Sicyon

Listen first. Wind moves through the dry grass on this plateau, and somewhere below a tractor works the vineyards. The ground underfoot is pale and stony, warm even in the late afternoon. To the north, the Gulf of Corinth lies flat and blue, and on a clear day the mountains of central Greece rise beyond it. You are standing on the site of ancient Sicyon, one of the oldest and most respected cities of the northern Peloponnese.

Today the modern village of Vasiliko sits close by, and the wider area belongs to the municipality named after the old city. But for well over a thousand years, Sicyon was a name that carried weight across the Greek world. Its people built treasuries at Delphi and Olympia, the great sanctuaries where Greek cities displayed their wealth and devotion. Its artists set standards that others copied. And its politics produced one of the best stories ever told by the ancient historian Herodotus.

That story belongs to the sixth century before Christ, when Sicyon was ruled by a family of tyrants. In ancient Greece, a tyrant simply meant a ruler who took power outside the traditional rules, not necessarily a cruel one. The most famous of this line was Cleisthenes of Sicyon. He was rich, ambitious, and proud of his city. He won the chariot race at Olympia, and then he made an unusual announcement.

Cleisthenes invited the finest young men of Greece to compete for the hand of his daughter, Agariste. According to Herodotus, suitors arrived from across the Greek world and stayed for a full year. They were tested in sport, in conversation, and in manners. The favourite was an Athenian named Hippocleides. But at the final banquet, he drank too much and danced on a table — at one point, the story goes, standing on his head. Cleisthenes was horrified, and Hippocleides lost the bride. His reply, roughly that he did not care, became a Greek proverb.

Here is the surprise most visitors miss. The suitor who did win, Megacles of Athens, became the father of another Cleisthenes. That grandson is the Athenian statesman credited with the reforms that laid the foundations of Athenian democracy. So a wedding contest in this city helped shape the family line behind one of history's great political experiments.

Now look around at the shape of the land. The ancient city you see here is not quite the oldest Sicyon. The earlier town lay lower, on the coastal plain toward the sea. In 303 BC, the Macedonian general Demetrius Poliorcetes, whose nickname means the Besieger of Cities, captured Sicyon. He then moved the population up onto this high, flat plateau, which was far easier to defend. For a time the city even carried his name.

That move explains much of what you can walk through today. The new city was laid out on a regular grid, with streets crossing at right angles, a modern idea for its age. Walking the site, you can still sense this order. Foundations of public buildings line up neatly, and the open spaces feel planned rather than grown. Steep cliffs protect the plateau on several sides, and you can feel why a general would choose it.

If you head toward the slope of the hill, you reach the theatre. It was cut into the natural hillside, a common Greek practice that used the slope to hold the rows of seats. It was one of the larger theatres of the Peloponnese. Sit for a moment on the lower stone seats. Face the orchestra, the round floor where the chorus once performed, and notice how the view opens to the sea behind it. Ancient audiences watched plays with that same horizon in front of them.

Nearby, the gymnasium spreads across two terraces linked by stairs. A gymnasium in the Greek world was more than a place for exercise. Young men trained their bodies here, but they also studied and debated. Look for the remains of fountains along the retaining walls. Water mattered greatly on this dry plateau, and the builders made it part of the architecture.

Sicyon's other great gift was art. The city was famous for its school of painting, and ancient writers praised its careful drawing and discipline. The celebrated painter Apelles, later the court artist of Alexander the Great, is said to have studied here. The sculptor Lysippus, who made portraits of Alexander, came from Sicyon. His bronze figures had slimmer proportions than earlier statues, and they changed how the Greek world pictured the human body.

There is also a gentle legend. The Roman writer Pliny tells of a potter of Sicyon named Butades. His daughter, sad that her lover was leaving, traced the outline of his shadow on a wall by lamplight. Her father pressed clay into the outline and fired it, and so, the tale says, the first clay relief portrait was born. It is a legend, not a record — but it shows how closely this city was linked with the birth of images.

In the third century before Christ, Sicyon produced a leader named Aratus. He freed the city from a tyrant and brought it into the Achaean League, a federation of Greek cities that worked together against larger powers. Under his leadership the League became a major force in the Peloponnese. Later came Roman rule, and in Roman times a large bath building rose on the site. That restored Roman bath now houses the site museum, where finds from the city are displayed.

As the centuries passed, the city slowly faded. Earthquakes, changing trade routes, and the rise of other towns drew people down toward the coast. The plateau returned to fields and grazing land. Today the plain below is covered with vineyards, orchards, and vegetable gardens, as it likely was in ancient times. The farmers working those fields live beside the memory of painters, tyrants, and a famous wedding feast.

Before you leave, stand at the edge of the plateau and look north once more. The same gulf, the same mountains, the same light on the water filled the eyes of Lysippus and Aratus. Listen to the wind again in the grass. As you walk back past the grey stone foundations, notice how quiet it is now. A great city once stood exactly here, and the land still holds its outline.