The feeling will be familiar to many who have visited the great cities of history: I had come to Athens for the first time and made a pilgrimage to its democratic Assembly, Plato's Academy, and Aristotle's Lyceum. And it left me with a sense of profound sadness. Here were the scenes of some of the most extraordinary moments in human history, and all that was left was rubble, garbage, and dog waste. Instead of bustling creativity, there was silence, interrupted only by the odd intoxicated passerby.
To be sure, I also experienced spectacular beauty in Athens, such as the grand monuments on the Acropolis. But even that was a museum to bygone glory. This used to be the place around which the world revolved, and now it's a collection of patched-together columns, stone blocks and shards with plaques telling us that it used to be impressive.
This must be what Percy Shelley, a great admirer of ancient Greece, reflected upon when he wrote about the crumbled monument to Ozymandias, king of kings: "'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away."
