The Parthenon Enigma

by Joan Breton Connelly

  68. For metope 14, see Schwab, “New Evidence for Parthenon East Metope 14.”

  69. M. Kunze, “Neue Beobachtungen zum Pergamonaltar,” in Andreae, Phyromachos-Probleme, 123–39. For Tritons, see S. Lattimore, The Marine Thiasos in Greek Sculpture (Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 1976); Webb, Hellenistic Architectural Sculpture, 65–66.

  70. The Parthenon frieze measures 160 meters (525 feet) long and just over a meter (3.3 feet) in height, while the Telephos frieze measures 58 meters (190 feet) in length and 1.58 meters (5.1 feet) in height.

  71. Collard, Cropp, and Lee, Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays; for Telephos, see 17–52; for the Erechtheus, see 148–94.

  72. Brunilde Ridgway emphasizes the role of architectural sculpture as a permanent public statement comparable to “the recitation of a bard or the performance of a play.” Ridgway, Prayers in Stone, 8, 82.

  73. A. Scholl, “Zur Deutung des Pergamonaltars als Palast des Zeus,” JdI 124 (2009): 257–64. I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Scholl for his kind help and hospitality during my study visit to the Pergamon Museum.

  74. Dreyfus and Schraudolph, Pergamon, 1:60, no. 5, panel 12.

  75. See Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess, 59–64.

  76. V. Käster, “Die Altarterrasse,” in Antikensammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Pergamon: Panorama, 199–211; Hansen, Attalids of Pergamon, 239–40; Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture II, 38.

  77. For interpretation of the Great Altar as the heroön of Telephos, see Radt, Pergamon, 55; K. Stähler, “Überlegungen zur architecktonischen Gestalt des Pergamonaltares,” in Studien zur Religion und Kultur Kleinasiens: Festschrift für Friedrich K. Dörner zum 65. Geburtstag am 28. Februar 1976, ed. S. Șahin, E. Schwertheim, and J. Wagner (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 838–67; Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture II, 27–32; Webb, Hellenistic Architectural Sculpture, 12–13.

  78. Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.13.3, 3.26.10.

  79. Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.4.9.

  80. A. Stewart, “Telephos/Telepinu and Dionysos: A Distant Light on an Ancient Myth,” in Dreyfus and Schraudolph, Pergamon, 2:109–20.

  81. S. Brehme, “Die Bibliothek von Pergamone,” in Antikensammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Pergamon: Panorama, 194–97; W. Hoepfner, “Die Bibliothek Eumenes’ II in Pergamon” and “Pergamon—Rhodos—Nysa—Athen: Bibliotheken in Gymnasien und anderen Lehr- und Forschungsstätten,” in Antike Bibliotheken, ed. W. Hoepfner (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2002), 41–52, 67–80; G. Nagy, “The Library of Pergamon as a Classical Model,” in H. Koester, ed., Pergamon: Citadel of the Gods (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1998), 185–232; L. Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001).

  82. Hurwit, Athenian Acropolis, 264–66.

  83. RC 23 (OGIS 267). The inscription was found in 1883 built into a Turkish gateway on the citadel. J. Muir, Life and Letters in the Ancient Greek World (New York: Routledge, 2009), 98–99; Hansen, Attalids of Pergamon, 448; Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture II, 38.

  84. Dreyfus and Schraudolph, Pergamon, 1:112, no. 54.

  85. Camp, Athenian Agora, 26–27, 35, 202; J. McK. Camp, The Athenian Agora: A Short Guide to the Excavations, Agora Picture Book 16 (Princeton, N.J.: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2003), 35.

  86. Lesk, “Erechtheion and Its Reception,” 43.

  87. Ibid., 126–29.

  88.A. L. Lesk,“ ‘Caryatides probantur inter pauca operum’: Pliny, Vitruvius, and the Semiotics of the Erechtheion Maidens at Rome,” Arethusa 40 (2007): 25–42; E. Perry, The Aesthetics of Emulation in the Visual Arts of Ancient Rome (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 92–93.

  89. J. N. Svoronos, Les monnaies d’Athènes (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1923–1926), 19–20.

  90. Allen, Why Plato Wrote, 44. For Plato’s aesthetics, see N. Pappas, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-aesthetics/, esp. sec. 2.4. For mimesis in poetry and the visual arts, see Pollitt, Ancient View of Greek Art, 37–41.

