March 30

This morning I woke up and found out quickly that the hot water does not turn on until 7:00am. It wasn’t a huge deal this morning, but it is something to keep in mind for tomorrow. Breakfast was served at 7:30: eggs, cereal, and yogurt, again. We even were given bagged lunches to take with us to the site: salami and cheese sandwiches, a small salad, fruit juice, a pastry, and a bottle of water. Reed traded me his salad for my sandwich. We agreed to keep trading every day – big time Elementary school flashback.
It took us over two hours to drive to Paestum this morning, but I just studied on the bus and tried to be as productive as possible. There are a ton of tunnels in this region, however, and it gets a little annoying that the lights basically go out every few minutes or so for long stretches at a time. We arrived at Paestum, ancient Poseidonia, around 11:00 and spent the morning and afternoon checking out the three temples on site. First, we looked at the oldest temple, the Temple of Hera I, dated back to the mid 6th century BCE. Next, we checked out the Temple of Hera II, right next to Hera I. This temple is dated to the mid 5th century BCE. This temple is the largest and best preserved of the three here and is comparable to the Parthenon in its refinements, though it has no decorative sculpture. This temple still looks very top heavy and the columns are too squat to be considered as beautiful as the Parthenon.
We ate lunch right next to these two temples and Krentz had us spend a few minutes discussing why the Parthenon appeals so much more than this one. To me, the Pentilic marble used on the Parthenon is much more beautiful than the rough limestone here (though these columns would have been plastered in ancient times). I also agreed with him that the ratio of the superstructure to the column height is too small. The Parthenon’s extended width made for a narrower pediment, which looks so much better with its slimmer columns. The columns here are just too stocky.
Next, we looked at some of the Roman houses that have been excavated. They were nothing special, everyone is waiting for Pompeii tomorrow to get a good look at the typical Roman houses. There was not much here to see. After the houses we looked at the last temple, the Temple of Athena. This temple was constructed around 500 BCE and its biggest claim to fame is that it is the first building ever to combine Doric and Ionic styles.
After the temples, we went to the Paestum Museum to hear Jensen give his presentation on the Tomb of the Diver. He spoke about the painted travertine stone slabs of this tomb. The walls of the tomb are painted with scenes of a typical Greek symposium – a dinner for men only where they reclined on benches and had musical “performances” (naked women) as they ate – and the ceiling with an image of a man diving into the water. There are several theories on why this man is diving, but no one knows for sure. It probably was something to do with the afterlife as the image was found in a tomb.
After this museum, we drove back to the villa. I am in Discussion Group B and we met up as soon as we got back to talk about books 1-4 of the Aeneid. Krentz is having two people in each discussion group lead the discussions each day. I go on Wednesday with Trent and we will be leading discussions on Books 9-12. I was worried at first, because when Krentz told us our partners at dinner last night, Trent hadn’t started the book (I had already finished). But, he got through 6 books by the discussion time this afternoon, so I think we’ll be fine.
After the discussion, it was soon time for dinner. Tonight our pasta course was lasagna. Then we were served baked chicken and potatoes. Spiros brought his own olive oil tonight to share with us. I didn’t know this till tonight, but Spiros grows his own olives and makes his own olive oil. It was ridiculously good! There were even whole kalamata olives in the bowl and I munched on those as well. For dessert, we had some sort of apple cake.
After dinner, I hit the books for a few hours and then went to sleep. The trip today took much longer than I had hoped and I didn’t get all the studying done that I planned. Tomorrow will be a very long day as well – the Pompeii site is huge. I’m trying not to get worried about these tests, but everyone (well, the girls at least) is a little frantic right now, trying to get everything sorted out mentally. Krentz is also putting his foot down this time about the 1 hour time limit. That is not good news. He says he is shortening the test length, but I am doubtful they will be all that much shorter than pervious tests (one of the tests last time took me over 2 hours to finish). Well, I shouldn’t worry, that’s not helping anything. I am just making do with what time I have. That includes sleep, so goodnight.