ANCIENT GREEK CULTURE AND THE ART OF ORATORY

Rose Moloney 2008

ANCIENT GREEK CIVILIZATION With special reference to Cleopatra VII and the Art of Oratory. GREECE In this theater of man's life, it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers-on. Pythagoras I started my journey in ATHENS the city of Pericles where the great playwrights Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles wrote their tragedies 5 centuries BC and Socrates taught Plato. It was with excitement I walked round the lower levels of the Acropolis and found the Theatre of Dionysius where the great competition of tragedians happened ( a phenomenon that would not happen again till the Elizabethan theatre in England .) Here I saw the seats of honour where Mark Anthony and Cleopatra sat when they visited the city in 31 BC. All performances were done as an offering to Dionysius whose temple I saw close by. I scanned the crumbling cliffs of the Acropolis wondering where Mark Anthony fashioned a cave into a Dionysian dwelling lined with leopard skins when he embodied the God on his earlier residency of the city. I recalled how Cleopatra had been rebuffed for the citizens loved Octavia - the wife Anthony had first brought there. The famous lovers were on their way to the battle of Actium then and their tragic death a year later so I started at the end of their story. Wisdom comes only through suffering. AESCHYLUS, Agamemnon The WCMT had agreed for me to make a preliminary trip so that I might go to the THEATRE OF EPIDAURUS and attend a performance of the Tragedy of Agamemnon by Aeschylus in the very place where it was performed ! I took a coach on my second day to Epidaurus travelling through CORINTH where I glimpsed the marvelous canal from the road. The coach reached the tranquil pine tree groves of Epidaurus - the first surprise was to find the theatre was part of a healing centre of Aesclepius - an Aesclepion - with sleeping cubicles where patients received divinely inspired diagnostic dreams. Was the theatre only entertainment to amuse patrons or was the purging effect of tragedy part of the cure ? This was the source of several other Aesclepion I was to visit hundreds of miles away in Ionia and others all over the Hellenic world. The acoustics of Epidaurus not only allow the audience to hear the actors without microphones but it actually creates amplification - this I experienced at last. Thousands of spectators filled the steep auditorium in the hillside - I was sitting where a Greek had sat 2300 years before to hear the same words ! But no goat was sacrificed to Dionysius as the tragedy or goatsong began. Above us the night

sky and beyond the backdrop of Nature green and restful. The play was one of a trilogy on the Trojan war - Agamemnon returns with a concubine, the prophetess Cassandra. His wife Clytemnestra, murders him in revenge for the human sacrifice he made of their daughter Iphrygia on the way to Troy. Unspoken, the name of Helen is suspended over the action - this is a women’s play. As the lights went out at the end we saw the stars glittering down on us. Silence. Above the cloud with its shadow is the star with its light. Above all things reverence thy self. Pythagoras of Samos MEDITERRANEAN SEA - in the wake of Cleopatra I took a ship from Piraeius bound for the ISLAND OF SAMOS. It had been once a great Hellenic city to match Ephesus or Athens where civilized Greeks and Romans often wintered to enjoy baths, philosophy, poetry, theatres, symposia, libraries, gymnasia, the Games and all the pleasures of civilization ( incredible to think most Europeans were at that time living in skins and cannibalism was rife.) On board I met Lena, a Greek Architect living in Paris. On arrival at the island she invited me to join her family for a wonderful Greek meal in a café by the quay and took me across the island. In my hotel there was a book left in the library as if providentially, a new novel of Anthony and Cleopatra, which incensed me so much that it inspired me to finish my book. Still no sign of the great city of Samos which produced Pythagoras ! I took a taxi to Pythagoria on the other side of the island and found a small seaside resort of great charm. The ancient city of Samos ! In my hotel there was a book left in the library as if providentially, a new novel of Anthony and Cleopatra, which incensed me so much that it inspired me to finish my book. Still no sign of the great city of Samos which produced Pythagoras ! Lena took me to Pythagoria on the other side of the island and found a small seaside resort of great charm once the ancient city of Samos ! Among internet cafes and hotels priceless pillars and foundations of great building were strewn carelessly. By the bus stop The Temple of Aphrodite looked like a recent bombsite… One evening Lena took me there to a café for live music and we drove up a street full of sunshine with a sign Basilica at the top. Later