CHAPTER 6:  Mycenae

I lean back in my seat and relax as the train lurches forward. Finally, I'm on my way to Mycenae, or actually Mukhnai (Mykinai), the small town on the outskirts of the ancient city. I hoist my pack to the overhead racks, realizing I'm handling the weight better than when I first started my journey. I'm in the front car and get a quick look inside the cockpit-sized engineers station which is definitely not hi-tech, more like a 1950's automobile interior.

The loud non-ceasing klickety-klack along the rails is accompanied by a physical jarring. The car rocks from side to side making it difficult not to bump into the guy next to me. It also lurches sideways and snakes, a dance-like slithering. I get out of my seat and walk down the aisle to look at the route posted over the door (which interestingly has nothing to do with where we're going) and find standing much more difficult than in a bus. All this and we're not doing fifty kilometers per hour.

We stop at several stations and at one, a man a couple of seats over buys souvlaiki (a small shish kebab on a wood stick) for himself and his wife from a vendor on the sidewalk. My light two-banana breakfast isn't standing up very well, and it's after two o'clock. My mouth floods at the smell of roast pork. After his meal, he demonstrates the Greek attitude toward the environment. He lowers his window a little, stands up, and drops the aluminum soft-drink can to the fast-moving ground below. No one in the crowded train protests this flamboyant gesture to the countryside.

I feel someone tap my knee and look up to see the motherly woman sitting across from me open a package of cookies and hand three to me. She must be forty-five, dark hair, a gray long-sleeved full-length dress and black shoes, a pleasant smiling face. I thank her and accept the cookies gratefully. Several times I've watch traveling Greeks share food among family members, and I realize what a friendly gesture this is. I wish I could talk to her.

We're traveling Argolid Nome which contains the ancient kingdoms of Argos, Tiryns, Nauphlia, Epidaurus and also Mycenae where I'm headed. The Argolid is a fertile agricultural plane by the sea separated from Corinthia Nome by mountain ranges to the north and Arcadia Nome to the west. From the time of Agamemnon, its most famous and powerful ruler, it has been known as "horse-rearing." Though it's ringed with mountains, passes provide easy access to Corinth, the coast at Nauphlia and Epidaurus. The Argolid plane is formed of limestone hills covered with citrus and olive orchards, pine woods, green fields of tomatoes, artichokes, melons, an occasional patch of tilled earth.

The woman taps my knee again and hands a napkin full of dried fruit and nuts to me which I also greatly appreciate. She doesn't try to talk to me, but when the train stops at one of the intermediate stations, I ask if we're in Mykinai. She says, "Oci," and points in the direction we're going. When the conductor comes by, she asks him something, and he tells me in English that Mykinai is the next stop. I get my pack from the overhead rack.

As the trains slows a commotion erupts among the passengers, and they strain to get a look outside. The woman across from me rises from her seat and exclaims "ToristaV!" Toristas! As I pull my backpack from the overhead wrack, I crane my neck also and see a gang of twelve young people in shorts and T-shirts, all looking very American, scrambling for their packs. I didn't realize we travelers were such a curiosity to the locals. As I exit the train, I nod to the woman who shared her food with me, and she smiles farewell.

The young American's board, and I'm the only person to get off. When the train pulls out, I stand alone outside the closed train station in the middle of nowhere. Then I spot a tall thin young man walking toward me who doesn't look Greek. I ask him if he speaks English. "I am English," he says. He has just come from the Mycenaean ruins, just got off the bus a block away. I quickly determine that he's from London, not far from where my own son spent six months a few years ago. "Do you know how I can get to Olympia?" he asks, a little impatient to get on his way. He's shy, reserved, the most unfriendly traveler I've met in a while. I tell him I've come from there and explain that he should take the train to Tripoli and there change to the bus. He gives me directions to a hotel where I can spend the night here in Mykinai. I shoulder my pack and walk away, feeling as though I'm deserting him standing before the closed train station with no way to get a ticket or schedule. He seems lost and as lonely as I. Too bad we're traveling in opposite directions.

I walk to a tourist shop nearby and learn that I'm actually in Fychtia, still two kilometers from Mykinai. The Englishman was wrong about finding a hotel here, but a stunningly-beautiful Greek woman (well-drawn features and captivating dark eyes) tells me I can find one in Mykinai. I stand outside the shop looking back inside at that beautiful girl, unable to walk away from her. I've never felt so drawn to a woman because of her looks. Finally, I trudge toward town all hunched over under the weight of my pack, wishing I had brought my Samsonite suitcase with wheels. I keep stopping to look back at the tourist shop, can't get the girl out of my head. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. The Greeks have had 3200 years to improve on Helen, and I don't think they've wasted any time.

