The Corinthian Isthmus and the Isthmian Sanctuary

Antiquity ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 32 (126) ◽  
pp. 80-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Broneer
Keyword(s):  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Steep Slope ◽  
The West ◽  
Northern Half ◽  
Greek Government ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Of Greece

The peloponnesus came so near to being a true island (Island of Pelops) that the neck of land (FIG. I) which joins it to the northern half of the Greek peninsula is less than five miles wide. This became a natural crossroads of the Greek world. Several routes converging on this landbridge connected the Peloponnesus with the rest of Greece. Communications by sea between the east and the west, through the Saronic and the Corinthian Gulfs, were interrupted by the Isthmus, and attempts were made early to pierce or overleap the barrier. The southern sea-lane encircling the Peloponnesus was much longer, and weather conditions made the journey hazardous. For this reason cargoes were unloaded at the two harbours, Kenkreai on the Saronic and Lechaion on the Corinthian Gulf, and carried by land across the Isthmus. Naval vessels, and perhaps the empty freight carriers, were transported over a paved roadway called Diolkos. The western end of this portage has long been recognized on the Peloponnesian side of the Corinth Canal, and recently longer stretches of pavement have been laid bare on both sides of the Canal. The Diolkos here did not run straight but ascended the steep slope in great sweeping curves (FIG. I and PLATE IX (c) ). The pavement has a width of 3-50-5 m. and is made with large poros blocks well fitted together. Two deep ruts, 1-50 m. apart, show that the ships were hauled on wheeled cradles, not on rollers, as was formerly assumed. The excavation, conducted by the Archaeological Service of the Greek Government, is still in progress, and the exact course across the Isthmus will not be known before this work is completed.

scholarly journals Image Restoration Strategies for the (mis-) handling of COVID – 19 Pandemic in Greece

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 56-59
Author(s):  
Neofytos Aspriadis
Keyword(s):  
Image Restoration ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Economic Pressure ◽  
Response Strategies ◽  
The World ◽  
Greek Government ◽  
Restoration Strategies ◽  
And Control ◽  
Of Greece

During the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak all countries around the world used several kinds of response strategies to protect public health and control the outbreak. The main aim was to stop the disease from spreading into the community and put a pressure on the health system of the countries. However, severe measures like lockdown of cities and countries brought side-crises like economic pressure on the individuals, corporations and even the state itself. Although the Greek Government was considered to have managed the first phase of the crisis in March effectively, during the aftermath of the first phase, the complete opening of the economy and tourism, the lowering of measures leaded to the increase of new cases. The increased number of cases together with the late imposition of a new lockdown, leaded to the perception of a governmental failure. This perception mobilized direct or indirect image restoration strategies by officials of the Greek Government to maintain the positive image of their handling despite the general perceptions. This paper explores the image restoration strategies used by the prime minister of Greece for the handlings of the second phase of the pandemic in Greece. The methodology used is discourse analysis with the tools of Image Restoration Strategies by Benoit (1995) from October till December 2020.

Early and Late Examples: A New Look at Olynthos and Pompeii

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dora P. Crouch
Keyword(s):  
Mineral Exploration ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The North ◽  
Pressure Pipe ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Karst Waters ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Church ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Of Greece

The arrangements made in ancient cities for the management and use of water varied over the extent of the Greek world, depending on local topography and geology. They also varied by time period. In the absence of detailed whole-site studies, we can no more than suggest some of those differences. Our method will be to examine one early city and one late, looking for similarities and differences. The chosen examples share the useful (for us) feature of having been destroyed, so that their ruins preserve a set of arrangements not diluted by later habitation. The examples chosen are Olynthos in northeast Greece, destroyed at the end of the fourth century B.C., and Pompeii near Naples in southern Italy, destroyed in A.D. 79. A description of each will point out features that are typical for that time period, and we will conclude with a direct comparison of the two water management systems. Olynthos (Fig. 13.1) is located in northeastern Greece, at the base of the left peninsula of the set of three which also includes Mount Athos. Geological maps of the area (Institute of Geology and Mineral Exploration, “Geology of Greece” series (1:50,000), Athens, Greece, ca. 1984) show that a large limestone massif terminates just to the north of the site, and could be tapped for its karst waters. Indeed, a pipeline was found coming southward for five miles (D.M. Robinson, 1935, 219 ff and fig. 12; Robinson and Clement, 1938), from the springs near Polygyros and from northeast of the church of Hagios Nicolas. More traces of the line were observed in the plain. In Volume II of the Olynthos excavation reports (Robinson, 1930, 12), the line is thought to be sixth century because of some fragments of black-figure vases found with it in the dig, yet in Volume XII this aqueduct was declared fifth or fourth century because of its beautifully cemented joints with mortar of pure lime with a little silica (Robinson, 1946, 107). The line is described as having pipes about 3 inches thick (.45 centimeters), and therefore is probably a pressure pipe.

