Armed with nothing but a slab of spanakopita, I began to climb Mount Hymettus – the mountainside to the East of Athens. It took me 2 hours just to reach the base but it wasn’t long before I had a terrific view. Tall pines enclosed me in a garden of Olive trees which lined my path like sentries. Far and beyond, the sprawl of Athens decked itself out like a distant tapestry.
I tucked into my spanakopita. I didn’t realise the importance of the mountain. It’s 20km long and draws a line right between the Athenian basin and the land of Mesogeia on the other side. If Athens was once the Cradle of Civilisation, then Mount Hymettus is the crust of the cradle.
Early in my ascent, I came upon a pool of water, on the surface of which floated a dead goldfish. The other goldfish were deadly still in the depths. Even when I brushed my hand through the water, they remained frozen like amber gemstones. There was something weirdly unnatural about the place.
“Fuck your INSTA SHIT” read a scrawl of graffiti plastered onto a nearby board…. I later found out that Mount Hymettus, colloquially, is known as Trellos: “the crazy one.” I hastily moved on.
Meeting the occasional hiker or jogger on my journey, I was able to practice warmly saying ‘Kalimera!’ but the recipients of my greeting weren’t anywhere near as enthusiastic. One of them completely ignored me. The weather may have been pleasant, but the same could not be said of my Mount Hymettus ascent.
Got a message from Carlos asking me how I was doing, so I replied with a picture of myself on Hymettus. I wish Hymettus was more like Barranca – the paradisical mountainside I went hiking with Carlos just 2 weeks ago. Hymettus has its sights, but it’s not as consistently beautiful as Barranca. It has more vegetation yet is far less charming. Yes, I discovered beautiful black butterflies and pine trees with bark like dragon scales, but there’s so many broken and uprooted tree trunks and thickets where the sun doesn’t shine.
‘Now as, following her through the thick crowd, he caught her,
Lunging in his charge far forward the son of high-hearted
Tydeus made a thrust against the soft hand with the bronze spear,
And the spear tore the skin driven clear on through the immortal
Robe that the very Graces had woven for her carefully,
Over the palm’s base; and blood immortal flowed from the goddess’
The Iliad, trans. Richmond Lattimore, ll. 334-339
Every now and then I found a rock to sit on and read some of Homer’s Iliad. I’m on Book 5, and Diomedes has just stabbed Aphrodite – the goddess of love – in the wrist after she tries to protect her son Aeneas in battle. I’m always on the side of Aphrodite, Apollo and Ares in the Iliad because they’re fighting for the Trojans. And I’ve always found it interesting that Diomedes gets to attack and wound a goddess and get away with it scot-free. In mythology, mortals who offend a god get punished 99% of the time. There’s a sanctuary dedicated to Aphrodite somewhere upon Mount Hymettus but I didn’t find it. Despite being exhausted I kept pushing myself further, hoping for better views and discovering something like Aphrodite’s temple. It was all for naught…
I eventually convinced myself to turn around, feeling like I’d come hungry out of a restaurant – the feeling of dissatisfaction was impossible to shake. It was especially frustrating as the path continued to wind upwards, ever steeper. I know that somewhere in the heights of Hymettus there are caves to be found, remnants of temples dedicated to Zeus and Apollo as well as Aphrodite, yet all I managed to find were the locked doors of an old Byzantine monastery.
I staggered down from the mountain a good 5 hours after heading up it, feeling like a sack of sludge. I was planning on another garlic cauliflower pasta dinner, but I was soon gulping down some extremely dry chicken doner at a nearby Taverna and practicing my Greek on the waiters. From ordering my spanakopita in the morning, to asking for the bill at dinner-time, my use of the Greek language was the most successful thing about my day.
Will I return to Mount Hymettus? I really want to. Koutouki cave and Aphrodite’s shrine have got to be worth seeing, but I don’t know if I can face a second round of failure like coming down from “the crazy one” with nothing to brag about but dead goldfish and butterflies.