I stop halfway to Mykinai at an isolated restaurant with two tour buses full of formally-dressed Japanese parked out front, catch my breath and cool myself in the afternoon breeze. Alongside the road cornstalks, plowed fields, a grape vineyard glow in sunlight. With a sigh and a glance back in the direction of the beautiful woman, I trudged on.

On the outskirts of Mykinai, the road starts a slow uphill grade which progressively steepens through the small nearly-deserted town. With my heavy pack, even the slightest incline means work. At the Klytemnestra Hotel on the far side of town, a man sitting at a table on the second floor notices me mounting the steps and comes to take my pack, addresses me in English.

At dusk, I walk down the street to a restaurant, the Electra, named for Agamemnon's vengence-minded daughter. It's turning a little cool. I order mousaka, a large Greek salata and a Sprite. The evening in Olympia when I had dinner with Hans and Margo both had mousaka. I've been wanting some ever since, even though they both said it gave them diarrhea. Eating the mousaka is work, an ever replenishing meal with layers of pasta, a ground-lamb sauce, eggplant and a layer of baked custard on top that distinguishes it from anything I've eaten. I'll find out what new adventure my dinner has in store for me.

Agamemnon and Klytemnestra, had four children, three daughters and a son. The eldest daughter and the most beautiful was Iphigenia whom Agamemnon sacrificed at the temple of Artemis in Aulis when she was eleven. Electra was several years her junior and Crysothemis a couple of years younger yet. Orestes, their only boy, was just a baby when Iphigenia was sacrificed.

Ten years later when Agamemnon returned from Troy, Klytemnestra was still fuming over Iphigenia's sacrifice and had taken a lover, Aegisthus, Agamemnon's hated cousin. Klytemnestra killed Agamemnon with an ax as soon as he arrived home from Troy. She describes her act:

An endless web, as by some fisher strung,
A deadly plenteousness of robe, I flung
All round him, and struck twice; and with two cries
His limbs turned water and broke; and as he lies
I cast my third stroke in, a prayer well-sped
To Zeus of hell, who guardeth safe his dead!
So there he gasped his life out as he lay;
And, gasping, the blood splashed me. ... Like dark spray
It splashed into my face, a dew of death,
Sweet as the rain-drops blown by God's dear breath ...[1]

Electra sorely missed her father and raged for years over his murder. He sent little Orestes away to be raised by Agamemnon's brother-in-law, Strophius the king of Phocis, so that one day he might return and avenge their father's murder. When Orestes came of age, he returned to Mycenae after conferring with Apollo at Delphi and, with Electra's encouragement, killed both his mother and Aegisthus.

Following the murder of his mother, the Furies hounded Orestes insane. He fled from them throughout the Greek isles, finally returning to Delphi where Apollo sent him to Athena's temple on the Areopagos in Athens. There Athena tried him for the murder of his mother. Apollo defended Orestes and the Furies prosecuted. Once Orestes had been acquitted, he returned to Mycenae and married his cousin Hermione, Helen's and Menelaus' daughter. He ruled as king, also succeeding to the throne of Sparta following Menelaus' death. Thus Orestes became the most powerful king in the Peloponnese, worthy of his name which means "man of the mountain,"[2] a reference to the hill on which Mycenae rests. Orestes was the last major figure of Greek mythology.

I'm the only guest in the Hotel Klytemnestra which is dead silent except for the repair work going on down the hall. The banging of hammers echoes through these thin walls like hand grenades. I hope they quit before bedtime. The entire town is deserted except for dogs. I hear their hollow voices from all over town. Occasionally a motorbike screams through town without slowing. Greece is shutting down for the season. I've taken a chance by coming to the mainland before traveling to the islands. I could have problems with ferry schedules, weather and accommodations. I must start my trek through the islands soon.

A mosquito wakes me just at midnight, and after battling for two hours, I finally kill him with a thundering hand clap at the edge of the bed. I've scratched two bites on my chest, and when I pull off my undershirt, pale spots of blood dot the inside. I've started picking up some mineature hitch hikers. I have something growing on my left ear. It's crusty and flaking, feels leathery. The side of my face stings, and I've been drawing flies.

