs his ankles, drawing blood.
Then—why tell aught beyond the sad event?—
Son slayeth father….[15]

In my own case who would deny I should have yielded to the older, more experienced man in his own home concerning who he would welcome as a guest. Was I spoiling for a fight? Oedipus didn’t know his own identity when he encountered the Laios on the road, and he didn’t know the man was his father. The lesson we learn from Oedpus, the great paradigm, is that we never know who we really are and the man we struggle with on the road is always our father.

At this fateful junction, three roads meet: one east to Thebes, another west to Delphi and the third to Daulia, a small town north on a sacred road not so frequently traveled. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, both Jocasta and Oedipus describe this crossroads. Jocasta’s description is translated as “the place where three roads meet.” Oedipus’ words are more variously translated, but I’m fond of that which calls it, “this triple parting of the ways.”[16] These words describe metaphorically what happened to me the fateful day I stood my ground against my father. Oedipus doesn’t say which road he was planning to take, that to Daulia or Thebes. I imagine him on his way to Daulia, the road less traveled, but following the confrontation with Laios, changed his mind and decided to go to Thebes and there met his fate head on.

I wasn’t Oedipus. My life didn’t literally parallel his although the inclinations are close enough to suggest something more than accident. The experiences of the human race down through the millennia have frequently paralleled this theme. The essential difference between me and Oedipus is that I didn’t kill my father although a few days later I toyed with a situation where it could have happened. Obviously, that has made all the difference.

My triple parting of the ways occurred when I heard my father clicking the deer rifle. My life disintegrated, fragmented. I proceeded down the road I was on a ways, driven by the momentum of my life, but I found the road blocked that night in Berkeley when the monsters within turned me back.

Parallels between my experience and those of Greek myth abound. Like Orestes in flight from the Furies, the insanity they bring and also Dionysus, ripped apart by the hands of the Titans. I was fragmented, and in a sense, even died, since I no longer knew who I was. After being reborn, Dionysus was driven mad by Hera and wandered throughout the world. I also wandered, lost within myself, half crazed. I was living close to all the myths then, and I chose the road also chosen by Oedipus, the conventional road symbolically represented by that to Thebes, one that ends in marriage, kids. I receded into the comfort of family and profession. But something had awakened within me that could never again be put to sleep. Eventually it caught up with me.

I don’t want to make too much of my short stay with my uncle after I abandoned my studies in Berkeley. I simply used him as a gateway into a new life. What is important is the simple fact I chose to run to my uncle who at times had bouts of insanity. He was a kind, considerate man and deeply religious. I thought possibly he would understand what others would not. He was experienced.

My uncle lived in a Mexican camp on the outskirts of Oakland, and when I arrived at two in the morning, it was dark and desolate, small rundown cottages bordering a dirt courtyard crowded with cars and littered with kid’s toys. My older cousin, the fighting cousin, and his new wife had come from my parent’s and were staying with my uncle in his one-room shack. Though crowded already, they were glad to see me and made a place for me to sleep on a pile of freshly-washed laundry. My uncle slept in an easy chair pushed up against the front of his refrigerator, and my cousin and his young wife slept in the only bed pushed against the wall. I remember books stacked everywhere, on the floor, nightstand, kitchen table, in corners, the middle of the floor. Much the way my apartment is now. When I told my uncle I was losing my mind, he smiled, put his hand on my shoulder and spoke with complete confidence. “Absolutely not possible,” he said. The sight of his bald head and white mustache was such a comfort.

When my uncle was in his mid twenties, he had his first bout with schizophrenia. He was institutionalize and underwent a series of shock treatments. Not long after, his wife left him for an older man and deprived him of contact with his two kids, thus precipitating his further mental deterioration. From then on he was committed periodically but always escaped. He used to tell me stories of wandering in the desert living in abandoned buildings, drinking from mud puddles left by rain. Once he kidnapped his daughter and ran off to east Texas where he took a room in a motel and left his three-year-old daughter with a babysitter while he worked. He couldn’t bear to be without her, couldn’t stand to think of another man being the role model for his son. The authorities caught him, look his daughter away, returned him to the insane asylum. More shock treatments. He drifted the rest of his life, coming to see us now and then when he wasn't working. I came to know him as the most sane man in my family, humble, honest, caring, easy to talk to, willing to discuss the hidden-side personality.

