Touching the Parthenon

 TOUCHING THE PARTHENON

                by Karen Brown

I wanted to touch the Parthenon, to run my fingers over its grand columns, to feel the distant pulse of a thriving civilization. But the savvy Greeks, sensitive to the touchy-feely longings of tourists like me, have put a rope fence around the Parthenon and placed inconspicuous guards here and there to spot violators, blow whistles at them, and remove them quickly─even if all they wanted were photos of themselves standing next to a resplendent piece of history.

They come to Athens by the planeload, the busload, the carload, the shoe load, these lovers of mythology and history, of gods and goddesses both fickle and powerful who left such enduring stories on the pages of history. My husband and I had come, too, after months of planning and hours of mind- and butt-numbing air travel.

We had barely settled our luggage in our hotel room, taking note that it was clean and comfortable, though otherwise not remarkable, when I peeked out the sliding glass opening onto the balcony, saw the cluttered balconies of the apartments across the street, heard the jumbled traffic below, and determined that we had not exactly hit the jackpot. A quieter room with a more scenic view would have suited us much better. I went back to my unpacking.

Then my husband opened the balcony door and said, “Hey, you’ve got to come and look at this.”  I dropped the walking shoes I was pulling out of the suitcase and went out; he pointed to the left. There, just a couple of football fields’ distance away, was the Parthenon, sunning itself in the warm Greek afternoon. Somehow, though I knew it had been standing perfectly still for centuries, it seemed to be strutting, maybe even preening a bit. We raided the minibar and sat on the balcony sipping vodka martinis, contemplating the meaning of life here in Athens as opposed to the meaning of life sitting on a stuffy transatlantic flight with a cabin temperature of 207 degrees.

Easy choice. Dionysus and Athena trumped Icarus.

This vision of the Parthenon would by itself have been worth the price of our three week trip to Greece. But there was much more to come, including some temptations I was hard pressed to resist−or not.

Next morning we got a closer view. Our climb up the acropolis rewarded us with unexpected sights of rocks and pillars still waiting, here and there around the hill, for some resolution to their fate. Archaeologists and engineers have still not determined where they go or what to do with them. Even at the base of the Parthenon, which I had imagined to be swept clean and pristine, enormous chunks of structures waited to be organized.

Up close, the Parthenon was even grander than I expected. I hardly blamed the little Japanese student who defied the guards and stepped over the rope to have her picture taken by a friend. I felt the need myself to sneak over the rope and skip (though septuagenarians are not noted for their agility) through the pillars until some scandalized guard tackled me and put me back in my place.

But my chances to communicate with the Parthenon were not over. Later, in the little museum filled with artifacts, statues, and pediments from the Parthenon, I found myself mere inches from a bit of 2,500-year-old history. Two thousand five hundred years. In the blink of an eye I could lift my hand and reach back to that famous war goddess Athena who, when she was born, sprang fully grown and fully armed from the head of her father, Zeus. (This lady really knew how to make an entrance.) And she knew how to live.

She aided her friends in battle, was credited for inventing the trumpet, the flute, the pot, the rake, the plow, the yoke, the bridle, the ship, and the chariot. She also excelled in the arts of cooking, spinning, and weaving. Once, in a jealous hissy over a bit of weaving, she turned the innocent Arachne into a spider. A girl with that many talents deserves some credit─and a temple. A temple that mere mortals 2,500 years later should not be allowed to touch.

The citizens of Athens must have known what they were doing, naming a city after a goddess who could turn them all into spiders. Building a proud temple to her must have seemed the expedient and politically correct thing to do. Besides, as they always seemed to be engaged in one war or another, a warrior goddess was surely a handy deity to suck up to.

* * * * *

Visitors all around me packed the museum, drifting from one exhibit to another, from one room to another, keeping their hands to themselves. I alone stood mesmerized in front of one commanding pediment, my fingertips drawn like magnets to its surface in defiance of that universal law of all museums: Do Not Touch the Exhibits. I heard one high school student warn another, “Don’t touch anything.” (Even the children were more disciplined than I.) Yet the force of my need to touch reduced me to defiance as my mind rejected the humiliation of hearing a guard’s whistle and admonishment.  I am a senior citizen; I should know better. “I forgot for a moment,” I’d lie when caught, “I don’t know what came over me.” But I did know what came over me: the irresistible longing to touch the history I had studied in school so many years ago. 

If I did reach up and touch this rock that was testing me so sorely (as I was almost certain to do), it would not be, as it turned out, the greatest crime I committed in Greece. Days later, at the original Olympic stadium, I stole more than a touch of my fingertips.

When people take something from a public place like Mount Olympus, they justify the theft with an “everybody does it” shrug. So when I reached down and picked up those two tiny stones, one for me and one for my riding teacher (who has a much better chance of getting to the Olympic Games than I ever did), I told myself the same thing. They were only stones, after all. Greece is a country rich in rocks and stones. These two little pebbles would never be missed.

They were, however, stones loaded with nagging guilt. One day, when the guilt has worn me down, I will have to send them back. Dear Greece, I am returning some rocks I stole from the Olympic stadium in 2007. So Sorry. I hope you didn’t miss them too much.

Though stolen stones can be returned, a stolen touch cannot. Yet a stolen touch is such a minor crime. It doesn’t remove anything from a country; it doesn’t diminish an exhibit. I looked at my hands in that little museum on the acropolis. They were clean−one tiny touch of my fingers wouldn’t make the pediment dirty.

I had loved the Parthenon for nearly sixty years, since I first studied about it in grade school. Those days, in a one-room school house in the Dust Bowl, I never dared to dream that I would one day be here. So close. Back then I had no hope of ever visiting Athena. If she wanted me, she would have to come and get me.

But at last those pictures in my history book had come alive. I had crossed the years from being the farm girl in the homemade chicken-feed-sack dress to climbing the acropolis and standing inches from Athena’s temple, temple of the goddess of so many things, including my beloved fine arts and literature. I tried to picture Athena in a dress made from a chicken feed sack. No, that could never happen, not to a goddess. Unless my mother made the dress.

My mother was a fine seamstress. She made her own patterns, cut them out, and sewed them up into pretty little dresses for school and church. If anyone could make a dress fit for a goddess, my mother could have. She could have made look-alike dresses for me and Athena. I could have been a little Dust Bowl goddess and turned the dirt storms into rain. And I could have changed my hated middle name from Bethene to Bethena. Athena and Bethena, twin goddesses.

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My husband planned this trip to Greece, bought the airplane tickets, and made sure our passports were current. He had been here years earlier while he was in the Navy and wanted me to see this special place, especially the Parthenon and the ruins of Ephesus in Turkey. Yet it was fun to stand and pretend that Athena had finally plucked me from my childhood fantasies and brought me here herself. And why not? Fantasies are not restricted to the young.

And neither are small crimes. I had to touch the Parthenon, you see, because the Parthenon had touched me first; my hand had only to reach out, to take the chance of getting busted by a guard. . . .  

At last, without even looking around to see if I would be observed, I lifted my hand and ran my fingers over the rough surface of the pediment, the forbidden face of history. I pretended that Athena saw me and approved. At least she didn’t turn me into a spider.

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