Original subtitles

ALICE ROBERTS: The Aegean Sea and its collection of beautiful islands

are framed by the coastlines of mainland Greece and Turkey.

Millions of tourists of all nationalities come here every year.

3,000 years ago, it was just as popular.

The ports of the Aegean would have been crammed with families,

workers, soldiers and kings,

travelling for trade and to fight.

The cities of ancient Greece were often at war with each other.

I want to find out more about this vast and complicated civilisation,

to dig out the real stories behind the myths.

And I'm not just going to the well-known tourist spots.

Of course not.

I'm headed off the beaten track.

I'm Alice Roberts, and I'm travelling hundreds of miles

through what is now Greece and Turkey,

looking into the flowering of classical civilisation,

from ancient Greece to the Romans...

Oh, my goodness!

That's wonderful.

..to discover this region's vital role

as the birthplace of Plato,

Socrates and Alexander the Great,

mythology, theatre and democracy.

(SPEAKS GREEK)

Taking the train is such a brilliant way to explore a country.

I love finding quirky rural stations...

..and then seeing how the landscape gradually changes.

(HORN HONKS) (MAN SPEAKS GREEK)

ALICE: I started my journey in Thessaloniki,

and from there, I took the train

to the historic sites at Vergina

and Delphi,

home of the oracle

and the temples of Apollo and Athena.

Today, I'm on a 90-minute train journey

from Livadia to the Greek capital.

Heading away from those lovely mountains and the temple of Athena.

But I'm now on my way to the city that bears her name -

Athens itself.

Halfway to Athens, and Delphi is very much still on my mind.

It's such a stunning mountainside city,

with incredible examples of precious ancient architecture

and thousands of tourists.

It's such a difficult balance to strike,

making these sites accessible to the public while protecting the heritage.

It's a hot topic in Greece

and one I hope to discuss with the Greek Minister of Culture.

Arriving into the metropolis of Athens

and new renovation at the station reminds you

of the depth of history here.

As they work to build two new platforms,

every scoop of earth is monitored by archaeologists.

Athens is an ancient city

with a history dating back thousands of years.

It's had a huge influence on Western civilisation

in everything from art and science to philosophy and politics.

My first meeting, though, is some distance away, in the Pentelic Hills,

just 15 minutes from the city centre.

These small mountains are all part of the...Mount Penteli,

which is the source of the famous, famous Pentelic marble,

the beautiful white marble that was used to build the Parthenon

on the Acropolis,

and as you can see, the quarries are still busy today.

Alongside this road is an archaeological site

rarely visited by tourists.

I'm heading to the sanctuary of Dionysos,

that dates to the 8th century BCE.

I'm meeting Niki, who's spent years researching here

and has a fascinating theory about the origins of theatre and democracy.

Niki.

Hello. Hi.

(SPEAKS GREEK) (SPEAKS GREEK)

Hello. Tell me about this place, then.

'Cause it's meant to be the birthplace of theatre.

NIKI: Yes, indeed.

Uh, this is, uh, the birthplace of, uh, Thespis.

You may know of, uh, the word 'thespian'.

Uh, so, it comes from him.

Thespis lived here.

This is his home village. Yeah.

And, erm...

..this village happened to have a very important cult of Dionysos,

the god of wine.

So, Niki, where are we standing right here, then?

There's archaeology all around us. Yes.

So if you can notice, there are these stone seats.

This is, uh, certain, that it was a small theatre.

OK. It's a local theatre.

Well, so this is the stage here? Yeah.

We're standing on the stage? More or less. Yes.

Yeah. More or less.

So we have to think in terms of, uh, small-scale activity,

but of extreme importance, because this is where it all began.

Yeah, and is there... there must be a settlement, then.

There must be... Yes, of course.

There was a town around here? Of course. There's a town.

It's not... it hasn't been excavated fully.

Yeah. Uh, only, erm...only this area.

And you see the site also looks kind of abandoned.

