Roots of Democracy
Executive summary by darmansjah
THE BEST PART of
being in Athens is the ability to explore across centuries,” says Eleni Vainas,
a Greek-American poet, animator, and longtime resident of the capital of
Greece. “Walking around Athens is a living history lesson. Modern is juxtaposed
with ancient, and art is featured throughout the city in ways that touch people
on an everyday basis.”
Any child who has taken basic world history classes known
about Athens and its indelible contribution to Western civilization. But studying
a place and its heritage is far different from actually being there, especially
if you are on a flat-topped hill called the Acropolis, gazing up at one of the
most perfect structures ever built by man-the Parthenon.
Where indeed would we be without the ancient Greeks, their
legacy of philosophy and democracy, their obsession with figuring out how Earth
and the heavens function, their groundbreaking strides in mathematics and
medicine?
Greek civilization didn’t start in Athens, but it reached
its greatest height here in the fifth century B.C. under legendary figures like
Pericles, Sophocles, and Socrates. Kids who clamber across the Acropolis and
enter its new museum-which displays statues of a three-bodied monster and the
goddess Nike leaning over to tie her sandal-gain a tangible connection with a
bygone world that gave us so much of our won civilization.
The Parthenon alone is worth the trip. Dedicated to the
goddess Athena, the temple arose between 447 and 435 B.C. The roof may be gone,
but nothing can detract from the building’s graceful, geometric lines. Focal point
of the Acropolis hill, the Parthenon was alter turned into a Byzantine church,
a cathedral, an Ottoman mosque, and a warehouse to store gunpowder for the
Turkish army, before it was resurrected as a global icon after the Greece
gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire.
The shimmering, white structure is one of 20 atop or
attached to the sides of the Acropolis,
including two open-air theaters. In a flashback to those ancient times,
families can attend performances at the hillside Odeon of Herodes Atticus
during June’s annual Athens Hellenic Festival.
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