The morning after I arrived at his place, he drove me to my parent’s home where I spent the following year, met a girl and married. I realized I couldn’t face the world without a woman at my side. It all makes so much sense now. Before I left home, I had to have a woman to replace my mother. Oedipus had done the same thing, only in his case, his mother was his wife. My wife had a timeless quality, sort of a mythic manifestation of all women.  Just as Orestes had fled from the Furies and eventually ended up at the temple of Athena on Areopagos in Athens, so had I fled into the arms of a woman. Eighteen years of marriage, two kids and a divorce followed. My wife satisfied a longing I’d had from the time my father took me from my mother’s bed and put me in my own baby bed. I used to wake in the middle of the night, astonished I could love her so much. Her silky hair and warm body were like a tonic to an illness.

During this time of marriage, all seemed well with me. I spent eight years in the Air Force, during which I underwent and passed human reliability testing, became a member of a Titan II ICBM launch crew, pulled alerts in missile silos. We mothered the missiles that could have destroyed the world. I got a master’s degree in astronautical engineering from Stanford and dealt with all the normal problems juggling professional and family responsibilities. But my wife’s departure years later unleashed something I suppressed all those years. I was spring-loaded toward something wild and violent, which her presence had counter-balanced. Without the steady, guiding influence of a woman, I drifted toward those deep uncharted waters I had dipped into that night in Berkeley.

Here at Kithaeron, the sun is set, the golden grass turned to shadow. The breeze feels cold on my bare arms. I hear the dull clank of goat bells in the distance.

The drive back to Corinth is endless. Just before I re-cross the feet of Kithaeron, traffic on the crowded two-lane road comes to a stop. An accident blocks the road ahead and soon a white ambulance wails past with red lights flashing. A kilometer further, I come upon a single-vehicle accident, an overturned truck pulling a cotton trailer partially protruding into the road from the shoulder. I drive on through the dark with the trail of red taillights before me snaking into the distance. Along the freeway next to the Gulf of Corinth, city lights on shore reflect out into the bay. Traffic is fast and reckless. Cars come up behind going 110 kph, get so close their headlights disappear behind my rear bumper before swerve around and cutting back in front almost clipping my fender.

After I return my rental car (it costs 30,000 dr or $125.00 including mileage and gas) I walk the dock looking at the boats, the small ones, the very old, well-used, the yachts. I meet Letizia there. She has just returned from climbing a mountain in Argos, the Acroargos, forty kilometers south of here. She liked the area so much, she’s moving to Nafplion tomorrow. “We just keep running into each other,” she says joyfully. She’s such a pleasure, her easy laugh.

“How was Hera’s temple.”

“Oh, David, you wouldn’t believe the setting. It’s on a hill beneath a mountain. Nothing left but foundations, but the view of the surrounding countryside is worth the trip. And all of it was for Hera, no mention of Zeus, her unfaithful husband. She bathed there every year to regain her virginity. Can you imagine that?” She blushes a little, turns from me.

“I would like to see it. Maybe that’s where I’ll go tomorrow.”

“Oh no!” she says. “Go with me to Epidaurus. The best preserved theatre in Greece is there.”

She’s convincing. I need to leave for the islands, but perhaps they can wait a couple more days. My first island will be Mykonos from which I’ll make a day trip to Delos where Apollo and his twin sister Artemis were born, then Santorini and Crete. “I’m really anxious to see Crete,” I tell her.

“I know,” she says, “and you’ll love it. But first you must see Epidaurus.”

I wake shortly after midnight, kill two mosquitoes I’ve been battling for two nights. My blood splatters in two ragged blotches on the wallpaper’s blue-and-green flowers. The music from the taverna downstairs dies out and so does the sound of traffic outside. Last night I gave serious consideration to changing hotels. I guess it was the helpfulness of the young man downstairs that changed my mind. Yesterday morning early, I found him asleep on the couch in the entryway, still in his clothes. When I left for the Cleft Way, he was at the top of the stairs standing guard while the maid cleaned the rooms. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like the living dead. I wonder if he ever leaves the hotel?

26 Oct, Tuesday

I’m up early for the bus to Epidaurus. First it goes to Nafplion where I change buses and meet Letizia. She’s glad to see me but seems preoccupied. “My room is not clean here in Nafplion,” she says, “the shower is so bad I had to bathe with my shoes on.”