ALICE: Legend has it that Thespis invented theatre

when he stepped away from a chorus of dancers and singers to speak to them,

and it somehow connected to the Greek god Dionysos, the god of wine.

NIKI: So you have to imagine a group of revellers. ALICE: Yep.

Thespis jumped out of this little crowd and addressed a question.

And the group answered the question. Yeah.

So this is a rudiment of Greek theatre,

the actor and the chorus.

And the reason why it is so important

is because the actor represents the individual...

Yeah.

..and the chorus represents the collective.

And it starts with a drunken dance. A drunken dance. Absolutely.

A drunken dance... Yes.

..gives birth to theatre.

Yes. This is brilliant.

So...we shouldn't think of theatre as secular, the way we do today. Yeah.

It was under the protection of this very, very, uh,

important god, Dionysos...

Yeah, yeah. ..erm, who is a protector.

That's all part of the religious worship?

Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Yes, yes.

ALICE: The site was first discovered by a German archaeologist

in the late 19th century

and then excavated by an American team.

How do you know that Dionysos was... was worshipped here?

NIKI: Because right where this big rectangular stone is,

we found the archaic statue of Dionysos.

And it's...it's...it's recognisable as that particular god? Yeah. Absolutely.

Because he's holding, uh, the kantharos, the drinking cup.

And, of course, there are, uh,

always stylistic criteria to recognise gods when you find the...

ALICE: Yeah. ..statues... ALICE: Yeah.

..let alone the fact that he's larger than...

..than natural size, so...

Yeah. He's in the National Museum.

I really recommend that you visit him.

So this is extraordinary.

You've got a really wonderful connection here between, uh...

..between archaeology and history AND mythology.

Yes, yes. It's all coming together. Of course.

ALICE: Niki has written extensively

about the surprising link between theatre and democracy.

NIKI: When democracy was founded a few years later,

democracy, uh, utilised this very important dialogue,

between individuals and collectives...

Yeah.

..as a f...a foundation for tremendous intellectual growth and political growth.

And, um, what I found interesting, looking at Hellenistic towns,

actually, into... into the Roman period,

is that you have the... the buildings, the architecture,

kind of reflects that link,

because you have the buildings which are the...

..uh, the odeon, or the bouleuterion, like, where the town council sits,

and it looks like a small theatre.

Yes. Yeah.

I can show you this, erm,

pillar here.

It has been identified and read.

Uh, it has letters here, as you see.

Uh... Oh, yeah. Yeah.

NIKI: Yes. Uh...

ALICE: God, they're fairly subtle, aren't they, underneath that lichen.

Do we know how old this is? Do you have any idea?

NIKI: This, yes. Yes, yes, we do. We know very well.

It dates all the way from, uh, the 4th century BCE.

ALICE: OK.

So you've got some letters on here. Yes.

What does this relate to? Is it... is it readable? Is it legible?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was much more legible.

They're the names of the sponsors.

Oh, OK. Yes.

The patrons of the theatre... Yeah, patrons. ..effectively.

The patrons of the theatre here. Held here.

ALICE: So the patrons get their names here.

That's the important thing, isn't it? NIKI: This is the important thing.

You write it in stone. You make sure everybody knows.

Everybody knows. Yeah.

And then this gave you a lot of, erm, social...

Status. ..visibility...

Yeah. Yeah. ..and status - exactly.

ALICE: And then setting up a monument to say, "I've done this."

NIKI: Yes, yes, yes. ALICE: Yeah.

Does every village have a theatre? We think so.

This just happens to be a very exceptional village,

because it...it produced, uh... uh, the...the birth of theatre.

ALICE: So it means it becomes

a really important central pillar of Greek culture.

NIKI: Absolutely. Yes. Yes. ALICE: Yeah. Yeah.

Well, Plato, uh, was, uh, uh, annoyed by that.

He talked about theatrokratia. Huh?

Like we say demokratia? Yeah. Democracy?

It's like the overpowering, uh...

..uh, theatre, uh... you know...addiction.

Being ruled by theatre. Yes, yes!

