We Mused on Greece’s Timelessness and Hustle

The mountains look on Marathon--

And Marathon looks on the sea;

And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free;

For standing on the Persians’ grave,

I could not deem myself a slave.

--Lord Byron

“Every American has a Greek and I’m yours,” Aris, the taxi driver, told us our first day in Athens.

Each morning he would waylay my husband Roy and me in front of the Chandris Hotel. “You go with me to the Acropolis? I make you a deal. Ten dollars.” If we hesitated, he would shrug. “OK, I throw in Hadrian’s Arch and the Temple of Olympian Zeus.”

Aris, a tall, lithe charmer with dark hair and brown eyes, was a born hustler and we were easy marks. He drove us to the antiquities and other attractions of Athens for three days, delivering a colorful, if not always reliable, running commentary.

We thought we had seen the last of him when he dropped us off at the port of Piraeus for our cruise on the Stella Solaris to the Greek islands and some Turkish ports. We had decided on the cruise that May of 1987 because the weather was in the high 70s and we wanted to avoid the hordes of tourists that visit during the summer.

We should have known better. There was Aris when the ship returned seven days later, waving furiously and pushing his way through the swarm of passengers and porters on the dock.

“No, Aris,” we protested as he reached for our bags. “No sightseeing today. We’re flying home in 10 hours.”

“I make you a deal. I take you anywhere you want to go, then to the airport. Only $50 dollars.”

“Why not?” Roy said. “We don’t want to be hauling the luggage around all day. But what haven’t we seen?

“Marathon!” The word flew out of me without conscious thought, as if it had been lying in wait for just this moment.

“Why Marathon?” Roy asked. “That’s a long drive.” And suddenly it struck him. “Because ‘the mountains look on Marathon and Marathon looks on the sea.’ ”

I nodded. I had told and retold the story of my eighth-grade teacher at Caswell Hill school in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and how he had inspired in his students a love of poetry.

Alec McKinnon was a Sean Connery look-alike, with the same mellow Scottish burr and the same flair for dramatics. And the fact that he was also principal of Caswell Hill made him even more impressive.

The first day in class he unrolled a large wall map of Greece and described its cities and terrain. The next day he told us how the greatly outnumbered Athenians had defeated the invading Persians in 490 BC on the plains of Marathon, where the bones of the fallen Greeks remain to this day in a huge burial mound.

The messenger Pheidippides ran to Athens to announce the victory and then fell dead from exhaustion. Our modern marathon race takes its name from that event more than 24 centuries ago.

And then McKinnon asked us: “What class am I teaching?” There was a babble of voices. “History.” “Geography.” “Sports.”

“No, I am teaching a class in literature,” and he began to read Lord Byron’s poem, “The Isles of Greece.” Later, I memorized the poem, imagining the brooding poet looking out to sea. And now, at last, I would see Marathon.

“We go,” said Aris, apparently undismayed by the drive of slightly more than 20 miles, heading northeast from Piraeus. But once in the cab, there was an explosion of curses and groans as he bluffed his way through virtually gridlocked traffic toward the east coast.

Soon the rows upon rows of apartment houses and the gray, smoggy city gave way to the blue skies and freshening air of the countryside. Crimson poppies dotted the Attica fields and silvery green olive groves relieved the severity of arid mountains in the distance.

Aris indicated points of interest along the way, but our eyes were fixed on the road as he careened across center lines on the sharp curves.

Our relief was indescribable when we finally braked to a gravel-scattering halt. Aris jumped from the car and held the door open for us. “I give you Marathon,” he said, with a ceremonial bow.

Flexing our tense muscles, we walked along a cypress-lined path and there, suddenly before us, was the burial mound McKinnon had described those many years ago. At the foot of the mound was an expanse of marble pavement with benches and an ancient stele bearing a sculpture of a Greek foot soldier.

There was no one else in sight and the silence of centuries descended on us. The remains of 192 heroic Athenians still rested there. It was an eerie scene, untouched by time.

