I took my daughter to Athens for a short holiday at half-term. She is studying Ancient Greek at GCSE, which makes me immensely proud as I didn’t even get that far with Latin.
Delphi was wondrous but Mycenae was perhaps the most powerful: there is something about the place, as if one might close one’s eyes, touch the stone and travel back to the Age of Heroes. It is also salutary to ponder that this was once the largest city in Europe, just as Uruk, home to the written word, is now rubble.
There is a streak of romantic Hellenism that runs through the British ruling class
Yet the Parthenon, even though I’ve been before and it’s as crowded as Thermopylae on a bad day, is still magical, both up close and from a distance. It’s beautiful when lit up in the evening, and every time you catch it out of the corner of your eye, you feel a bit grateful.
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