Yeah. Yes, yes.

Did he go to the theatre, though? Uh...

Do you think he...

We don't know if he went, but, uh... Yeah.

..he must have.

Uh... He sounds a bit miserable, Plato, I always think.

He is a little bit.

Yes. Uh, detached.

Yeah. And too intellectual.

I like... (LAUGHS)

..I pref...I prefer Aristotle.

(LAUGHS) I think he'd have been more fun.

I would have liked to have met him. Yes. Yeah.

It would be nice to meet any of them.

Yeah, it would, wouldn't it?

I'd like to meet some of the playwrights, though.

Yes. Aristophanes.

Oh, my God. He'd have been a laugh.

NIKI: He would have been a...

..a real treat to meet.

ALICE: Yeah.

It's a...it's a very quiet archaeological site.

NIKI: Very. Very much so, yes. ALICE: Yeah.

Uh...

..it would be nice if, uh, more people knew about it.

Yeah. Yeah.

If, as you say, this really is the birthplace of theatre.

Yeah. It's an important place.

Very much so, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Back in the city centre of Athens, and I'm in the district of Plaka,

famous for its narrow, winding streets, bars and cafes.

Plaka sits in the shadow of the Acropolis,

which dominates the skyline.

It seems a bit strange to find a street here

named after the English romantic poet Byron.

But he was here, in Athens, 200 years ago,

and he was a champion of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.

He was also very critical of the British diplomat Lord Elgin

about removing marble sculptures from the Parthenon

and taking them back to Britain.

It's a controversy that rumbles on

and that I want to understand more about.

Hello.

Are you gonna come and lie on my bag?

(SPEAKS GREEK)

(MAN SPEAKS GREEK)

Mmm.

Tomorrow, I'm going to look at some very ancient inscriptions,

which hold clues to Athens's power and wealth.

But for now, I'm just going to enjoy the evening light with my new friend

and raise a glass to Dionysos.

(CAT PURRS)

ALICE: I'm in Athens, looking for evidence of this city's ancient past.

Today, Athens has a population of just over 3 million,

but it brings in twice as many visitors.

Some six and a half million tourists come here each year.

I want to discover what lies behind its success.

Five metres below street level, ancient Athens reveals itself.

In the 1990s, engineers extending the metro

came face-to-face with the engineering of their ancestors.

Getting water into and out of the growing city was a challenge,

and amongst these remains of ancient Athenian buildings

are stone channels, including a very large one,

dating to the 5th century,

called the Great Drain.

One of the reasons we know so much about ancient Greece

is because of their obsession with writing things down.

Public notices, new laws and, as I saw at the sanctuary of Dionysos,

lists of patrons who funded the arts

were all written on stone

and have lasted thousands of years.

There's a whole museum dedicated just to inscriptions on stone

in the city centre north of the Acropolis.

I'm meeting the museum director, Dimos,

who has a team of people still working on conserving and decoding

many of these texts.

Dimos. DIMOS: Hi.

Good morning. (SPEAKS GREEK)

Oh. It's very nice you speak Greek.

(LAUGHS) A little bit. A very tiny bit. OK.

And I can read it a little bit as well.

Yes. This is very good. (LAUGHS)

And...and it is good here, isn't it, because it's all about...

Yes, it's... ..inscriptions...

..all about inscriptions and all about writing.

It was founded in 1886.

It's a...a museum that has, uh, Greek inscriptions, mainly,

from 8th century to modern times.

ALICE: Yeah, yeah.

How many inscriptions have you got here?

14,000.

14,000 inscrip...

Have you read them all?

Me personally? Yeah.

Not all. Not all? (LAUGHS) Not all.

I know most of them, but...

Yeah. ..I have not read them all.

Do you hope to read them all? Yes, of course. Yeah?

I have some years, you know... Yeah, yeah. ..in front of me.

So I have to read some inscriptions that I have not read yet. Yeah.

So these inscriptions relate to lots of different things.

Some of them are decrees or...

Decrees. ..uh, laws carved in stone.

