Random Commuter Observation

There's a little Greek deli outside my metro stop. It used to be called Port of Piraeus. Some time recently, they changed the name to Athens Market.

Piraeus was the port of ancient Athens. A famous double set of long walls was built between the two - a distance of about five miles or so - during the Persian Wars of the mid-5th Century and Piraeus became the critical deep-water harbor for the celebrated Athenian Fleet. During the Peloponnesian War, it was this link with the sea that allowed Athens to carry on as long as it did even though Sparta could invade Attica from the landward side at will and even beseiged the city.

I think the name change at the deli is a shame. "Port of Piraeus" harkens back to classical times (the port eventually was destroyed by the Romans when they took control in the 1st Century B.C. and never recovered) and for me has a real romance to it. One thinks of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Themistocles and Pericles and the wiping out of Xerxes' navy at the Battle of Salamis. Athens, on the other hand, while certainly having a classical air, also has several millenia of more modern mish-mashed history to dilute it. It just really isn't the same thing.

Oh, well.