Читать книгу Looking for Aphrodite - David Price Williams - Страница 44

“Say, David, could we stop for just a moment. You know, the younger ones may need the rest.”

Ten minutes go by. I start up the mountain again. The group is lagging behind, talking constantly.

“Oh, David, we can’t see you, David. Where are you? We’re lost.”

They are a few metres below me. I stop again, and again, all the way up to the top. It has taken well over an hour to do a half hour climb, but it’s been worth it. As we breast the last rise the Hellenistic fort of Knidos comes into view, its block-built walls festooned over the three summits of the mountain, and in places still standing an impressive five meters high, punctuated with eleven square towers. From the top there is the view, one of the finest in the classical world.

From the Acropolis we can look north across the Ceramic Gulf to the dark outline of the Bodrum Peninsula. Somewhere at the foot of those hills are the relics of the city of Halicarnassus and the remains of the Mausoleum, the tomb of Mausolus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The intervening sea stretches out like a luminous plastic sheet, lightly corrugated by the early summer breeze, shimmering silver in the reflected sunlight. To the west lies the whole extent of the Island of Kos, its northern half a mass of brooding mountain tops. On the other side of those mountains lies the Aesclepeion, the centre of healing were Hippocrates challenged the non-rational, animistic approach to medicine – dominated by superstitions, spirits and sympathetic magic – and ushered in a new understanding of the human body and of medical practice.

To the south, beyond the tranquil, turquoise water of the Commercial and the Trireme Harbours of Knidos, way in the distance behind the crenulated rocks at the top of the Island site recline the southern Dodecanese. To the east is the huge whale of Rhodes, one of the largest of the Greek islands. In

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