From the bus we see the ancient theatre sitting in a shallow, dream-like valley within a sacred grove surrounded by shrub-covered hills. It was built into the side of Mt. Kynortion in the 3rd century BC and has a seating capacity of 12,000.

We exit the bus and walk the short distance to the theatre. Letizia goes her own way. I watch her from the top of the stadium and look out at the rolling hills basking in the sun. A man comes to the center of the stage, asks for quiet and drops several coins onto the circular stone surface. I hear metallic ring as each coin hits the stone stage demonstrating the stadium’s perfect acoustics.

This theatre is one more tribute to Dionysus, but the big attraction for the ancients was not the theatre. Epidaurus was the largest healing center in Greece and dates from the 6th century BC.[17]

Letizia and I leave the theatre and walk to the ruins of this ancient medical facility.

Apollo was the god of light and order, a healing god, but he also had a dark side. He brought plague. The plague at Thebes that devastated the countryside and drove Oedipus to search for the murderer of Laios came from Apollo. Death from the plague was seen as caused by his sharp arrows. But he was also a healing god, though he turned over this attribute to his son Asklepios.

Asklepios’ mother was the mortal Coronis, the “Crow Maiden.” While Coronis was pregnant with Apollo’s child, she married a mortal and so angered Apollo he had his sister Artemis kill her. While her body was on the funeral pyre, Apollo became frantic over the pending death of his unborn child and pulled him from the flames. Thus Asklepios had a fire birth as did Dionysus. Apollo took Asklepios north to Mt. Pelion where the half-horse, half-man Centaur, Chiron, raised him. Chiron was the most wise and learned of all earthly beings and taught Asklepios the healing arts. Zeus was ever protective of his own powers and particularly vengeful toward mortals who stepped on his toes. 

Asklepios became a great healer, eventually learning to resurrect the dead. This so angered Zeus he killed Asklepios. Apollo again rescued his son by making him immortal. Worshipers of Asklepios built his healing center here at Epidaurus.

The patients who came to the health center were first ritually cleansed and then ingested therapeutic herbs. They spent the night in the sanctuary, sleeping in a special building called the Abaton set aside for them. Asklepios appeared as a serpent in their dreams and touched them or otherwise provided for their cure. Inscriptions testifying to the effectiveness of this primitive form of psychotherapy were chiseled into tablets on view here for the patients to read. The Abaton is currently being excavated. I stand before the roped off dig, staring into the uncovered ruins beneath the red scaffolding of the archaeologists.

One of the more interesting buildings excavated, is a circular stone structure, only the foundation of which now stands. But beneath the foundation is a labyrinth of rock slabs and steps leading to a lower level. No one knows the purpose of this building, but speculation tells us that it is the tomb of Asklepios. Since Asklepios was a chthonian god, but also at one time a mortal, his two aspects are represented here: the below-ground portion signifying his immortal Underworld aspect, and the above ground portion, his life as a man.

So psychotherapy was invented here at Epidaurus, and 2600 years later, I submitted myself to the modern form of psychotherapy a few years after my wife left. The art of healing is illusive, particularly when it comes to diseases of the emotions and mind, sometimes making the patient worse before he gets better. I certainly didn’t understand what I was getting myself into. Something like this trip to Greece which I’m using to precipitate reactions to my past. Too bad I don’t have Asklepios to chase down my long-buried feelings. Now that I think about it, the dreams I’ve been having while on this trip are precipitating something although I question their therapeutic value.

Letizia and I take the bus back to Nafplion where she’s staying. She’s learning Greek, and I teach her a little while we wait in the shade of fir trees for the bus back to Nafplion. Her friends think she’s strange for traveling like this. They don’t understand her interest in foreign countries. When we get to Nafplion, she waits with me for my bus to Argos. We sit on an elaborate wooden seat in the bus station, the only one I’ve seen so far that isn’t drab. “You must see the Acroargos,” she says. “It’s better than the Acrocorinth.” She looks at me seriously. “When you leave me, please go there.” We exchange addresses and telephone numbers. I take her request to heart, but still I'm more saddened by leaving her. She's been such a joy to be with my short time here at Corinth.

