Road signs, vipers, and democracy

We rented our car for two days, so we still had one day left to explore the island. We thought we’d go in a more urban direction, and decided to check out the historic capital city of Plaka. The drive was about 20 minutes long, past stunning coastlines and hairpin turns.

That turn wasn’t the most impressive, but I was whiteknuckling it on the ones that were, so the camera stayed in my pocket. I’m not going to lie, it felt like I was in a Bond movie. Something about sharp turns, gorgeous views, tiny cars, and road signs I can’t understand.

On Sasha’s advice, we parked outside of the city and walked up. As a rusty stick shift driver, I was very grateful not to to have to navigate the old world cobblestone streets.

Well, at least not in our car.

We, very intentionally, haven’t been making a lot of sightseeing plans. With two kids determining our amount of leisure time, seeing anything is a win. So I didn’t have much of an idea about what was in Plaka before we arrived. But from the front porch of the cafe we stopped at, we could see a Byzantine-era church and castle overlooking the city.

Both are about a thousand years old, and are essentially modern history on this island. There are several artifacts from 4,000 BC (!) showing that not only was this island inhabited, but the heart of an art-creating, pottery-making, and eventually coin-minting and parchment-writing civilization. In fact, the Milo in Venus de Milo is because the sculpture was found here. It was made around 100 BC, discovered by a local farmer in 1820, and is actually an image of Aphrodite, not Venus. But the name stuck. Tomatoes/Tomahtoes.

It’s easy to write off the Greek islands as sleepy offshoots of the mainland, but they have a rich history all of their own. They likely played a (if not the) major role in why the ancient Athenians were such a dominant force in early western society. The book I read before this trip makes a case that although a lot of the early Greek innovations were borrowed from their neighbors, the Greeks themselves were the singular inventors of democracy. The importance and significance of that development was a major advancement of human civilization, and it’s almost a cliche to say how revolutionary that was.

In all known corners of the world at the time and beforehand, community leaders, large and small, were granted their status through violence or birthright. We now take them for granted, but the thought of elections, or even civil discussions, about who should lead a community were absolutely unheard of at the time.

And how did this happen? The author makes a pretty convincing case that the coastal makeup of the country created the environment for all of the Ancient Greek advancements. The idea of a modern Greek nation-state is relatively new (less than 200 years). Previous to that, it was a loose federation of communities that spoke a common language. In ancient times, the concept of race was not well-developed, and being “Greek” simply meant believing in a common set of Greek values (individual freedom, merit-based advancement, peaceful cooperation towards common goals, appreciation of the arts, etc.). Sound familiar? There’s a reason that America’s early leaders chose Greek columns for the DC architecture.

Although the footprint of Greece (then and now) is smaller than all but 10 US states, it contains the highest ratio of coastline to landmass. As is often the case with coastal societies, the Ancient Greeks were excellent seafarers, and traded with all of their neighbors. This resulted in the constant ebb and flow of both people and ideas. Unifying such a migratory and flourishing civilization would be nearly impossible with a strong-man type monarchy, not that people didn’t try. But the governmental structure that really took hold was an open, direct democracy that allowed for multiple voices in leadership from all of the different geographical and cultural corners of early Greece.

Because the Ancient Greek population was different than ours (thousands of people vs hundreds of millions), their democracy was different, too. It was a direct democracy, meaning that Athenian citizens were chosen at random to join the Ancient Greek version of a Congress or Parlaiment. They served one year terms, and debated everything from the price of bread to whether or not they should go to war. And in addition to this, their court system had juries of hundreds of people for each case! Since there were only a few thousand people in Athens at the time, everyone had several terms in Congress and served on countless more juries. So it was nearly impossible to go about your day without direct involvement in civil leadership. Out of that, the Greek inventions of oration, persuasive writing, and drama (which was essentially persuasive writing masquerading as a fictional story) evolved. And thus western civilization developed because the early Greek people were spread out over the same Aegean Sea that I dipped my toes in earlier today. I’m not worthy.

Woah. I think this post started out at a cafe with a pretty view.

There we are.

Without much of a plan for the day, Aimee and I thought it might be nice to hike up to the castle. Our thighs were finally starting to recover from the Acropolis.

The view alone was worth the effort.

That second photo marked the end of the hike for our stroller. The cobblestone steps every six feet were doing a number on the wheels and our son. Time to strap Quinn on to mama. We hoped the stroller would still be there when we returned, but carrying it any further wasn’t an option.

Mimi didn’t mind getting a free ride, either.

Just like the Acropolis, the hike was worth it!

But we probably would have worn some better footwear if we knew what we were biting off.

By this point, you probably have a flight search going in another browser window. As you should. This place is impossibly beautiful.

The beach in the center of the last photo was the one we drove to yesterday. Delightful from any angle.

We had an early dinner after nap time, which meant that we still had about 3-4 hours remaining to engage a toddler before we all fell asleep. Where’s the metro when you need it? But what Milos lacks in choo choos, it makes up for with stunning beaches.

When I reserved our car, the rental agent gave me a map with some suggestions. She crossed off two large areas on the east and west shores. She didn’t give much of an explanation, but our guidebook says that it’s populated with the Milos Viper. I’m going to take the book’s word for it. But the agent did mark off a couple other areas that are less likely to result in a trip to the hospital.

One of them was Sarakiniko beach. Photos of the gray volcanic rock make up some of the most inconic images of the Greek islands. Which is good, since our photos don’t really do it justice.

You really just need to see it in person. Pretend I didn’t say anything about a viper.