Once a Catholic…

I had no plans of posting anything religious during this trip; I’ve always considered myself more “spiritual” than religious, and I view the Holy Bible as a good book as opposed to the good book, but my Catholic upbringing came into play by being in this area and served me well. So here’s a short theology/history lesson, though the following is not the gospel according to anyone, and merely my interpretation of the story.

Our story begins at Arios Pagos, also known as Mars Hill. It is a huge marble hill directly to the west of the Acropolis of Athens, and I suppose you could also call it Council Rock. The elders of Athens used to meet here, discuss important issues, and hold trials for wrongdoings. It’s also a great place to see the sun set.

So the story goes that after the Apostle Paul had his revelation, he decided that he should go to Greece and try to convert the people he viewed as “pagans” to Christianity. He hopped off the boat, took a long walk into Athens, and became increasingly upset by the gaudily-painted idols he saw everywhere he looked. Paul made a beeline for Mars Hill because I guess someone tipped him off that there would be a lot of influential people chillin’ up there. He then proceeded to give his famous sermon, and did actually manage to convert a few people, though most remained unaffected. Eventually Paul moved on to the city of Corinth to try his luck there, where he found more like-minded people. He settled in Corinth for about a year and a half (circa 51 C.E.,) and had a rather successful tent-making business, before becoming disheartened with the locals’ attitudes and left. After moving safely to Ephesus in modern day Turkey, he wrote a few letters to his former neighbors telling them what he really thought of them. Amen.

When I was an altar boy, I never bothered to check a map to find out where Corinth was, although I did finally look it up when I was reading some ancient tragedy at university. Corinth was a fairly important and wealthy city in the good old days due to the shipping industry. Below is a picture of the Corinth Canal, built in the late 1800’s, and designed by the same fellow who designed the Suez canal. It’s about 6 1/2 kilometers long, about 21 meters wide at the base, and the sides are around 63 meters high. Prior to its construction, ships had to sail around the Peloponnesian peninsula, which took a lot of time and money. Later on, the Greeks devised a way to unload the ships on one side of the isthmus, and drag the empty ships and their cargo on wheeled platforms to the other gulf where they would reload them and send them on their way. This could only be done if the ships were rather small, and even after the Canal was completed, most cruise ships still have to circumnavigate the Peloponnese.