A man moved into the room next to mine late this evening. His snores come through the wall as I chase mosquitoes. I hear his every move through the thin wall. He just went to the bathroom. I hear his bed squeak and all the bathroom stuff. Now, it's very quiet. I haven't heard a rooster since this afternoon.

When Orestes returned to Mycenae after being raised by his uncle in Phocis, he had been to the oracle at Delphi and received Apollo's order to avenge his father's murder by killing his mother. Electra was champing at the bit for him to do their mother in, but his resolve weakened with his mother's plea:

Hold, O my son! My child, dost thou not fear

To strike this breast? Hast thou not slumbered here,

Thy gums draining the milk that I did give?[3]

Orestes was caught between the old and new order of Greek gods: Apollo who represented the new Zeus religion, and the Furies who were three gray-haired daughters of Earth, serpent-haired, black-skinned crones who dressed in gray raiment and had voices like those of baying dogs. They directed their wrath against the minds of those who wronged their parents. Orestes described his own mother murder of his mother as a "victory that sears me like a brand" and immediately afterward sensed his mind going:

               ... methinks I steer

Unseeing, like some broken charioteer,

By curbless visions borne. And at my heart

A thing of terror knocketh, that will start

Sudden a-song, and she must dance to hear.[4]

Orestes' "thing of terror" was the Furies.

The fall following the fateful encounter with my father, I enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley to study physics and philosophy. I was interested in Plato, Aristotle, quantum mechanics, astronomy. I bought a copy of the Iliad. For the first time, I was living in the center of my life. But one evening a college buddy from Bakersfield came to visit. We went out to one of the local student-cramped coffee houses and discussed Dostoevsky for hours among the din of raised voices, the clatter of dishes and the lofting wisps of cigarette smoke in the darkened room. I went back to my apartment that night, slipped between the sheets of my bunk bed and dropped off to sleep. Or almost dropped off. As I dozed, something came into my mind, the magnitude of which I can only compare to visions of Hell itself. I saw grotesque images, animated faces, so vivid they had the undeniable mark of reality.

I sat up for a second to clear my head, looked around in the dark room. Another man slept in a bunk bed off in the corner, and I heard the soft steps of his rhythmic breathing. But as soon as my head hit the pillow again and my eyes closed, the terrifying shapes returned.

Dionysus is the god of the mask, and behind the mask lurks the world of madness. His epiphany is sudden and terrifying. I was not in some sleep-filled dream world but fully awake. I would raise up in bed and the faces would disappear, but when I closed my eyes, there they were again. My body shook. I dressed, went into the living room and tried to study. My mind started working on its own, a runaway freight train. I can't adequately describe the terror that filled me knowing I could no longer controlled my though processes.

Dionysus was "the spirit of a wild being. His coming brings madness."[5] Otto describes his epiphany:

The eternal depths gape open and out of them a monstrous creature raises its head before which all the limits that the normal day has set must disappear. There man stands on the threshold of madness--infact, he is already part of it even if his wildness which wishes to pass on into destructiveness still remains mercifully hidden. He has already been thrust out of everything secure, everything settled, out of every haven of thought and feeling, and has been flung into the primeval cosmic turmoil in which life, surrounded and intoxicated with death, undergoes eternal change and renewal.

But the god himself is not merely touched and seized by the ghostly spirit of the abyss. He, himself, is the monstrous creature which lives in the depths.[6]

I have no doubt I could have given myself up to madness and gone completely insane. Looking back through thirty-two years, I see it as having all the characteristics of Dionysus' world, full of terror, murder, madness, ecstasy. The ancient Greeks spoke of Dionysus as coming to the person. We don't have to seek him out. Perhaps I was experiencing panic, a panic attack as a psychiatrist would say, but this was much more than a feeling. I had no thoughts of impending death. I was being visited by something from which no escape was possible. The epiphany was occurring within my consciousness. Dionysus was frequently seen in the company of Pan, from whom our word "panic" derives. That night I felt the presence of both gods. Uncle Jud, my namesake, was evidence I could travel that path as an inheritance.

Pan was also frequently seen in the presence of the Earth goddess and her defenders, the Furies. I knew well what Orestes had experienced. In Orestes words:

Ah! Ah!
Ye bondmaids! They are here: like Gorgons, gowned
In darkness, all bewreathed and interwound
With serpents! ... I shall never rest again.
...
You cannot see them. I alone can see.
I am hunted. . . .I shall never rest again.[7]

Orestes was twenty,[8] my age at the time of my problems. I had to get out of my apartment, go somewhere, but I knew I needed help, couldn't take care of myself. I was going crazy. I ran.

