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Beneath the cultural peaks of Ancient Greece lay the basic agricultural economy that made civilization possible. This book studies Greek country life from its earliest beginnings to the recent past, revealing a sequence of geological, geographical, cultural, and economic images spanning some 50,000 years of human settlement and land use.
Built in the fifth century b.c., the Parthenon has been venerated for more than two millennia as the West’s ultimate paragon of beauty and proportion. Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it? In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis—the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state—from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme. In particular, she probes the Parthenon’s legendary frieze: the 525-foot-long relief sculpture that originally encircled the upper reaches before it was partially destroyed by Venetian cannon fire (in the seventeenth century) and most of what remained was shipped off to Britain (in the nineteenth century) among the Elgin marbles. The frieze’s vast enigmatic procession—a dazzling pageant of cavalrymen and elders, musicians and maidens—has for more than two hundred years been thought to represent a scene of annual civic celebration in the birthplace of democracy. But thanks to a once-lost play by Euripides (the discovery of which, in the wrappings of a Hellenistic Egyptian mummy, is only one of this book’s intriguing adventures), Connelly has uncovered a long-buried meaning, a story of human sacrifice set during the city’s mythic founding. In a society startlingly preoccupied with cult ritual, this story was at the core of what it meant to be Athenian. Connelly reveals a world that beggars our popular notions of Athens as a city of staid philosophers, rationalists, and rhetoricians, a world in which our modern secular conception of democracy would have been simply incomprehensible. The Parthenon’s full significance has been obscured until now owing in no small part, Connelly argues, to the frieze’s dismemberment. And so her investigation concludes with a call to reunite the pieces, in order that what is perhaps the greatest single work of art surviving from antiquity may be viewed more nearly as its makers intended. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma is sure to become a landmark in our understanding of the civilization from which we claim cultural descent.
"When we think of ancient Athens, the image invariably coming to mind is of the Classical city, with monuments beautifying everywhere; the Agora swarming with people conducting business and discussing political affairs; and a flourishing intellectual, artistic, and literary life, with life anchored in the ideals of freedom, autonomy, and democracy. But in 338 that forever changed when Philip II of Macedonia defeated a Greek army at Chaeronea to impose Macedonian hegemony over Greece. The Greeks then remained under Macedonian rule until the new power of the Mediterranean world, Rome, annexed Macedonia and Greece into its empire. How did Athens fare in the Hellenistic and Roman periods? What was going on in the city, and how different was it from its Classical predecessor? There is a tendency to think of Athens remaining in decline in these eras, as its democracy was curtailed, the people were forced to suffer periods of autocratic rule, and especially under the Romans enforced building activity turned the city into a provincial one than the "School of Hellas" that Pericles had proudly proclaimed it to be, and the Athenians were forced to adopt the imperial cult and watch Athena share her home, the sacred Acropolis, with the goddess Roma. But this dreary picture of decline and fall belies reality, as my book argues. It helps us appreciate Hellenistic and Roman Athens and to show it was still a vibrant and influential city. A lot was still happening in the city, and its people were always resilient: they fought their Macedonian masters when they could, and later sided with foreign kings against Rome, always in the hope of regaining that most cherished ideal, freedom. Hellenistic Athens is far from being a postscript to its Classical predecessor, as is usually thought. It was simply different. Its rich and varied history continued, albeit in an altered political and military form, and its Classical self lived on in literature and thought. In fact, it was its status as a cultural and intellectual juggernaut that enticed Romans to the city, some to visit, others to study. The Romans might have been the ones doing the conquering, but in adapting aspects of Hellenism for their own cultural and political needs, they were the ones, as the poet Horace claimned, who ended up being captured"--
The Parthenon sculptures in the British Museum are unrivaled examples of classical Greek art, an inspiration to artists and writers since their creation in the fifth century bce. A superb visual introduction to these wonders of antiquity, this book offers a photographic tour of the most famous of the surviving sculptures from ancient Greece, viewed within their cultural and art-historical context. Ian Jenkins offers an account of the history of the Parthenon and its architectural refinements. He introduces the sculptures as architecture--pediments, metopes, Ionic frieze--and provides an overview of their subject matter and possible meaning for the people of ancient Athens. Accompanying photographs focus on the pediment sculptures that filled the triangular gables at each end of the temple; the metopes that crowned the architrave surmounting the outer columns; and the frieze that ran around the four sides of the building, inside the colonnade. Comparative images, showing the sculptures in full and fine detail, bring out particular features of design and help to contrast Greek ideas with those of other cultures. The book further reflects on how, over 2,500 years, the cultural identity of the Parthenon sculptures has changed. In particular, Jenkins expands on the irony of our intimate knowledge and appreciation of the sculptures--a relationship far more intense than that experienced by their ancient, intended spectators--as they have been transformed from architectural ornaments into objects of art.
