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With my imaginative juices now flowing, I was primed
for our third site,
Assos,
where ruins of a Greek city dating from the 7th Century BC lie atop a
mountain.
"Spoiled" said one guidebook of the surroundings, but perhaps because we
were traveling in June, in advance of tourist
hordes, we found the place practically deserted and very
charming. We were let out of the bus halfway down the
steep slope, so that we might walk to
Assos'
ancient harbor, where the stone buildings of a little fishing village have
been converted into accommodations for foreign
visitors. It was noon, the sun was hot and our
thirst sticky--but we were quickly diverted by the sight of the large
Greek island of Lesbos rising from the azure
Aegean off to the left and of pink hollyhocks, which grow
wild in Turkey, thrusting up on either side of the narrow road.
At the water's turquoise edge, our group was invited by
members of the hotel staff to seat
ourselves at a row of tables lined up on the stone wharf. There, protected
from the sun by a slatted canopy of bamboo, we
were brought bottles of mineral water, wine, and delicious
mixed appetizers and grilled fish. Not the least
pleasant aspect of our three-course lunch was
its price The bill came to barely $7 a head. In Turkey, the beleaguered
dollar has value.
After a nap, our group reassembled and we hiked back up
to the bus, which took us to the
modern village situated below the site of the ancient
city. A scramble to the top brought us to the
Temple of Athena (6th Century BC), its surviving Doric columns starkly
silhouetted against miles I and miles of sea and
sky. The Greeks, said Vann admiringly, loved a good view.
After wandering in and around the temple, we followed
our leader down through brush and
thistles to the remnants of the city's imposing, 1th Century BC defensive
wall. The most complete surviving fortification
of the (Greek world, it once ran three miles .round the
settlement. Where the slope broadened into a kind of
platform, enormous sarcophagi yawned open, their
lids topsy turvy or overturned. The road they lined lay partially
excavated below us, some six feet down in the
earth, an eerie reminder that I was standing on accumulated
layers of time and that one day our own thin layer
would be covered over by the future.
The street
led straight to the city's gate, through which we passed to reach the
agora, the public assembly spot where
Aristotle--who lived in
Assos
for three years—had walked. Today, this once-grand space is little more
than a rumpled
field, with stray
bits of rubble poking up here and there. But it is pure in that apparently
nothing was built over it after
Assos'
decline. Where Aristotle's footsteps fell, so now did mine.
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