April 25, 2012 – Gortys and Hiking

Or Gortyn, or Gortis, or any number of variants.  Whatever it is, we ditched the GPS today.  It is proving almost worthless except for finding the bigger towns.  I suspect this has to do with spelling, but the GPS doesn’t recognize any of the versions of town names that are on any of our maps.  Fortunately, all the villages are very well marked with road signs, so if you have a decent map it is easy to navigate by tracking your position from village to village – sort of like subway stops.

As you might have guessed we went to ancient Gortys this morning.  

We started at the main tourist site, with a display of the many statues that were found at the site.  Apparently, there are more to see in the Heraklion museum.

The main site where all the tour buses stop has an Odeon (small theatre) that was once a Greek construction and, as usual, was later added to by the Romans.   You can clearly see the older ashlar blocks with the newer Roman brick and mortar right beside. 

 

This is the Odeon, although for some reason, it is called an Odeum here in Greece, which kind of takes the pun out of Ian's jokes.  It's spelled with an "N" in Greek. . .

Ashlar, (Hellenic and on the left) added to by brick (Roman, and on the right.

 

 Inside the passage that leads around the back of the Odeon there is inscribed on the wall the Gortyn Law Code that was in force in the Greek times (5^th C BC).  It is one of the earliest written law codes surviving.

The actual Code of Gortys.  It is influenced by moth tribal and Minoan Law, but is the first attempt that we know of to write actual statutes.  You read one line left to right, and the next line right to left.  Ian couldn't quite figure it out.

The code is on the left wall.

There is also the partial ruin of the church called Agios Tito, which is a Fourth Century Church built over the remains of St. Tito, who was a disciple of the Apostle Paul and the First Bishop of Crete.

This is an amazingly photogenic church, and absolutely full of doves and pigeons!

However, there is much more to the site than where the tour buses stop.   It was a large city and Roman provincial capital of Crete in its day.  We had a great time walking through olive groves and flocks of sheep to view the Pritorium, baths and Temple of Apollo. 

 

The Praetorum, from which all of Crete and the Province of Libya as well were ruled under Roman times.	a pile of pottery fragments
A tomb with benches on top.  We saw some like this in Hierapolis	Some fellow tourists

Immediately across the road from the main site there is a “Monumental” Olive Tree.  Apparently there are a number of these ancient and venerable trees classed as monuments.  This one had grown up around the remains of a Roman era column.  Some of the trees are claimed to be over one thousand years old.

We also went to view a tomb called Agia Deka.  This is the tomb of the 10 Martyrs.  It honours 10 Christians who were martyred under the reign of Decius in 280 AD.  We also went to see the 12^th C church called Agia Deka (Deka for 10 after the 10 Martyrs close by), but it was closed.

 

The tomb of the ten martyrs

The church at Aghia Deko

After that we had excellent ice cream and then returned to our cabin.  There are a number of hikes around the resort, including one to the Monastery of Agia Nikolaos that was only supposed to be about 1.5 hours.  It goes by a crystal clear “lake’ that reminds me of a something that might be made in a Municipal park.  Somehow, we took the wrong turn down the goat path (literally) and ended up circumnavigating the lake.  When we ended up back where we started we tried again and went the right way this time, eventually getting to the Monastery, meeting a monk who was shooing goats out of his garden and getting in to see the small 14^th C church where the priest made sure I took my hat off, and Margaret had to take hers off too.  The icons that lined the walls had such expressive faces.

We were amazed by all the guy wires holding this fence up, some at throat level, others at ankle level, and none of them marked.  I made jokes about the Cretan resistance movement in WWII.  Then we found out we were walking on the wrong side of the fence!	The beautiful countryside we walked through.
The lake we walked around.  It might have been more than once.	The monastery we walked to, across the gorge we are walking in.  This is the new part that is shown in the picture.

Very hot, as it was 28 degrees and our path climbed 490 metres, both times we did it, we returned to our cabin and then had a swim in the blessedly cool pool.