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High life

Where Alcibiades once walked, amateur tax spies are trying to entrap poor pistachio-sellers

The glories of Ancient Greece are a long way from the present mess

14 March 2015

9:00 AM

14 March 2015

9:00 AM

 Athens

I am walking on a wide pedestrian road beneath the Acropolis within 200 meters of the remaining Themistoclean wall and the ancient cemetery to eminent Athenians. One side is lined with splendid neoclassical houses, none of them abandoned but most of them shuttered and locked up. This is the area where once upon a time Pericles, Themistocles and Alcibiades — to name three — trod, orated and debated non-stop.

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