  91. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 2.37.1.

  92. Ibid., 2.51.2; Hermann, Morality and Behaviour, 52, 395–414; Hermann, “Reciprocity, Altruism, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma.”

  93. Euripides, Erechtheus F 360.10–50 Kannicht = Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 100.

  94. Hermann, Morality and Behaviour, 342.

  EPILOGUE

  1. V. Woolf, The Diary of Virgina Woolf, vol. 4, 1931–35 (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1983), 90–91.

  2. Balanos, Les monuments de l’Acropole. On Balanos’s restoration work, see Mallouchou-Tufano, “History of Interventions on the Acropolis,” 81, and “Restoration of Classical Monuments.”

  3. Sourvinou-Inwood, “Reading” Greek Culture, 10–13; C. Sourvinou-Inwood, “Reading a Myth, Reconstructing Its Constructions,” in Myth and Symbol 2: Symbolic Phenomena in Ancient Greek Culture, ed. S. des Bouvrie (Bergen: Norwegian Institute at Athens, 2004), 141, 146–47.

  4. For the history of CCAM, see Mallouchou-Tufano, “Restoration Work on the Acropolis,” in Proceedings of the Fifth International Meeting.

  5. Korres, Study of the Restoration of the Parthenon; Mallouchou-Tufano, Η Αναστύλωση των Αρχαίων Μνημείων; Toganidis, “Parthenon Restoration Project,” 27–38.

  6. Korres, From Pentelicon to the Parthenon; Korres, Stones of the Parthenon.

  7. Korres, “Recent Discoveries on the Acropolis”; Korres, “Architecture of the Parthenon”; Korres, “History of the Acropolis Monuments”; Korres, “Parthenon from Antiquity to the 19th Century”; Korres, Panetsos, and Seki, Parthenon, 68–73; Korres, “Der Pronaos und die Fenster des Parthenon”; Korres, “Die klassische Architektur und der Parthenon.”

  8. Vlassopoulou, Acropolis and Museum; Bernard Tschumi Architects, New Acropolis Museum; K. Servi, The Acropolis: The Acropolis Museum (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon SA, 2011); Tschumi, Mauss, and Tschumi Architects, Acropolis Museum. To be sure, the museum has been criticized by some for not showing the full multi-temporal and multicultural life of the Acropolis, including the medieval and Ottoman periods; see Hamilakis, “Museums of Oblivion,” and other criticisms by D. Plantzos, “Behold the Raking Geison: The New Acropolis Museum and Its Context-Free Archaeologies,” Antiquity 85 (2011): 613–25.

  9. Chaniotis, Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean, introduction, 9, sets out the challenges of the source materials and various biases that bedevil the study of ancient ritual in particular and ancient history in general.

  10. Bremmer, Strange World of Human Sacrifice, esp. J. Bremmer, “Human Sacrifice: A Brief Introduction,” 1–8.

  11. A. Parpola, “Human Sacrifice in India in Vedic Times and Before,” in Bremmer, Strange World of Human Sacrifice, 157–77.

  12. Judges 11:31–40.

  13. Genesis 22.

  14. Euripides,Iphigeneia in Aulis 1585–94; Apollodoros, Library 3.21.

  15. Kaldellis, Christian Parthenon, 34–35; Korres, “The Parthenon from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century,” 14–161.

  16. Ibid., 40–41; G. Rodenwaldt, “Interpretatio Christiana,” AA 48 (1933): 401–5.

  17. Mokyr, Gifts of Athena, 218–83.

  18. Mokyr, Gifts of Athena, 225–26. See also B. Barber, “Resistance by Scientists to Scientific Discovery,” in The Sociology of Science, ed. B. Barber and W. Hirsch (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 539–56.

  19. Mokyr, Gifts of Athena, 19, 266.

  20. P. G. G. Joly de Lotbinière, “The Parthenon from the Northwest, 1839,” in N. P. Lerebours, Excursions daguerriennes: Vues et monuments les plus remarquables du globe (Paris: H. Bossange, 1841–1842).