Some of them are... Decrees. Laws.

Uh...catalogues, what we call catalogues, that are...

..uh, usually, they catalogued many things.

And they had, uh, many things from the...

..sacred place, from the temples.

And I presume that they're put up in...

..uh, public places where...

Yes, of course. ..where people can read them.

Uh, Acropolis. Usually on Acropolis. Yeah.

On Acropolis, it was fine, it was written...

(SPEAKS GREEK)

"Put them on Acropolis."

ALICE: Because when you look at these inscriptions,

there are no gaps between the words.

DIMOS: Yes, of course.

The way they were writing had no gaps. Yeah.

I find it very difficult, because I can read the letters.

I studied ancient Greek.

But when they're all just...

..in a string, I find it really difficult.

OK.

You...with the years...

..you are used.

You just get used to it? You used and you read them. Yeah.

It's...it's not...if...even if you come here and you stay one month,

after one month, you are going to read them...

Yeah. ..easily.

Yeah, yeah.

So, what should I look out for as I'm wandering round? What?

From there, that... they are the earliest inscriptions.

And afterwards, you have to go back there from here.

That there. OK.

I mean... I'll go and explore.

Thank you very much. You're welcome.

ALICE: There are four large galleries

containing inscriptions on smaller and larger stones

and back rooms, where the researchers decode the texts

and carefully catalogue each item.

I'm looking, though, for the oldest piece in the collection.

This is one of the smallest fragments in the museum,

but definitely not to be missed, 'cause it's also the oldest,

dating back to the 8th century BCE.

So this is

incredibly early Greek writing.

I can make out a kappa there and an alpha.

What they're doing is they're taking a written language

that already existed, the Phoenician language,

the language of...of trade around the eastern Mediterranean,

and they're adapting it to

the language that they're speaking.

They're adapting it to

that Greek spoken language,

using those Phoenician letters,

but also adding in new ones,

because Phoenician didn't have any vowels.

And so the creation of the Greek alphabet also involves

vowel sounds as well as consonants.

8th century.

I mean, that's mind-blowing.

We're seeing the origins of the Greek alphabet here,

and it really caught on.

There's something amazing about

still being able to read these words today.

But some inscriptions are harder to decode than others.

And these earlier ones look like they're back-to-front.

It's mirror writing.

This is from the 7th century BCE,

and it's read from right to left.

So this is a gravestone for...

..Keramos.

And then in this inscription of the 5th century,

the direction of the writing changes every line.

So you can just see that we're going this way, left to right,

then we're going right to left

then left to right.

And this style is called boustrophedon,

because it's like cattle pulling a plough

and turning at the ends of the field.

Tall stone slabs covered in inscriptions

were erected in public spaces.

They're called stelae.

They'd inform the citizens of new laws, treaties

or record financial dealings,

a bit like a newsletter.

So this is the stela that relates to the first Athenian League.

And this is when the city-states came together

in an alliance against the Persians.

And Athens was at the heart of that alliance.

And what Athens was doing was

asking for money from the other city-states.

So it was asking for a tribute.

And what we've got here, then, are all of these tributes recorded.

So it is the kind of accounts that go with this Athenian League,

with this alliance.

And what we've got here are numbers,

a little bit like numbers in... in Latin,

but instead here we've got Greek letters, so...

..each one of these represents a hekaton, so that's actually 400.

So it's basically saying how much each...

..city should be paying to Athens.

And you can see some of the names of cities around here.

They're all arranged geographically, look,

so we've got cities around the Hellespont.

Hellespontios.

And they were all listed here, like Neandreia.

And then every few years,

Athens has a reassessment

and decides that everybody should be paying them a bit more tax.

Dimos says I can go in here, into the research lab.

It says "No entrance, no photos."

I'm going in anyway.

Oh, that's lovely.

A little grave marker,

with somebody's name on it, look.

"Zosime Heraklionos..."

So "Zosime, daughter of Heraklion..."

"..Apamaetis..."

"..from Apamea".