I had an uncle (a man who died just recently) whom I had been close to since childhood. He was paranoid schizophrenic and had been hospitalized several times, always against his will, and given shock treatments. At times, he claimed to be God. Schizophrenia manifests in early adulthood, and I had always wondered if I would develop his illness. Until that night, my wondering had been an intellectual exercise. My uncle lived close by on the outskirts of Oakland, only a half hour away in a small one-room shack in a Mexican camp. When I ran that night, I ran to him.

23 Oct, Saturday

Up a little late this morning. I sit in the hotel restaurant, the only customer waiting to be served a breakfast of bread, jelly, butter and milk. The proprietor had to go to the store to get it. The front of the restaurant is all glass, and I see out over the street in front to the light traffic. The sky is covered with clouds, and I can barely see the mountains in the distance. A pickup passes slowly with fruit and vegetables in the back. A song by the rock group "Tears for Fears" blares through the pickup loud speaker. The proprietor returns from the store with my breakfast, and shortly I'm shoveling it down. An English woman comes down the stairs and asks him for a roll of toilet paper. She says good morning to me, and I speak back but she keeps staring at me. I hope its not because I look so scruffy. I wonder if she is the "man," I heard snoring last night?

---

Despite the proprietor's forecast of a sunny day, which he pronounces as I leave the hotel, intermittent rain follows me to the ruins of Mycenae.

The walk is all uphill, two kilometers of gentle slope along a blacktop road, with towering Mt. Zara to the right where the sun peaks through the clouds as it starts to sprinkle again. Mycenae was the most powerful kingdom in the late Bronze Age and gave its name to the entire Aegean civilization of the time. The ruins of Mycenae are beyond the winding road in front of me, covering a hilltop and looking camouflaged, its tan coloring blending into the rolling hills. Triangular-shaped Mt. Ayios Elias looms behind it to the north.  

The legend of Mycenae is intimately connected with that of Pelops at Olympia. The founder of Mycenae was Perseus. Perseus, like Theseus, was of uncertain parentage.

His mother, Danae, told her father Zeus had made her pregnant, taking the form of liquid gold and flowing into her womb.[1] Perseus was the famous mythological character who traveled to Libya and decapitated the Gorgon, Medea, and subdued his enemies by holding up her snake-haired head which was so ugly it turned men to stone. 

Perseus became king of Tiryns, south of here, and later founded Mycenae, having the giant one-eyed manlike Cyclops's erect the walls of the palace from huge stones.

Several kings of Mycenae descended from Perseus, but his grandson, Eurystheus, died without leaving a son to succeed him, so the Mycenaeans chose Atreus, the son of Pelops, as their king. Atreus was a powerful king, and the influence of Mycenae steadily grew. He married Aerope, the granddaughter of Minos, king of Crete. Atreus had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus. But the curse on Pelops' family, a result of his murderer of Myrtilus, was still active and led to the infamy of the "House of Atreus."

The Argolid was inhabited during the stone age, as far back as 20,000 BC,[1] and Mycenae's natural citadel between two ravines was first inhabited in the Neolithic Age.[2] The city was named after Mycene, the daughter of the ancient river god, Inachos.[3] Perseus simply walled the citadel of an existing city. Agamemnon was Mycenae's most famous king.

I sit just inside the tourist entrance to Mycenae at the edge of an asphalt walkway proceeding on past through the famous “Lion Gate.” Four huge stones frame the entrance over which stand the triangular limestone slab containing the relief of the lions.

The lions have been decapitated, the soapstone heads not surviving the 3200 years since Agamemnon was king. In his time, Mycenae was surrounded by huge stone Cyclopean walls, six meters thick, much of which remain today. The first fortifications were built about 1350 BC. Much of them remain today.

I enter the ruins of the ancient city, walk through the huge stone gate with the headless lions towering above me. The 900 meters of walls circling Mycenae were six meters thick.

