Testing post 2

Temple of Posidon on Cape Sounion

Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion seemed lifeless, as though it had always been a ruin. One lone structure on a windy promontory. It was difficult to imagine the Ancients worshipping there. Its columns stood, stark white, against the blue canvas of the sky, just as they did in all the guidebooks. Even ruined for two and a half thousand years, it still made me feel insignificant as it towered above me. Empty. The solid steps, base, and columns hinted at a past grandeur not reinforced by the weeds growing between the broken foundation blocks. Or the names and twentieth century dates carved into its age-old marble. Unlike other ruins we’d seen clustered together, with their caretakers and their sense of once having been inhabited, this place felt abandoned.

 Shading my eyes, I almost stumbled over a rock which had separated itself from the others. Not red as the clay was, nor white as the marble of the temple and the scattered blocks discarded around it, but a dark dusty mottled brown. A tortoise. A Greek tortoise, and quite an old one by its size. Temple forgotten, I watched its determined progress across the dirt and marble chunks. Maybe I looked strange kneeling in the dirt in front of a tortoise, but how else was I to get a closer look?

 It had certainly lived a hard life. Chips and scars marred its domed carapace, some raw and white like car parking grazes, others dark and worn smooth like dents in an old kitchen table. Scaly armoured forelegs, tipped with claws, dragged it forward. On the loose surface they dug into dirt, but skidded on marble. It raised its pointy nose, mouth sternly downturned. Dark eyes blinked slowly as its head swivelled, checking for obstructions like me. Once on the hard packed pathway it moved faster, heading for the nearest shelter. The flared back skirt of its shell, shading legs and tail, disappeared amongst the weeds in the shadow of the temple.

 The ruins weren’t quite abandoned after all.