I returned there and found the ‘ church ‘ had first been a Greek palace overlooking the deep blue sea and mountains of Asia Minor beyond….it was an evocative place…the stumps of pillars were red crystal - here I later read was the place where Cleopatra and Mark Anthony stayed on their way to Athens before Actium. Her dynasty, the Ptolemies had formerly owned the island and kept their fleets here. But it was for the cult of Dionysius that they had chosen to celebrate here before the battle with an arts festival theatre, song and joyous revels and the famous Samian sweet wine beloved of the God - all perhaps to invoke his support. They were defeated by propaganda not warfair. With foreboding I made my way on a local bus one hot afternoon to see the most illustrious building of the great city - the Herian - temple to Hera, queen of the Gods. I alighted at the old entrance. Surly workmen glowered through the locked gate - but I saw all I needed to see through the wire fence - stumps of castrated pillars, a desolate pool of stagnant water from which one enormous ugly pillar had been cobbled together from mismatched

fragments. Designed in 570 BC by Roikos and Theodorus, Master architects who later built the foundations for the Artemisia of Ephesus this was the largest temple ever built in the Hellenic Age. Here Octavian came the year after he defeated Anthony and made his wife, Livia, a goddess, even bedecking her with a cornucopia, the symbol of Cleopatra’s dynasty. He also stayed in 29 BC at the palace where the Lovers had stayed in 31 BC as if to obliterate them - a pattern I was to observe in every site Anthony and Cleopatra loved. (Yet Shakespeare has immortalized them….) From a hill above the city among olive trees I found the remains of the theatre, now small but still in use. I gazed at the scenery that the audience must have enjoyed as backdrop to the plays - the blue sea and the vast buildings of the wonderful metropolis, now ruins strewn across the shore. I could see the public baths donated by Cleopatra, roofless today like exposed gaping decayed molars. And beyond - the distant scenery which the spectators in the auditorium would have seen, the mountains of Ionia presiding, home of the first philosophers. Once this small resort had been a thriving port and centre of culture of 50,000 people or more. Now less than 5000 remain, but whose descendents could they be ? I returned to Athens by sea, unable to forget that last unhappy voyage from Samos to Piraeus made by the famous couple. Yet the sea had suffered a sea-change in 2039 years, The crew of the ferry were strangely hostile to everybody and I recalled how much Cleopatra had been used to the enmity of those who hated the Romans. I flew from Athens airport now better prepared for the next phase of my journey. I would travel in the colder months to conserve precious energy. No man steps twice in the same river. Heraclitus EGYPT It was January when I arrived in ancient THEBES ( Luxor) now welcoming the warmth of the sun. Those of us bound for the Royal Barque river cruiser were shepherded onto coaches heading to the quays of the Nile. A new ship on her third voyage I had chosen her carefully for my journey down the Nile in the wake of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. The Barque Royal was smart and the bathrooms were ultra modern, the water filtration systems the same as Voyager space vehicles, the buffet food sumptuous. I also made more true friends, Janet and Mike Robson who have held a lifeline for me ever since as my journey extended. I will not dwell on our call at the Valley of the Kings or the temple of Hapshepsut which preceded Cleopatra‘s Greek dynasty though she may have displayed these wonders to Caesar on their honeymoon knowing he was an anthropolgist and historian.( He was descended from survivors of the Greek- Trojan war. ) But at the Temple of Horus at Edfu they surely did stop for her ancestors had started it and her father Ptolemy XII had completed it and his effigy strode warrior-like across the entrance pylons. It is still impressive. KOM OMBU Temple of Healing was our next mooring - again dedicated to Horus but also a temple of healing. We saw one wall which depicted a birthing stool and forceps, thousands made pilgrimage here for healing. Cleopatra was by now pregnant with Caesar’s child who

