Athens - Day 6 (Part 1)

18 July 2025

Today I have a trip to Corinth, and then to Sounion in the afternoon. I was alone, as Silvia wanted to walk around Athens especially to the Acropolis, and Kiyasha wanted to do more shopping and just walking around.

First stop (again) – the Corinth Canal. There is something strangely humbling about standing on the bridge above the Corinth Canal, between the Aegean and Ionian Seas. It’s not its size, though the vertical walls of limestone drop away so sharply they almost make you dizzy – but its boldness. A manmade wound in the land, dug through centuries of dreaming and delay. Periander imagined it in ancient times, Nero tried to begin it with spade and spectacle, and finally, long after emperors had turned to dust, 19^th century engineers completed the cut. Today, as ships creep slowly through the impossibly narrow passage, you feel the old ambition still pulsing there: to connect worlds, to force nature to yield to purpose.

And then we were on the road again to Corinth. On the way, we passed the ruins of an ancient Christian basilica, which had originally stood as a temple dedicated to Isis, the Egyptian goddess. Nearby, remnants of a medieval wall could still be seen – once part of a fortification built to protect the narrow isthmus of Corinth. The landscape was dotted with pine groves, once considered sacred to Poseidon and prized for shipbuilding, their tall, resin-scented trees swaying gently in the sea breeze.

A short drive away lies Ancient Corinth, scattered in sun and silence across a dry plain beneath the brooding heights of Acrocorinth, one of the largest and oldest fortresses in the Peloponnese. It was one of the greatest powers of ancient Greece, continuously inhabited from Neolithic to Byzantine times and founded important colonies like Kerkyra (Corfu) and Syracuse. Its imposing walls belong almost entirely to the medieval period. The fortress was connected with the history of Leo Sgouros, said to have committed suicide by jumping on horseback from the walls in 1210 in order to avoid surrendering to the Franks, who held the fortress until 1460, when it passed into the control of the Turks.

The Temple of Apollo rises first into view, stark and defiant with its seven Doric columns, their edges worn by time yet still upright, as though refusing to forget the gods. This Temple was never buried, it stood as always, where it is standing now, some 2,600 years old! I walked slowly through the ruins, the air buzzing with cicadas and history, my feet brushing against stone laid by Romans, by Greeks, by slaves and emperors alike. The craft here is Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. There was also what was left of the Temple of Hera (wife of Zeus) and remnants of the Temple of Octavia (sister of Augustus).

The agora, or marketplace, is vast, uneven, and alive with absence. In its day, it would have been deafening – merchants bartering, philosophers disputing, children chasing stray dogs through colonnades. I paused at the Bema, where the apostle Paul once stood to address the Corinthians. The judge was Gallius, who acquitted Paul for allegedly preaching Christianity to the locals. Gallius’ brother was Seneca, the Roman philosopher who was Nero’s tutor. The ruins are just stones now, but somehow they hold the shape of speech, of human urgency and divine doubt.

To my surprise, one of the most unforgettable spots was the public latrine. Smooth benches carved with tidy keyhole-shaped openings still sit in a row over a trench once flushed with water. I smiled, imagining the ancient chatter that must have filled that space – daily gossip, politics, maybe a bit of poetry or scandal, all discussed as friends shared a communal moment of relief. Civilization, after all, is built as much on shared bathrooms as on temples.

At the edge of the site, the path climbs toward the remnants of a stadium and theatre. The stadium is barely visible now, its contours softened by earth and time, but I imagined the pounding of feet, the cheers, the pride of competition. You can still see the stone starting blocks, with shallow footprint-shaped grooves carved into them to mark where runners were to place their feet before a race  an ancient version of the starting line (it used to be that you stood ready to run, not sitting down like nowadays).

Though the track itself is no longer intact, standing there offers a vivid glimpse into the athletic traditions of classical Greece, where speed and skill were celebrated alongside strength and strategy. Here I placed my feet on the marker just the ancient athletes used to do, and asked the guide to take my picture while I pretended that I was starting a race. But the monkey made me lose my poise when right before taking my picture, he commented that “Of course, in those days, athletes ran naked.”