Inside stand the remains of the guard’s sanctuary, and beyond it, the primary attraction at Mycenae, the famous Mycenaean Grave Circle A. When the amateur archaeologist Schliemann came here in August of 1876, he came looking for gold, and it didn’t take him long to find it. He butchered the site, slicing large trenches through the earth to expose the stone slabs of the Grave Circle. The Grave Circle is composed of vertical-standing sandstone slabs forming two concentric circles a meter apart. The space between the concentric circles was originally covered with similar slabs but now stands open as a narrow circular walkway around the graveyard. Six rectangular pits inside the stone circles descend for several feet to royal graves. Each burial was followed by a feast with the remains of the meal left covered with soil.[12]

The ancient Greeks believed we are all the children of the great Earth goddess and burial of the body was the return of the deceased to her. Here, in part, is the Homeric Hymn to Earth:

I shall sing of well-formed Earth, mother of all
and oldest of all, who nourishes all things living on land.
Her beauty nurtures all creatures that walk upon the land, 
and all that move in the deep or fly in the air.
O Mighty one, you are the source of fair children and goodly fruit,
and on you it depends to give life to, or take it away from,
mortal men.

I think back to the picture of Schliemann, his wife and crew that I saw in the Athens museum. They stood among loose piles of rubble, looking unbearably hot in their long-sleeved, baggy, 19th century clothing and hats.

But now, a group of well-dressed tourists spreads around the circle with a guide lecturing to them from within the stone circle. Several umbrellas are poised over their heads to ward off rain splats. The tourists are quiet, attentive, the men in suits and the women in long dark skirts. The voice of the guide rings within the circle of stones. The connection is unmistakable, a funeral service here at the ancient Mycenaean gravesite.  

In the royal graves, Schliemann uncovered the remains of ancient Mycenaean kings, queens and their families. Gold masks (those I saw in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens) were placed over some of their faces.

Nineteen members of the royal families were buried here, eight men, nine women and two children, along with “gold vessels and jewels, ... bronze swords with gold and ivory hilts ... daggers decorated with gold and silver inlaid blades....” In all, Schliemann uncovered fifteen kilograms of gold.[13] Later, a more detailed analysis of his finds revealed that the remains were all from the 16th Century BC, much earlier than that envisioned by Schliemann. He had not found the bones of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra as he thought but those of a royal family who lived some four hundred years earlier.  

I leave the grave circle, ascend stone stairs up a gentle slope strewn with boulders to the ruins of Agamemnon's ancient palace. All that remains are short stone walls, paved floors and courtyards.

I sit at the very top of the ruins at the temple of Athena, which was built at a later date on top of old palace ruins. From here I overlook hills and valleys, patches of brown grass, squares of orchards and vineyards that stripe the hills with golds and greens. Heavy clouds cover the tops of mountain ranges in the distance.

As Vincent Scully points out in his book, The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods, All the problems of the House of Atreus may also be attributed to an unparalleled arrogance.

The ancient Greeks didn't take the setting of their citadels lightly, and with Mycenae they were unusually particular. Most ancient Greek cities lay below the temples of their gods, but Mycenae was placed on a hill between two peaks. This location was viewed by the ancient Greeks as a representation of a prone woman, Mother Earth, with her knees raised, legs wide-spread with Mycenae sitting on her privates, the entrance to the womb. When the king mounted his throne, he was pronouncing his dominion over the earth, and in particular, his authority over Mother Earth. Thus the most powerful kingdom in the Bronze Age was founded on a profound demonstration of mortal arrogance. One can well imagine Agamemnon's uneasiness as he mounted his terrible throne which sat over the womb of the World. This crime against Mother Earth was echoed when Orestes murdered his mother.

Interestingly enough, that was also Oedipus' transgression, to lie with the mother.

Two artifacts from late 13th Century Mycenae, the time of Agamemnon, are of particular interest. One is a large bowl-shaped jar used for mixing wine. 

The other artifact is a fresco of a beautiful large-busted woman. Her head tilts slightly peering down at something in the missing portion of the fresco. She’s smiling and has just a hint of a double chin. Her delicate well-formed hands are drawn in detail. Could the beautiful woman be Klytemnestra, sister of Helen and wife of Agamemnon? Do we have an actual snapshot of the queen?

Wisps of wind bring more cold drops of rain, and I break out my small black umbrella. When Agamemnon returned home from sacking Troy, Klytemnestra rolled out crimson tapestries for him to  enter the palace.

He protested the red carpet, claiming such honor should be only for a god, but at Klytemnestra’s insistence he gave in.

If you are so determined--  
Let someone help me off with these [his shoes] at least.
Old slaves, they’ve stood me well.
                                                      Hurry,
and while I tread his splendors dyed red in the sea,
may no god watch and strike me down with envy
from on high. I feel such shame--
to tread the life of the house, a kingdom’s worth
of silver in the weaving.[14]

Shortly after he entered the palace, Klytemnestra killed him with an ax in the bathroom. From where I sit, I can see it marble-paved floor.

