Sicilian Odyssey Read Online Free Page A
sacrificed to Zeus in a single day.
Like certain ruins—especially those in which something horrific has taken place—the Castello Eurialo retains some vestige of the spirit (in this case, of delusional mania) that inspired its construction. Bracing myself against the wind that rakes the bluff, climbing over the stone walls, exploring the grassy courtyards and the dank cells reeking of what I can only hope is mildew, I lose sight of Howie for just a few minutes and fall instantly into a sort of irrational, childish panic that feels like a combination of claustrophobia and agoraphobia, a terror of never being able to get out of, or down from, this empty, desolate, open place.
Despite the massive fortification of the Castello Eurialo and the best efforts of Archimedes, who invented a series of imaginative military gadgets (including hooks that seized and hoisted the attacking soldiers up into the air) to repel the invasion of his native city, the Romans—under the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus—entered and destroyed much of Syracuse in 212 B.C . Preferring blood sport to classical tragedy, the Romans modified the amphitheater, enlarging the proscenium to accommodate gladiatorial and aquatic displays and covering the front rows with marble so that the nobility could enjoy yet another advantage unavailable to the masses of ordinary theatergoers.
Not content with these relatively modest renovations, the Romans also built a huge elliptical arena for chariot races and circus games. In the center is a pool about which historians and guidebook writers disagree. Some claim it was used in the cleaning of the arena, while others speculate, more luridly, that it was intended as a receptacle for the remains of the more unfortunate participants in the Roman games, and that after the spectacles ended, the anemic and infirm would rush in to devour the internal organs of the unsuccessful athletes in the hope of benefiting from their supposed health-giving properties.
As we stand on the edge of the Roman arena, we notice, perhaps a hundred feet away and quite near the tunnel-like entrance through which the chariots used to come hurtling onto the track, an animal about which there’s something so strange and uncanny that it’s hard to figure out what kind of creature it is. It looks like a wolf or coyote, but in fact it’s a very large and apparently feral dog, standing in a peculiar posture, leaning slightly to one side. After a moment we realize that it’s nursing two puppies so big that they seem almost full-grown themselves.
I’ve never seen a dog stand to nurse before, let alone one suckling two such enormous pups, yet its posture seems so familiar, so…archetypal. We both say at the same moment: Romulus and Remus. And it feels almost like a vision, a private and privileged communication from the spirit of the civilization that built this proto-speedway and then lost it first to the barbarians and then the Byzantines. The mysterious appearance of the dog and her pups seems like a gift from this city from which the Romans fled in terror, abandoning their arenas and villas and seeking refuge near Pantalica in the caves where their Bronze Age predecessors lived, two thousand years before.
Among the most celebrated visitors to Syracuse and its archaeological ruins was the painter Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio. He arrived in 1608. Almost two years before, he had fled Rome, where he had killed a man named Ranuccio Tomassoni in a street brawl thought to have begun over a bet on a tennis game. He left the city for the surrounding countryside, then went to Naples, and then Malta, where he managed to get into even more trouble. Like so much about Caravaggio’s life, the facts are unclear, but it’s been suggested that he wounded yet another man in yet another fight, was imprisoned, escaped, and was wanted (and was, or so he believed, being actively pursued) by the Knights of Malta.
He was one of the
Like certain ruins—especially those in which something horrific has taken place—the Castello Eurialo retains some vestige of the spirit (in this case, of delusional mania) that inspired its construction. Bracing myself against the wind that rakes the bluff, climbing over the stone walls, exploring the grassy courtyards and the dank cells reeking of what I can only hope is mildew, I lose sight of Howie for just a few minutes and fall instantly into a sort of irrational, childish panic that feels like a combination of claustrophobia and agoraphobia, a terror of never being able to get out of, or down from, this empty, desolate, open place.
Despite the massive fortification of the Castello Eurialo and the best efforts of Archimedes, who invented a series of imaginative military gadgets (including hooks that seized and hoisted the attacking soldiers up into the air) to repel the invasion of his native city, the Romans—under the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus—entered and destroyed much of Syracuse in 212 B.C . Preferring blood sport to classical tragedy, the Romans modified the amphitheater, enlarging the proscenium to accommodate gladiatorial and aquatic displays and covering the front rows with marble so that the nobility could enjoy yet another advantage unavailable to the masses of ordinary theatergoers.
Not content with these relatively modest renovations, the Romans also built a huge elliptical arena for chariot races and circus games. In the center is a pool about which historians and guidebook writers disagree. Some claim it was used in the cleaning of the arena, while others speculate, more luridly, that it was intended as a receptacle for the remains of the more unfortunate participants in the Roman games, and that after the spectacles ended, the anemic and infirm would rush in to devour the internal organs of the unsuccessful athletes in the hope of benefiting from their supposed health-giving properties.
As we stand on the edge of the Roman arena, we notice, perhaps a hundred feet away and quite near the tunnel-like entrance through which the chariots used to come hurtling onto the track, an animal about which there’s something so strange and uncanny that it’s hard to figure out what kind of creature it is. It looks like a wolf or coyote, but in fact it’s a very large and apparently feral dog, standing in a peculiar posture, leaning slightly to one side. After a moment we realize that it’s nursing two puppies so big that they seem almost full-grown themselves.
I’ve never seen a dog stand to nurse before, let alone one suckling two such enormous pups, yet its posture seems so familiar, so…archetypal. We both say at the same moment: Romulus and Remus. And it feels almost like a vision, a private and privileged communication from the spirit of the civilization that built this proto-speedway and then lost it first to the barbarians and then the Byzantines. The mysterious appearance of the dog and her pups seems like a gift from this city from which the Romans fled in terror, abandoning their arenas and villas and seeking refuge near Pantalica in the caves where their Bronze Age predecessors lived, two thousand years before.
Among the most celebrated visitors to Syracuse and its archaeological ruins was the painter Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio. He arrived in 1608. Almost two years before, he had fled Rome, where he had killed a man named Ranuccio Tomassoni in a street brawl thought to have begun over a bet on a tennis game. He left the city for the surrounding countryside, then went to Naples, and then Malta, where he managed to get into even more trouble. Like so much about Caravaggio’s life, the facts are unclear, but it’s been suggested that he wounded yet another man in yet another fight, was imprisoned, escaped, and was wanted (and was, or so he believed, being actively pursued) by the Knights of Malta.
He was one of the
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