would be the next Horus, as all male Pharaoh’s were. Offerings would have been made. Again the Ptolemies had built this and Auletes, Cleopatra’s father was depicted being blessed by the Gods. Our guide made no mention of Auletes relationship to Cleopatra or indeed mention of her voyage down the Nile with Caesar. I was to learn that they deflect all non-Egyptian history especially the Greeks, thus most Nile voyagers never get the true picture. At ASWAN, Nubia, we visited the famed Temple of Isis at PHILAE by boat. Relocated to another island because of the Aswan dam, the site of the temple has been lost. This temple was of special importance to Cleopatra who was the avatar of the goddess Isis, like one of her forebears, a previous Cleopatra. Although Cleopatra was born here the guide did not even mention her. She and Caesar sailed further south to Ethiopia until his men ( in 400 boats ) refused to go further. We too sailed back to LUXOR to see the wonder of the ancient world - KARNAK. I felt sure Caesar must have visited the Karnak Temple complex of Amun especially since his hero Alexander the Great made an altar there. Cleopatra regarded Caesar as an embodiment of this father God. Karnak is still gigantic, the largest religious building ever built, I was inspired to return by night for the thrilling Sound and Light show. A temple to Isis with a headless Isis dressed in Greek drapes is little visited, was this Cleopatra’s addition to the complex ? I said farewell to my fellow passengers on the Barque Royal and moved to a hotel on an island in the Nile in order to visit Denderah downstream towards areas forbidden to tourists. THE TEMPLE OF HATHOR DENDERA was also built by Cleopatra’s family and was dedicated to Hathor, goddess of Love and Music and Happiness. I was thrilled to be able to examine a vast outside wall of the temple on which Cleopatra had inscribed her concept and thealogy with lifesize portraits of herself and Caesarion, Caesar’s son. I returned twice to Denderah, once on the Lotus, a cruise ship and then on a land tour for I realized there was more there about her than anywhere else. On my second visit I was rewarded by an ancient Arab who beckoned me into a small chapel next to the Cleopatra Wall, this is actually an Isis Temple, completely ignored by tour guides but of vital importance, surely built by Cleopatra herself. Nearby is the sacred pool of the temple, now called Cleopatra’s Pool. I descended the steps of the empty pool where the sacred drama of Osiris and Isis was re-enacted annually. I sensed that Cleopatra herself played the part of Isis, for she was sincere in embodying that power. Her great theaphony wall, I mentioned above, survives intact. We know Octavian was paid a great sum by a supporter of Cleopatra to keep all her statues intact, none survive except this wall. The zodiac on the ceiling of the rooftop sanctuary may well be Cleopatra’s coronation horoscope. ABYDOS was farther north in an area generally off limits to tourists due to past attacks by militants. Peasant life seemed little changed by time in the last 2000 years with hand cultivation and donkeys everywhere. I was thrilled to see a sign to Nag Hammadi en route which showed how close to the cult centre of Osiris there were early Gnostic Christians. THE TEMPLE OF OSIRIS was the cult centre of the Gateway to the afterlife ruled by Osiris. This concluded my researches on the Nile.

I then moved on to GIZA on the perimeter of CAIRO to see the pyramids though we do not know if Cleopatra ever saw these, she ruled as Pharaoh for 20 years and curiosity must surely have drawn her there. Finding Cairo unbearable I changed my plan to speak at Toastmasters there but did meet Marjorie Barratt, mother of a friend from Toastmasters Findhorn and Forres, who is married to a member of the former royal house. It was her birthday and we made an expedition to the Oasis of Fayoum south of Cairo. We had lunch at the grand hotel Auberge du Lac where Sir Winston Churchill met King Farouk in 1942 for secret conference. I was shown the meeting room, and was pleased to see a portrait of Sir Winston in the Churchill Lounge. This was the only evidence I saw of the British Empire days. We saw the ruins of a Greek city, KARANIS, built by Cleopatra’s dynasty, where as the only tourist I was protected by several armed men. I understood at last how Egypt was the bread-basket of Rome. It had puzzled me how a desert land with only the Nile area for food production could possibly export hundreds of tons to Rome weekly - now I saw how vast and fertile were the Oases, Fayoum is enormous, and I read that Karanis was a major grain producer. Now I headed for the city of ALEXANDRIA, once the greatest of Hellenic cities and ‘ Pearl of the Mediterranean ‘. The dazzling white marble city founded by Alexander the Great and which reached its zenith under Cleopatra. I knew nothing remained there and only stayed one day, during which I discovered that the only relevant museum, the Graeco Roman, is closed for two years, a fact not mentioned on their website ! There is however an atmosphere of bright breeziness which is stimulating after the claustrophobic fumes of Cairo - certainly Alexander had a genius for choosing sites for cities as well as battles. It seemed an auspicious sign that a one day seminar on Cleopatra was held at the New Library of Alexandria while I was there but sadly it was in Arabic with no translation. Nothing remains of the great Lighthouse, a wonder of the