Island Hopping 2024: Marsala, Parco Archeologico di Selinunte, Sicilian Fruit.

 We have both orange trees and lemon trees on the grounds of this cottage.  We made good use of both.

Lemon Tree is very pretty and lemon flower is sweet but the fruit of the poor lemon tree is impossible to eat

Unless of course Sandy makes her homemade lemonade with that fruit

Oranges in the tree

Oranges in the glass

The Greeks started settling city-states on Sicily in the 8th century BC.  While these Sicilian-Greeks may have been closely aligned with a city-state on the mainland of Greece, they were in no way vassals of the mainland cities.  Greeks in Sicily reached their zenith during the 5th and 4th centuries BC.  Following the First Punic War (264-241 BC) the Roman Republic emerged as the dominant power in the region. At which time Sicily became a Roman province marking the end of Greek rule of the island.  

Today Sandy and I visited the site of one of those early Greek city-states, Selinunte.  On walking into the archeological park we were immediately awestruck by the sight of the Eastern Agora.  It is a reconstruction using the materials from the rubble of the building.  Modern archeologists dismiss these reconstructions, like Knossos, but I believe it helps us non-archeologists to understand what all the piles of rubble meant, and to better grasp how great was the Greek settlement of Sicily. 

The Temple of the Eastern Agora as we first saw it

From behind the Temple of the Eastern Agora

This picture puts in perspective how massive the columns were, and this is the smaller structure

Inside the Temple

This is the base (I think) of one of the columns of the largest Temple in the Eastern Agora, again comparing it to me, gives perspective on how huge it is

This temple is the largest one here, and one of the largest in all of the Grecian world.  Again compare me to the diameter of the column

This Temple would have stood as high as a ten story building

Today it is a pile of rubble but when it was standing it was as long as a football field 

We then moved on to the Acropolis a little over a mile away.  Columns here have not been reconstructed, however, work is done to keep them from tumbling over.  We were mostly by ourselves up here and as I walked around the back I was completely alone in the shadow of the Temple of Apollo.  I could imagine the construction of the temple and of the religious rites that took place there.  I could see across the valley where the foundations of thousands of residences and work shops could be seen.  I could imagine the people of that time going about their lives and how they would be amazed had they known that it would someday all come to an end.  And that  brought me back to the Temple. What about the god Apollo.  Did he just slink away?  Is he still here waiting to be re-exaulted?  Did he never exist?  Did he exist only in the consciousness of these people and when they died, so did he?  A place like this makes your mind work harder than it normally has to.

Reliefs that are carved into the Metopes that run across the top of the columns

Apollo's Temple from across the valley

This clay sculpture found in the rubble is 2,700 years old

The myth of Actaeon the hunter being attacked by his own dogs.  This happened because he violated the space of the gods

The part of Apollo's temple that is still standing

Foundations of the house and work shops of the people who lived in Selinunte

After two complete months on the road, we were ready. Give these guys a Michelin Star!