Electra, Iphigenia’s sister, brooded here day after day, year after year waiting for her brother, Orestes, to grow into manhood so he might return and avenge their father’s murder.

Orestes did return and plunged a hot knife through his mother’s heart. Because of her years of brooding and her hatred for her mother, Electra is considered by many to be the Rosetta stone for the relationship between mother and daughter. But in this instance, unlike Oedipus where he unknowingly killed his father, Electra’s hatred is specifically and knowingly for her mother. And another curious fact: Electra is impotent against her and relies on her brother to commit the murder. Plus, unlike Oedipus, she has a valid reason for hating her mother, the murder of her father. All of Oedipus’ problems came from his own unknown nature, but those of Electra were a part of her conscious everyday life, and therefore would seemingly be of little interest in revealing her hidden nature. I’m skeptical that the story of Electra reveals anything significant about the relationship between a mother and daughter. I had hoped it might reveal something about my own feminine side and its relationship to my mother, but now I doubt it.

The sun comes out again, and it turns warm. As I exit the archeological site, just outside the Lion Gate I meet my two friends from Holland again, Hans and Margo.

We smile and shake hands as if we’re family. Traveling has brought me unreasonably close to these strangers. They’ve rented a car in Nafplion, driven up to Mycenae and have just entered the site. Ah, to have a car myself! I’m glad to see their smiling faces, all that blond hair. We part again, them to the ruins of Mycenae and me to the Treasury of Atreus, or as Schliemann called it, the “Tomb of Agamemnon,” which is in a hill across the road to the west. The Treasury was built in 1250 BC and was definitely here when Agamemnon was king, may have been his resting place.

I walk from the site, across the blacktop road to the dead, grass-covered hill from which the mound of earth covering the tomb has been partially removed to reveal a ramp way and arch. The place is cluttered with tourists, and I mill about for a while, and eventually they leave.

Once inside the massive stone archway cut from the hillside, I’m overwhelmed by the size of the interior (15 meters in diameter and 14 meters high), the architecture and the craftsmanship of the stone cutters. The inside is beehive shaped, thirty-three concentric circles of fitted stone which come together at the apex. 

A small adjoining chamber to the north, hewn-out rock, is not nearly as impressive. I have to use my flashlight inside it since it has no entrance to the outside. Just as in Odysseus’ Cave of the Nymphs, the walls of this chamber drink the light. The comparison with the Cave of the Nymphs reinforces another aspect of ancient Greek burial practice. The comparison with the Cave of the Nymphs reinforces another aspect of ancient Greek burial practice.

Caves were sacred to the ancients and the entrance to this cave here in this large mound of earth certainly brings to mind the privates, the womb, of Earth. Agamemnon's tomb is then an entrance to Earth's womb, and instead of being a place of death is one of rebirth.

Back in the large stone-lined beehive chamber, I walk along the base of the walls inspecting the workmanship, look in disbelief at the 180 ton stone slab over the arch way. No wonder the ancient Greeks believed Cyclops’s built these large structures. 

The last straggling tourists leave, and I suddenly find myself alone in Agamemnon’s tomb and notice a loud clicking noise. When  I stop walking, the sound stops. I walk to the center of the chamber just beneath the apex.

My footsteps are amplified and come back as tremendous echoes. I stomp my foot and hear thunder. It’s a sound like that from a deep well, as if the chamber is acoustically much larger than is visible. The room is acoustically tuned to its center. I can find no mention of the effect in guide books. When others come into the room, the effect disappears.  

I walk back outside and up the small hill created by dirt piled over the site by ancient grave makers. I stand on top and look back at Mycenae. I walk back outside and up the small hill created by dirt piled over the site by ancient grave makers.

I stand on top and look back at Mycenae. Agamemnon himself must have seen this sight many times. Perhaps he chose it himself for his own grave. The view of ancient city is indeed magnificent. But this was also the home of Iphigenia, and I can well imagine she also stood here. I have a feeling I may have to come to terms with their troubled relationship, as well as that between me and my own daughter before my journey is over.

By the time I finish visiting Agamemnon’s tomb, the clouds have disappeared and the sun is hot on my head. In the evening I go downstairs and follow the sound of voices to the lounge where a young man sits alone watching TV. He nods to me and motions to take a seat on one of the two couches. He turns off the TV, starts talking to me as if we've known each other for years. All around us is darkness, the hollow building echoing sounds of the night.

