World Tour: Invaded by Enemas

Sunday 7th October

Heaven knows how much I can write, there seems so little time today and we have seen so much!

The explanation of the title for this entry is that our charming local guide who was very knowledgeable and spoke otherwise excellent English, had confused 'enemy' with 'enema'. Syracusans apparently had many enemas, who seemed to have attacked them quite often.

We started our day by being driven to ancient Syracuse, where we had a look first at the stone quarries where 7000 Athenians were imprisoned during the Peloponnesian Wars in 430 BC. Some few escaped and were helped home, but most perished there.

Having read so much about it, I found it quite moving actually to be there and imagine them toiling in all the heat until they died.

We went on to look at the Greek theatre where some of Aeschylus plays were first performed. The upper part of it is now missing, but it is still very large, on a steep hillside facing the sea.

It was another place I've read a lot about, so I found it very atmospheric. At the very top of the hill, a fountain that was built so that there would be water for the audience is still running - fed by an aqueduct that was built around 470 BC, almost 2500 years ago.

I was disappointed to learn that archeologists now no longer think that the huge acoustic cave called 'Dionysus' Ear' had anything to do with the acoustics of the theatre - my information is clearly out of date.

All the groups went into the cave to test the famous echo. The echo is good inside, but much better heard from outside!

We walked down next to the well- preserved Roman amphitheater.

Nobody is quite sure about the square bit in the middle. It seems to have some connection with underground water, so it might have bern used to flood the arena for sea battles, as was done at the Coliseum, or for something else entirely.

After that, we drove to the fort of Euryalus, at the far western end of the 27 kilometres of walls that protected Syracusans from their enemas (sic!)