We ascended a long flight of stairs and stood at the crest amid a field of wildflowers. The view was spectacular. Five mountains in an arc look out upon the battlefield like sentinels, and beyond is the crescent shore of the bay where the Persian invaders landed.

I tried to picture the clashing warriors but the image was blurred. Instead, there sprang into sharp relief the familiar portrait of the dashing--and dissolute--Lord Byron with the ruffled shirt and flowing cravat. And I heard again the Scottish burr of Alec McKinnon: “The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung.”

I would have preferred to muse there “an hour alone,” as Byron had, but Aris had other plans for us.

“I take you now to the most beautiful temple of all, the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion,” he said, and hustled us back to the car.

We drove south from Marathon, heading for the southeast corner of Attica, along a coastal route past beaches and campsites that Aris said would be teeming with Athenians come the weekend. But his favorite swimming place had always been Sounion, where there were beaches and coves and where he could float on his back in the clear water and look up at the remaining columns of the beautiful temple.

Aris told us it had been rebuilt on its sheer headland by Pericles in 440 BC, just a few years after work had begun on the Parthenon. (We consulted our guidebook and, for once, he was right.)

The road to the cape veered inland for several miles, then back to the coastal cliffs. Below us the Aegean lazed in the sun, impossibly blue. Soon we could see the white marble columns of the temple outlined against the sky and minutes later we were there.

Adjoining the parking area was an open-air cafeteria with an incredible view. We had been telling Aris for an hour that we were ravenously hungry and insisted that now was the time for lunch. “Not here,” he said. “These people are robbers, thieves!”

Before we could object, he was at the ticket window, counting out drachmas from his pocket. It was his temple, his treat.

And a splendid treat it was. High on a crag above the coast, the 12 remaining columns confirm the remarkable beauty and symmetry of the original. On this breezy day, wind shadows played across the face of the Aegean. Gulls mewed from their perches on shards of white stone and paths led down to sandy coves. One could not imagine a more dramatic site for a temple honoring the sea god of the ancient Greeks.

Amazingly, we had it all to ourselves except for two other couples. Unlike the Acropolis where the crush of tourists and the clamor of guides are a constant distraction, we could evoke the glories of the past undisturbed.

Suddenly there was a shout from Roy. He had found what the guidebooks said we would. There on one of the columns at about eye level, inscribed by his own hand, was the name of Lord Byron and the date 1810.

It was time to go and even Aris finally declared himself ready for lunch.

As we began the 30-mile drive to Athens airport we saw one restaurant after another, but Aris sped past them despite our objections. When he finally did stop, it was at one of the least attractive places we had seen. Nor was the appearance of the proprietor, unshaven and wearing a stained black suit, particularly reassuring.

But he greeted us with great dignity and led us back to a glass case where fresh-caught fish of many species rested on ice. On Aris’ advice we chose the white mullet and a salad.

On a signal from Aris, our host brought a bottle of ouzo (a colorless Greek cordial flavored with aniseed) to our outdoor table overlooking the sea just across the way from the beach.

A light wine might have been a better choice, but by that time we were inescapably in Aris’ control. We toasted him and he toasted his new American friends and gave us his business cards to hand out to friends back home.

When the fish, broiled over sprigs of fennel, arrived, we toasted our waiter/chef/restaurateur, and he sat down to share the bottle with us.

I may have had more succulent fish or a crisper salad, but I would be hard-pressed to remember when or where. Also, I would be hard-pressed to even remember the name of this Greek restaurant.

We were amused, rather than distressed, when we paid an inflated check and saw Aris huddling behind the counter with the owner to collect his cut.

We floated back to Athens on a cloud of good humor, oblivious now to Aris’ screeching brakes and strident horn.

In no time, it seemed, we were at the Athens airport and Aris was shouldering his way through the crowds with us in tow. He waited while we checked our bags and confirmed our seat reservations, then shook our hands vigorously.

Those sly, brown eyes were actually misting over. It could have been genuine.

As we watched him head for the exit with that swaggering walk, yielding the right of way to no one, Roy smiled and said: “Believe it or not, I think I’m going to miss him.”

Believe it or not, I thought I would, too.