between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Menstruation is damned inconvenient, lads. I can't really recommend it.

I just need to bitch about that for a second. Okay, bitter complaint completed. Moving on.

I've been unable to get in touch with the French house in Argos, so I'm going directly to Plan B and heading for a cheap hotel in Nafplio. I'm not prepared to give myself extra stress over this adventure, when I already have quite enough to be going on with, especially when there's only about fifty euro in the difference.

Anxiety, I hates it.

Slept poorly last night, thanks to the heat and the fact that the bed here is a folding-metal-frame-type thing that creaks every time I twitch, and headed out down to the Asklepieion at about 0830, picking up breakfast of water and chocolate biscuits on the way down the hill. It was already hot even then, despite the breeze blowing off the Gulf to the north, but tolerable.

The Asklepieion is located at the northernmost edge of the ancient town. This means it's also at one of the lowest points in the town: to the south the hillside slopes up towards the agora and the Acrocorinth looming in the background, to the north it backs onto the remains of the city wall (incorporated into the temenos wall) and the land drops away sharply to a well-watered plain between the hill and the Gulf. At the east end of the sanctuary, it connects to a court, the so-called "Lerna Spring," possessed of a number of cisterns cut into the rock, at least one of which was briefly a Christian chapel. The Lerna Spring is about three-four metres lower than the temple area, accessed by a ramp (these days) and in antiquity probably by stairs.

Intervisibility: it possesses a commanding view of the peaks across the Gulf; it is of course over-looked by the Acrocorinth; probably there was intervisibility with the theatre, and almost certainly with the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on the slopes of the Acrocorinth. Probably accessed by road passing N-S along west end of sanctuary - leading from the theatre down. Also probable: a temple of Zeus and/or a gymnasium somewhere in the southern vicinity.

Today not one stone stands upon another. The cuttings for the temple and the stoas remain on the bedrock, and the north stoa is riddled with holes cut for early Christian graves. There are also ancient water-pipes crossing the sanctuary: Corinth was famously "well-watered."

It's at a distance from the agora, which is the main, touristy preserved part of Old Corinth. It stands in a field within hearing distance of very vocal chickens, overlooking more fields and some olive groves. (Figs and other fruit I couldn't identify - persimmons? - overhang garden walls on the road down.) The grass and the fennel stands knee and waist high in places, concealing dangerous dips and cuttings in the rock.

I spent about an hour taking pictures and making notes at the temple level. Then I girded my loins - metaphorically - and ventured down to the Lerna Spring area.

The silence was incredible. Just the wind and the cicadas, the occasional bird or chicken.

The ramp to the Lerna court is very overgrown. I mean, seriously high grasses. And there are little white animal bones in the grass, so I found the rustlings terrifying - the place is honeycombed with cisterns and wells and grave-holes, so who the hell knows what lives there? Snakes? Rats? Vicious underground man-eating chickens?

Sorry about the lack of pictures, btw. I will upload to flickr eventually.

Okay, Lerna. Past some out-jutting Roman brick foundations from where the ramp had been built over, the court opens out. To the east there's the west end of the temple area rock outcrop, with the half-collapsed entrance to a cistern in the rock and the bitty wall remains of what appear to have been dining rooms. The centre of the court is paved with smooth river stones. To the left as you enter from the ramp (south) the rock wall is cut with the entrances to the cisterns, which continue along the rock wall to the south west.

The grass rustled. I ended up scrambling up some lovely archaeology (a couple of blocks which framed a cistern entrance) to a) get a better view down the steps of the first cistern (I did not venture far from the ramp, for fear of stumbling into wells or grave-holes among the high grass) and b) to get well above the grass, lest something small and vicious emerge to attack my ankles while I was distracted.

The steps down into the cistern (which I was not venturing down into without a spotter, fuck no, do I look like a reckless explorer-type to you? Getting back to the road with a broken - or even twisted - ankle would be no fun) are well-worn. There are niches cut in the rock, and I could hear - and smell - the trickle of water way down at the back. It's shallow enough - and the light was good enough - to see all the way to the back wall and the water trough.

(I was tempted to climb more of the archaeology. The rock wall looked attractive for scrambling up, even in runners. But I was good - and besides, visions of broken ankles.)

The Lerna court would have had roofed stoas. Its exact relation to the sanctuary is debated. Me, I think a connection likely, even if the connection probably wasn't exclusive.

Another hour there, so it was approximately 1045 by the time I headed off again, back up the hill to ASCSA's house, where I spent over an hour in the library, getting a better idea of the archaeology of Corinth from the excavation reports they have on hand - particularly, getting an idea of the water supply and the role that water played in the life of the town. (Water is important to the cult of Asklepios.)

And after that, I went back to my room and checked my email and napped. Napped like whoa, thanks to my broken night's sleep last night, from about 1330 until about 1530, when I ventured out again to get more water, some chocolate and some caffeine. (And when I tried to get in touch with the French house in Argos, to no resounding success. Oh, and that reminds me. Remind me to buy a Greek mobie if I do this sort of thing again, because having to rely on access to other phones to dial out is occasionally awkward.)

And, yes, I've spent the last couple of hours answering my emails and writing this up. This is my day thus far. I feel slightly ill, which I'm going to put down to combining heat and menstruation (great combination. How do people live with it?), but otherwise, life goes all right.

Tomorrow, I think I'll be spending more time with the archaeological reports and in the agora. Tonight, I might knock off and actually watch some of my hoarded laptop TV - or maybe I'll try to write something. Who knows?