Greek Statuary

It should be astonishing to think that depiction of the human form in marble or bronze was perfected two and a half thousand years ago. For some strange reason it isn't. We just accept that the Ancient Greeks were really good at this and then move on. This is to extent a measure of how much the foundations of our civilisation are taken for granted today.


This more than life-size statue of Athena (left) is a 3rd century BC, one twelfth scale copy of the original, sculpted for the Parthenon by Phidias in 438 BC. The naked parts of the original statue were of ivory and the rest filigreed with gold. Sadly of course the original is now lost and this Pentelic marble in the Greek National Archaeological Museum is the best preserved copy.

I've selected it as an example because, although the Greek notion of bodily perfection is associated with representations of the nude, the skill in portraying drapery is not far behind and this is able to give us a very clear idea of how well-to-do people dressed.






The Museum exhibition traces the development of human statuary from the  stylised figures of the early Bronze age through to the idealised forms of the Classical period. For male figures, the athlete came to be seen as the nearest to perfection of development and figures of Apollo, Mars and so on would often be depicted in the same way. Athletes trained and competed in the nude and warriors are often depicted as fighting in the nude, wearing little more armour than a helmet, with perhaps a himation wrapped around the free arm if they weren't carrying a shield.

The athlete on the right is probably preparing to throw a discus, though we might think his arm muscles less finely-developed than his torso and legs. This could be to achieve a better balance of form.

As the goddess of love, nudity or semi-nudity was also the unofficial uniform of Aphrodite, whilst the Amazons, whose invasion looms large in the early history of Athens, also fought in the nude.

It is worth noting that the Greek idealisation of the female figure did not, as modern airbrushed images are all too wont to do, represent an impossible or unhealthy shape. No goddesses are depicted as stick-waisted or possessed of boyish hips.

For me, the remarkable fluidity of movement as well as form is what distinguishes classical sculpture and nowhere is this better illustrated than in a composition involving several figures.

Sadly the temple marbles showing the battle between the Athenians and the Amazons, though full of activity, are also badly damaged.

The group on the right however, showing Aphrodite, Eros and a satyr, is a perfectly preserved small masterpiece.

It will be obvious that I could go on and on about the Greek National Archaological Museum. My three short pieces have only scratched the surface of the wonders to be found within it.

Most people seeking a taste of historical Greece will look outdoors, but it may be worth mentioning I took three times as many photographs inside the museum as I did around and about in Athens on the previous day.

Around and About in Athens

The Parthenon is presently a giant building site

Although Athens boasts a fine new airport road, it seemed it was necessary for our taxi to leave it and plunge through tangled suburban streets which showed considerable evidence of the city’s current financial hardships. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen so much graffiti; hardly an inch of any ground floor wall seemed without. To the first-time tourist this is disconcerting; what exactly have I let myself in for here? Fortunately that was where the bad impression both started and stopped.

Monastiriki  Square

With just one and a half days to take in the sights, we began as we often do on the top deck of a circular tour bus. Whoever invented the hop-on/hop-off open-top bus performed a great service to tourism. In Athens that meant our first call was at Monastiriki Square (left) at the foot of The Acropolis where we browsed around the Flea Market and immediately encountered the vexing problem of attractive pottery and glass that had little or no realistic prospect of homeward transportation by air.

Excavations of the old Agora

It was surprising to find excavation of the old agora district (right) going on. For some reason I’d supposed central areas must have been explored long ago, but of course the level at which the archaeologists are working is well below the current city and our own country is always finding ancient sites when digging foundations for new developments too.

A tip for EU citizens visiting The Acropolis: take your passport or pictorial ID; you’ll get in for half price. It’s no good saying you left it in your hotel safe and anyway one can always tell an Englishman by the way he talks.

Odeon of Herodes Atticus

On your way up you first encounter the Odeon of Herodes Atticus (left), a superb ancient theatre still in use for modern performances.

The Propylaea, the monumental gateway to the temple area, is a remarkable building in its own right, as is the Erechtheion (below), the older temple at the summit, though of course all the crowds are flocking round The Parthenon (top). How sad that such a magnificent structure should have survived from antiquity only to be blown up in a relatively modern war, sadly an all too familiar spectacle to this day.

Erechtheion

Surrounded by crowds one can only marvel at the colossal remains. I found it impossible to feel the spirit of Ancient Greece while being broiled in the sun on top of an exposed rock. In fact it was hard to feel anything but the urgent need for shade.

Neverthless, from the summit you can see great distances. Amongst the landmarks I picked out Lofos Likavitou, the site of one of my (sadly as yet unpublished) stories, along with the Theatre of Dionysus, the Temple of Olympian Zeus and the Temple of Hephaestus, all of which we had little choice but to pass by in the energy-sapping heat.

By this time we were ready for a rest in our air-conditioned hotel room and a very pleasant dinner in a penthouse restaurant overlooking the Acropolis.

The ruins of Cluny

What is left of Cluny is worth seeing, if only for the formidable effort of imagination that it demands of you.

Until the construction of the new St Peter's, Rome, during the Renaissance, Cluny Abbey was the world's largest church. It is believed that the Pope sent a delegation with specific instructions to measure the length of Cluny's nave so that St Peter's could be larger, since that was only appropriate for the premier church of Christendom.

Mind you this was presumably the same Pope who also authorised the demolition of parts of the Colosseum to provide a source of cheap marble for St Peter's.

In its heyday Cluny was the mother house of monastic institutions all over Europe. These Cluniac houses were mostly priories, not abbeys, because they owed allegiance to their Abbot in Burgundy and the priors of the satellite houses travelled once a year to confer at the gigantic centre of the monastic world.

After the French Revolution, Cluny suffered an even worse fate than Vespasian's grand arena. Sold to a stone mason it was almost completely razed to the ground; only the tower adjacent to the cloister was saved, and that not from any sense of the building's historic significance. Merchants who had turned the cloister (left) into a shopping mall were concerned that any attempt to demolish the final tower would risk the destruction of their business premises along with it.

In a year when we mourn the devastation of remnants of ancient civilisations in the Middle Eastern war zone, it is as well to remember that the urge to do away with monuments to a culture with which we have no sympathy is a recurring blight on the human race and no new invention.

The blowing up of the Parthenon in 1687 and the careless burning of Linlithgow Palace (close to Sliabh Mannan) in 1746 are two more examples. 

And in case we think we in the civilsed West are now immune to the Vandal mentality, perhaps we should consider why it was only this year, seventy years after the end of the Second World War, that a decision could be taken about what to do with the remains of Speer's Nazi rally arena at Nuremburg.

We do not have to agree with the religious or political philosophy that underpinned a historic monument in order to wish to preserve it. We learn about ourselves by learning about our ancestors and there are few better ways than having the opportunity to consider what they built and what marks they left upon the physical world.