This morning I got up early and jogged around the Acropolis. My route took me first up and down the hills of Filopappos and Pnyx, before heading through the ancient agora and the Plaka district, then past the Lysicrates monument before heading back to my starting point near the theatre of Dionysos. This was, quite literally, a jog through antiquity. It was on Pnyx Hill, for example, that democracy first started, during the 4th and 5th century BC, when citizens’ assemblies (Ekklesia) met there to discuss and vote upon all important matters of state. Themistokles, Perikles and Demosthenes all spoke from the speaker’s platform (the bema) that is still visible today. The ruins-scattered Filopappos hill, alongside it, is where Francesco Morosini’s dastardly cannon were located in 1687. There are splendid views from the monument at the top (raised in honour of a Roman consul, AD 114-16) and there I saw an old lady, dressed all in black, thread her way through the scrub pines to the summit. I imagined her doing this every day. If she had done so, she would have seen the sea of green between Athens and the Mediterranean – visible in the near distance – gradually become a sea of buildings, for modern Athens now pours all the way to the sea.