The Mything Link

Kalimera! (Good day, in modern Greek)

Mild-mannered mythology major seeks creative minds, armchair travellers, art lovers, and born-again pagans for a ramble through the ruins of ancient Greece.

I came there last spring for the first time in the flesh, where I have been going in my imagination for almost 30 years. Through much of that time I have been earning a degree or two in classics, ancient Greece and Rome, with a little Egypt and Crete and Sumer thrown in for good measure. But I never quite fit in academia. Back when I worked on the Perseus Project in 1993, my personal homepage said, "other scholars beat the ancient world to death, when it's already dead. I want to bring it to life."

There are red, red poppies growing up through the cracks in the marble monuments of Eleusis, where rites to Demeter and Persephone promised initiates immortality.

In the ruins of Athena's shrine on Mt. Parnassos, where Gaia had a sanctuary guarded by a python long before Apollo slew her serpent and stole her oracle, green snakes still glide in the tall grasses beneath dusky olive trees.

The acoustics at the great theater of Epidauros are still sound enough that if you dare to recite Homer-- "Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles--" your voice will carry clear up the mountainside to the topmost seats.

Listen. Akoue. I'm going to tell you a story.