In Greece, Every Cruise Is a Classic : Visitors to the islands are exposed to blue skies, whitewashed villages--and a semester’s-worth of mythology and history.

In early summer a tumult of crimson poppies spills over the hillsides of Greece as vivid as the blood from the tragedies that befell the mythological House of Atreus, and the gods and mortals of Homer and Sophocles are seemingly everywhere, staring with their sightless eyes past the Daedelus Rent-A-Scooter sign in Iraklion, on the island of Crete, or the Iphigenia Restaurant in Mycenae, south of Corinth on the mainland.

When you booked your Greek Islands cruise, you may have thought you were heading for the Aegean version of a lighthearted Caribbean sailing--secluded coves and sunny white sand beaches. You probably didn’t expect to get the equivalent of a college semester of classical history before making a dent in your tube of sun-block.

But each island (there are 1,425 of them, 166 inhabited), has its pantheon of mythic heroes and blood-gushing tragedies, all of which will be revealed with varying proficiency by a series of graduates of what we began, sometime in the last 10 years, to call the Athens School of Incomprehensible Guides. We have made many Greek Islands sailings in the last decade, usually seven-day round trips out of Athens, our latest outing being this spring aboard Seven Seas’ Song of Flower.

Like Odysseus, the Greek hero made popular by Homer’s epic poems the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” one sails around the blue Aegean and through the Dardanelles into Turkey’s Sea of Marmara looking for the classical and mythic. Much of each day is spent in port, and most ships visit at least one if not two islands a day, pairing up Delos and Mykonos, for example, or Crete and Santorini.

It is essential to get to Delos as early in the morning as possible, before the polyglot flocks arrive, and just as obligatory to see Mykonos in the late afternoon from a sidewalk cafe, a milky glass of ouzo at hand, watching the sunset melt into twilight and then into darkness as distant lights twinkle and the sea turns black.

Delos is uninhabited but filled with the ghosts of ancient heroes and heroines. Only the acid-green lizards, slithering along the rocks among the ruins, and the crouching stone lions, golden beige in the sun and gently worn down by generations of visitors climbing on their backs, populate the landscape. Five of the lions remain from the original nine or more that were carved of marble from the neighboring island of Naxos in the 6th Century BC. Protected by ropes that make them off-limits only to law-abiding adults, the lions face the site of the sacred lake where the goddess Leto (or Leda), pregnant by Zeus when he took on the guise of a swan, gave birth to the full-grown Apollo and Artemis.

After Delos, Mykonos, to the east, is a riot of colors--bright-blue trim on dazzling whitewashed houses scattered against the parched hillsides like a spilled box of sugar cubes, a shock of red geraniums and fuchsia bougainvillea, overblown roses in neon pinks, corals and yellows. Gnarled men and women in black sit out in their chairs in the late afternoon, their eyes closed against the glare and the giggling, prowling mobs of Euro-youth.

We settle down in a cafe near the harbor where a roasting lamb turns on a spit, and when we point to it the waiters bring bowls of olives and fat fava beans in tomato sauce, salads with chunks of red onions and crumbly feta cheese, thick slices of bread, platters of lamb and fried potatoes, a bottle of astringent red wine. Four of us feast for less than $50.

On Crete, Greece’s largest island with its stunning variety of architecture and terrain, we are guided to the 4,000-year-old Palace of Knossos by our guide Marinella, who speaks as if by rote while staring through the windshield of the bus at some indeterminate point on the horizon. Perhaps she is visualizing the Labyrinth of Knossos as it once existed, or perhaps she is merely contemplating what to fix for dinner.

From the outside, what remains of the massive square structure, some of which has been reconstructed, is reminiscent of a Frank Lloyd Wright design, but the mythical architect of this 1,200-room labyrinth was the skilled artisan Daedelus. According to legend, it was constructed to house the Minotaur, a monster with a bull’s head and a man’s body, to whom seven young men and seven young women had to be sacrificed every year.

While Knossos is quiet today, the side streets of the capital of Iraklion bustle. In the morning market, Greek Orthodox priests in black cassocks and black hats browse among the vegetables, a blind lottery salesman hawks tickets, a rosy lamb carcass with tufts of hair on the tail and ears is garnished with a bouquet of pink carnations stuck in the rib cage, and a fishmonger repels flies with a flourish, spraying his fish with insect repellent.