ancient world, but Cleopatra’s palace has been located under the sea by Frank Goddio. In the Museum of Alexandria, which I visited next, his photos were on view. Here in the city of Cleopatra she is not honoured with a statue or anything. MARSA MATROUH lies 90 km to the west of Alexandria on the coast. I traveled on by battered bus. It was a surprise to me for I now learned this too was founded and designed by Alexander as a port and has the same bright Mediterranean atmosphere. I took a taxi to see the ‘Cleopatra Beach ‘ where local tradition maintains she swam and slept in a natural rock room in the shallows. I explored this, If true was her action something to do with her role as Isis Navigans who blessed the boats annually ? The sea runs into the man made windows but without them it would have been safely sealed from the sea which crashes against the walls A wild elemental place to go in time of deep trouble - some say she came here in that last year of waiting for the final blow from Rome. A tourist guide states that she had a palace built nearby for Anthony and herself to retire to but they did not live long enough to use it. A magnificent herm of her head guards entrance to the beach - here she is better remembered than in her capital. SIWA OASIS: THE WESTERN DESERT. Alexander the Great brought the Hellenic civilization to Egypt in 330 BC and founded Cleopatra‘s royal house. She was the guardian of his crystal tomb. I surmised she might have followed in his steps from Marsa across the Western Desert to visit the famed Oracle of Amun in the Oasis of Siwa as he did. Again a battered 1960s bus took me and 50 Muslim men, this time across flat desert wastes, only wild

camels grazing on rock, A nightmare all night journey then at dawn - the forbidden city, Siwa ! I lingered long with the Berber people, among palm gardens, swimming daily in hot mineral pools. One was named Cleopatra’s Pool - for if any image has lodged in the collective psyche it is of her in mineral pools so I discovered. Previously it was named for one Juba, the name of a Berber King of Numidia who married her daughter Cleopatra Selene. Did she then come here to visit the Oracle ? By coincidence on that very day a French Algerian traveller told me Selene’s grave is a pyramid in the Algerian city of Tipaza which he had seen. I walked to the village of Aghoumi 6 kilometers to see the oracle and temple of Amun. Climbing a rocky crag I entered the Oracle temple first, now a bare ruined choir. Here Alexander asked, not as is popularly repeated, if he was the son of God, but who murdered his father (King Philip of Macedonia). The reply was…Your Father is not dead for I am He……… It occurred to me there that Cleopatra might well have asked Amun if he would father her son and the next pharaoh - for later she was utterly convinced that when Julius Caesar entered Alexandria with the bull of Amun on his legions‘ standards that he was the avatar of Amun. He did indeed rescue her like a divine intervention. I walked on to the Temple of Amun, now a sorry jumble of fallen stone blocks where locals fear to go…tales of some tourists unable to approach. Donkey taxis, women shrouded in black, dwellings of mud and salt, cheap hotel rooms, interesting travellers, empty wheely bins and rubbish everywhere, trips into the dunes ( fossilized skeletons of whales !) made this an exotic interlude. SINIAI A Lebanese Christian man, Bashir, gave me a lift several hundred kilometers across Egypt from the Western Desert to the Eastern Desert of Siniai. At Sharm El Sheyk I took a bus to NUWEIBA on the RED SEA. Here I found a Bedouin village, Tarabin which is near the spring of Miriam, sister of Moses and faces the mountainous coast of Saudi Arabia - from a map I saw we were very close to Mecca and Medina as birds fly across the Red Sea. Here I stayed in a beach camp - you hire a beach hut with communal showers, electricity and mosquito net for as little as 3 UK sterling a night, whilst spending more on food from their cafes. The Blue Bus Camp proved a good choice, friendly and safe. I was invited to a Bedouin wedding but turned back at the gate when I saw the sheep-roast was still alive and bleating desperately at its tether by the spit. Equally unsettling was the news that girls and boys are still circumcised in Siniai. A third of Cleopatra’s Alexandrian citizens were Jews who eventually turned on her and helped the Romans in her downfall. I took a bus for a day in Eilat, Israel from Nuweiba - a decision which cost me dear because with my Israeli passport stamp I was later on unable to enter Syria on my way west. Nuweiba is the port for ferries to Aqaba, Jordan, my next destination, and so I departed from Egypt by ship. I had met Nubians, Berbers and Bedu as well as Egyptians descended from those of Cleopatra’s Egypt and I now sensed how alien these tribes were from her natural culture of the Hellenes and the Mediterranean.