  21. For an overview of the impact of nineteenth-century photography carried out on the Acropolis, see Hamilakis, “Monumental Visions,” 5–12. During his first visit to Greece, Boissonnas shot a few thousand photographs published in his collections La Grèce par monts et par vaux, with D. Baud-Bovy (Geneva: F. B
oissonnas, 1910), L’Acropole d’Athènes, with G. Fougères (Paris: Albert Morance, 1914), La Grèce immortelle (Geneva: Éditions d’Art Boissonnas, 1919), and Dans le sillage d’Ulysse, with V. Bérard (Paris: A. Colin, 1933). He traveled to Egypt, Nubia, the Sinai Peninsula, and Mount Athos and published fifty collections of photographs in all. For the work of Mavrommatis, see A. Delivorrias and S. Mavrommatis, The Parthenon Frieze: Problems, Challenges, Interpretations (Athens: Melissa, 2004); A. Choremi, C. Hadziaslani, S. Mavrommatis, and E. Kaimara, The Parthenon Frieze, CD-ROM (Athens: Acropolis Restoration Service in collaboration with the National Documentation Centre, National Research Foundation, 2003); S. Mavrommatis, Photographs, 1975–2002, from the Works on the Athenian Acropolis (Athens: Acropolis Restoration Service, 2002); C. Bouras, K. Zambas, S. Mavrommatis, and C. Hadziaslani, The Works of the Committee for the Preservation of the Acropolis Monuments on the Acropolis of Athens (Athens: Ministry of Culture, Archaeological Receipts Fund, 2002); S. Mavrommatis and C. Hadziaslani, The Parthenon Frieze, Photographic Reconstruction at Scale 1:20 (Athens: Acropolis Restoration Service, 2002); C. Hadziaslani and S. Mavrommatis, Promenades at the Parthenon. Films by S. Mavrommatis: The Works on the Athenian Acropolis: The People and the Monuments; The Parthenon West Frieze, Conservation and Cleaning (2003–2004); The Restoration Works on the Acropolis Monuments (2003–2004).

  22. Lissarrague, “Fonctions de l’image”; F. Lissarrague, lectures, delivered at the Swedish Institute at Athens; Lissarrague and Schnapp, “Imagerie des Grecs”; Connelly, “Parthenon and Parthenoi,” 55; Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess, 20–21; Marconi, “Degrees of Visibility,” 172; Ferrari, Figures of Speech, 17–25; Sourvinou-Inwood, “Reading” Greek Death, 140–43.

  23. Hitchens, Parthenon Marbles; D. King, The Elgin Marbles (London: Hutchinson, 2006); Cosmopoulos, Parthenon and Its Sculptures; D. William, “ ‘Of Publick Utility and Publick Property’: Lord Elgin and the Parthenon Sculptures,” in Appropriating Antiquity, ed. A. Tsingarida and D. Kurtz (Brussels: Le Livre Timperman, 2002), 103–64; St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles; Vrettos, Elgin Affair; C. Hitchens, Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles (New York: Hill and Wang, 1988); T. Vrettos, A Shadow of Magnitude: The Acquisition of the Elgin Marbles (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1974).

  24. D. Rudenstine, “The Legality of Elgin’s Taking: A Review Essay of Four Books on the Parthenon Marbles,” International Journal of Cultural Property 8 (1999): 356–76; J. H. Merryman, “Thinking About the Elgin Marbles,” Michigan Law Review 83 (1985): 1898–99; J. H. Merryman, “Whither the Elgin Marbles?,” in Imperialism, Art, and Restitution, ed. J. H. Merryman (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2006); C. Hitchens, The Elgin Marbles: Should They Be Returned to Greece? (London: Verso Books, 1998).

  25. St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles, 338–41. Photographs and full translation at http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/t/translation_of_elgins_firman.aspx.

  26. Nagel, Mistress of the Elgin Marbles, 134–35.

  27. Ibid., 136.

  28. Extracts given in Nagel, Mistress of the Elgin Marbles, 134–39, as transcribed from letters and diaries of Mary Hamilton Nisbet, Bruce Ferguson, and Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin (now in the possession of Andrew, eleventh Earl of Elgin and fifteenth Earl of Kincardine, Mr. Julian Brooke, and Mr. Richard Blake). See also R. Stoneman, A Literary Companion to Travel in Greece (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994), 139.

  29. E. D. Clarke, Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1810), sec. 2, 484.

  30. Vrettos, Elgin Affair; F. S. N. Douglas, An Essay on Certain Points of Resemblance Between the Ancient and Modern Greeks (London: J. Murray, 1813), 89; Dodwell, Classical and Topographical Tour Through Greece, vol. 1, 322–24; T. S. Hughes, Travels in Sicily, Greece, and Albania (London: J. Mawman, 1820), sec. 1, 261; F.-A.-R. Chateaubriand, Travels to Jerusalem and the Holy Land Through Egypt (London: H. Colburn, 1835), sec. 1, 187.

