This week was a more chill week than previous weeks so far. Our main outing as a class was going to the Cycladic Art Museum in Athens, but I also got to go on a make-up visit to the Acropolis since I had missed the class visit due to travel delays.
Through these two visits, and several conversations I had with friends this week, one of the main overarching themes was how “Greeks” throughout time have viewed, idolized, and displayed their history. We of course discussed this during our visit to the Acropolis given how blatant it is there. The site as a whole, especially the top, is littered with monuments to the Persian War, and Athen’s victory there. The Parthenon and the Temple of Athena Nike are two of the most obvious, and perhaps ostentatious, examples of this, but similar themes can also easily be seen in the positioning of the entrance to the top of the Acropolis, the windows to the ruins beneath on the walk up, and the Erechtheion.
The Parthenon was built with money that, based on the lecture we received on top of the Acropolis, was initially raised by all different parts of Greece to be used in case the Persians returned, so they had money to counter an invading force, but Athens took control of this money and used it to build the Parthenon. The Parthenon itself has the main frieze, which famously depicts the Panathenaic procession and thus commemorates Athen’s celebration of its own history, and another more inner frieze that depicts various mythological victories that have been interpreted as being analogous to Athenians’ victory over the Persians. The friezes then depict the beginning and successes of Athens over “non-Greek” enemies, while comparing them in some ways to the successes of the gods, and, with the added context of the funding, the building also represents Athens’ victory over “Greek” enemies or allies. It establishes them as victors in varying layers of subtlety, that have been differently apparent to people throughout history; an ancient “Greek” non-Athenian visiting the Athenian Acropolis may have viewed it with the funding more evident and at the forefront of their mind whereas now visitors have to know quite a bit more about the Acropolis and Ancient Greece in order to know and understand the funding.
The Temple to Athena Nike is a bit more direct as its friezes directly portray scenes from the Athenian victory over the Persians. It is, however, at least the second commemoration of these events on just the top of the Acropolis and it is a smaller temple that is less immediately obvious amongst the busy site. Right next to this temple is the entrance to the top of the Acropolis which, as John Papodoplous told us when we visited the Agora, was moved slightly when it was built so that, he claims, it framed the island of Salamis where the Athenians retreated to and then had a major battle against Xerxes that ended up being a turning point in the war. This again commemorates Athenian victory over the Persians and makes victory over the Persians one of the main ideas around the Acropolis, which makes some sense as it was a huge victory for the Athenians, but it also shows how important to the Athenians this victory was and continued to be.
The windows cut into the rock going up the Acropolis and the Erechtheion display different parts of Athens’ claimed history. The windows to the Mycenaean palace display the history of the land itself and connect the Athens that built the Acropolis to older, partially mythologized and heroic peoples and rulers by leaving visual evidence of their palace and thus rule for people approaching the Acropolis to see. This both works to create a history that goes back further in time than the Acropolis when it was new, and therefore tie the rulers of Athens to an older rule that they are building upon, but also the act of building upon the ruins of another empire also works to, in some metaphorical sense, to conquer them and build something of your own, something “new and better” on top of their ruins. It ties them to the history and aligns with the other imagery of conquest on the Acropolis without being as overt.
The Erechtheion then also has details of Athen’s mythological history decorating it. This was the actual center of religion in Athens and works also to commemorate Athens’ mythical founding by having a whole in the ceiling of one of the bizarre side porches that allows light in and then a corresponding hole in the floor that reveals a scar in the bedrock that is supposed to be where Poseidon struck the ground and water began to spurt out.
There is a corresponding olive tree next to the temple, though the one there is modern, that represents the olive tree that Athena gave the city so that they would choose her as their patron. This myth, hand in hand with the mythology of the Athenians springing from the earth of Athens and always inhabiting it instead of moving there from another place as a colony, contributes to its mythical history and ties to itself and the very ground that is there. They have the historic connections through the windows to the Mycenaean palace and the mythological connections and claim to the land through the scar and olive tree both displayed on the Acropolis along with the numerous depictions of Athenian success in battle. The Acropolis and the monuments on it, at least the major Greek ones on the top of the Acropolis work to show how important history and tying themselves to their past and their successes was to the ancient Athenians.
The importance of history and also ways in which it was interpreted were also clear within our visit to the Museum of Cycladic Art. The first part of the visit was a great tour given by Metaxia Routsi. She was super interesting and clearly knew and had thought so much about the art, area, and time period, but there was also a point in which she referred to the people who had made this art as “proto-Greeks.” I am not trying to contest this statement outright, but it is interesting to see how different communities are all seen as proto-Greek because they existed on land that is part of modern day Greece. There seems to be a lot of pride involved with Greeks tying themselves back to earlier cultures, carrying on the same tradition that the Ancient Athenians participated in in the construction of the Acropolis; there is pride in the history of the land that one inhabits and it is beneficial to one’s own culture and standing to be able to tie yourself and your culture back to older and admired cultures. This is something that we don’t see as much of in the same way in the United States. People claim Native American ancestry as a point of pride and connection to the land (even when that ancestry is fictitious), but it is rare, and would probably be seen as politically incorrect, to refer to Native Americans as “proto-Americans.” It is also always interesting to see who claims ancestry and cultural inheritance based on land and whether or not the peoples inhabit the same land or if people are more concerned with more “biological” ancestry and ties to culture that way.
It certainly helps Greece’s image as the “birthplace” of “western culture” and democracy to claim inheritance from all the ancient cultures that existed within modern Greece, especially if those cultures are revered as the Cycladic art has been artistically. As a government it makes sense that Greece would oversee and manage the archaeological excavation and upkeep of these sites, but there were so many different cultures in what we refer to as Ancient Greece, even just looking at different city-states, and they now get grouped together under “proto-” or “Ancient” Greeks even if they were at war with each other.
So much of the historical discussion appears to be centered around Ancient Greece, which makes sense both since the Acropolis and Ancient monuments are so prevalent given archaeological interest and work on them and also the aforementioned benefits to Greece as a modern nation and that this is a primarily Classics OCS and so we are seeing a lot of Classical sites and history. However, there are centuries of history, such as Byzantine history, that do not seem to be discussed as much as the Classical eras. It was a super interesting week to see how different eras of “Greece” think about their history and create their own narratives and claims to previous cultures and the land to solidify their own standing and rule.