JORDAN Syria- Palestinia was once ruled by Cleopatra’s family, the Ptolemies, and later parts of it were given back to her by Mark Anthony thereby antagonizing another tribe - the Nabatean Arabs. WADI MUSSA. By teaming up with 3 other travellers on the boat to Aqaba I had a cheap taxi ride to Wadi Mussa - the place of the spring of Moses - and found my fellow travellers had taken me to another Bedu accommodation, Bedu from a different tribe. This time a budget hostel which had Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail playing every night because it featured Petra. That night my legs gave way, drunken men abused me from a car and I began to regret leaving Egypt where I had never seen alchohol on display. But instead of resting I was determined to take the free shuttle to the famous siq of Petra, the rose-red city of rock. As at the pyramids of Giza horses were suffering in the rocky tracks hauling tourists uphill in the heat - I felt proud of the Brooke Hospital for Horses and Donkeys in Cairo - a British charity - who minister to them at Giza, in Petra and the donkeys of Siwa Oasis. PETRA - I felt convinced that the famous Treasury building - once known as The Pharaoh’s Treasury significantly, and the House of the daughter - from which the adjective Pharaoh’s has lately been removed and the so-called monastery were entirely built by the Greeks and Romans though Nabatean workmen may have been used. The dynasty of Cleopatra ruled here before her time. The water irrigation systems I felt sure were built by the Romans who ran the city for 300 years. I feel inspired to write about this - the patriotic Jordanian guide books claim the tent-dwelling Nabateans built it all - however the Statue of Isis on the Treasury holds a cornucopia and is the emblem of the Ptolemies on their coinage. Their other emblem, the eagle, is represented by three large eagles on the façade. Nikes and Amazons complete the Greek statuary of the building - it is obviously Ptolemaic. I returned to Petra for the candlelit Sound and Light - an eerie and marvellous experience. The Nabateans took revenge on Cleopatra, because Anthony had given her rights to bitumen for ship water-proofing on their lands. Later elephants hauled her warships over the desert to the Red Sea they set them afire - her last plan of escape foiled. After a day spent in bed because of my painful legs, I headed north towards the great Decapolis Greek cities built after Alexander’s eviction of the Persians 2330 years ago. I was still on Ptolemy territory and somewhere here Anthony had called for Cleopatra to meet him for since Pompey‘s conquest of these lands around the time she was born - it had become Roman. He gave her Jericho which Herod the Great possessed thereby completing with Herod’s jealousy the ring of fire around her at the end. In AMMAN I was given the opportunity to practice the part of my project devoted to The Art of Oratory in Greek culture. Here is the article for the Jordan Times : ________________________________________________________________ CHURCHILL TRAVEL FELLOW AT AMMAN TOASTMASTER CLUBS Rose Moloney, a public speaker from the UK has been in Amman for two weeks researching the Ancient Greek history of Jordan and speaking at Amman Toastmasters Clubs. Rose, who lives in an eco-village in the Highlands of Scotland, has been awarded a Winston Churchill

Travel Fellowship in History. She said, ‘ Amman was built as Philadelphia, by the family of Cleopatra, the Greek Pharaohs of Egypt, Cleopatra is one of my subjects of interest, the other is the Greek Art of Oratory.’ She first spoke at the International Toastmasters Club of Jordan on her Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship which has taken her to Athens, Epidaurus, the Nile, Alexandria and Ephesus, Turkey, to see the remains of Greek civilization. ‘ This was a friendly and elegant club to start my tour, they really allowed me a lot of opportunities to speak. I am interested in the predecessors of today’s Toastmasters Clubs which were the teachers of Oratory in Greek cities - the Odeon of Amman would have been used by orators giving public speeches and there would have been teachers of public speaking here in the Odeon in down-town Amman.’ At the Black Iris Toastmasters Club on Monday May 4th Rose gave a speech from the Advanced Manuel ’ A Dramatic Talk ’ on how the Nabatean Arabs of Petra cut off Cleopatra’s last escape route by burning her ships as they were hauled across the desert from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. Rose also took part in the Creative Toastmasters Club on Monday and gave an evaluation for another member’s speech. ‘Every Amman club has a unique character and the Creative TM Club is like a salon for lovers of culture much like symposia of the Ancient Greeks. Black Iris is a new club with a younger membership and I like the way they experiment with debates as well as speeches. “ The Amman Division N competition was held at the Geneva Hotel on May 1 st and Rose attended as an observer. “The hospitality of the Amman Toastmasters Clubs I have visited has been so heart-warming and the standard of clubs so high, I will encourage other Toastmasters in the UK to come to Jordan and visit the clubs. ‘ See www.toastmasters.org for the list of all 11 Jordan club contacts and venues. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------DECAPOLIS CITIES There are 8 Decapolis cities in Syria- Palestinia, now Jordan, and here at last - not in Greece or Egypt - I found Greek-Roman cities with astonishingly complete remains of baths, latrines with flushing systems, mosaic floors, theatres, stoas, bouletarions, odeons, forums, , temples, sacred ways, agoras, nymphaeums, aquaducts, libraries, gymnasia, stadia, hippodromes. At last I could see how Alexandria must have looked in its glory. GADARA City of Philosophers was of particular interest : Rhetoricians of Gadara: The founder of a famous 1st century B.C. rhetorical school, was

Theodorus of Gadara, whose inscription was found at Athens - and who taught the future emperor Tiberius rhetoric. A less famous later rhetorician, called Apsines of Gadara (190-250 A.D.) taught oratory at Athens about 235 A.D. and has left us a handbook of Rhetoric. However most people know Gadara as the place where Jesus sent 2000 pigs over the cliff. (Thanks to Ken Humphry.) JERASH compares with Ephesus for the size of the remaining city, its great Temple of Athena is better preserved. The Nymphaeum is staggering. Another tour to MADABA a Christian city famous for mosaics in churches from the first century - oddly temples of Venus and Bacchus were labeled churches ! I also gradually discovered, through forays from my room, the Greek city over which AMMAN sits - delighted to find the Acropolis with its Temple of Zeus right above my budget hotel, the Nymphaeum in the market and a superb Odeon, Theatre and Forum in down-town. A tour to the DEAD SEA showed me the area given contentiously to Cleopatra for its bitumen used for building her fleet of 200 ships. I enjoyed black mud therapy and a float in the mineral rich waters which probably she also used for health. On my last day I attended 2 Toastmasters Clubs, gave two speeches and had a delicious lunch with Haifa who had been such a support, and her husband a Bedouin professor of economics who showed me the name of his tribe in the Book of Genesis. Then farewell to Hiba who treated me to an eco dinner at Wild Jordan. I felt enormous affection for the people of Jordan who are so pro- British, I had even heard an anecdote about Sir Winston Churchill during the TM competition from another speaker. ASIA MINOR. Syria will not let pass those with Israeli passport stamps, I therefore had to miss Tarsus in Eastern Turkey where Anthony and Cleopatra made their sensational meeting, she arrayed as Aphrodite with small boys dressed as Eros fanning her on a golden barge. However there is nothing original left there. I flew on to Istanbul.. IONIA (TURKEY) I flew to Turkey instead on the 3rd phase of my project and took an express train to Izmir for Ephesus and its modern extension Selcuk, a charismatic place housing the Efes Museum and delightful quirky guest houses, mine was the closest to the ruin of the Temple of Artemis. This became my home for trips to the remarkably preserved cities of the Ionian League and glories of Asia Minor as it was. EPHESUS, was visited at least twice by Cleopatra, in 41 BC and 31 BC when it is said she made a ‘triumphal entry from the harbour along the Arcadian Way to the theatre. Here also her treacherous sister Arsinoe was granted refuge, which she ungratefully misused by setting herself up as queen of Egypt. The true story I have researched and intend to publish, sadly thousands of visitors hear the misleading description on the audio tour that Cleopatra murdered her sister, a false account which has been further misrepresented by the BBC and press since the possible tomb of Arsinoe has been recently investigated. (NB see end - I interview the professor who proposes this theory.) My son, a history student, joined me for a week and we explored together Ephesus and the

