Trips throughout Greece

Athens - Pireaus - Cape Sounion - Poros - Santorini - Zakynthos - Rhodes - Mikonos - Delos - Corinth - Theater of Epidauro - Nafplio - Mycenae - Delphi - Arahova - Ioannina - Vikos Gorges - Meteora - Messenia and Peloponnesus

The ancient town straightens up on the top of a rough hill surrounded by a landscape of arid hills. Mycenae was a fortified town founded 4000 years ago and base of the Mycenaen civilization.

My advice when you plan to visit Greece and you would like to know something further than islands and beaches is to make an effort and inform yourselves about the Homer Iliad, the first known written work that laid the foundations of the Greek culture and consequently the humanity. Try to read it or at least try to get some data about the story that the book tells. It was written 500 years later than the related happenings. It is the only live reference about the advanced Mycenaen Bronze age.

The history that Mycenae keeps is plenty of distinguished names that I would try to resume. In order to begin, some mythology, as habitually. According to the legend the hero Perseus, Zeus' son, founded the city. Perseus built the wall with the help of gigantic Cyclops (mythological monsters with a big eye on their foreheads).
The Atreides dynasty substituted the Perseus' successors. This family was marked by the misfortune and their story has been narrated by several authors such as Homer (in the Iliad), Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (Greek tragedy authors).
The man who gives the name to this family is Atreus. The main legacy that he left for the posterity is that he killed his brother's sons and served them as food in one banquet. Atreus had two sons: Menelaus and the great Agamemnon. Menelaus was Sparta's king and his beautiful wife Helen was seduced by the Trojan Paris (son of the Troy's king, Priam). This fact induced the Troy war that Homer describes through the Iliad. Agamemnon was the Mycenae king and he was called "king of kings" because he was the most powerful monarch during the period. He gathered all the Greek people under his command to launch a siege against Troy. However, he had a wicked side, because he ordered to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia in order to the winds to be favourable for the navigation towards the enemy city. The Troy war lasted for 10 years as the wall was indestructible and inaccessible from the outside. Indeed the legend tells that Poseidon and Apollo constructed it, as a punishment ordered by Zeus. To briefly review this war, it is important to know that in the Greek camp Achilles and Agamemnon argued and got angry, because a slave (Briseis) that the king of kings snatched to the great warrior. Since then Achilles decides not to intervene in this war. The Greeks hardly manage to contain the Trojan attacks and they were on the point of the total defeat near their ships. Looking at the complicate situation, Achilles acceded that his troops participated in the battle (but not him), and they saved the Greek army and forced the Trojan to retire. However in the battle Hector, the favourite son and the Priam's successor killed his loyal squire Patroclus. Achilles decides to fight again and the war changed the tendency with a victory for the Greek troops on next battle. Afterwards Achilles defied Hector to a duel, and killed him. Achiles died during the next battle because a failure of his heel and an arrow thrown by Paris. Time after the Greeks invented a way to enter the invulnerable city: the wooden horse. They left the ground and simulated to sail away an abandon the war, but they left the huge horse in front of the wall gates. The Trojans thought that it was an object designed by the gods so they introduced the horse into the city. At night the Achaeus (the Greeks were known by this name) hidden in the inside, opened the wall gates and the army entered the city and sacked, killed, and burnt everything (Priam and Paris were killed). After conquering and firing the city the Achaeus kings returned to their respective kingdoms and they ran into many surprises after the long absence. Agamemnon found that his wife Clytemnestra had a lover called Aegisthus, the youngest son of Thyeste (Thyeste was the man who ate his sons without knowing it). Aegisthus had killed Atreus as a vengeance and to reach the power. Aegisthus assassinated Agamemnon as well. But this lovely story doesn't finish here. Agamemnon's son, Orestes, killed Aegisthus and his own mother, thus gaining the Mycenae throne.

Captivating, isn't it? After knowing a bit all this legendary story, you understand that such interesting characters have been deeply developed through literature and theatre. All these characters were considered legendary until Schliemann, the well known German archaeologist whose life aim consisted on digging up the Homer's history, discovered Mycenae . Since then the historians accept the existence of these figures although the history is deformed and magnified by the poets who transmitted it, like Homer.

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) represents the kind of archaeologist that you have always imagined during the childhood, someone that leaves everything behind and addresses all his efforts to find what he expects. Probably he is the most famous archaeologist of the history (after Indiana Jones). He had a grocer's shop business and he became rich. When he was 45 he decided to abandon everything and to look for the civilizations of the Iliad. First he found Troy and afterwards Mycenae . At last he had found the traces of the heroes that strongly impressed him when he was child.

The bus left us in a modern village. The first surprise was to check that there wasn't any bus driving to the site from the village, so we had to walk for 30 min. throughout the road. Perhaps this was due to the low season (it was October).

Only because the history I knew that I was going to enjoy the site very much. The ruins are very interesting but they are not spectacular, except for the entrance gate perhaps. The acropolis is located on a walled hill surrounded by a couple of ravines that protect it. This citadel was reserved for the king and his family, some noblemen and the guards. The rest of people lived down there and they are trying to dig it up as well.

The main entrance is really fantastic. It is called "the Lions Gate" . The wall is formed with huge stone blocks, linked without mortar, from 15th and 14th centuries. It is so impressive that it is easy to understand that the Greeks attributed the constructions to mythological creatures. The wall drives towards the main gate that owes the name to the to female lions sculpted on the tympanum and representing the Mycenean power. The gate is built with huge blocks that recall the attention very much.

From the rest of the ruins it can be emphasized the first royal circle of tombs (which Schliemann thought at first that it contained Agamemnon's but after he checked that it was more ancient). These tombs kept the rests of several persons and rich objects. Also the palace is interesting, where the king inhabited, but little still stands straight. Nearby the wall we reached the East end of the city. There we found some subterranean stairs down passing under the walls and leading to secret passages.
You can go down on your own and with a lantern. The true is that this passage frightened a bit. You feel like an explorer entering the unknown. Unfortunately we hadn't got any light and it is so dark that it was impossible to go further.

We started our way back that was keeping more surprises for us. There was no bus from the village to anywhere and they told us to continue on foot until a village located nearby the main road. We walked without the confidence of knowing the time we were going to spend or if we were going to find it. After one hour we saw it. We acquired the bus tickets to Athens in a bar and although we had to wait for long (as the first coming bus was full), finally we arrived in Athens at night. The wait wasn't so bad as it was a lively Greek atmosphere, a bar where the Greeks watched soccer, played tavli or had a coffee. It was everything authentic except for us!