Samothrace

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clyde E. Fant ◽  
Mitchell G. Reddish
Keyword(s):  
Summer Period ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Sunday Afternoon ◽  
Urban Buildings ◽  
Taxi Service ◽  
Bus Service ◽  
Private Homes ◽  
Gallipoli Peninsula ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Of Greece

Unfortunately, fascinating Samothrace does not receive the attention from foreign visitors it deserves. Except for the peak of the summer period, when many Greeks and a few others make mostly day trips to the island, Samothrace is largely ignored as a tourist destination. Weather in the winter can be harsh and windy, but otherwise the climate is inviting. Only a very few small hotels exist on the island (though there are many guest rooms available in private homes), and places to dine are limited, shopping even more so. But for an overnight visit, or perhaps a weekend, Samothrace is hard to beat for a sense of a Greek world that once was. The wild beauty that surrounds the once glorious buildings of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, where the immortal Nike of Samothrace, now in the Louvre, once stood, is largely unmatched for a striking impression of Greek sanctuaries before they were surrounded by pavement and urban buildings. Do not miss this unique island if it is in reach of your journeys to Greece. The island of Samothrace (or Samothraki) can be reached easily by car ferry or hovercraft from Alexandroupolis, approximately 20 miles away. Although there is only one road that circles the island, an automobile or taxi is necessary to reach the site of the Great Sanctuary of the Gods, which lies 4 miles from the harbor at Kamariotissa. (Bus service is possible but infrequent.) If a taxi is used, be sure that a return is arranged; get a card from the driver with a phone number, and be aware that taxi service is not available on Sunday afternoon. The only telephone available is at the adjacent museum, and when it closes, if you are without transportation, be prepared to hike or use hitchhiking skills on the rare passing automobiles. Samothrace was known historically as the most remote of the Greek islands, which certainly is not true in modern times, when the nearby Thracian shore is a part of Greece. Likewise, the island is virtually equidistant from the Gallipoli peninsula of Turkey as well.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Waldemar Heckel
Keyword(s):  
Achaemenid Empire ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Of Greece

What induced Alexander to embark upon a war of conquest against Persia? How did the peoples he attacked resist him, and why? The undertaking was bequeathed to him by his father, Philip II, whose expedition to the East was cut short by his assassination. The ostensible motives, which were presented in the form of slogans concerning vengeance and Panhellenism, were those that had been promoted in the Greek world since the years that followed the invasion of Greece by Xerxes in 480/79. The target of Alexander’s counter-invasion was the Achaemenid Empire, but the apparent soft underbelly was formed by the states thought to be held in servitude by the Persian king. Indeed, the king’s subjects were generally referred to as douloi, “slaves” of their vainglorious master. But their attitudes toward “liberation” varied according to experience, and although some welcomed the Conqueror, the notion that they welcomed a new master was mistaken.

scholarly journals The Role of Archaeology in Forming Greek National Identity and its Embodiment in European Identity

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 448-458
Author(s):  
Olga Katsiardi-Hering
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Europe Today ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Of Greece

