For the first time in my life, I saw Ancient Greek ruins today. I got a little prickly behind the eyelids. What a wonderful place to visit them. In Paestum there are three temples, plus many remains of a Roman town, and the area is not crowded. At one temple, visitors can climb right up and the surface and take a very close look. I learned so much more than I can summarize tonight, but here’s a taste.
One temple is thought to have been dedicated to Poseidon, but this is a guess.
It is largest of the three and the town itself was named after Poseidon, so it may be to him or it may be to another god. Another temple is dedicated to Zeus and Hera. The last, up on a hill, to Athena. Athena, I learned, is much m ore highly revered than what I was taught in school. Our guide explained her as so clever she was more clever than her father, Zeus, and she is more or less the goddess of strategy.
After the Greeks, the Romans moved in. Their road is still remarkably straight and smooth.
We learned about a building that was like a hospital. Patients would come and take psychedelics, and ask the gods to intervene for specific body parts. Meanwhile, the floor was covered with snakes because snakes can shed their skin, and people with ailments are longing for a new skin. A trench around the inside of the building was for leaving a small sacrifice if the gods did heal you. When excavated the trench has fingers, toes, and uteruses.
Parts of buildings show the Roman techniques of making a cement core surrounded by triangular bricks. The cement the Romans used actually gets stronger when moist with the salt air, and has not been able to be replicated.
The museum at the site was built by Mussolini who liked to make the connection between Italy and Ancient Rome. The artifacts in the museum are from Paestum. The most famous is the “Tomb of the Diver,” the oldest Greek painting that is not on a vase. It is a fresco that was used to decorate the lining of a tomb. “Lining,” means that the pictures faced the body, not the outside. The diver is thought to symbolize being at the gates of the end of the known world, diving into the unknown waters, and emerging at a pomegranate tree, symbolizing new life. Whether new life mean life in a heaven or life reincarnated is an unknown. The side panels represent going to symposium.
We left Paestum and drove to a farm that raises water buffalo for cheese making. After learning about how buffalo mozzarella is made, we had lunch which featured cheese, and then walked around and looked at the water buffalo. They are curious. They wallow and are odiferous. Their fur glistens with the mucous-like substance they produce that protects them from the “mixture” they wallow it. I liked seeing them, especially their expressive faces, and I felt like I could smell the farm for hours later.
We drove to Ravello to see a beautiful garden in the fading light. Some of the rose varieties being grown there date from thr 1800s and even earlier.
We stopped at the lovely cathedral dedicated to St. Pantaleone, a new one for me. The cathedral is 900 years old and has a beautiful bronze door by Trani, an amazing pulpit, and an ambo of the epistles with a mosaic of Jonah and the Whale that looks as fresh as if it had been laid yesterday.
The bus rides are challenging. There is a lot of honking and the twists and turns make me close my eyes for long stretches. I think the longest road trips are over now.
We had pizza and gelato for dinner. Can’t ever go wrong with that combination in Italy.
