Most Popular Posts

As you know on the first day of the new year, I publish the all-time favorites.   This year the top three from the 190 posts were:

1.    In the Land of the Cyclops

http://dgscrosscountrychronicles.blogspot.com/2016/04/in-land-of-cyclops.html

2.   Poseidon’s Temple and the Aegean Sea

http://dgscrosscountrychronicles.blogspot.com/2014/04/poseidons-temple-and-aegean-sea.html

3.   Porto Rafti

http://dgscrosscountrychronicles.blogspot.com/2014/03/porto-rafti.html

Most of the 50,000+ visitors were from the United States, followed by Greece and Russia, France, Germany, Ukraine, Ireland, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.

I wish you all and your loved ones a healthy and happy New Year.  I also hope 2020 will bring peace on home planet Earth.

Achilles Island

The dying Achilles (Αχιλλεας θνησκων), a marble statue in the grounds of Achillion Palace, in the island of Kerkyra, raises the question to where Achilles the bravest of all Greeks was buried after he was killed in the Trojan War.  

In this Attic lekythos c. 510 BC we see Ajax carrying the body of Achilles.  It is exhibited at Staatliche Antikensammlungen in Munich. 

Although there are many sites claiming to be Achilles’ tomb, we have a credible story by Captain Kritzikly, who in 1824 visited the island of Leuke and discovered the ruins of a temple in which a wooden statue of Achilles was found.  Captain Kritzikly drew a map of the temple and described his findings in detail. 

In 1840s the island was visited again.  Unfortunately a lighthouse was built in the same spot and resulted in the complete destruction of the temple and the surrounding structures. (Image from Wikiwands)

The experts agree that there were many temples dedicated to Achilles on Leuke in the 6^th century BC.  Did the construction many temples on Leuke meant to honor Achilles or was it because he was buried in one of them?  Nobody knows as Achilles and Ajax likely were buried near Troy as Nestor tells Telemachus “so many battles round King Pram’s walls we fought, so many gone, our bravest and best fell.  There Ajax lies, there Achilles too, the greatest man of war. (Homer’s Odyssey Book Three 119-122), and this is why the “seabirds dip their wings in the water to sweep the temples clean”.  

An Epic Journey

Voyager I & II are celebrating 40 years of exploration this August and September. Image from NASA.

Amazing planetary encounters in Voyagers’ journey includes discovering the first active volcanoes beyond Earth, on Jupiter’s moon Io and hints of a subsurface ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa.

Voyager I (top) launched on September 5, 1977, has traveled beyond our solar bubble into interstellar space almost 13 billion miles from Earth. Voyager II (bottom) launched on August 20, 1977, is still exploring the outer layer of the solar bubble, is almost 11 billion miles from Earth. Image NASA/JPL-Caltech

Now that Voyager I has left the solar system, its next big spaceflight milestone comes with a flyby of a star called AC +79 3888, which lies 17.6 light-years from Earth, in 40,000 years from now.  Although the spacecrafts’ science instruments will be turned off by 2030, they’ll continue their journeys at their speed of more than 30,000 mph, completing an orbit within our Milky Way galaxy every 225 million years. 

Each spacecraft carries a Golden Record of Earth sounds, pictures and messages. Since the spacecraft journey could last for millions of years, these time capsules could one day tell the story of human civilization on planet Earth. 

και αν μας βρητε ακομα ζωντανους, εδω στη Ιθακη             

θα σας καλοσωρισουμε, με δωρο αντι δωρου                

και θα γλεντησουμε μαζυ, διοτι ετσι ειναι το εθιμο μας, 

με αυτους που ειναι ποντοποροι

but if you found him alive, here in Ithaca

we would have replied in kind, gift for gift,

and entertained you warmly..

that’s the old custom, when one has led the way

                                                                               from Homer’s Odyssey 24.315-18