great Ionian cities. The great Temple of the Mother Goddess Cybele-Artemis is utterly devastated, ransacked for Christian and Muslim buildings, only a small pillar in a dark pool and debris remain of this Wonder of the World. My son and I wandered among tiny frogs, and saw storks nesting on the one wonky reassembled pillar. Here we were treading where Alexander the Great worshipped, Cleopatra saw the statue of herself, Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony and all the leading Greeks and Romans gazed in awe. And Arsinoe was murdered. Our visit to MILETUS made me appreciate its importance - it preceded Athens with its school of philosophers, Thales the first of them, and like Samos with Pythagoras can claim to be the source of the stoa. Here too I saw the palatial Baths of Faustina, wife of Marcus Aurelius. I understood then how women of influence could donate public facilities. Scholastica of Ephesus had also donated baths, and Varius was named as co-benefactor with her husband in the donation of the Gymnasium at Ephesus. The healthy and well-educated man is a happy man. Thales of Miletus An illuminated sacred way of 15 kilometres, led from Miletus to DIDYMA - A thrilling sight ! For here is a staggering shell of the great temple of Apollo, the best preserved in Turkey, from which we could imagine the glory of Ephesus’ Artemisia and the Herian of Samos. Like Siwa this was an Oracle where rulers consulted the god Apollo for help. I made a trip to HIERAPOLIS at Pamukkale a sacred city and healing centre - here is another Cleopatra Pool in which I soaked myself for mineral therapy; swimming among fallen pillars. Situated on a very high Acropolis the city is truly awesome. Uniquely it has a Plutonium or temple for the God Pluto whose statue presides in the Theatre, with a suggestive underground entrance to the Underworld. The ruins are magnificent and below, like an ice palace, shelves of fossilized salts create an arctic landscape. Distant mountains ring Hierapolis, the air is rare and it is truly a holy place. Mark Anthony came here with, possibly, his scholarly consort. MAGNESIA I was the only visitor to this beautiful rural site from which the mineral is named. ‘These were the very mountains they saw daily….‘ I thought. The presiding Goddess was Artemis and again a vast edifice lies in pools of water. Most extraordinary was the walk up the hill to the stadium and theatre attesting to the size of the city, now being uncovered by archaeologists on site. The rich carvings of the theatre seats and stone thrones for dignitaries or priests were very similar to those on the Acropolis of Athens in the Theatre of Dionysius. Higher quality than Ephesus. A very helpful custodian showed me the fabulous statues of Magnesia which are held in Germany. Among the wealth of great cities in Ionia which I saw, pine- sheltered PRIENE with its temple to Athena was my favourite, secured on a mountain ledge. A stone for the speaker in its parliament is still in situ. This city is entirely Ionian Greek, the Romans did not develop it, so it is important for my project - Ephesus having been rebuilt extensively by RomansAD is less like the cities Cleopatra knew. Priene has a Temple to Demeter, Aesclepion healing centre, and Temple to Alexander the Great who loved the city and had used it as a house. Lend a helping hand to the fallen. Phocylides

PERGAMON. It was Mark Anthony’s generosity with other people’s possessions that doomed Cleopatra and attracted enmity from Rome, the Nabateans, Herod of Judea, the Cyreneans, and surely the people of Pergamon for he sent her their great library of 200,000 books. These grand gestures, I realized on my travels, ensured her destruction when he lost power. I saw the site of the library ! It is attached to the temple of Athena who was the presiding deity. On the mountain-top Acropolis I saw the temple of Zeus, famous for its great altar, now in Berlin, while an eagle, bird of Zeus flew over me. I marvelled at the Theatre with the steepest auditorium in the world. I walked down the steep Acropolis passing the eerie Serapeum, red brick and titanic in size. If anywhere looked like the ‘ Seat of Satan ‘ as Pergamon is described in the Book of Revelation, this is it, though ironically it was by then the seat of the church itself ! The cockerel, herald of Aesclepios, was crowing as I reached the Aesclepion where thousands found therapies and healing. Here I saw the unique 260 foot tunnel where patients were given natural state-altering herbs before entering a circular sanctuary with six rooms for different cures - music, herbs, massage, mud-therapy etc. Here too the cubicles where patients slept to receive diagnosis. Another magnificent theatre, library, baths and springs for purification are discernible but shells of their former glory. INTERVIEW WITH DR HILKE THUR I found the Crisler Library an American history resource centre in Selcuk