Siracusa, ancient Greeks, Plutarch, Santa Lucia, travel

I was just going through some pictures and reminiscing about the trips I've taken to Siracusa, and isn't it interesting how you think you know a place and then you either re-visit or read something and you think, wow, I never saw that!  Like the Edificio Termale in eastern Achradina, a Roman bathhouse where an emperor was supposedy assassinated in 668 AD by a servant who clobbered him with a soapdish.  Gee, and I love to soak ... just keep an eye on where all the soapdishes are.


We all know that Siracusa was founded by the ancient Greeks and the famous spring, Fonte Aretusa, which supposed turned red with blood when a sacrifice was made at the sanctuary of Olympia in Greece.  Also that if a cup was thrown into the river in Olympia, it would rise in Ortygia.  I personally never saw any cups floating around, but I did walk all over Ortygia and it was beautiful.  They say Plutarch wept when the beautiful city of Siracusa fell to the Romans.


And of course Cicero, the famous orator, was impressed with Siracusa as well (who wasn't?) and talks about the extravagant decorations of ivory and gold on the outside of the Greek temple where the Duomo is now.  And Cicero went on to prosecute Verres, the nasty Roman governor who plundered many of Sicily's treasures with impunity.


Last but not least, I'm always fascinated with Santa Lucia.  I first met this saint in a Lutheran church in Chicago, where Santa Lucia Day is celebrated as a festival of light on the shortest day of the year.  Girls came down the aisle with tiaras of real candles in their hair (yikes, I'd be scared to do that) and there were special cakes and food.  Imagine my surprise when years later I go to Sicily and again meet Santa Lucia, who is the patron saint of Siracusa, and famous throughout the island.


Anyway who has knowledge or stories about Santa Lucia, please cough them up, I'd love to hear them.


And the last thing I want to say about Siracusa, is the fabulous food I have always had there - octopi, sea bass, gelato - you name it, we ate it and it was all wonderful.

The First Computer

Three flat misshapen pieces of oxidized bronze that now rest at the National Archeological Museum of Athens, Greece, have been called the world's first computer. It spent the last 2000 years under the sea. Look closely and you will find gears with neat triangular teeth and a ring divided into degrees of the circle. Nothing like it will appear again for 1000 years. With amazing accuracy, the device was meant to track the motions of the sun, moon, and planets. Similar in sizer to a mantel clock, the Antikythera Mechanism has trains of interlocking gear wheels that drive at least seven hands (sun, moon, and the 7 planets visible to the naked eye) at various speeds to mark celestial time. It also featured ways to mark phases of the moon, the calendar, and the timing of lunar and solar eclipses. Cicero wrote that a Rhodes philosopher Posidonis made a similar model of the heavens in the first century BC, and some have suggested that such items originated as much as 200 years earlier in Babylon. How was such knowledge transmitted to the sailors of the Mediterranean down through the centuries if another such device wasn't readily available? By the time of our stories, such information was 1300 to 1400 years old. Merchants and sailors may have relied on this ancient knowledge without knowing where it came from.