Leonard Cohen bought a house on
Hydra with an inheritance from his
grandmother: thus are famous hippies
made – with inherited money.
— Tanya Gold, p54
High life
Taki
Athens
I am struggling up the slippery marble steps
of the Acropolis with the Geldofs and the
Bismarcks. We gaze upwards towards the
façade of the Parthenon, whose simplic-
ity has excited architects and conquerors
for 2,000 years. There are no straight lines,
everything curving upwards towards the
centre. The whole structure tilts slightly
towards the west end, the side you first see
as you arrive, hot and winded. Yet every
column seems perfectly straight, an opti-
cal illusion as real as the glory that once
was Athens.
The crowds are shabby and rather ugly
— fat people speaking Spanish or Chinese,
their children munching candy and ignor-
ing the most beautiful structure ever built by
man. The Parthenon’s subtleties are many:
it arches, leans, swells and breathes. It also
served as a place to make love in when I was
a youngster. (It was open to the public but
there were no tourists back then. Under the
Athenian moonlight, mild breezes blowing,
you had to be really gauche with women not
to get lucky.)
Phidias, the man who oversaw the Acrop-
olis project, was a friend of Pericles, and the
gold plates, with which he covered the gown
of the statue of the virgin goddess Athena,
were worth about 25 million bucks in today’s
moolah. (They were sold in no time to pay for
mercenaries.) The tiny Winged Victory tem-
ple is as beautiful as they come, desecrated
long ago by the hated Turks. The Venetian
Morosini fired on the sacred site in 1687, as
horrible an act as there is — and he was sup-
posed to be civilised.
As Geldof expounds his theories and won-
ders how the Athenians, who prided them-
selves on their cultural superiority, passed
down their wisdom, he suddenly changes tack
and tells us about a popular quiz programme
for morons. When the panel is asked what
Hitler’s first name was ‘Paddy hits the button
first and blurts out “Heil”.’ All five of us col-
lapse in laughter, but then it’s back to culture.
Low life
Jeremy Clarke
My luck had to run out one of these fine
days. Everybody’s does sooner or later. I’ve
had a fantastic run — I’ve been lucky all of
my life — and shall continue to count myself
fortunate. But being suddenly out of luck
makes one feel unmasked, which does take
a bit of getting used to. Such were the mor-
bid thoughts running through my head as
I sat in the eye clinic waiting room, already
packed by 8.30, waiting to see Mr Doyle.
It was my third visit in two weeks. They’dWhen Byron first came here in 1810, Ath-
ens had 10,000 denizens. The poet was at once
buoyed in spirit but depressed by the ruins he
saw. He launched a bitter attack against Elgin
for his ‘vandalism’, calling him a plunderer
and a grave robber. Byron would ride east
to Sounion and admire the Temple of Posei-
don and its Doric columns, taking about eight
hours each way. It now takes an hour by car
and four hours if you sail. ‘Place me on Soun-
ion’s marbled steep,/ Where nothing, save the
waves and I,/ May hear our mutual murmurs
sweep.’ He was 22 and had 14 years to live,
dying in Missolonghi in 1824 after his return
to Greece. ‘For standing on a Persian’s grave,/
I cannot deem myself a slave.’
While lost in Byronic thoughts, I noticed
three redheaded young women speaking
with American accents and taking selfies as
they posed in a stripper’s come-on manner.
I approached them with Leopold Bismarck
and introduced myself as a morality police-
man safeguarding sacred grounds from for-
eign sacrilege. I’ve never seen three more
terrorised beings. ‘This is simply a warning,’
I said. ‘The Acropolis is not a strip joint.’ They
breathed easier and were about to thank me
when I told them I was a simple tourist like
them and was pulling their leg. They got
angry and left rather abruptly. Bolle thought
it quite funny. I wonder what Byron would
have made of it?
Greece for me is territorial, but for
many foreigners it is cultural and artistic.
Hellenistic culture lasted until the final
triumph of Christianity around 500 ad. It
was both universal and centred on the indi-
vidual. Every time I ascend that sacredrock, I go ape about my Greekness. It’s
a strange thing. It is not necessary to become
Roman to understand Julius Caesar. But
to understand Aristotle is, in a small way,
to become a Greek thinker. But how does
a person achieve wisdom? That is a Socrat-
ic question. It has to do with the spirit.
How does one become good? That was a
Platonic question. Easy, says the ancient
philosopher Taki. One cannot, at least
according to Plato. Until Jesus Christ
came along, that is. See what I mean when
I say that Hellenism was over when Christi-
anity came along.
As all Greek-speaking readers know, one
shows respect by addressing someone in the
second-person plural. The singular is used
either when you speak to people you are
extremely familiar with, or in order to show
lack of esteem. When one of the housekeep-
ers on the island asked me how the mother
of my children was, in the plural, I replied
that I had left my wife and was now look-
ing for a younger one. The housekeeper
looked appalled and said to me in the sin-
gular: ‘You’re an idiot.’ When I told Alexan-
dra this, she said that Eleni, the housekeeper,
was a very wise woman with good taste. (One
can’t win against these females.)
On my last night in Athens, I sat up on
a roof with the Geldofs and Bismarcks and
reminisced about a great week that ended
among the ruins of the Acropolis. I am now
a ruin also.‘Hi — I’m on the slain.’