He's the son of owner, mid twenties, single, startlingly handsome. He would be a good match for the young lady I saw just up the road at the tourist shop when I first got off the train yesterday. Her Paris. He has the archetypal Greek bushy-black hair, dark-olive skin. His family is originally from Greece but immigrated to Australia where they lived for nineteen years, returning three years ago.

I ask him how he likes living in Greece compared to Australia. Most people I've met on the road take a day or so to size you up before they speak without skirting questions. He only pauses long enough to ensure his answer is precise. "Summers here are hectic with all the tourists," he says, "and the rest of the year is boring. I have a small circle of friends, but we have nothing to do."

I tell him I feel safe in Greece, much safer than in America.

"It is safe," he tells me. "In three years, I've never seen a fight, no violence."

"But Greeks argue a lot," I say.

Big smile. "They argue all the time, but it's good-natured. Nothing they like better than arguing. But Greeks are a petty people, most will stab you in the back if given the chance."

"Why is it so much safer in Greece than America?"

"American television," he says without hesitation. "That and Hollywood. All the violence. In Greece, everything is the family. That's the reason I'm having difficulty returning to Australia."

"Your mother and father want you to stay?"

"Especially my father. It will kill him if I leave."

The more I talk to this guy, the more I realize he will tell me anything, everything about himself.

"My parents, they have no education," he states this without animosity. "They are hardworking and own land here, could retire if they wished. But years ago, my father used to come home drunk, and my mother would argue with him about it. I've always had a strong sense of who I am, had strong moral convictions. I held our family together while he did his drinking. When I was eight, I talked with him about his drinking, that he should quit. He finally did, but it was a struggle. My parents used to keep all their money in jars in the house, and already as a kid I knew that wasn't right. I told them they should put it in a bank, so it would draw interest. It took me two years to convince them. My friends have always been older than me. I've always been grown up. My friends tell me I should be a psychiatrist, but I have no idea what that would be like. I want to be an architect because I once worked in construction."

He reminds me of my father who also held his family together, took care of his alcoholic father. His brother and sisters looked to him as a stabilizing influence in their lives even after they were married and on their own. He once told me that when he was thirteen, he suddenly realized he was grown. Quite a load for a kid to be carrying around.

Next he starts on Australia. "Australians love to hunt kangaroos," he says. "The country is overrun with them. Even though killing kangaroos is necessary to control the population, I wouldn't do it. A lot of my friends here in Greece hunt, but I don't."

"You don't like violence," I say.

"Not always," he says. "But I like boxing. Probably the most violent of all sports. I don't fight but I like to watch fighting." I'm surprised at his insights into himself.

If one characteristic distinguished me from my father, it's my distaste for hunting, killing. But I also like boxing, an interest I share with my father.

"My parents," he says, "they do not understand about boredom. I'm bored to death here. I only intended to stay two years when we came from Australia. I'm an only child. In Greece, a man must have a son. My father's adamant about me staying. If I'm going to be an architect, I must return to Australia to attend college."

"You seem to have made up your mind," I tell him.

He smiles. "Yes, but I don't know how to tell my father even though we're very close. It'll break his heart."

I've never been close to my father. Hate is a very strong word for a son to use about his feelings for his father. Of all the world's literature on love, precious little has been written about hate. No one feels just one way about anyone, particularly about their father. No one wants to deal with their own hatred.

This is the first time I've recognized the hostility I have for my father. As I write these words, they come to me as a revelation sending a chill up my spine. I can also say I love him and say it with more conviction, more certainty than ever, as if my hostility no longer contaminates my other feelings. Perhaps this is a remnant of that night he lifted me from between my mother's sheets and laid me in my own baby bed. My anger at him has stood between me and my own good judgment at crucial times. It's an undercurrent I've never been able to get beyond.

 

24 Oct, Sunday

A lone rooster crows. He has no followers, just a single voice raised against the darkness of early morning. My dreams have gone into a strange, alien land where I visit cities as a child. I learn to direct and control the flow of glass-encased rivers. I see weird bridges and dams. Strangers take care of me in dark unfamiliar homes. I work jobs unfamiliar to me, dream of women. In one, a pregnant woman comes to stay with a female friend who is ecstatic to have her in her home and covers her with kisses. I'm neither in the dream nor am I viewing it. I don't exist. Some dreams are dark, happy, others full of fear and strange longings, denial and crude excess. Strange, prebirth dreams set in a dark land in an primordial time. I've melted, dissolved into the landscape.

