Ancient Athens
Like most cities Athens owes its existence to geography. In this case its 'acropolis' is a natural site for a fortification and has been occupied by warlike humans (those in need of a fortification) since Neolithic (late Stone Age) times.
Later in this trip we would visit the ruins of the Minoan civilisation that evolved and flourished for nearly two millennia, much earlier, between 3000 and 1100 BCE, when Athens was still a backward, neolithic stronghold.
As we would confirm later, on Thera (Santorini) and Crete, The Minoan civilisation was perhaps the most advanced society the world had yet seen. Yet, after thousands of years, it crumbled, in part due to natural seismic events, and partly as their neighbours developed militarily.
By the first millennium BCE Athens was ruled by the Mycenaean Greeks who's civilisation persisted until engulphed by the chaos of the 'Postpalatial Bronze Age'. This period was characterised by the destruction of settlements and collapse of the socioeconomic system. It corresponded with the emerging 'Prehistoric Iron Age' and the invention of new weapons and more effective methods of warfare. Slowly order was restored as better equipped rulers emerged and by the fifth-century BCE several new city-states had coalesced in Greece.
Principal among these was Athens, that rose with the support of the goddess Athena, from whom the city took its name. The period from 480 to 404 BCE has been called the 'Golden Age of Athens'. It began in 478 BC, after the defeat of the Persian invasion by an Athenian-led coalition of city-states, known as the Delian League. Primitive Persian gods were apparently less effective than Athena in securing victory, having not yet been supplanted by Zoroastrianism.
After peace was made with Persia in the mid-5th century BCE, what started as an alliance of independent city-states became an Athenian empire'. Athens relocated the Delian League treasury from Delos to Athens, cementing its position as the dominant naval and civil power. Amongst other religious thanksgivings, was an additional, larger, temple to Athena, the Parthenon, housing a large golden statue of the goddess, on the Athenian Acropolis.
As Wikipedia tells us: "With the empire's funds, military dominance and its political fortunes guided by statesman and orator Pericles, Athens produced some of the most influential and enduring cultural artifacts of the Western tradition. The playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides all lived and worked in 5th-century BC Athens, as did the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician Hippocrates and the philosophers Plato and Socrates."
As we never tire of hearing, except for slaves and women, all citizens were equal. Representatives and other leaders were elected for defined periods and the State functioned as a democracy.
Alas, the Golden Age of Athens lasted less than a long lifetime. Very soon, Phillip II of Macedonia, in the north, would employ improved military tactics to conquer most of Greece, in addition to: modern Albania; North Macedonia; most of Bulgaria; and a bit of Turkey (as far as the Bosporus). His son, Alexander the Great, would go on to defeat the great Persian Empire and then to conquer a good deal of the known world, all the way from Egypt to the eastern Mediterranean and Central Asia. Democracy gave way to autocracy.
Yet again, this dominance was short lived as, in the west, the Romans would further perfect warfare, with the help of the same gods renamed (Athena became Minerva), to build their own, much longer lived, empire.
In 88 BCE Athens was sacked by Roman forces and in the following centuries it was repeatedly plundered by the enemies of Rome.
The glory days of Ancient Athens were well-and-truly over.
The Romans would, in turn, make significant advances in engineering (for example aqueducts and glass windows) and civil society (for example, the law), setting the scene for the advent of a novel, trinitarian, god (unitarian and man-gods were old hat) and start of the Common Era (CE).
Around Athens
Today, Athens is again an important city, with around 3 million residents. The capital and administrative centre of Greece, it is also an important European port and industrial centre, in addition to one of the world's most visited tourist destinations.
It was a public holiday in Athens when we arrived. It was a day to remember Jesus taking heavenly-leave, for-the-time-being, (until His long-awaited return at the end of days - a strangely Zoroastrian concept). As a consequence, the Acropolis, the principal place of interest, was closed.
This was slightly odd as we were here to wonder at the remnants of a much older religion, that had apparently, for its believers, sufficed to defeat their enemies and achieve and sustain their civilisation, featuring a pantheon of a dozen Olympian gods and plus hundreds of minor, specialist gods, and even a bunch of half-man-half-gods.
Yet, we were not concerned with this consequence of religious revisionism. We already had tickets for tomorrow. It was a very nice day and pleasant to wander around Athens and sit in a café beside some ruins, neither are unusual in this city.
