Destination: Pylos, Greece
Book: The History of the Peloponnesian Wars by Thucydides
I’m in a road trip frame of mind, since I’m in the middle of one right now. Thanks to a hotel with WIFI and for Traveler’s son lending a laptop to the cause, I can add some thoughts on road trips to the Library.
The island of Spacteria in Navarino Bay
Although the present road trip is classic American, my husband and I have road tripped in several other countries as well. Once on a driving trip through the Peloponnese in Greece, we headed toward the south end of the west coast. The town of Pylos wraps around the circular Bay of Navarino. We noticed that an island almost seals off the mouthof the bay. We found a hotel overhanging the bay and took out our travel guide, The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.
We could look down from the balcony rails as from a ship’s deck into water so clear that we could count the stones below us on the bottom of the bay. Waves shushed against the piers supporting the hotel, a perfect sound effect for sleeping. The scene looked somewhat familiar because we had seen 19th century water color paintings that romanticize the Greek war of Independence. In the paintings, clouds of smoke from cannons hang over the bay during one of the most important battles of that war in 1827. Skeletons of several ships that sunk during that battle rest on the bottom. But we were also looking at the scene of a much earlier battle, 425 BC, when an unusual event played out on the island of Sphacteria at the mouth of the bay.
Thucydides history brought to life for us a 72-day blockade of some 400 Spartans on the island at the mouth of the bay. Heroic efforts by the Helot slaves of the Spartan fighters kept the marooned soldiers alive far beyond the few days that Athens had calculated it would take to end the battle. Supporters of the Spartans sneaked small boats out past two constantly patrolling Athenian ships, and more dramatically, swam through that clear water, towing supplies in skins.
As we sat on the balcony and surveyed the scene, Thucycides transported us back through the centuries before the famous sea battle of Navarino, before the Venetians built the fort that overlooks the bay, to the battle between city states–Athens, the great sea power against the home boys, the fierce Spartans of Lacedemonia. We were looking at the very scene observed by famous Athenians like Demosthenes and Socrates from the rocky shores of the bay. And as dusk began to blot out the island, classical warrior ghosts were chased away by the lively street scene in the little village of Pylos by they bay, and we came back to the present and a seafood dinner in a taverna on a nearby cliff.
Thucydides can be a helpful companion to the traveler in Greece. Pausanias wrote a tome more closely aligned with today’s travel literature, but I found Pausanias not much help because as a traveler in his own day, he focused on great memorials and temples that no longer exsist, and even if they did, would have lost their importance. So check the index on Pausanias and see if there is something that may help, but tuck a tiny copy of Thucydides into your luggage when you head to Greece.
See a post about a road trip in Spain. And stay tuned for some thoughts on John Steinbeck and Larry McMurty’s road trip books as I continue my mosey through Texas.
Do you have classics–that you have used in your travels? Tell us so we can add them to our travel library.
See other posts on Greece: The Mani Peninsula,The Miracle of Siphnos at Spot Cool Stuff; Crete; Athens; Greek Islands; Movie on Greek Island; and Museums and Loot. Well, I TOLD you I love Greece.
PDF Tags: Greece, Navarino, Peloponnesian War, Pylos, road trip, Thucydides