This morning early, I'll leave for Corinth, the home of young belligerent Oedipus. I see him there, tall, broad-shouldered. A man who would provoke a drunk into lashing out with the only tool, only weapon, he could use against him: his suspicion concerning Oedipus' parentage. I see Oedipus as a man of arrogance, privilege. Perhaps he even wore his limp with a certain grace, a man of strong conviction who provoked jealousy, envy. I'll go to Corinth to find this young man, hopefully find him among the stones and dust, see him standing at the Acrocorinth staring out to sea.

I stand at the window awaiting sunrise, looking out at the surrounding hills. Snores come from the next room. Morning comes to Greece not as a bolt of sunlight, but as a lifting of haze which uncovers first a village, then the countryside, a hill, a mountain, a mountain range. Sunrise in Greece is not a revelation but a slow discovery from within the mists of morning.  

It's time to move on.

---

I decide to walk the two kilometers to Fychtia rather than wait for a bus from Mykinai that was recommended by the proprietor of the hotel. I'm not sure he can forecast the buses any better than he can the weather, and I can't afford to take the chance. The walk is mostly downhill, but I still have to stop a couple of times to rest from the weight of my pack.

Once in Fychtia, I buy a ticket for 550 dr at the roadside coffee shop across the street from the bus stop. I have forty-five minutes to dry my sweat while I await the bus to Corinth. I'm already drawing flies, sitting here in the morning sun with my bus ticket in my pocket. Four men sit at a table not far from me drinking Greek coffee and water. They always serve water with Greek coffee.

Thinking back on the frank conversation with the young man last night, I realize I've developed a new openness myself on this journey. I talked to Pat and Marlene in Delphi about things I won't tell my own friends. I felt the same comfortableness and urge to talk about myself with Hans and Margo in Olympia. I'm beginning to understand what a liberating experience traveling can be. It's like watching a sped up movie of the walls of Mycenae crumble through the millennia, the walls I've built around myself.

Flies swarm my backpack, my Levis, my arms. A taxi pulls up and stops in front of the cafe. An old man in one of those blue fisherman's caps (which I want very badly) gets out. Flies swarm the old man. His features converge at a focal point just in front of his face. His eyes, his nose, his chin all point at the same imaginary spot. He drives a Mercedes. No flies on the Mercedes.

I've not been tempted to undergo Orestes' treatment for his madness. Pausanias tells the story of his cure:  

When the goddesses were going to drive Orestes mad they are said to have appeared to him all black, and when he bit off his finger they suddenly seemed to turn white, and the sight of them sobered him and he consumed offerings in fire to turn away their wrath, and performed divine sacrifice to the white goddesses. ... Orestes cut his hair ... when he came to his senses.[1]  

But then I was only sitting on insanities doorstep, hadn't yet gone off the deep end. I ran as Orestes did, right into the jaws of a life I never intended to live.

I feel better with my ticket to Corinth in hand, and while waiting for the bus, I read my guide book. Hera's most important temple in all Greece is not far from here. But I can't get there by bus from here. The air is cool even sitting in the hot morning sun. The four men have split up now, one to his pickup; two have moved their chairs into the shade behind me and are still talking; one stays put with his elbows on the table, his hand at his mouth, eyes staring off into the flatland with the mountains of Mycenae in the distance just below the burning sun.

[1]Aeschylus, The Complete Plays of Aeschylus, tr. by Gilbert Murray, Franklin Center: The Franklin Library, 1978, page 266.

[2]Ibid, page 322.

[3]Ibid, page 330.

[4]Otto, Walter F., Dionysus, Myth and Cult, tr. by Robert B. Palmer, Dallas: Spring Publications, 1965, page 91

[5]Ibid, page 140.

[6]Aeschylus, The Complete Plays of Aeschylus, page 331.

[7]Ibid, page 334.

[8]Letters, F. J. H., The Life and Work of Sophocles, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1953, page 235.

[9]Apollodorus, Gods & Heroes of the Greeks, The Library of Apollodorus, tr. and with an intro. and notes by Michael Simpson, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976, page 72.

[10]Iakovidis, S. E., Mycenae-Epidaurus, Athens: Ekdotike Athenon S. A., 1993, page 12.

[11]Ibid, page 21.

[12]Ibid, page 34.

[13]Ibid, page 35.

[14]Aeschylus, The Oresteia, tr. by Robert Fagles, New York: Bantam Books, 1975, page 144.

[15]Pausanias, Guide to Greece, Vol. 2, tr. by Peter Levi, New York: The Penguin Group, 1971, page 456.