I was last here in the eighties and I don't recall having to book, nor pay, for entrance. If there was a charge it must have been small as I went there more than once. Yet, back then one didn't need to pay to go into an English cathedral either. Maybe we could claim to be worshippers? Dionysian's?
A café beside some ruins, not unusual in this city
Those once barren fields are now covered by the modern city.
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Around Athens - prior to a climb up the hill to Athena's edifice
On the Acropolis
The following day, we joined a large crowd of ticket holders and made our way up to the summit. We had both been here previously, Wendy over fifty years ago and I nearly forty, and struggled to remember what has changed. Certainly, the crowds are bigger. And the cameras are mostly gone now to be replaced by mobile phones, that didn't commonly exist back then, certainly not with built-in cameras, GPS or the Internet. Returning home I got out my old photo album. The pictures of the Erechtheion are almost identical. Yet the Parthenon has mysteriously grown, no doubt as a result of the scaffolding and the crane.
I imagine that in another 40 years it will be fully reassembled and look just like the one in Nashville Tennessee.
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Parthenon on the left - the Erechtheion (a much older temple) on the right
Or what's left of the original Parthenon after being: set on fire; looted; blown up; damaged by earthquakes; raided for antiquities;
degraded by acid rain; trampled by tourists; and 'repaired' by restorationists
These buildings bore the scars of all those ancient invasions and lootings but continued to stand more-or-less in tact well into the Current Era when the Ottoman (Turkish) possessors of the City were besieged by the the Venetians, who had been in the process of acquiring Ottoman territory along the Adriatic. The Turks retreated to the stronghold of the Acropolis, where they demolished several small structures, set up gun batteries and used the Parthenon to store their munitions.
On the evening of 26 September 1687, a 'miraculous shot' from a Venetian mortar fell among the munitions. The resulting explosion killed 300 people and led to the complete destruction of the Parthenon's roof and most of the walls, assuring a Venetian victory. Yet, it was soon decided the that the city was too costly to defend and the Christian population was assisted to resettle, beyond the reach of a possible Ottoman reprisal. Before leaving, the Venetians attempted to take some ancient monuments as 'spoils' but the statues of Poseidon and the chariot of Nike smashed as they were being removed from the western pediment of the Parthenon. In the end, they contented themselves with several marble lions, including the famous Piraeus Lion, which had given the harbour its medieval name, Porto Leone, and which, today, stands at the entrance of the Arsenale di Venezia (in Venice).
So, a much-diminished Athens, now a small town, was abandoned to the Turks and the Acropolis lay in ruins.
Athens in the 1820s
It was under Turkish occupation and had shrunk in size to a large village.
But now it was the turn of the British, who were in their turn building an Empire, their young aristocrats seeking out ancient culture on their 'Grand Tours'. One such was wealthy Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, who after completing his education in Paris took up a diplomatic career. At the age of 32 he was appointed ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople.
According to Wikipedia:
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Following discussions with the diplomat and archaeologist Sir William Hamilton, Elgin decided he would engage, at his own expense, a team of artists and architects to produce plaster casts and detailed drawings of ancient Greek buildings, sculptures and artefacts. In this way he hoped to make his embassy, "beneficial to the progress of the Fine Arts in Great Britain." Elgin procured the services of a Neapolitan painter, Lusieri, and of several skilful draughtsmen and modellers. These artists were dispatched to Athens in the summer of 1800, and were principally employed in making drawings of the ancient monuments. Elgin stated that about the middle of the summer of 1801, he had received a firman from the Sublime Porte which allowed his agents not only to "fix scaffolding round the ancient Temple of the Idols [the Parthenon], and to mould the ornamental sculpture and visible figures thereon in plaster and gypsum," but also "to take away any pieces of stone with old inscriptions or figures thereon". The document exists in an Italian translation made by the British Embassy in Constantinople and now held by the British Museum... |
Another 'Grand Tourist' was Lord Byron, who strongly objected to Turkish highhandedness in giving away 'Greek' culture and condemned Elgin for removing 'relics' to 'northern climes abhorred'.
| Dull is the eye that will not weep to see Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed By British hands, which it had best behoved To guard those relics ne'er to be restored. Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved, And once again thy hapless bosom gored, And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred! |
Those abhorred climes from which he, Byron, had recently been banished after his, decidedly unfilial, relationship with his stepsister was jealously made public by his cousin and ex-lover, who called him: "Mad, bad and dangerous to know".