Among Nafplion’s claims to fame is the legend that it is named for Nauplius, the father of Palamedes who exposed Odysseus’ attempt to fake insanity when asked to join the Greece forces going to Troy. While there Odysseus got even, having Palamedes stoned.

It’s mid afternoon and I’d like to get back to Corinth, but Letizia’s insistence has convinced me to stop in Argos. Oedipus’ son Polyneices went into exile in Argos when his brother, Eteocles, wouldn’t share the throne of Thebes. While there, Polyneices married and formed an alliance of seven armies, which he then used to try to regain the throne in the battle of Seven Against Thebes.

Late afternoon the bus arrives in Argos. In the middle of a large plateia, I run into a small group of American men (one from Colorado) who give me directions to the ancient city, but I have difficulty finding the ruins anyway.

I’m lost within a city where I wanted to spend no more than a couple of hours. The sun seems to be sinking faster than normal. Finally I spot some ruins at the foot of Larissa hill (the Acroargos) within a dilapidated barbed-wire fence grown over with weeds. I can find no tourist entrance, no place to pay. The wire gate is locked so I climb over the fence and have the ancient city to myself. Few Mycenaean ruins remain. The stone walls and dirt street are Roman. The most impressive of the ruins are the Roman baths built in the 2nd Century AD.

Above the ruins of Argos at the foot of the Acroargos is another not-so-well-preserved theatre, built in the 4th Century BC. It overlooks both the ancient city and the modern town. Its stone seats and steps are worn slick with age.

I’m the only one in the ruins and I climb the slick stone steps, uneasy at the steep slope and slick rocks, to sit at the top. Below me are the ruins of ancient Argos and the modern town, apartments and businesses bordered in the distance by a range of hills.

Before Polyneices came here to spend his days of exile, he stayed with Theseus in Athens to earn his respect, then came to Argos and formed an alliance with Adrastus, the king of Argos, by marrying his daughter Argeia. Sitting here against the mountain where Polyneices must have come many times, I recall another of the many versions of the Oedipus myth, one in which Jocasta does not commit suicide after learning that her husband is her son. She’s still alive during the battle of Seven Against Thebes and talks to Polyneices when he comes into Thebes to make one last attempt to get his younger brother to share the throne. He has already mustered the Argos forces outside the city gates. Jocasta asks her son about being an exile living in Argos:

Jocasta:        Well then, first I ask thee what I long to have answered. 

                     What means exile from one’s country? is it a great evil?

Polyneices:   The greatest; harder to bear than tell.

Jocasta:        What is it like? what is it galls the exile?

Polyneices:   One thing most of all; he cannot speak his mind.

Jocasta:        This is a slave’s lot thou describest, to refrain 

                     from uttering what one thinks.[18] 

The one problem between me and my father that galled me most was that he never let me speak my mind. I spent most of my childhood days out in the fields alone staring off into the distance toward the small town nearby and longing to be with friends, anyone I could speak to honestly. I was an exile in my father’s land. The day I stood my ground against him, I was trying to establish myself, my own identity, something he would never permit.

I leave the ruins of ancient Argos and walk toward the top of the Acroargos, the fortress, following a footpath shortcutting the asphalt road, walk the edge of an olive grove, city and countryside dropping ever further below, another tough climb.

Argos is beautiful from above and silent, the white buildings with orange-tile roofs spread out in one giant oval. 

Later Polyneices led the Argives in a futile attempt to siege Thebes. All the Argive leaders were killed, including Polyneices but Thebes wouldn’t give up the bodies.

At the request of Adrastus, Polyneices father-in-law, Theseus retrieved the bodies of the Argive dead by force. Eteocles was also killed, but Oedipus’ line did not stop with the death of his two sons. Polyneices and Argeia had a son they named Thersander who also lived here in Argos. Thersander was among the Sons of the Seven, the Epigoni, who avenged the Argos defeat by destroying Thebes. Thersander was also with the Greek forces when they left for Troy.

The ancient stone wall completely circles the mountaintop. Someone has spray-painted METALLICA on one of the vertical members. My only companion here within the fortress walls is a flock of grouse.

Their round gray bodies scurry ahead of me through the dead grass waddling like runaway children, stopping occasionally to feeding on grass seeds.

I have dinner at the same restaurant where I ate two nights ago. I couldn’t resist the kalamari. The waiter brings a small Greek salata and I make him take it back because I ordered a large one.