Nafplio

by Andy Hall

This morning I achieved the bastion of Nafplio. I am surprised by this. Lonely Planet gives stern warnings about "leaving early" and "taking water" before you attempt it's 999 steps. I, of course, climb it on a whim with none of the preparations. Why am I surprised? I am surprised because I found myself at the top in only 15 minutes. I reckon I owe this to The Pink Palace. Its 129 steps between the Palladium and Reception have clearly put me in better condition than I thought. Imagine that, going up and down between the Palladium and Reception 7 times?

Sitting on the top gave me time to reflect and to have the ideas I am now putting on paper. Where did I leave off in my last mail? Sparta wasn't it?

From Sparta I took the long road to Nafplio. It winds and switches through the mountains of Pernonas right up into the cloud tops where I am anointed by my first Peloponnesian rain. The road almost peters out in places leading me into claustrophobic village squares and down cart tracks. It and I snake down the mountain, the tyres complaining on the reverse camber. Through forests and gorges; eventually we reach the sea. For the next 50 kilometers the road hugs the fractal, sinuous coastline and together we develop a rhythm turning left then right hypnotically. Causing my mind to wonder its own sinuous path.

Nafplio comes upon me quickly. It is a jewel, a miniature Naples without the coating of grime that seems to hang over everything in that once Castilian city. The narrow streets of the old town hide a myriad of shops and restaurants. You might stay for a month and never eat in the place twice. Finding the hotel I meet two joyful French girls who teach me again the Way of the Ouzo.

The next day we three go to Mycenae that most evocative of Greek sites. It was from Mycenae that Agamemnon set out to bring down the walls of Troy. I believe there was a recent film about this. Some guy called Pitt. Mycenae's cyclopean walls stand resolute against time and as we approached they seemed golden in the afternoon light. The walls are broken by a gateway made of three gigantic stone blocks. The lintel is the largest and it is beyond massive. Above the gate, carved in stone, are two lions rampant supporting a pillar. That most famous escutcheon. They are decapitated; their bronze heads looted after Mycenae's fall millennia ago. We climb to the top and as I sit there I think of the 10 thousand years of human occupation on the site. I imagine the forebear of Agamemnon sitting atop this hill in the evening light, lord of all he could see. Chief of his tribe, who, with a stone weapons, subdued a valley and built his first palace.

This resolute man is staring in awe at an object he has never seen before. It is a weapon made of Bronze. In it he sees the subjugation of all the tribes and he marvels at the craft of man that made this metal. That he should be at this juncture in time, that the Gods had chosen him to receive the means of his ultimate achievement, the means to build the Kingdom of Mycenae. In the bronze he sees the reflection of the moon and his reverie leads him to wonder what else man might achieve in time. Perhaps this man is Pelops himself.

All this came to me as I was sitting atop the bastion of Nafplio; after the 999 steps. Mycenae can be glimpsed in the far distance, across 15 miles of the fertile Argolid plain. These are not the only two bastions. There are many others. Kingdoms have come and gone and they have all jealously guarded this fertile land. Opposite from Nafplio on the other side of the Bay is Argos and above it the fortress of Larissa. Larissa is a conglomeration of Archaic, Classical, Byzantine, Frankish, Venetian and Turkish walls.

These three fortresses form a triangle. They challenge each other across the miles and across the centuries; standing in mute testimony to the ages of man and his constant striving for security. Each one is obsolete, it walls rendered useless by that very progress which Pelops foresaw when he gazed at the moon's reflection in the bronze.

They in turn are watched over by a fourth fortress. It too stands sentinel; but on a far flung mountaintop. Set amongst the craggy limestone it has no walls or gates, it needs no battlements or moat. It does not even need men. It is a fortress of steel and plastic of silicon and copper and it listens. It listens to a yet more distant shore, to far flung skies and oceans, listening for an enemy that may never come, that it does not even known.

Like a Russian doll it also is encapsulated by another even greater fortress. A network of ears of which our small station is but a part. A network of ears that spans the globe and stretches into the void. It's untraceable lines connecting Earth and satellite.

So we see that Pelops' ambition, hinted at on the surface of the Bronze, is achieved. Man has conquered the very skies over our heads and beyond, into the realm of the Gods themselves.