The Acropolis Museum
There is ongoing debate concerning the removal of the 'Elgin Marbles' that were taken to London in 1801. Not the least being a constant harangue, everywhere one turns, at the Acropolis Museum.
This museum, like its predecessor, has taken down plenty of its own for safe-keeping (they were getting ruined out there) but wants the actual British ones 'back' - replicas will not do.
I wondered how far an object could be removed from its original location to safe-keeping before it had gone just too far? And when replaced in-situ by a replica, can that replica still be admired as was the original? Can Joe Public tell the difference? I'm reminded of the statue of David in Florence and the replica caryatids standing up there on the hill.
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The Acropolis Museum - holding the original marbles, taken down from the Acropolis, including the original caryatids
except for one, which remains in London. Those supporting the porch of the Erechtheion, on the hill above, are replicas.
For it's part, the British Museum points to its much larger patronage and makes the points that: they were rescued from crumbling unprotected ruins; and are a part of humanity's collective culture, along with millions of ancient artifacts that have been removed from their place of origin to thousands of old and new world museums across the planet, for the education and edification of the local and visiting populations; in addition to anthropological and historical research.
Returning them could be the very thin end of a very large wedge. Museums across Europe, the United States and even Australia are shaking in their collective boots.
The Elgin Marbles in the British Museum - my photo from 2010
Modern Athens
As mentioned above, the Golden Age of Athens was a brief flowering. Yet Athens was frequently subsumed into the empires that followed. Most notably, the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire), the long-lasting continuation of the Roman Empire centered in Constantinople during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the Ottoman Empire, that followed, after the fall of Constantinople, in 1453.
Greek influence within the Byzantine Empire, that persisted for almost nine centuries, was enormous as Greek became the 'lingua franca' during the development and dissemination of Orthodox (Eastern) Christianity, over that period. The Ottoman Empire was similarly influenced. Muslim scholars rediscovered the Ancient Greek authors from the Golden Age, translating and studying their writings, creating a new 'Islamic Golden Age'. so that today much we have of Aristotle; and other Ancient Greeks has been retranslated from Arabic. The advances in knowledge made by Islamic scholars during the Middle Ages and their interactions with China, that brought gunpowder, paper and advances in medicine and mathematics to Muslim Europe led, in turn, to the demise of Medieval society and the scientific revolution.
Wandering around Athens it is easy to find remnants of all these past periods in the city's history. A Roman wall; a Byzantine church; an Ottoman mosque.
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Among museums of Athens, the Benaki Museum had been particularly recommended by several recent visitors of my acquaintance. And we were not disappointed. It covers the span of Greek history, from the prehistoric to the modern, illustrated with artefacts from each period. And, would you believe it, there was an exhibit featuring the British 'Grand Tourists' and specifically Lord Byron. Wendy was particularly taken with the fabrics and more recent fashions, while I found the historical exhibits fascinating. We spent several hours there.
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George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron) remains an important figure in the history of modern Greece and in particular Athens. In addition to his status as one of the most important poets in the English Language, with a significant influence on romantic philosophy and on the enlightenment, he used his influence, wealth, and ultimately gave his life, in the cause of Greek Independence, against the Ottoman Empire. He died in 1824, at the age of 36, from a fever contracted after the siege of Missolonghi, while leading a Greek army against the Turks. In his twenties Byron acquired a reputation as a 'rake': "Mad , bad and dangerous to know" and became a an archetype: 'The Byronic Hero'. His one child conceived within marriage, Ada Lovelace, was a founding figure in the field of computer programming, based on her notes for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Amongst other acknowledgements of this, she has a computer language named after her. |
More than once on this trip I imagined what might have been if the barbarians and religious zealots had not succeeded, time and time again, in overcoming rational discourse. Might humankind have long-ago developed evidence-based medicine, engineering, and social sciences?
Yet, as I never tire of repeating, every past second, every action, every inaction, of what went before us, was essential for us to be here at all, to observe our world. So, it was just as essential that that Venetian who fired the shot that blew up the Ottoman munitions stored in the Parthenon as it was that Lord Elgin made off with one of the caryatids and part of the frieze, for me to have been here to see the results.
On the other hand, some things don't seem the change much. My old photo album records the same 'silly walks'. Presumably, it's a new generation practicing the old traditions but they look just the same.
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Another site to see is the palace guards. Wendy beat me to posting these guards on Facebook. 'Silly walks' indeed. Presumably, with it's a new generation practicing the old traditions. |
