The Athenian statesman, general and orator Pericles is generally regarded as presiding over the Golden Age of Greece, when Athens was the first among equals of the Greek city-states — ruling the seas in a series of wars; bestowing democracy on freemen; encouraging the arts and literature; and building a series of public works projects that are still with us today in the remnants of the buildings of the Acropolis that include the Parthenon, temple of the city’s patroness, Athena, goddess of wisdom and war in a just cause.But after some 30 years it was all over in 629 B.C. when a plague — perhaps typhus — ripped through Athens, killing Pericles and several members of his family. It was the beginning of the end for Athens, too, which became involved in a long struggle with archrival Sparta.
People often ask me about my fascination with history and in particular the Greeks and Alexander the Great, the Greco-Macedonian conqueror who would come along 300 years later and avenge all the Greeks suffered at the hands of the Persians, their foreign rivals, including the burning of that Acropolis. Let’s be frank here, shall we? People find my fascination with history and the Greeks at best quaint and at worst out of touch. They don’t just ask me about it, they ridicule me about it.
Who’s laughing now?…
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Read MoreThursday, July 20 marks the anniversary of the birth of Alexander the Great in 356 B.C. in Pella, the capital of ancient Macedon, now Macedonia, a region in northern Greece.
Alexander has been an obsession of mine since childhood, when I read the legends associated with his conquests of the Persian Empire in 331 B.C. From Alexander, I learned how to navigate difficult parents and how to lead from the front – skills that would later serve me well in grappling with equally challenging bosses. Thanks to Alexander, I learned to work through pain, illness, grief. I figured if he could fight a battle with a punctured lung, I could gut life out. ...
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Read MoreAs fabulous as the Times Journeys’ “The Legacy of Alexander the Great” was thus far, I still wasn’t feeling Alexander. Athens had never been a home to him, even after he sent the city 300 Persian shields – a brutal souvenir of the victorious opening gambit in his quest to conquer the Persian Empire, the Battle of the Granicus. Plutarch – and tour leader David Ratzan – tell us that Alexander signed the tribute “Alexander, son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Spartans,” the Spartans rarely taking part in anything the other city-states, especially archrival Athens, did.
You get the sense that perhaps Alexander was doing a bit of kissing up to the Athenians, who saw him, Philip and the rest of the Macedonians as rough-hewn arrivistes. (It’s the reason that Oliver Stone cleverly had the Greeks speak with British accents in his movie “Alexander” and the Macedonians speak with Irish ones, the idea being that the Greeks looked down at the Macedonians just as the British have looked down on the Irish.) ...
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Read MoreOur Times Journey group of Alexandrians no sooner got acclimated to Athens than it was time to bid the city – and its mesmerizing views of the Acropolis – a brief farewell and head north to Thessaloniki, about an hour’s flight, or the distance between New York and Washington D.C.
Named for a younger half-sister of Alexander the Great – his father, the crafty, lusty Philip II, having loved much but apparently none too well – Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece but the main one in the misty, highland Macedonian region that was once Philip’s kingdom.
At Athens International Airport, I scored a small, hefty, well-molded head of the Acropolis Museum Alexander in a gift shop, plus a free copy of the “Greece is….Thessaloniki” magazine, with an Andy Warhol Alexander on the cover, so I was pumped. ...
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Read MoreEven casual readers of this blog will have surmised my passion for the Greeks in general and Alexander the Great in particular. So when I saw an ad for Times Journeys’ “The Legacy of Alexander the Great” tour on the back page of The New York Times one late winter day and learned that there was one single room left for the late summer voyage, I jumped at the chance.
Not. Even though it was Alexander, I kept finding excuses. Work, home, fear of flying, money, did I mention work? Besides, I needed the money to self-publish the second book in my series, “The Games Men Play.” I needed a sign. Then I got one in the form of a contract for the book. ...
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Read MoreMichael Phelps won his 21st gold medal and the U.S. men’s swimming team took its fourth consecutive gold in the 4-x-200 meter relay Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro. In all four relays, the common denominator was Phelps and longtime teammate and rival Ryan Lochte. He and Phelps swam the third and anchor legs respectively. They are now the grand old men of swimming at 32 and 31. Seems like only yesterday they were teenagers crowned in laurel and giggling on the podium in Athens.
Phelps, who’s had his share of problems with alcohol, has a newfound maturity with fiancée Nicole Johnson and baby Boomer (so adorable). Some things, however, never change. Lochte, noted for his, shall we say, striking sartorial choices, dyed his hair ice-blue for the Rio Games. Instead it looks platinum.
Why do thoroughly gorgeous people tamper with Greco-Roman beauty?
Read MoreA patron at a restaurant I frequent finds Donald Trump’s relationship with his older daughter, Ivanka, peculiar. He seems to be closer to her than to his wife, Melania, she has said.
Jill Filipovic – a lawyer and journalist who’s the author of the forthcoming “The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness,” offers an explanation: A man wants a nurturer in a wife, who will care for his needs, and an independent-minded, strong woman in a daughter, who, after all, reflects him. I myself saw this with my own father and I’ve seen this with every man I’ve known who had daughters. Whether or not he was a feminist, married or divorced, gay or straight, he always wanted his daughter or daughters to succeed and thus women to have opportunities and pay equal to that of men. ...
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