We have gotten behind.  There are reasons (nothing to do with international intrigue), but we are catching up.

The first was a trip that David took because G.G. was getting over a bacterial lung infection that the very-British ship’s doctor diagnosed for her.  This trip was into Turkey to see the remnants of a city, Miletus, that began as a Greek city and was taken over by the Romans after they took over everything Greek.

Miletus consisted of about 180,000 people, a very large city in a nation that relied on lots and lots of farmers to feed itself.  Miletus was a seaside city beside a river that the Romans eventually abandoned because the river silted up the port.  The sea is now several miles away.

Miletus was connected by a twelve mile road to Didyma, another Roman city that was the home of a famous oracle, a soothsayer like the oracle of Delphi, who did his soothing (or was it his saying) in the temple of Apollo at Didyma.  We have a photo of the ruined temple below.

This temple provides an example of how wealthy Rome was and how much it spent on its cities and temples.  It is estimated that it would cost 2 million Euros (about $2.7 million) to build one of the columns of the temple of Apollo today.  There were 110 columns in the temple plus lots of statues and other stone decorations.

Both Miletus and Didyma have the feel of very great shows of power and wealth by people whose names and fame have been lost in time.  Those of you who know farming in places where there are a lot of rocks know that one of the common habits of farmers in those areas is to take the rocks they dig up while plowing their fields and pile them at the ends of the fields.  There are numerous farmers fields that border the site of Miletus.  At the ends of their fields they have piled pieces of small marble columns and bits of marble coverings used on the city’s buildings.

Another individual who traveled through this part of Asia during the height of Roman power, the Apostle Paul, seemed of far less import to most of the men of influence during his day, but of course we remember him very well although he never built any impressive stone temples for the worship of his God.

Part Two of our catch-up post requires that you understand that the nation of Greece includes over 3,000 islands, about 200 of which are inhabited.  One of the most famous is Mykonos.  For those of you old enough to remember, Mykonos is one of the places that Jackie Kennedy became Jackie O, because her wealthy Greek shipowner husband had a villa on the island.

Perhaps we didn’t see the best parts, but Mykonos looked a little like an aging tourist trap to us.  We much preferred the island of Santorini (see previous post on that subject).

This is the end of catching up for today.  Sometime tomorrow, we will write about Athens and Corinth (home of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote letters), then we will be completely caught up, at least until the next time we fall behind.