ribbon on his head, a palm branch to wave around the
stadium
and an olive wreath to take home
his real reward started he got home he was allowed his pick
of the spectacular heiresses in the town
he'd get a meal, a good meal at public expense
for the rest of his life and over it all
the fame, he would be smiled at, pointed at
for the rest of his life
the winners were recorded on statues
around Olympia their names were even
used in the Greek calendar
they named their years after Olympic winners
for the greeks an event was dated
a year in which such and such won
the games continued for twelve hundred
years until
Christian Emperor Thoedosius in 394 AD
abolish them as a pagan event
now the Olympic flame has been rekindled
and every four years
a torch is carried from Olympia to the
modern site at the greatest show on Earth
But just as spectacular were the myths
of the ancient Greeks
but there was no greater story than the lost world of Atlantis
the idea of Atlantis originates from the
writings that the Greek philosopher
Plato
he wrote about a Utopian World that became
corrupted
and as punishment destroyed
no one has ever resolved whether the
Atlantis myth was a moral
allegory or a historical story but the
search to find this lost civilization
has persisted ever since and the events
which one struck a ring of islands in
the eastern Mediterranean
have long been considered the
inspiration the Atlantis legend
Three and a half thousand years ago
an island volcano in the Aegean sea
errupted
the explosion left behind a vast bay
beside the Greek island of Santorini
had this been the destruction of Atlantis
to try and find out
archaeologists are examining the layers of 
a volcanic strata
on the island which have preserved a picture
of how life was before the eruption
right here ground zero, this is ground zero man lived on that surface
man walked that surface man built this
city on that surface
here's a residue of man what appears to
be a broken field wall
by man on that surface and then came the
pumice and down rained
pumice piece by piece, particle by
particle bearing that landscape
knocking a tree down that's a remnant of
a tree
it's now a hole because the wood has
rotted away and then the eruption
continued
with tens of feet
of more pumice ash
a tantalizing glimpse
of who were these people of Santorini and
are they a key to discovering the Atlantean
race
Plato described?
He wrote of a great island power and its
centre
a massive city built on concentric
circles land and water
and at its heart a citadel full a
spectacular treasures
was Plato's circular City inspired by
the round volcano
which had errupted by the side of Santorini
the link between Atlantis and the island
of Santorini
hit the headlines in 1966 when a Greek
archaeologist working on the southern
side of the island
uncovered some of the most beautiful
works of art
ever to be found at an ancient site
what was fuund was an unbelievably
well-preserved town this was
due to the fact that that specific
settlement was buried
under the ash of the volcano. This layer of ash
is somewhere near eight or ten meters so
it's quite a thick deposit
which means that two and three-story
buildings were actually preserved within this layer
But the most revealing discovery
was of a
wall painting it represented a map of
Santorini
and in the middle it featured the
volcano island
before it erupted
it shows a profile of the island one,
two, three peaks. Those three peaks we see
today
going down further we see a waterway
that surrounds a central island a fairly
large island
on that island, a city
the impression one gets from this painting
is society that was
able to have a large city on a small
island
but they had culture that would allow
more than subsistence living it allowed a
large city to develop here
and be supported by trade exports and
imports
Plato had talked of an island
civilization and if the wall painting is
to be believed
then perhaps it was that civilization
the once prospered
here in the bay
If we were sailing right here we'd be bumping
ashore
thirty-six hundred years ago against an
island and then if we believe
that wall painting we would just be
bumping into an island be bumping into a
little city
that was sitting right here
the wall painting is our closest
representation as to how that city
might have looked
it's amazingly impressive they are
showing
the landscape the boats the costumes the
people
3,600 years ago in the late Bronze Age
it's a snapshot a past life. The painting
bears an instant similarity to
Plato's description at the circular city
of Atlantis
but the people who'd built it had no idea
the dangers that threatened to destroy
them
 
There hadn't been any big major eruptions in this part of the world
for thousands of years, so I don't think they
had any concept of what a volcano was
Tthe eruption began with a cloud of ash
the inhabitants on the adjacent island
of Santorini
fled for their lives as tons a volcanic
rock
erupted from a huge fissure with gusts
up to 15 feet thick this pomice as it
piled up
and before ever got to fifteen feet
thick they were gone
I mean they left quickly and that was a
smart thing to do
because then it became huge explosive
eruption
water from the sea
flowed into the crack on the island
volcano
one explosion mix water with rising lava
and you got a disaster, we had a disaster
here.  There's a plume
rising up perhaps 25 miles and
everything that's on that island is
incorporated into that plume. The islanders
of Santorini
watched the Island City vaporize the
volcano then collapsed back on itself
leaving a massive hole over 900 feet deep
that hole is called a caldera it was
filled by
the ocean and this provides this dramatic
landscape today
The Atlantis legend lives on as marine
archaeologists continue to search for
signs of a lost city
beneath the sea
and the catastrophic events which struck
the island of Santorini
have ensured that Plato's puzzle remains indelibly written into history
The ancient Greeks
were able to match the extraordinary
legends with their own achievements
They develop the skills to build the
greatest wonder of ancient Greece
it is an icon of perfection
an architectural inspiration. The Parthenon
on the Acropolis the sacred hill
overlooking the city of Athens
the Parthenon was billed as a symbol of
success
it is still strong for two-and-a-half
thousand years
the story of how it came to be built is as
remarkable as the design of the building
itself
this glorious new building that was arising from a field
ruins was a symbol to the Athenians
It taught them
that after their near annihilation by the
Persians
they were now in charge, they were on their way up
this was their reminder
the Parthenon would be no ordinary
temple
its exquisite proportions on the outside
would be matched by its interior with
splendid carvings
and coloured beliefs
but the two men responsible for its
construction would face fierce criticism
Pheidias was appointed master of works he was the most famous sculptor
of his day
Pericles was the Athenian
statesman who
commissioned the building
it was part of a vast regeneration
programme
conceived by Pericles to transform Athens
to make it stand as an exemplar to the
rest of the Greek world
It was a great idea
but how would he fund it?
The money that was used had been contributed for the war against Persia
by Athens allies
