Where Alcibiades once walked, amateur tax spies are trying to entrap poor pistachio-sellers

 Athens

I am walking on a wide pedestrian road beneath the Acropolis within 200 meters of the remaining Themistoclean wall and the ancient cemetery to eminent Athenians. One side is lined with splendid neoclassical houses, none of them abandoned but most of them shuttered and locked up. This is the area where once upon a time Pericles, Themistocles and Alcibiades — to name three — trod, orated and debated non-stop. Back in those good old days we Athenians ruled supreme. Reason, logic and restraint placed us at the head of the queue, and genius also helped. I am climbing to the Pnyx, where Themistocles rallied his fellow citizens to defy the Persian juggernaut, and, except for a couple of stray dogs, I am alone with my hangover. I walk between the hill of the Nymphs and that of the Muses, where Cimon, father of Miltiades, victor at the Battle of Marathon, is buried, and I visit a small Byzantine church where my parents were married.