Most of these were Greek cities that were built over by the Romans, so that most of the remaining ruins are Roman. The first thing that strikes me is the superb locations of these cities, often with an Acropolis atop a hill and the city sprawling down the hillside, a natural spring tapped to provide fresh water, and usually overlooking a port that has now often been filled in by earthquakes and alluvial silt. The amphitheaters, marketplaces, libraries, baths, stadiums, aquaducts, gates, necropolises, and even the public toilets have aura of grand design about them. These Romans certainly knew how to build things, achieving amazingly impressive architectural feats.

However, I'm also struck with the incredible contrast between the great and glory of Rome and the horrible nastiness of it. Just down the street from a great library and wonderous public fountains is a brothel, where slave girls from all over the known world are exploited. The theaters where great plays are performed also sometimes play host to gladiator battles, where slaves are brutalized in horrific sport. The marvelous temples had secret sections where the corrupt priests would store their ill-gotten treasures, while they manipulated the public with phony oracular proclamations and bizarre religious sacrifices. The baths seem like the majestic height of civilization, but they were used a meeting places for officials to avoid assassinations and often involved binge drinking and eating, aided by a disgusting vomitoriums.

Roman society was great but it was also grotesque. I know that a lot of people would say the same things about today's societies but somehow the Romans just seemed more blatant about it. Certainly I knew all this before my visits, but seeing the sites really brought it home for me. There's something that's just a tad depressing about the Romans.

The same could be said for modern Turkey, which, like many places, is full of hatreds and predjudices. More to the point, there a kind of blind stuborness about the place that is disquieting. For example, the modern Turks are happy to exploit Turkey's Byzantium and Ottoman pasts, while conviently ignoring the fact that the one brutally destroyed the other. Likewise, they constantly seem to be railing against the "theft" of their treasures of antiquity (and to be fair, many of their greatest pieces are now in London and Berlin museums) while completely ignoring the fact that their museums are filled with treasures the Ottomans stole from Persia and other parts of the Middle East.

More on this last point, they just seem to have a certain pig-headedness about it. For example, the guide I had at Pergamon, whose great Altar of Zeus now lies in a Berlin musuem named for its place of origin, took out a pen and painstakingly defaced the official sign they have at the site. Ironically, he writes: "stolen by German theivies (sp)" on the sign, mispelling the word "thieves" twice, despite the fact that he'd asked a Canadian couble how to spell the word. I don't know if the couple were egregious spellers or just not paying proper attention.

Ultimately, I'm very glad I saw these Roman ruins, whose sites have lovely coverings of flowers and wild oregano, but all of the history involved with them is not a happy one.