The contract has an interesting background. When first proposed to the Government back in Junta days it was left pending. Although it was known that the present government was studying it, and various pleas and protests were made, the opposition did not seriously organize itself because the area was protected by the Archaeological Service under Law 4171. In August the Archaeological Council duly rejected the proposed contract. A little later, however, during a soporific session of summer parliament, Law 159/75 was passed with unbecoming haste and, it has been suggested, a certain amount of deviousness. This law amended the earlier one by stating that the three economic ministries (Industry, Interior and Finance) could grant contracts to major industrial projects without consulting the Archaeological Council. On October 20, Europa Nostra, the most prestigious organization dedicated to the preservation of European cultural heritage, added its plea to those of the Council of Europe, UNESCO, the Elliniki Etakia and archaeologists from all over the world.
All this was to no avail. The Government gave its approval and while doing so dismissed alternative proposals for shifting the industrial complex elsewhere. (The Elliniki Etakia suggested the island of Proti further up the coast which, for a few extra million spent on building breakwaters, might have proved suitable.) The Government, one supposes, much in the spirit of telling a coronary patient that he would be worse off if he had cancer, added the consoling thought that an industrial complex would . damage the area less than tourist development. Finally, the Government dismissed the archaeologists’ objections as ‘romantic*.
The next day the entire Archaeological Council resigned, declaring that since the new law left them powerless when it came to major industrial projects, their functions were superfluous. (According to the new law, if a house owner in an archaeological area wishes to excavate in order to install plumbing, permission must be obtained from the archaeological service; on the other hand, if an oil company wants to put up a refinery on the Acropolis, permission is unnecessary.)
Although archaeologists have been the main defenders of Pylos-Navarino, the issue is not merely archaeological. The Palace of Nestor may be the best preserved Mycenaean palace in existence but it is contained within a few hundred square metres north of the bay. Nor is the issue merely Homer’s ‘sandy Pylos’, or that the area was the site of the great naval battle of the Peloponnesian War immortalized by Thucydides, or that it is only the site of the battle of 1827 when the combined naval forces of Russia, France and Britain sank the Turkish fleet and assured the independence of Greece. The issue is all these things together — and more. The Navarino area is romantic; the bay, in the opinion of many, the most beautiful in the Mediterranean, and, as yet, it is unspoiled. The surrounding countryside is as lovely as exists in our country and the town of Pylos, designed, and in part built, by the French in the early nineteenth century, is exquisite.
There is no point in talking about ‘landscaping’ steel factories and planting hedgerows around cement plants. Industrial development is still not advanced enough to prevent urban blight and sprawl which inevitably accompanies it. To destroy irreplaceably beautiful landscapes or monuments of the past to satisfy present needs that may be satisfied by other means is unforgivable. And if you want to see something unforgivable, just go up to Elefsis and take a long, hard look. Pylos-Navarino can still be saved but those with a social conscience must raise their voices and join the protest. We need industry. The location of proposed projects, however, must be carefully studied by economists and conservationists alike.
Wonders of Kifissia
ALTHOUGH the suburb of Kifissia, peacefully situated on the slopes of Mt. Pendeli, does not appear on any existing list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, this is likely due to its relative obscurity in antiquity. In one of the few, precise, eye-witness accounts of the place, Aulus Gellius, a pedantic bootlicker of Herodes Atticus, confesses to have been confined to his bed in Kifissia by an attack of gastro-intestinal distress {Nodes Atticae, xviii.10.1.), proving incontestably that some Kifissia taver-nas date from the second century A.D.
It is no slight wonder that a town barely ten miles from the Aegean Sea can support a climate similar to that of western Ireland for half the year. During this period, many of the inhabitants spend the long, rainy evenings sitting in draughty Tudor, Gothic, Moorish, Mitioan Revival, Byzantine, Neo-Classical, Art Nouveau or pre-Raphaelite baronial halls shivering in front of fireplaces the size of postage stamps.
