DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4593#0249
THE SHRINES OF ATTICA 225
at home, however, to find roosters crowing, dogs
barking, children laughing, birds singing, horses
neighing, in your own language. I did- find one
bird talking Greek. It was a parrot at Salamis:
vrcnraydXo wpalo, " Pretty Polly." The effect was
startling, especially to hear a modern Italian noun
coupled with an adjective which Pindar and Plato
used. Even parrots in two words remind you of the
new Greece and its hoary past.
If the phoning of the rooster did not " call me up,"
Spiridion was sure to do so when he brought my
cup of hot milk and a breakfast roll with the morning
paper. Scarcely was the breakfast finished at eight,
when the step of Georgios was heard on the stairs,
and an hour was spent in reading or talking Greek.
Martial music on the street at nine o'clock every
morning announced the guard mount at the war
office.
Then one had a chance to decide in what century
he would spend the next few hours. You could as-
cend the Acropolis and live in the age of Pericles,
or step into the Museum and live in prc-Persian days.
You could return by way of the Areopagus, walk into
the Christian era, preserve your historic continuity
by passing through the stoa of Hadrian in your
Roman toga, and enter the Byzantine era at the little
Metropolitan Church. From this you could stride
again into the nineteenth century in time for luncheon
at half-past twelve. If you are making a specialty
of epigraphy, ancient inscriptions in the Museum arc
legible indeed compared with the task of decipher-
ing a Greek bill of fare in an average restaurant. But,
like the Rosetta Stone, one often finds it bi-lingual,
IS
at home, however, to find roosters crowing, dogs
barking, children laughing, birds singing, horses
neighing, in your own language. I did- find one
bird talking Greek. It was a parrot at Salamis:
vrcnraydXo wpalo, " Pretty Polly." The effect was
startling, especially to hear a modern Italian noun
coupled with an adjective which Pindar and Plato
used. Even parrots in two words remind you of the
new Greece and its hoary past.
If the phoning of the rooster did not " call me up,"
Spiridion was sure to do so when he brought my
cup of hot milk and a breakfast roll with the morning
paper. Scarcely was the breakfast finished at eight,
when the step of Georgios was heard on the stairs,
and an hour was spent in reading or talking Greek.
Martial music on the street at nine o'clock every
morning announced the guard mount at the war
office.
Then one had a chance to decide in what century
he would spend the next few hours. You could as-
cend the Acropolis and live in the age of Pericles,
or step into the Museum and live in prc-Persian days.
You could return by way of the Areopagus, walk into
the Christian era, preserve your historic continuity
by passing through the stoa of Hadrian in your
Roman toga, and enter the Byzantine era at the little
Metropolitan Church. From this you could stride
again into the nineteenth century in time for luncheon
at half-past twelve. If you are making a specialty
of epigraphy, ancient inscriptions in the Museum arc
legible indeed compared with the task of decipher-
ing a Greek bill of fare in an average restaurant. But,
like the Rosetta Stone, one often finds it bi-lingual,
IS