 |
| Writer nearby the Entrance to Hades |
Once upon a time in a far, far, far away land there lived a
fair Queen.
Sorry, Mykonos, this isn’t about you. I’m focusing on the Peloponnese, Greece’s
southernmost mainland peninsula about the size of the American state of
Massachusetts; though I guess these days it’s technically an island after the four-mile
long (by only seventy-feet wide) Corinth canal severed it from the rest of
Greece in 1893.
Think picture perfect harbor, nestled up against the
Aegean’s Laconian Gulf halfway along the eastern coast of the middle prong of
the trident-shape southern tip of the Peloponnese (make it easy, look at the
map). I’m talking about Gytheio, largest
town in the southernmost Peloponnese region of the Mani and municipal seat of
East Mani.
Twenty-five-hundred years ago this spot served as the port
for nearby ancient Sparta, and during Roman times it thrived as an export
center for such valuable commodities as the deep purple dye so revered by
royalty that it gave rise to the phrase, “born to the purple.”
But in the early Third Century BCE, Gytheio’s reign
as a port center ended in a massive earthquake.
It remained abandoned, serving as but a small village, until refugees
from Greece’s 1821 War of Independence escaping to the Mani brought with them
the renewed growth that ultimately returned Gytheio to glory in the 1960s with its
new port.
To the the ancient Spartans—and Greek classicists—this area wasn’t
known as Gytheio but as Cranae, the name of a tiny, arrow-shaped island two
hundred yards from shore at the southern end of Gytheio’s modern harbor. From Cranae, ancient Sparta launched its
ships (a bit of a hint for those who haven’t already guessed the soon to arrive
punch-line).
Today, Cranae connects to Gytheio by a narrow, two-hundred
yard-long concrete causeway, is approximately five-hundred yards-long, east-to-west,
by one hundred yards wide at its broadest point, and is made up primarily of dirt,
rocks, and pine trees.
Aside from a couple of fishing shacks (and I do mean shacks),
and a taverna and restaurant close by the island end of the causeway, only
three structures remain standing on Cranae:
A lighthouse at its eastern edge, Saint Petros (Peter) Church on its western
end looking across the sea back at the harbor town (a very popular site for
weddings), and roughly equidistant between the two, a four-story stone tower
built in 1829 later expanded to house the Historical and Cultural Museum of
Mani (currently closed because of the financial crisis). [Cranae photos by
Panos Kazanells]
 |
| Cranae Lighthouse |
 |
| Mani Museum |
 |
| St. Petros Church |
So, where’s the Queen fit into all of this, you ask? I’ll let Homer tell you.
NO, NOT HOMER SIMPSON, Everett. The other teller of tales. The Iliad names Cranae as the spot where
Queen Helen of Sparta and her abductor, Paris of Troy, spent their first night
fleeing Helen’s husband King Menelaus of Sparta, in the process giving Homer
the story line for the world’s best known epic tale of romance, action, and intrigue,
catchy phrases for advertising execs such as “The face that launched a thousand
ships,” “Trojan horse,” etcetera, and Peter O’Toole the chance to make a movie
with Angelina Jolie’s (not yet?) husband.
 |
| TROY |
But there’s another story to Gytheio. World War II took a great toll on this
region. In 1942 merciless bombing
devastated the area—skeletons of bombed out buildings can still be found along some hillsides—and its villages were among the first wiped out by the Nazis in
reprisals for partisan attacks on German soldiers.
Along the roadside between Gytheio and modern
Sparti are monuments erected to the memory of those murdered Greeks
As one villager told me, “A lot of family trees lost entire limbs
to the Nazis. They did almost as much
harm to us as the Turks, but in a hell of a lot less time.”
So, I have a question: With so much suffering endured by their
ancestors at the hands of the Nazis, why is there looming above Gytheio’s
central harborfront square a banner proclaiming that location as The Mani’s headquarters
for Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn), the neo-Nazi political party in Greece’s
parliament openly praising the architects of Nazi methods that once brought so
much suffering and death to so many of their countrymen and to Gytheio in
particular?
I’m not going to suggest an answer. That’s too easy
to address with a nod, a shake or a shrug.
No, I’d rather you think about
an answer. And to help get you started, here’s
a story reported in the US by National
Public Radio on September 4, 2013 on the impact the rise of Golden Dawn is
having on the tiny population of Greek Jews that remains after 87% of their
67,000 population saw extermination by the first round of Nazis to take a shot
at destroying Greece.
It portends a future no thinking or remembering Greek
could want. For it is guaranteed to end in
tears.
Xronia Pola
and L’Shana Tova.
Jeff—Saturday