Herodes Atticus, a friend of the Emperor Hadrian, lived in great splendour in Kifissia and came to govern Attica in much the same way that Rockefeller came to govern New York: in the sanctified odour of money, which somehow increases in sweetness as it gains in abundance. Certainly Kifissia has always attracted money. Turkish princelings are said to have built summer kiosks on the ruins. of Roman villas and, in the latter part of the last century, affluent Athenians began to build summer houses in every whimsical style imaginable. There is hardly a great family of Athens that has not at some time or other been connected with a fine Kifissia villa. Many of these homes still stand, their spacious cellars and attics crammed with memorabilia whose inaccessibility is the despair of the social historian.
As one enters the main square of Kifissia — Platia Platonos, named after a plane tree that died of old age and was carted away over a decade ago — there may be seen, to the right, a concrete-roofed shed which houses several soiled Roman sarcophagi, adorned with sculptured cupids, rams’ heads, and pairs of kissing quails. The claim that they once held members of Herodes Atticus’s family is no longer seriously maintained. These sarcophagi stand surrounded by a wrought-iron fence to which is attached a bronze plaque reading: Kifissia Archaeological Site. Ask for the entrance key at the kiosk. Inquiries there will reveal that the key is missing, ‘but it doesn’t matter as the lock is jammed.’ It is a relief to know that antiquity lies lightly on Kifissia…
No Kifissia. garden would be tolerated within sight of an English stately home. Attica, however, is a desert for six months of the year, and barely supports a Mars-like green fuzz for another two. Kifissia, by comparison, appears to be a temperate rain forest. The main entrance to ‘Alsos Kifissias’, the chief public park, lies just across the square from the ‘Kifissia Archaeological Site’. This park, which extends down to the little electric train station, is divided by a stately walk lined by palms and chestnuts. Interspersed among these are evergreen trees carefully pruned in the shapes of mushrooms and pyramids. Under these trees, on most fine mornings, sport excellent specimens of what the World Health Organization calls ‘the Malnutrition of Affluence’: chubby little boys and girls whose nannies, chattering together on green benches, discuss the extramarital escapades of their employers.
For the naturalist, there is a· dovecote, a cage full of sparrows, and a few peacocks who will fan, if one is patient enough to wait half a day. This is worthwhile as the males are in an alarming state of moult and, when aroused, resemble the skeletons of discarded umbrellas.
On the north side of Platia Platonos is the entrance to the Kifissia Zoo, yet another wonder. In quiet surroundings it exhibits a grab bag of beasts in such a state of stupor as to conjure up a vision of ‘The Peaceable Kingdom’. This vision, however, is false, for it is the only zoo in the world which is known less for the animals it contains than for those that escape from it. Not so many years ago, a mangy hyena got loose and wandered about for several days, joining the chorus of barking dogs that keep the good folk of Kifissia awake at night, until it was finally tracked down. It is rumoured, as well, that the reptiles are given to slithering forth on their own for an occasional outing.
If the Spirit of Antiquity lies lightly on Kifissia, parts of the town still live at the turn of the century. On sunny Sundays as Athenian families arrive by train to hire a horse-drawn carriage for a ride up the tree-lined Odos Othonos, one recalls, in a nostalgic moment, an earlier, more tranquil time.
Dial-a-Syncope
IF THE telephone operators have been sounding faint lately when placing your international or internal long distance calls, this is because they have been fainting in droves at the central offices of OTE since last October. When twenty-four operators swooned in one day, Labour Minister Laskaris called on an all-male team of sixty specialists and scientists to look into the matter. These gentlemen came to differing conclusions. Some thought that the phenomenon was caused by bad ventilation and irregular air-conditioning. Some thought it might be due to electrical seepage in the equipment or to the possible presence of arsenic in the preservatives used in the machinery. Others felt it was due to one hundred and fifty girls being crowded into one noisy room. Still others felt that pollution was the culprit as many of the rooms look on light wells and the radar scanners on the top of the building contaminate the whole neighbourhood and should be moved out of town. One scientist, however, maintained that it was all ‘psychological’.
Since then loss of consciousness at OTE has become routine and an ambulance is on hand at all hours to take care of the victims. In early November the ‘wake-up’ service became so disrupted (no doubt causing complaints from oversleeping businessmen) that male operators were called in as replacements.
All of this is very distressing to hear as International Women’s Year draws to an end. There are, however, two mitigating items of news: the half-hour break in the girls’ eight-hour working day has been increased to an hour — and the male replacements are now beginning to faint, too.
