#trip iv

We hit Messene this morning and then made our way to the little village of Konstantini for some incredible hospitality. Some of the town elders and the mayor had organized a (massive) lunch for us and I’m still so full that I’m probably going to skip dinner. After a report on some spolia they all took us up in various cars to the Byzantine church and we got to explore some before heading to Sparta for the night.

Penultimate day of the trip done! Lots of bus time today, but it was totally worth it for the views. Tomorrow I’m giving my report on Mantineia and we’re headed back up to Athens

While here I also started reading my friend’s tbp(ublished) manuscript on nudity in the Early Iron Age which includes a significant amount of naked male bronze figurines from Olympia, I think mainly from the so-called “black layer” of votive material mixed in with ashes that were distributed across the site probably when the riverbed was rerouted. Anyway, her book is great so far and I’m looking forward to finishing it this week.

I love a good artistic depiction of architecture and this one really got me going this morning. I’m back in Athens and ready to sleep in tomorrow without setting an alarm and it is going to be glorious.

This afternoon we visited the Palace of Nestor, my first time at the site, and it was awesome to see it after being totally inundated with information about it for the past 5 years (it’s Cincy’s flagship project and also one of the most important Mycenaean sites).

We’re in a lovely Arcadian mountain town tonight, Dimitsana, and the highlight of the day was definitely the Water Power Museum outside of town.

I wanted to highlight this image in particular because I’m really fascinated by the prolonged iconographic development of Alexander, which I’ve made posts about before. In an ideal world I think I’d want this nascent interest to develop into my second book project, post diss monograph. We shall see, but it’s definitely something I want to keep thinking about and exploring further.