2002: Robbing the Cradle of Civilization.
by Carl Russo
2.
An artifact at the Temple of Olympian Zeus soaks
in a pond of thief-repellent Athenian muck.
We had much catching up to do, starting with a breakfast of honey over yogurt thick as ice cream, on to the Acropolis, the Agora, the Kerameikos cemetery, the National Archaeological Museum and on. After several weeks of prep homework, I could barely remember the difference between a Doric and an Ionic column, or that the Cycladic peoples of the Bronze Age were the original Cubist sculptors.
Each monument stands secluded by banks of greenery, in silent testimony to Civilized Man, under a brown blanket of raunchy-ass smog. What vandals and crusaders couldn't sack, pollution will finish off in the city that contains half of all domestic Greeks. Even the country's original vegetarian restaurant, Eden, hangs thick with cigarette smoke—a health nut's paradise (hak! coff!).
But we enjoyed the city for what it was: a teeming metropolis with an umbilical cord to our origins.
We climbed the bleachers of Panathenaic Stadium—home of the first modern games in 1895—and wondered how these cracked and weed-choked marble slabs could be renovated in time for the 2004 Summer Olympics. Some locals we met agreed that it was impossible: it's not a Greek trait to rush anything.
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