The murder of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, for many the ‘founder of archaeology’, in 1768 in a Trieste inn, did not mean the end for his work, which could be said to have been the key to understanding ancient Greece, which Europe was re-discovering at the time. In the late Enlightenment, Neoclassicism, followed by Romanticism, elevated classical, Hellenistic and Roman antiquity, and archaeological research, to the centre of academic quests, while the inclusion of archaeological sites in the era’s Grand Tours fed into a belief in the ‘Regeneration’/‘Wiedergeburt’ of Greece. The Modern Greek Enlightenment flourished during this same period, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with a concomitant classicizing turn. Ancient Greek texts were republished by Greek scholars, especially in the European centres of the Greek diaspora. An admiration for antiquity was intertwined into the Neohellenic national identity, and the first rulers of the free Greek State undertook to take care of the nation’s archaeological monuments. In 1837, under ‘Bavarian rule’, the first Greek University and the ‘Archaeological Society of Greece in Athens’ were set up. Archaeologists flocked to Greece and those parts of the ancient Greek world that were still part of the Ottoman Empire. The showcasing of classical monuments, at the expense of the Byzantine past, would remain the rule until the latter half of the nineteenth century. Modern Greek national identity was primarily underpinned by admiration for antiquity, which was viewed as a source of modern Hellenism, and for ‘enlightened, savant, good-governed Europe’. Today, the ‘new archaeology’ is striving to call these foundations into question.

The Stone Age in Beechamwell

1913 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-321
Author(s):  
R. C. Nightingale
Keyword(s):  
Small Area ◽  
Average Depth ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
The West ◽  
Narrow Strip ◽  
Northern Half ◽  
Top Soil ◽  
Northern Side ◽  
Boulder Clay ◽  
Grey Colour

The greater part of the northern side of the parish of Beechamwell consists of marl and chalk with a top-soil of from one to eighteen feet of gravelly sand. The average depth of this is about eight feet. On the top of it there is a layer of turf or of cultivable soil from three-quarters of a foot to a foot and a-half in depth. There is a narrow strip of boulder clay deposit on which ice-scratched, worked flints are found. There is also a tongue of gravel one and a-half-mile long and half-a-mile wide at its widest part. On this, generally, very few worked flints have been found; fragments of pottery in some numbers have been found all over it however. On the edge of this strip, adjacent on the west to the boulder clay, several worked flints have been picked up, and a hoard of about 200 splinters and flakes was found lying between the sand and the turf, a foot deep here.The greater part of the worked flints are found in an area of about half-a-mile square. The axes, whole or in fragments, are found scattered over the whole of the northern half of the parish. The first axe, however, I found was lying beside a path through the old fen that lies on the south side of Beechamwell. The worked flints found near the moraine are of a peculiar grey colour, and nearly all scimitar-shaped.Flints are found in beds in the chalk and are still plentiful on the surface of the soil, although many have been picked off it for building and road-mending. The small area on which the worked flints are so numerous is the highest ground in Beechamwell.

The amber beads

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 237-244
Author(s):  
Nancy Sandars
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
West Coast ◽  
The West ◽  
Ionian Islands ◽  
Constant Feature ◽  
Different Shapes ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
Lapis Lazuli

It has long been axiomatic that amber is seldom found in Crete, and it is therefore of some interest to be able to record amber beads in two of the Gypsades tombs, Nos. II and VII. In Mycenaean sites on the mainland of Greece amber beads of different shapes are found in great numbers and so frequently as to appear a fairly constant feature of these sites; certainly as much as faience and rather more so than lapis lazuli, an exotic from Asia.In the shaft-graves of both the new and old grave circles at Mycenae amber is plentiful and thereafter at Prosymna in graves dating from Late Helladic I to Late Helladic III; and this is characteristic of all the principal sites, though the number of beads found may be much smaller. Amber is also particularly plentiful on the west coast of the Peloponnese: at Kakovatos in Elis, in tholos A (dated L.H. IIA); at Epano Englianos in western Messenia, in the tholos excavated by Lord William Taylour, close to the palace, and dated to the fifteenth century or earlier, in which about 360 beads were recovered; and in the second tholos recently excavated by Professor Marinatos at Myrsinochorion in the same area. Farther north there was much in the Ionian Islands, particularly in Cephalonia; and a little has been found in Epirus.

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