And these two hands are praying,

so hands raised in invocation or prayer.

That's lovely.

Politics, ancient lives, deaths.

They're all here.

And they'll be here long after I've gone.

The centre of Athens has three huge hills, completely uninhabited today.

The most famous is the Acropolis.

But I'm heading to a neighbouring hill.

And here, I'm on the edge of the old city.

This is part of the ancient fortifications of Athens.

There was a...

..an enormous long wall,

and then this is the remains of

one of the gates into the city -

in fact, one of the towers at the gates.

It had two towers, or dipylon.

Look at the city!

It's like a vast sea, lapping up against these islands.

The Acropolis is, of course, the most famous landmark in Athens, but...

..I think in some ways, this hill is even more important.

It's called the Pnyx.

Seems to come from a word that means "tightly packed together", because

throngs of people would gather up here,

and this was where the Athenian assembly met.

This is the beginning of the world's first democracy.

Thousands of people could fit into this semi-natural hollow,

and the speaker, whoever it was that was going to address the crowd,

would step onto that platform there, called the bema.

And a really important principle was that everybody had the right

to speak to the assembly.

Although when I say everybody, it was every citizen,

and not everybody was a citizen,

so if you were a slave,

you were not going to be able to speak to the assembly,

and also, you had to be a man,

but apart from that, it is the beginnings of democracy. (LAUGHS)

Tomorrow, I have a very important meeting

with a minister in the Greek government.

I want to talk about the challenges

of protecting ancient Greek archaeology,

the effects of tourism,

and hopefully the Parthenon marbles, that ended up in London.

I love the way

that people come out at night and sit

on these little rocky islands that poke up above the city.

There's a few people up here,

but there's loads of people on

the Areopagus rock over there.

That's a favourite spot.

And it gets even more spectacular

as the sun goes down and they light up the Acropolis.

The Acropolis, literally the "high city",

still dominates Athens.

Its crowning glory is the Parthenon,

the temple dedicated to Athena herself.

There are other monuments up there too,

all dating to the 5th century BCE.

The Parthenon looks remarkably intact,

but it's been reconstructed.

It was damaged by earthquakes in antiquity,

and in the 17th century, it was used as a gunpowder store by the Ottomans

and was blown up by Venetian artillery.

In the 19th century,

the British ambassador Lord Elgin

claimed to have made a deal with the Turks

allowing him to take marble sculptures from the site,

which he did,

and they ended up a long way from the Parthenon, in the British Museum.

The debate about their return has been rumbling on ever since.

ALICE: I'm in Athens, and I have an important meeting.

I've got to be at the Minister of Culture's office at 12 sharp.

To get to the ministerial Department of Culture,

I'm walking through the National Gardens,

a calm and peaceful short cut through the city centre.

It wasn't always open to the public like this, though.

It was the Royal Gardens originally

and reserved for the exclusive use of the Royal Family.

The park ends at Hadrian's Gate, also known as the Arch of Hadrian,

a classic example of Roman Athens.

(SHUTTER CLICKS)

But now, time is tight,

and I want to look smart for my meeting.

So, I've got an appointment to see Dr Lina Mendoni,

who is an archaeologist

with a special expertise in ancient inscriptions.

She also happens to be the Minister for Culture.

I want to talk to her about inscriptions,

but I'm also wondering

if she'll answer a question about some very particular marbles.

As with all politicians, time is very precious.

The Minister has two meetings today with her Turkish counterpart,

so I'm very grateful that she has managed

to squeeze me in.

We have just a few minutes to get our cameras in place

and then it's on.

Dr Mendoni, I wanted to ask you about inscriptions.

That is your particular passion, your particular expertise.

Uh, so...uh...uh,

what...what is the importance of... of inscriptions

to understanding ancient Greek culture?

I mean, uh, uh, I think that's what's incredible, is...is...is...

..being able to read the words that were written in antiquity.

It's like somebody in the past talking to you.

(SPEAKS GREEK) Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

I thought it was interesting at Delphi, the...

