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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BoldItalic" data-source="post: 7121097" data-attributes="member: 6777052">They hovered the magic carpet over ancient Athens, having evaded the thunderbolts flung at them by the gods as they flew over Mount Olympus on the way, and wondered where to land. There seemed to be a building site on the flat top of a large hill in the centre of the city so they put down there, next to a large marble noticeboard. Throg couldn't read the notice because it was all Greek to him anyway, so he risked asking Hermione what it said."The archaic writing doth me sore perplex," she admitted, "but seemingly it sayeth COMING SOON - THE PARTHENON."It meant nothing to Throg, so he concentrated on the task in hand. "Maybe we should ask someone the way to the fish market?" he suggested.Now, it is an immutable law of the universe that, when you ask someone the way in a strange city, they will turn out to be the only person for miles who isn't a native and who knows even less about the place than you do. This indeed occurred. The man they tried to speak to was a Phoenician tin-trader recently returned from a lucrative voyage beyond the pillars of Hercules who knew no Greek, had never been to Athens before and had got completely lost after leaving the port of Piraeus because this was about a century before Themistocles would be building some proper roads between the two. His name was Stan and he spoke Phoenician with what, about two millennia later, would be recognisable as a Cornish accent.[sup]1[/sup][HR][/HR][sup]1[/sup] This is in case you feel like role-playing him. The justification is that, during the bronze age, the Phoenicians did indeed sail to Cornwall to trade with the tin miners there. Also, he is called Stan because the alchemical word for tin was stannum, but he wouldn't have known that so it's not much of a joke.</blockquote>

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