By Edward Clark
After queueing for half an hour, bringing a bit of British tradition to the centre of Athens, we finally reached the entrance to the grounds of the Acropolis. The memory of midday’s sun was already fading in the uncharacteristically temperate afternoon air. I scanned my ticket on my phone and went through the gate.
‘This is a single ticket’
After some discussion with the Greek staff, holding up the line behind us, my dad accepted that he’d failed to buy five tickets and had only bought one. Through the fence, we agreed that I’d get our money’s worth and see the temple. I shouted that I’d see them later and so ambled on: alone, phone dead, sun just over the horizon.
Halfway up the trail to the Parthenon itself, I took a break at a bench, and looked up to find what appeared to be a small shrine, half-derelict. I remembered a poem that I studied at A-level.
‘It was midday, mid-May, pre-tourist sunlight / In the precincts of the god. / The very site of the temple of Asclepius.’
Despite the fact that it was neither midday nor mid-May, I felt a sort of connection to Seamus Heaney and a nostalgia for my past self who romanticised the site two years earlier. Completely on my own, I had the opportunity to sit and bask in the sunset, soaking in a pilgrimage site that had been renowned as a place of healing for hundreds of years.
It did seem a bit smaller than I’d imagined. ‘The precincts of the god’ had stimulated images of a grand sanctuary in honour of Asclepius and Hygeia, not a small room. But no matter. I sat and focused, enjoyed my solitude – pilgrims to the Parthenon walked past, paying no attention to this seemingly inconsequential structure.
‘They don’t know what they’re walking past.’ I felt a secret pleasure in being the only person to properly admire the Asclepieion. After ten minutes were up, I stood and read the sign- ‘This sanctuary was one of several Asklepieia in the ancient Greek world’. I’d misremembered the poem. The main site was at Epidaurus, a completely different city. And not one we were planning on going to. I moved on, unfazed: my ten minutes meditation didn’t seem any less spiritual.
Image Credit – Pinterest