Islands in a Turquoise Sea

Islands in a Turquoise Sea Picture a great trireme, three banks of glistening oars slapping gently in an oily sea while a great square mainsail decorated with the stylised head of the supreme god Zeus or the sea-god Poseidon, flaps gently in the evening breeze. On the port-side lies a rocky island, perhaps it is Ogygia the home of fair Calypso, or Aeaea, island of the enchantress Circe, waiting to waylay, in a Cycladic paradise, the wily – and often gullible – Odysseus. Ever since I read Homer’s Odyssey many years ago, and listened to the lyrics of Tales of Brave Ulysses by the rock group Cream:

"And the colours of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips"

my mind has tended to conjure up this image whenever I think of the Greek Islands. One can dream of splashing along a pristine foam-fringed beach where "… you see a girls brown body dancing through the turquoise" or to dive into the crystal-clear waters where "tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers". Of course today the reality is quite different with many of these fascinating islands now overflowing with tourists and the modern trappings that come with them, although traces of these islands’ classical heritage do, of course, still remain.

hat in ancient times invoked images of treacherous Scylla and Charybdis, or the ‘Clashing Rocks’ that so impeded both Odysseus and Aeneas, as well as Jason and his Argonauts during their quest for the Golden Fleece. There are about a 100 islands, excluding the large island of Crete, grouped geographically over 1000 kilometres into six archipelagos in the Aegean, Ionian and Myrtoan Seas. The easternmost island, Kastellorizo, lies just a couple of kilometres or so off the small Turkish Mediterranean port of Kaş with which there is little contact. The westernmost island is Corfu in the Ionian Sea off the Albanian coast and for 50 years in the 19th century was in the British Empire, even producing its own postage stamps with an image of Queen Victoria. For a student of classical mythology many of the islands feature prominently in the Greek myths. Delos was the birth place of Apollo; the inhabitants of Aegina were created from ants by Zeus at the request of King Aeacus who had seen his original people destroyed by Hera; Euboea was the island of Posiedon, God of the Sea and Ithaka was the home of Odysseus and his wife Penelope. For the student of classical poetry Lesbos was the island of the romantic poetess Sappho; "

Ah, what art thou but a fern-frond Wet with blown spray from the river                              Diffident, lovely, sequestered,                                                                                                Frail on the rock-ledge?                                                                                                   Yet, are we not for one brief day,                                                                                 While the sun sleeps on the mountain,                                                                           Wild-hearted lover and loved one,                                                                                   Safe in Pan’s keeping?

Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, was born and practiced on Cos; Rhodes had its Colossus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; Santorini was, perhaps, the site of Atlantis and Salamis saw the greatest sea battle of ancient times which guaranteed the Greeks freedom from Persian suzerainty. In recent times

Hydra was where the modern Greek navy had its beginnings during the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s; Corfu still has a cricket pitch, a relic of the 19th century British occupation and on Skyros the British poet Rupert Brooke was buried on the eve of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 in:

"some corner of a foreign field That is forever England."

One of the most interesting islands is Santorini in the Cyclades. Sometime around 1500BC a massive volcanic eruption blew out the centre of what, until then, had been, more or less, a circular island. Today the result of that eruption has left a fascinating multi-coloured rim around a turquoise bay. Small, whitewashed villages cling precariously to the volcanic breccia overlooking Nea Kameni, a newly forming scoria cone in the centre of the bay, evidence that the fires of Hephaestus have not yet gone out. That Santorini was the site of ancient Atlantis is a theory first advanced by the Greek archaeologist Professor Spyridon Marinatos who excavated, and met his untimely end, at Akrotiri, a pre-eruption Minoan settlement on the island. Professor Marinatos suggested that the legend of Atlantis quite possibly stemmed from the eruption which, along with the succeeding tsunami, completely devastated not only Santorini, but the surrounding islands and parts of coastal Crete. The devastation of the eruption was such that the early Minoan civilisation on Crete suffered an irrecoverable decline and soon after was assimilated by the Mycenaeans from the Mainland. A apocryphal story relating to the founding of the ancient city of Troy could be related to this tsunami. It is said that a prince named Dardanus escaped from a great flood which swept over his home island of Samothrace by clinging to a raft of wood which carried him to the Kingdom of Teucer, Dardanus married Teucer’s daughter, founded a city on the slopes of Mount Ida which he named Dardania from which was derived the name Dardanelles, the strait of water separating Europe from Asia. Dardanos had a grandson named Tros from which the city of Troy took its name.

Santorini, with its two main villages of Thira and Ia is justmade for walking. Typical whitewashed Cycladic houses grace the narrow, steep lanes. At each corner something new springs into view. Ia, particularly, is most interesting and a photographers’ paradise. Part of the old village was destroyed in an earthquake early in the 20th century and the ruined buildings still remain, giving the village an air of mystery. Panoramas across the bay, particularly at sunset, are among the best in the Mediterranean and to sit in a tavern in the fading. rosy light of the setting sun with a plate of kalamari, a Greek salad and a glass of retsina, contemplating the words of Lord Byron, epitomises all that is appealing in these classical Mediterranean isles:

"Where burning Sappho loved and sung,                                                                               Where grew the arts of war and peace,                                                                       Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!                                                                   Eternal summer gilds them yet,                                                                                       But all, except their sun, is set."

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

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