The island of Santorini, also called Thira, may or may not be the remains of the lost island of Atlantis, as some believe, but it has undergone a staggering series of earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions that have left only a steep peak rising out of the sea bristling with whitewashed houses and churches along its spine. Like Delos and Mykonos, it is part of the subset Cyclades island group.

Cruise ships anchor in the island’s caldera, the central crater filled with sea water, and passengers climb to the village above on foot, astride a donkey or in a cable car. In the shops, a postcard depicts a donkey looking sadly out at a cruise ship while a cartoon fantasyfrom his head shows an obese tourist sitting on its back.

Rhodes, part of the Dodecanese island group, just off Turkey’s southwest coast, merits a full but exhausting day trekking behind Phyllis, the best of our guides on one particular cruise. In its day, she says, Rhodes was a great intellectual center where Caesar, Brutus, Antony, Cassius (and probably the rest of the cast of “Julius Caesar”) were students. She herself, half Greek and half Austrian, graduated from high school in Queens, N.Y.

In Lindos on Rhodes, we are somehow coerced into climbing aboard donkeys for our ascent of the Street of the Knights to the Acropolis. The animals, given to flatulence, are a definite mistake. Once rid of them, we are free to climb the three sets of stairs with Phyllis while she explains how each level is planned to elevate the pilgrim’s spirit--first the narrow confined steps, then wider and more gentle ones that begin the preparation for entering the sacred area, finally the very wide steps that lead up to and open into the magnificent temple ruins “as if you were walking into heaven.”

From the top, we can look down to the small bay where it is thought St. Paul once landed, and down along the coast where the movie “The Guns of Navarone” was filmed.

In the 6th Century BC the sage Cleobulos ruled Lindos and doled out advice in enigmas, one of which was the perennially popular admonition “Nothing in excess.” Standing in the town square watching endless rows of tourist buses and rental cars in gridlock, we wonder what his advice would be to the town today. But the island countryside is a tangle of wild geraniums, rock roses, fragrant thyme, sage and oregano, wild pomegranate trees, lemon trees heavy with bright yellow fruit and honey locusts in full white blossom.

The city of Rhodes, where the famous Colossus once stood, was built to be a capital much as Brasilia and Australia’s Canberra. Dominating the old town is the Grand Master’s Palace, constructed in the 14th Century to house monks and abbots of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. It was badly damaged by an explosion in the 19th Century, when it was used as a prison and munition storage during the Turkish occupation of Rhodes.

Along Turkey’s Turquoise Coast, cruise ships usually visit at one or both of the great classic sites of Ephesus and Pergamum en route to the wondrous carpet bazaars of Istanbul.

Ephesus, the largest ancient city in history--built all in marble in the Roman style the Greeks thought gaudy--has been extensively restored so that even the least imaginative visitor can stroll into the ancient past. We walk along a mile-long marble street, stopping to see ruts made in the marble by chariot wheels, a crudely scratched street corner advertisement for a brothel, a restored six-story building that was an early condominium. Most popular perhaps for photographers is the large public toilet, rows of stone seats like a giant outhouse, where citizens would gather to gossip. On cold mornings, the wealthier would send a slave down to warm up his spot for him. The restored library here was the third greatest in the ancient world; the amphitheatre is still used for concerts and plays.

The old city of Pergamum, built atop a 1,300-foot hill, had an even bigger library, one that rivaled the great library of Alexandria. Of course, one’s time-compressed semester in classical history doesn’t always take. Toward the end of our last cruise, we heard a day-tripper coming back on board chirp to her friend, “Look, I found a postcard with a lovely view of the island of Michelob.”

GUIDEBOOK

Cruising the Aegean

Getting there: Cruise lines that usually sail in the Greek Isles and Turkey in either the spring or fall seasons include Classical Cruises, Club Med Cruises, Costa Cruise Lines, Cunard Line, Cunard Crown, Crystal Cruises, Diamond Cruise Inc., Dolphin Hellas Cruises, Epirotiki Cruises, Fantasy Cruises, Holland America Line, OdessAmerica Cruises, Paquet French Cruises, Princess Cruises, Renaissance Cruises, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, Royal Cruise Line, Royal Viking Line, Seabourn Cruise Line, Seven Seas Cruise Line, Special Expeditions, StarLauro Cruises, Sun Line Cruises, Swan Hellenic Cruises and Windstar Cruises.

For more information: Contact individual cruise lines or a travel agent, or the Greek National Tourist Organization, 611 West 6th St., Suite 2198, Los Angeles 90017, (213) 626-6696.