Next, my advance reading about Sicily had prepared me to see some of the most complete Greek ruins still in existence – right there, not in Athens, but in Sicily. The Island had been a Greek possession during much of the classical Greek period. Plato had walked the streets of Syracuse where we toured, teaching in the forum there, possibly trudging across the very stones I was walking on. Dionysus I, a tyrant ruler of Syracuse, had prevailed upon Plato to come to Syracuse. Dionysus hoped Plato could teach his nephew and brother-in-law to be “philosopher-kings,” like the ones Plato had written about in The Republic. Plato was very doubtful that these young men could be taught wisdom. But he came to Syracuse and tried nonetheless. However, he soon had a falling out with Dionysus, was imprisoned, and was almost sold into slavery. Only his followers’ incessant pleadings on his behalf eventually won his release. He came back to Syracuse a second time to teach for Dionysus II – but fell out with this ruler in turn, over freedom-of-speech issues. This time he was only put under house arrest for a while. But all-in-all, Plato did spend a fair amount of time in what is now Italy, something that surprises even people who are familiar with Plato’s works.
The Greek amphitheaters were mostly carved right out of the Island’s substrate of rock. Sicily is one big, rocky, volcanic island. So it wasn’t necessary to haul big slaps into place to make the circular tiers of seating and the stage. The raw material was already there.
Some of the most notable Greek ruins are in Syracuse itself. But it was hard for members of our group to focus on the ancient ruins. The big draw in Syracuse is the wild pussycats. They are everywhere, poised on every vendor’s canopy, sunning on the forum steps, prowling where their larger relatives, the lions, were once led out to attack and do battle. The population’s willingness to communally feed and care for the wild cats may go back to the time of Plato himself. As I looked at the cats and their kittens reclining everywhere, it seemed as if they might have had more wisdom passed down to them than those numbskull human relatives of the Dionysus dynasty.
Then the Romans ousted the Greeks on Sicily and the “glory that was Greece” was replaced by the “grandeur that was Rome.” Our guide pointed out how, in Syracuse for example, a Roman arena would be built less than half a block away from a Greek amphitheater. The two kinds of structures looked essentially the same to me. Both were circular tiers of seating surrounding a performance ring. But our guide said if you looked more closely, you could see that the two structures reflected two entirely different worldviews and cultures.
The Greek amphitheater was built for the intellect and for enrichment. It was the site of plays and choruses and lectures. However the adjacent Roman arena was built “just for cruelty.” Our guide pointed to the runways that winged the Roman theater – where the lions would be prodded out from their pens in the excavated basement under the arena. It seems the lions had even less of a chance of survival than the gladiators or Christians. The lions were brought over from Africa and starved in wretched conditions until the moment they were released for the crowd’s entertainment. Hardly any survived more than one very short bout in the arena.
But the Romans were great builders. Their plumbing achievements are especially famous. Many of their water ducts remain in use to this day, although since the pipes were made of lead, it’s doubtful that one would want to drink too much of the water that passes through these pipes.
But one of our tours took us through the “Frigidarium” – the old Roman bath in Catania. A cathedral has been built on top of it, but the essential plumbing remains in the sub-basements of the church. The pipes down there were designed to carry cool water from local aquifers and feed a reservoir, which now serves to keep the cathedral cool through the hot summer months. It was a little eerie, going down the dim fire escape stairways to this old spa, inching along the catwalks overlooking the pool. I could almost see the Roman wealthy, languoring there, 2,000 years ago.
The city of Catania was itself an interesting contrast with the rest of Sicily. A lot of Sicily’s towns are similar mazes of ancient, stone-paved alleyways. But a lot of Catania is much more modern. That’s because Catania is right underneath Mt. Etna, the most active volcano in Europe. Our guide said the residents of Catania are kept busy sweeping ashes off of every surface, the spumings from Mt. Etna. However, I didn’t notice any particular residues about the place the day I was there. But several times in the 20th century, a large part of Catania was buried under ash and lava. And the residents had to rebuild their city. In Sicily, when you want to call someone “pigheaded, stubborn,” you call him “Catanian.” That’s because through the ages, the place has been destroyed so often – and yet the survivors always rebuild on the same spot.
Now big swathes of the city are glitteringly new. The main street is a broad boulevard lined with gleaming plate glass. But always looming behind is the outline of ancient Mt. Etna.
It’s not just one fumarole. Etna is actually a chain of several hundred craters. The volcano was especially active while we were there, more active than it has been in decades. A new crater was opening up, spilling lava down one of its steep sides. The molten lava pouring from this crater was added to the lava pouring from three adjacent craters. We would all angle to get good views of the Mountain at night. These four orange-glowing rivers would shift and re-channel, looking as if they were trying to form different letters of the alphabet there on the mountainside. For a minute, the lava streams looked as if they were forming a big letter “M.” Then the next moment, they converged to look like an enormous “R.” It was as if the mountain were trying to spell out a message for us. Everyone took photos of the spectacle, but I don’t think any of these night shots came out.
(By the way, when the tour was over, our group departed from the Catania airport. When I got home, I read that the very next day after our departure, that airport had been temporarily closed due to the heavy amounts of smoke and ash coming from Mt. Etna. It would have been too dangerous for the planes to attempt any take-off in the ceiling-zero conditions.)
But as I say, while I was there, I didn’t notice anything particularly noxious about Etna. (The only respiratory distress I suffered was when we were touring the ruin of a Greek temple in Agrigento. A man was cleaning the stones of the temple that day, using a scrub brush and buckets of benzene! Maybe he needed to scrub away spray paint graffiti?)
Our group was bused out to Etna one day, and invited to climb a little way up the mountain - on a facet away from where the molten lava was spilling. We were also told we could collect as many granite rocks as we wanted as souvenirs. The mountain just keeps tossing out more and more. Some of the ones we found were still warm, a sign of their recent escape from the nether regions. These were all spongy-looking, nondescript rocks though. It seems Mt. Etna doesn’t form any obsidian – the lovely black-glass rocks I was hoping to see.
“Obsidian my midnight gleams…”
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