Drawing on archaeology, literary and epigraphic evidence, professional and technical literature, and descriptions of cities by travellers and geographers, the author traces the developments of town planning, revealing the importance of the city to political, religious, and social life in the Greek and Roman world.
In this volume, scholars of history, archaeology and anthropology explore the located and contextual nature of historical narratives, analysing contested historical rituals, building style, and traditions, .
A novel at once metaphorical and iconoclastic, The Parthenon Bomber exposes the painful and maddening paradox of contemporary Greece. “Blow up the Acropolis” was the 1944 call to action by the surrealist circle the Harbingers of Chaos. Sixty years later, a young man obliges. The Parthenon has been destroyed, the city orphaned. Is it still Athens? All eyes are on the empty hill, now smoky and ashen. Cries of distress, indifference, and fanaticism fill the air. What were his reasons? How will he be punished for this unspeakable act of violence? What does it mean for Greece, now deprived of its greatest symbol? This provocative tale reveals the unique dilemma of a country still searching for an identity beyond its past as the birthplace of Western civilization.
This second volume on Early Cycladic (and Cycladicising) sculptures found in the Aegean, examines finds from mainland Greece, along with the rarer items from the north and east Aegean, with the exception of those discovered in the Cyclades (covered in the preceding volume), and of those found in Crete. The significance of these finds is that these are the principal testimonies of the influence of the Early Bronze Age Cycladic cultures in the wider Aegean. This influence is shown both by the export of sculptures produced in the Cyclades (and made of Cycladic marble), and of their imitations, produced elsewhere in the Aegean, usually of local marble. They hold the key, therefore, to the cultural interactions developing at this time, the so-called ‘international spirit’ manifest particularly during the Aegean Early Bronze II period.This was the time when the foundations of early Aegean civilisation were being laid, and the material documented is thus of considerable significance. The volume is divided into sections wherein contributions examine finds and their archaeological, social, and economic contexts from specific regions. It concludes with an overview of the significance and role of these objects in Early Bronze Age societies of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean region. This will be the first time that this material has been systematically gathered together. Highly illustrated, it follows and builds on the successful preceding volume, Early Cycladic Sculpture in Context (Oxbow 2016).
Antiquity has often been perceived as the source of Greece's modern achievements, as well as its frustrations, with the continuity between ancient and modern Greek culture and the legacy of classical Greece in Europe dominating and shaping current perceptions of the classical past. By moving beyond the dominant perspectives on the Greek past, this edited volume shifts attention to the ways this past has been constructed, performed, (ab)used, Hellenized, canonized, and ultimately decolonized and re-imagined. For the contributors, re-imagining the past is an opportunity to critically examine and engage imaginatively with various approaches. Chapters explore both the role of antiquity in texts and established cultural practices and its popular, material and everyday uses, charting the transition in the study of the reception of antiquity in modern Greek culture from an emphasis on the continuity of the past to the recognition of its diversity. Incorporating a number of chapters which adopt a comparative perspective, the volume re-imagines Greek antiquity and invites the reader to look at the different uses and articulations of the past both in and outside Greece, ranging from literature to education, and from politics to photography.
A Companion to Greek Architecture provides an expansive overview of the topic, including design, engineering, and construction as well as theory, reception, and lasting impact. Covers both sacred and secular structures and complexes, with particular attention to architectural decoration, such as sculpture, interior design, floor mosaics, and wall painting Makes use of new research from computer-driven technologies, the study of inscriptions and archaeological evidence, and recently excavated buildings Brings together original scholarship from an esteemed group of archaeologists and art historians Presents the most up-to-date English language coverage of Greek architecture in several decades while also sketching out important areas and structures in need of further research