Regular Members Flint Dibble and Leigh Lieberman sit on the one remaining worked block we could discover from the Temple of Hera at Plataia
The Fall Trips are now well underway: we returned from Trip 3 and glorious weather in Boeotia. I call this year’s exuberant Regular Members the “lucky” group because repeatedly we have been able to see things usually locked away from view. On our last day in Thebes, thanks to Ephor V. Aravantinos, we were able to visit the storerooms of the Thebes Museum, where conservators are in the process of restoring wall frescoes from the Mycenaean palace on the Kadmeion. We looked at some of the Linear B tablets from the archives there and saw the preparations to display the large collection of Boeotian inscriptions and sculpture.
Our trip started in Delphi, and we enjoyed the company of Whitehead Professor Glenn Peers and his family (each one of them gave reports!). We made it up in a rainless interval to the Corycean Cave and nearly everyone opted to hike down back into the village, passing up above the stadium and sanctuary of Apollo. The group sorted through the plethora of international dedications in the sanctuary, and solved the block-challenges I posed to them in the Marmaria.
On our way to Kalambaka we visited the Porta Panagia near Pyli, the pass Julius Caesar took from Epiros through the Pindos range into Thessaly before the battle at Pharsalos, and we went up a single-arched bridge built in the early 16th century. We marveled at the geology that produced the Meteora, and we heard about how previous travelers had to go up the pinnacles in frayed nets drawn by the monks, swinging 300 feet above the lower rocks. In Thessaly we visited Archaic and Protogeometric tholoi, early Christian basilicas, and the Temple of Ennodia at Velestino. At Goritsa, outside Volos and facing Mt. Pelion, we heard about Achilles’ childhood and teen years as represented in early modern painting, as well as studying the supports for large catapults.
Once into Boeotia, and with Levadia as our base, Assistant Director of the British School Robert Pitt talked to us at the Temple of Zeus Basileus high above the city. We tried to pay our respects to Trophonios, knowing full well we might not be in just the right place. We took in the major sites around the Copaic Basin and considered the enormous engineering skills of the past inhabitants, and the shifting politics of the later classical towns. Boeotia is still open, green, fertile, and filled with archaeological sites, all so frequently evoked in literature. We felt like travelers of the early 19th century, but in the end we were glad to reach the ASCSA and the comforts of home. The ongoing turmoil in Athens notwithstanding, in the microcosm of our bus trip we had a lovely time.