and met one of the founders Janet Crisler who invited me to use the resources. She introduced me to Prof Dr Hilke Thur of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, an architect whom I had seen on the BBC documentary on Arsinoe, sister of Cleopatra < Cleopatra: Portrait of a killer > about the octagonal Tomb in Ephesus, which she claims is that of Arsinoe. It was exciting to enter The House of the Archaeolgists, owned once by the first to dig here, it adjoined my guesthouse. In the interview I raised several challenges to her theory that such a mausoleum would honour a rebel : I pointed out that the octagonal shape of the tomb could be traced to the Tower of the Winds in Athens instead of the Pharos of Alexandria. She directed me to an article she knew which explains the Pharos could have been based on the Tower of the Winds. However I knew the Lighthouse was built first !.The Pyramid roof I queried, a pyramid has 4 sides not 8, furthermore no-one at that time used pyramids to represent Egypt. The emblems of the Ptolemies, the eagle and cornucopia are not in the tomb, Ms Thur had no answer but claimed a papyri shape torch was Egyptian. The skeleton bears no signs of a violent death and is too young at 15 -21 to have led the revolt of AD48 as Arsinoe did, Hilke conceded this.I pointed out that far from being an innocent victim Arsinoe had in 48bc put Antilla her general to death. Hilke had not heard of this - said that sources were written after the event and probably others ordered that death not Arsinoe. Why ? How unfair - when sources say Mark Anthony ordered Arsinoe‘s death Hilke does the reverse, blaming Cleopatra. Anthony was recorded as having

put Arsinoe to death in 41bc, he was Lord of Asia and Ephesus for 11 more years till 30bc, it is inconceivable that the Ephesians would risk insulting him by putting up a mausoleum to her in a place of great honour. Furthermore he was there for several months with Cleopatra in 31bc. Her reply was that his successor, Octavian, might then have allowed it - Octavian had just murdered the last of the House of Ptolemy and refused to look at their tombs in Alexandria so I was doubtful. Hilke agreed with my next objection that Arsinoe had done nothing for the city unlike the very few others buried within the walls accorded that honour. Everyone else was buried outside the walls. Her next point that members of foreign dynasties could also be buried in places of honour, needs proving with examples, I shall research. The BBC documentary claimed the RomanGreek world was outraged by the killing on temple precincts - I asked for records of this - she conceded there were none. The sensational claim that the skeleton had African ancestry was based on a skull which no longer exists, those who reconstructed it said Ancient Egyptians also had this skull type yet the BBC skimmed over this. Hilke agreed. Several questions Ms Thur deflected saying she was not a historian but an Architect and had little knowledge of the era. She agreed to let me mention in my letter to the BBC producer her objections about the sensationalizing of her archaeology. Yet again an accusation of Cleopatra has been fixed in the minds of the public - by someone who admits they do not know history. I had put up a defence for my subject Cleopatra. I can also refute now the statement on her documentary that Arsinoe is the only remaining body on Earth from which the DNA of Cleopatra is found - see above:- my meeting in Siwa - the tomb of Selene, Cleopatra’s daughter exists in Tipaza. I can make the case that since Cleopatra was beside Caesar at His Triumph when Arsinoe was released and beside Mark Anthony during the years Arsinoe’s mausoleum was built in Ephesus that she was responsible for both events. It was an exciting climax to my project. I thanked Prof Hilke Thur for her interview. EPHESUS……………………..farewell As the muezzin calls the worshippers to prayer I write from the roof terrace of the guesthouse on the site of the sanctified precincts of the Temple of Artemis. Swallows sacred to Isis flit around the roof terrace to their nests outside our rooms. This has been a journey that has changed my life - I have found a new base here for future years from where to study further the glories of Asia Minor and the Aegean. I found new perspectives for my book and speeches. Inner shadows have vanished in sunshine and blue skies, a healing journey. All of us who are persisting late in life to achieve our aspirations are encouraged by Sir Winston Churchill’s heroic example. I am grateful to Sir Winston, the great orator of the twentieth century, and the Memorial Trust whose faith in me has given me a new impetus in my career.