High life | 8 August 2019

Athens

I am struggling up the slippery marble steps of the Acropolis with the Geldofs and the Bismarcks. We gaze upwards towards the façade of the Parthenon, whose simplicity has excited architects and conquerors for 2,000 years. There are no straight lines, everything curving upwards towards the centre. The whole structure tilts slightly towards the west end, the side you first see as you arrive, hot and winded. Yet every column seems perfectly straight, an optical illusion as real as the glory that once was Athens. The crowds are shabby and rather ugly — fat people speaking Spanish or Chinese, their children munching candy and ignoring the most beautiful structure ever built by man. The Parthenon’s subtleties are many: it arches, leans, swells and breathes. It also served as a place to make love in when I was a youngster. (It was open to the public but there were no tourists back then. Under the Athenian moonlight, mild breezes blowing, you had to be really gauche with women not to get lucky.) Phidias, the man who oversaw the Acropolis project, was a friend of Pericles, and the gold plates, with which he covered the gown of the statue of the virgin goddess Athena, were worth about 25 million bucks in today’s moolah. (They were sold in no time to pay for mercenaries.) The tiny Winged Victory temple is as beautiful as they come, desecrated long ago by the hated Turks. The Venetian Morosini fired on the sacred site in 1687, as horrible an act as there is — and he was supposed to be civilised. As Geldof expounds his theories and wonders how the Athenians, who prided themselves on their cultural superiority, passed down their wisdom, he suddenly changes tack and tells us about a popular quiz programme for morons. When the panel is asked what Hitler’s first name was ‘Paddy hits the button first and blurts out “Heil”.’