The Athenians

Go, go, move. One by one, the marble slabs are sliding off... And for my father’s sake, don’t spit on them!

What exactly, my dear lady, do you imagine your five-year-old is going to understand, dragging him up mountains like this? Oh, look at that one asleep — and apparently he’s after permanent civil-service position too. . Here we are, and he can’t even see the little brat jumping up and down on the country’s main source of income.

Come on, move along. Don’t you dare stain my building with that coffee from “Gregory’s”. What the hell is wrong with these guards? Don’t they get paid? Are they all volunteers? Who’s calling me again?

Ah.

Right. The ones with the kollyva, down there by the rock. When did there get to be so many of them? I always remember about ten or so, and suddenly this year they are enough to fill two coaches. With an expansion option, I might add.

And now they’ve prepared kollyva for me again because somebody read something about the Anthesteria and ChatGPT told them, yes, yes, an “iconic” celebration in honour of Athena.Boil the kollyva and call it panspermia.

I hate kollyva. At least the ancients knew better. They offered them here, in my space, “but to the second-raters: Dionysus the drunk and Hermes the flight attendant-and-ground-crew-in-one.”

And now, these people invoke me while handing them out to the tourists as well. Some of those tourists, make no mistake, will put them in the fridge after turning them into TikTok shorts, only to take them home to their countries.

As far as I’m concerned, they can all get lost — tourists and their worm-infested souvenirs alike.

Personally, all I would like is some peace and quiet in my own place, the way I had it for all those centuries when I only had a little disturbance from visitors during the summer months. The rest of the year, the locals avoided the uphill climb as if it were the Devil himself.

But these past few years, with the city’s tourism boom — my city,mind you— I’ve been living on anxiolytics and vitamin B complex for my thoroughly battered nervous system.

I don’t sleep well at night anymore. Thump-thump-thump in the surrounding neighbourhoods, and toilets flushing in the hotels.

In the mornings I take my place early. Because besides my house, I also have to check in on that warehouse with the glass cases by that foreign fellow Tsumi, as though we never had any local builders. Then I swing by the market to inspect the artists’ latest inspirations and the tourists’ latest purchases.

Because I’m not one of those gods who spent the centuries homeless because of Christianity and eventually had to move back into the family home.

My supposedly beautiful, influencer sister never stops reminding me how lucky I am. Her sanctuaries all over Greece became foundations for thοσε who came after to build on. Not that they had much better luck.

Some ended up being acquired by shepherds through adverse possession, turned into shelters for livestock, until Byzantine scholars and archaeologists finally went in there with handkerchiefs over their noses to clean out the treasures.

Life at the family home, it is true, becomes unbearable after a certain age.And if that’s true for human beings, imagine what it’s like for gods who are born straight into adulthood. God, I’d love a little studio apartment. One roof tile I could call my own. Somewhere I could have some peace. All the more so when your father is an old, foul-tempered, skirt-chasing bastard and your stepmother is an insecure, manipulative, depressed schemer.

In our world there are no psychologists or psychiatrists. Otherwise, every last one of us would be spending eternity on a couch.

Because we all have our issues.And behind all our issues, make no mistake, there he is.My Father.And I have absolutely no problem admitting it, even though for thousands of years people have insisted that I am his favourite, his beloved daughter, the one who can wrap him around her little finger.None of that is true.None of it ever was.

The only thing people have been passing down from generation to generation that actually contains a grain of truth is that I’m not afraid of him — and that I give him hell whenever I get the chance.And apparently that is precisely why he keeps sending me home.Which means back to my crumbling ruin, the one that is still standing thanks to scaffolding.

Until the Recovery Fund money finally gets put to use and they restore it according to whatever energy-efficiency standards the European Union has decided it should meet.

Although I’m not at all sure that will happen anytime soon. Even as a ruin, my house is still making money.

So don’t be surprised that all the other property owners in Athens — my Athens,mind you — rent out their ruins as palaces without even having the decency to make them habitable.

Ruin porn is added value in my city.And I am hardly proud of it.But apparently I’m the only one.The only property owner, that is.

All day long it’s Athena this, Athena that, Athens this, Athens that, armour everywhere.Give it a rest.And please take those bags off your shoulders with my own bloody face on them, hidden behind the helmet.How is anyone supposed to appreciate my beauty if, for my entire — endless, I would say — life, they keep hiding me behind metal?What about my feminine curves?

You see the other one comes along half-naked and gets everyone hot and bothered right inside my house, in my own territory, while I stand there like Ugly Betty, with a dark moustache over my lip and owl eyes.The owl eyes, of course, are credited by gods and mortals alike with great intelligence — presumably so I don’t turn to drugs.

Paris didn’t wrong me.No.Paris, let me tell you, didn’t even spare us a glance. He just voted like a Greek voter before an election.He asked us what we had to offer him.And he chose according to his own interests.That, for anyone who still thinks the Trojans were somehow fundamentally different from the Achaeans.Could I have played populist and promised him everything?Yes.Did I?No.Good for me?Obviously.

But why, exactly, did all those people who supposedly worshipped me — and still supposedly worship me today — never bother to restore my reputation?

I’m the eternal virgin spinster. Thank dad, the joke about the sacred veil trailing behind me through the streets like a bedsheet has finally died down.And while Netflix is busy questioning the virginity of another beloved figure with documentaries suggesting that the Messiah had four or five brothers, when it comes to me — nothing.Not one child of my own. Only one adopted child.And I did right by him.

I’m the eternal tomboy who goes toe-to-toe with the toughest thug in the world. Yes, I mean the one nobody worships. The one you won’t find a temple dedicated to, or cities fighting over his legacy.The one who now spends his endless time playing video games.The one abandoned even by the woman he was hopelessly obsessed with, the half-naked one.Forgotten even by his own mother after the Trojan War.At least she didn’t throw him off a cliff.

Anyway.I’m not here to moan and complain.I’m here to set the record straight after yesterday’s fight with my father.No, I told him. I am not obliged to protect everyone who happens to be in my city.Period. End of story.

Shame on you, he replied. I went down in history as Xenios, and you... where did you get it from?

From the woman you swallowed while she was pregnant with me, then sent her down into your gut and sent me up into your head.

I would have said more to the old man, the one who condemned me to adulthood from the moment I was born without ever granting me the right to be a teenager.But just then the only man who has ever made a pass at me walked into the living room — yes, that hideous Hephaestus — and I was afraid he might ejaculate on my thigh again.So I grabbed our father’s thunderbolt and smashed it over the head of his son, who isn’t particularly bothered by falling, whether it’s himself falling or objects falling on him, and I left.The matter remains unresolved, despite what the fellow with the unruly white hair seems to think.

My city has been taken over by every kind of clueless outsider, brought in from every corner not only of the country but of the entire world, and I have no intention of protecting all of them.I have spoken.And I have no sin on my conscience.

Now I’m just waiting for that woman with the headband- the Culture Minister- to close the doors of my house so I can finally get some rest.