The Silent Witness: Athens and its Acropolis

The Acropolis of Athens

Many said it was the warmest year in memory; the gravel streets sizzled, the boughs of great trees withered and gnarled. The ice cream truck placed the streets under its sing-song spell, as it passed under a crimson sky. A feverish shade lingered at the edge of the hills, furtively spying into the sprawl of apartments and maze-like streets below.

The hills were burning.

Cars trickled down the central avenue of Athens towards Syntagma square. Flamboyant yellow taxi cabs blared as motorcycles darted in and out of the stagnant flow, whizzing like ostentatious hornets. Under the sweltering heat, the exhaust of the automobiles created hazy illusions and peculiar rainbow mirages, spinning my mind into a state of disorientation and fatigue.

Hastily, I escaped into a side street.

A sense of silence washed over me. Restaurants crept onto the pavement, marking their sovereignty with stools and plastic chairs; waiters slumped on the tables, fidgeting with their phones. At the street corner, the sign “lottery” beamed down in rags above the weathered remains of a door frame. A group of old men gathered outside, puffing away on their cigarettes, eyes glued to the static screen. 

“And now the last number!”, the voice of a presenter buzzed over the loudspeaker.

They drew the cigarettes out of their mouths, gaping at the screen with the eyes of a child.

A dice twirled in the urn.

“3!” the presenter shouted enthusiastically.

A musty silence ensued as the old men dropped their gaze, some shaking their heads solemnly.

They stuffed the tickets into the overfilling bin and shuffled down the street in ambling steps.

Before long, they had all dispersed into the alleys, disappearing into the shadows of languid apartment blocks.

Maybe next time.

I turned into a long diagonal street running up the hill. Raising my head, I saw a cobweb of electricity wires and clothing hangers that flooded into the shaded alley. As I looked through the entanglement, I discerned the form of a large, rocky outcrop that protruded into the sky.

It towered above the dusty beige flats and sand coloured roofs, aloof in its arrogance above the hubbub. Steep stone walls rose above the clifftops, holding up a podium on which rested the crumbled remains of a magnificent temple of stone. In the tepid light of that summer’s day, it was a dormant giant, lulled to sleep through the long years of neglect – it had made company with the shrubbery and the mood of the gods, submitting itself to the unforgiving will of the rain, which etched dark chains of grit into its carcass.

The dusty path beneath the trees opened to a steep flight of marble stairs that carved into the heart of the acropolis. Grass spilt through the edges in the stairs, ravenously engulfing the surface of the rock in its attempt at reclamation. The Propyla, the entrance to the acropolis, was marked by a group of pillars, standing mutely before a stone wall. In the afternoon sun, they were like sentries, casting slender shadows along the stone floor as they stood their last posts.

We proceeded through the Propyla, into an opening at the zenith of the hill. The cavernous structure of the Pantheon rose before me - its slender Doric beams and sleeping marble slabs in the shrubbery were the epitaphs of retired times. The stone arches of the amphitheatre stared soullessly into the chaos of Athens like headstones.

I wandered to the edge of the acropolis. Apartments streamed down the hills to the foot of the acropolis like stacked cards. They were falling into a deep sleep, I interposed – their squarish windows were glimmering fireflies as the curtains of night fell.

“I wonder what this place must have looked a thousand years back,” a traveller muttered behind me, sighing.

“I dunno,” his companion answered, “you know, I wouldn’t fantasize it all that much.”

“Surely, you would want to see the pantheon in all its glory,” the young man said breathlessly, “its interiors glittering in gold, worshippers before grand statues, the incense –”

“Yes, yes… who wouldn’t?” his companion chuckled, cutting him short. “But hear this – we do not owe the wonders of history to our comprehension of its sinews. It lies in our bewilderment,” he smiled sanguinely, “perhaps, some are better witnesses of history than we can ever dream to be…”

As I looked back at the acropolis again, it no longer struck me as a sleeping carcass.

It was a wizened elder, soundlessly observing the fading of empires, the joys and woes of men from its gallery between the Parnitha and the Aegean.