Being Poor May Help Make Greece Rich

At the risk of sounding callous, I shall comment that there are environmental advantages to Greece being an economically poor country. Though low on the list of manufacturing nations in the European Common Market, Greece has riches in abundance in the friendly warmth of its people, their fierce sense of independence and love of their heritage, the sun-blessed beauty of their land and the unpolluted clarity of their seas.

If asked to synthesize my recent Greek experience (my wife and I spent three weeks cruising among the Greek islands), I would say that Greece is a land of olive, fig and orange trees, vineyards, the best-tasting vegetables and fruits in our experience and mind-boggling ancient ruins.

Greece is primarily an agricultural nation. Its leading products are olives and olive oil, the origins of which are lost in the dim mists of prehistory. There are many small farms, cultivated by discing, harrowing and the hoe. Green cover crops seem to be a prevalent practice, with less dependency on chemical fertilizers than here. This could be the reason their fruits and vegetables were so delicious. The Greeks have a sensible habit of eating only that which is in season.

Heavy Cultural Debt

The beginnings of our Judeo-Christian culture pale before the pre-Christian civilizations that inhabited this ancient land. Truly, the roots of our cultural debt lie heavily with the Bronze Age Minoans and Mycenaeans who planted and plowed and ruled the seas near the end of the 16th Century BC and onward through time to the Greco-Roman periods, when in about the 6th Century the glories of these civilizations waned.

One of our able guides and mentors on the cruise, Stephen L. Glass, McCarthy professor of classics and classical archeology at Pitzer College, Claremont, remarked that American tourists in Greece have a “toilet fixation.”

To this, I think, all 160 of us on the cruise aboard the 297-foot-long ship, Stella Maris II, pleaded guilty.

It was with rapt fascination that we viewed the plumbing in the great Minoan palace at Knossos on the island of Crete, where once ruled a legendary King Minos. At some time around 2000 BC, architects and craftsmen began building this multistoried, more-than-500-room palace of stone, wood and brick, replete with magnificent frescoes.

Water Pipes of Clay

Archeologists have uncovered bathtubs, water closets, drain pipes of clay and water pipes of the same material.

I sketched an ancient drain pipe still in place. It was fitted together in about three-foot lipped sections of terra cotta, each section shaped in the form of truncated cone. Thus, with a design somewhat like the nozzle of a fire hose, a venturi effect was created that helped clear the line of material that might clog it.

Here alone was cultural debt for us in the latter part of the 20th Century of inestimable value.

There is so much more from small to grand I cannot hope to list it all. Suffice it to enumerate safety pins from the Romans; dice; codes of ethics; laws; the alphabet; the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates; the father of botany, Theophrastos, and religious beliefs that included gods with wings, like medieval angels, and gods on Earth who died, then were resurrected.

One of the loveliest legends told us by a guide on a tour bus was about the ubiquitous, wild, scarlet poppy, similar to our paler California poppy. It grew everywhere, from old stones on the Acropolis at Athens to the grand palace of Mycenae overlooking the Argoli Plain, where it is said by Homer that King Agamemnon ruled.

How the Poppies Grew

It seems that Aphrodite and Adonis were in love. While out hunting wild boar, Adonis was wounded by one of the beasts. As he walked painfully over the countryside toward help, his drops of blood fell on the soil. Finally, Adonis died. Grieving, Aphrodite created a memorial to her beloved by causing his drops of blood to become those blood-red wild poppies. Thus, Adonis is resurrected every spring throughout Greece.

Another story I heard that illustrates the poetic nature of the Greek character is about a father who had immigrated to America, advising his son to learn a foreign language. The father says, “Learn French and you can speak to the French girls; learn Spanish and you can speak to the Spanish girls. But, son, learn Greek and you can speak to the gods.”

Yes, there is everywhere in this ancient land an intimation, like barely audible sounds on the wind, of the presence of the old gods. It sent shivers down my back at times.