..the importance of protecting that landscape,

so that you do feel like you're stepping back in time, actually.

And an important part of your... your job now is...

..is looking at how you can achieve that balance of

making these sites accessible to the public

but protecting the archaeology.

That must be a huge challenge.

Yeah. So new policies are making a difference.

And...yeah.

I would like to ask you one final question.

And you can say that you don't want to answer it if you don't want to.

In your lifetime, would you like to see

the marbles come back from Britain to the Parthenon?

Hmm. (LAUGHS)

Uh...

What would it mean to Greece to have those marbles back?

Absolutely.

I don't know why it seems so complicated.

To me, it is very straightforward.

They should be back here, in Athens.

Yeah. Yeah.

Amazing. Thank you. You're very welcome.

ALICE: The Minister dashed off to her next meeting.

The impression I have is

that she's a politician who likes to get things done.

I've just two hours left in Athens before I'm back on the train

for my next destination.

Ancient Athens was a cosmopolitan city

where people from different regions and cultures mixed.

I'm on my way to a museum dedicated to the history of one community

that thrived here 2,000 years ago.

Along the avenue down to the metro is an arts-and-crafts market.

I'm suddenly surrounded by characters from ancient Greece.

And here is the legendary Theseus,

the man who went to Crete to slay the minotaur

and who's credited with founding Athens.

There's no evidence for any of that, of course, but it's a good story.

As well as the bronze statue,

he has his very own metro station.

Thissio station is just a couple of stops from my next destination.

I'm going to see a new exhibition that reveals the fascinating story

of the Jews in ancient Greece.

A 5-minute walk brings me to the Jewish Museum.

(BUZZING)

It was founded in 1977

to house thousands of artefacts from Jewish communities across Greece,

stretching back from the modern era through the Middle Ages to antiquity.

And here's one object that captures a century's worth of history.

There's a great story of recycling right here.

This piece of stone has had at least three cultural lives,

if I can describe it in that way.

It was...most recently, before it ended up in this museum,

part of a Venetian fort at Chalcis.

But you can see there's writing on it, and that writing is in Hebrew.

So before it was part of the fort, it was a tombstone,

and it was a tombstone of, obviously, a Jewish person in the 16th century.

Before that, though, it was part of a bit of ancient Greek architecture.

It's an Ionic capital from the top of a column.

So it's interesting to see this Jewish reuse of

this earlier ancient Greek bit of stonework.

But I know there are much older inscriptions in this museum

which evidence Jews in Greece going back more than 2,000 years ago.

Occupying what seems to be an old townhouse,

the museum has four floors arranged around an octagonal staircase.

The collection here consists of ritual objects

from synagogues from all over Greece.

There are also personal items, rare books

and a collection of beautiful textiles from the Ottoman period.

But it's the new exhibition on the very top floor that I've come to see.

I'm meeting the museum's director,

Zanet.

Zanet. Hi.

Hello. Nice to meet you. It's good to see you.

Really good to see you. I found an inscription downstairs,

But it dated to the 16th century. Yes.

Yes, yes. Which is a bit late for me. Yes, quite.

ALICE: This gallery is dedicated to inscriptions,

but this time, Jewish inscriptions.

These artefacts have been collected from mainland Greece and the islands

and span different periods of antiquity.

This is a Hebrew inscription dating from 1611... OK.

..from the castled city of Mystras,

where there was a strong and vibrant Jewish community.

ALICE: Yeah.

So, here we are moving to the 5th century, Common Era,

and this is a fragment from the Agora of Athens.

That's a menorah, isn't it? Yes, it's a menorah. Yeah.

ZANET: And a lulav. You see part of a lulav here to the right.

ALICE: What's a lulav?

It's a bunch of plants... Yeah.

..a bouquet of plants, that's used, uh, for the, uh, holiday of Sukkoth.

And the menorah is the.. Tabernacles. ..is that typical Jewish candle?

Typical. Yes. Typical. Yeah. Yeah.

And do you think they were Greek-speaking?

