Yannis Loulourgas' Bouzoukis Workshop

The Heraion

When I first arrived at the Heraion in Samos, I approached the marble podium above and immediately this beautiful cat came running out from the trees and perched herself right on the engraving that I wanted to capture in a picture. She was purring loud enough to be heard in Pythagoria, about 11 kilometers away! I named her Hera...and I swear she purred even louder when I called her that! She was a delightful greeter...

 It is said that the goddess Hera was born here on the banks of the Imbrasos river beneath a Lygos tree...

 

 She was betrothed to Zeus and the rest...well, that was just the beginning, wasn't it?

 

 I spent the better part of the day last Saturday at this sacred site.

 

 

                           The enormity of this ancient temple was difficult to imagine until I saw this...

 

               Look to the right of the rightmost column and you will see the height relation to man...!

 

 
This is an overhead rendering of the columns in the temple. There were 155 of them, each 20 meters tall...that's over 60 ft.!...Herodotus wrote: "The most eminent of all the temples we have beheld"

This column, at half it's original height, is the last remaining column out of the one hundred and fifty that stood in support of this, the greatest of all temples honoring Hera...

 

 

 The site itself is over 20 acres and with each step I took, there was yet another remnant of Hera's Temple...

 

 

This site plays an important role in my new book...

For more information, click here

And now for ÆSOP's Fable of the Week...

The Fox and the Grapes


  One hot summer's day a Fox was strolling through an orchard
 

till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which
 

had been trained over a lofty branch.  "Just the thing to quench
 

my thirst," quoth he.  Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and
 

a jump, and just missed the bunch.  Turning round again with a
 

One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success.  Again
 

and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to
 

give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: 

"I am sure they are sour."