Are we talking about people who were...

..who were, you know, part of that wider Hellenistic culture?

We know they were Greek-speaking. Yeah.

They had already been Hellenised

by coming into contact with the Greek language of the time.

And they were speaking, um, Greek, Hellenistic Greek, among themselves

in their everyday life.

Um, it...it was something like English today. Mmm.

If you wanted to be part of a social milieu

and, uh, participate, you know, in...in socials

and in, uh, business,

um, you had to speak Greek at that time, like you do now.

You have to speak English. Yeah, yeah.

So they're...they're speaking Greek on a day-to-day basis... Yes.

..but speaking Hebrew in the synagogue?

Exactly. And worshipping in Hebrew. Yeah. Yeah.

ZANET: This is very special.

This is the oldest inscription in this exhibition

but also the oldest archaeological evidence

of the presence of, uh, Jews in...on Greek soil.

Really? Yep.

And when does that date to?

ZANET: It dates from the end of the 4th,

uh, to the first half of the 3rd century, Before Common Era, which...

BCE. BCE. That's right.

ALICE: So we're talking, you know, round the time of Aristotle,

around the time of Alexander the Great.

Yeah. Yep.

That's incredible.

It was found, erm, at the, uh, temple of Amphiaraos,

in a small town called Oropus, about an hour and a half from Athens.

Yeah. Um, it's a manumission inscription.

Quite rare. Yes. OK. So...so freeing a slave?

Yes. It concerns freeing a slave.

And the text tells us very de... in great detail,

because it's actually a legally binding text,

that, uh, the, uh, man, Moschos, son of Moschion, the Jew,

uh, will be liberated by his master, Phrenenis,

a year after this inscription is put up

at the wall of the temple where it was found.

Yeah. Yeah. So a year after that, he must be liberated.

ALICE: So this legal document written in stone... ZANET: Exactly.

..is the...is the first... is the first inscription

that we have relating to a Jewish person.

Show me...show me where the word is that says...

It's right here. ..that he's a Jew.

ZANET: "Moschos, Moschionos..." ALICE: Yes.

ZANET: Meaning "son of Moschion". ALICE: Yeah.

"..Ioudaios." ALICE: "Ioudaios." I can see that.

ZANET: "The Jew". ALICE: Yeah. ZANET: Right.

That's incredible.

So based on what we know from the historical documents

and then this amazing new work on the epigraphy, the inscriptions,

do you think there were... there were Jews, there were...

..there were Jewish communities, in...in most Greek cities?

Yes, if we...

..especially if we speak about, uh, the...time in the long term...

Mmm. And we're talking about 2,500 years.

So it is the long term. Mmm.

..um, yes, absolutely.

They settled in Greek cities and islands, um,

and, uh, traded there and made lives for themselves,

professions they took up,

all the way from Crete right to the north.

Yeah. Um...maybe not in every city.

But in most cities, yes. Yeah.

That's beautiful. Thank you very much.

My time in Athens has come to an end.

I'm back at the station to catch the train away from the capital.

I've seen amazing archaeology here,

including inscriptions revealing the political power of ancient Athens

and the presence of Jewish communities in Greek cities.

And I learned how theatre and democracy emerged here.

I've caught the train heading westwards out of Athens,

and you quite quickly get out of the city and into the countryside.

Lovely hills dotted with olives and cypress trees.

And I'm going to be crossing across a very narrow isthmus

which connects to the Peloponnese.

I'm heading for another ancient city, the city of Corinth,

and I've found an ancient philosopher to be my guide,

a man called Socrates.

Next time, I come face-to-face with the Greek gods...

That's incredible, isn't it? WOMAN: Yes.

..meet the workers piecing together the past...

Are you getting near the end?

Oh! No. (LAUGHS) Oh! No.

(LAUGHS)

..I take to the seas...

OK.

I'm in charge now.

..and meet the archaeologist

with the keys to the city...

Oh! It's lovely.

..searching for more evidence of ancient Greek civilisation.

Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2025