  31. Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), canto 2, stanzas 11–15.

  32. A. Chaniotis, “Broken Is Beautiful: The Aesthetics of Fragmentation and the Cult of Relics,” in Mylonopoulos and Chaniotis, New Acropolis Museum, 44.

  33. Bernard Tschumi Architects, New Acropolis Museum; Tschumi, Mauss, and Tschumi Architects, Acropolis Museum.

  34. D. Pandermalis and S. Eleftheratou, Acropolis Museum Short Guide (Athens: New Acropolis Museum, 2009); Vlassopoulou, Acropolis and Museum; M. Caskey, “Perceptions of the New Acropolis Museum,” AJA 115 (2011), http://www.ajaonline.org/online-review-museum/911.

  35. Some, however, have seen this offer very differently. See Y. Hamilakis, “Nostalgia for the Whole: The Parthenon (or Elgin) Marbles,” in Nation and Its Ruins, pages 243–86, for the opinion that this approach only continues a submissive, subservient posture that exists within the logic of colonialism.

  36. “Students, Supported by Marbles Reunited, Stage a Peaceful Protest at the British Museum,” PRNewswire, May 6, 2009, http://www.elginism.com/20090506/1942/. Students and teachers traveled to London from the second General Lyceum in Argostoli, Kephalonia.

  37. For the eighth Earl of Elgin and the burning of the Summer Palace, see W. T. Hanes and F. Sanello, The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another (Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks, 2002).

  38. For the “universal museum,” see the Declaration on the Importance and Value of the Universal Museum, signed by eighteen European and American museums in December 2003, http://icom.museum/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/ICOM_News/2004-1/ENG/p4_2004-1.pdf. For cosmopolitanism and the defense of the universal museum, see K. A. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006); J. Cuno, Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); J. Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008); J. Cuno, ed., Whose Culture? The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009). For an interesting discussion of cosmopolitanism and particularism, see D. Gillman, The Idea of Cultural Heritage, 49–55. For critiques of the universal museum, see G. Abungu, “The Declaration: A Contested Issue,” ICOM News 1 (2004): 4; G. W. Curtis, “Universal Museums, Museum Objects, and Repatriation: The Tangled Stories of Things,” Museum Management and Curatorship 21 (2006): 117–28.

  39. C. Calhoun, Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream (New York: Routledge, 2007); C. Calhoun, “Imagining Solidarity: Cosmopolitanism, Constitutional Patriotism, and the Public Sphere,” Public Culture 14 (2002): 147–71; C. Calhoun, “Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Social Imaginary,” Daedalus 137 (2008): 105–14. For further critique of cosmopolitanism, see A. González-Ruibal, “Vernacular Cosmopolitanism: An Archaeological Critique of Universalistic Reason,” in Cosmopolitan Archaeologies, ed. L. Meskell (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009), 113–39.

  40. A television poll conducted in 1996, reported in Hitchens, Parthenon Marbles, xxi, shows a very similar figure. For a poll taken by The Guardian in 2009 see http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/poll/2009/jun/24/elgin-marbles. It should be said that these polls represent somewhat “loaded” samples and, in the case of the Guardian poll, reflect the opinions of those choosing to send in their vote. The true figure is hard to ascertain because of the large number of “don’t know/never heard of them” responses. A debate on the return of the Parthenon sculptures to Athens, sponsored by Intelligence Squared and televised by the BBC, was held at Cadogan Hall in London on June 11, 2012. The actor Stephen Fry and Andrew George, Liberal Democrat MP for St. Ives, spoke for the motion, while Tristram Hunt, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent, and Felipe Fernández-Armesto, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, spoke against it. A vote by the audience showed the motion to return the sculptures carried by 384 to 125.

  41. This figure is extrapolated from the annual visitor totals claimed by the British Museum and the average proportion observed entering the Duveen Gallery. http
://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18373312.

  42. Lords Debates, “The Parthenon Sculptures,” May 19, 1997.

  43. Lord Renfrew has argued for the preservation of archaeological material within its stratigraphic and cultural contexts, see C. Renfrew, Loot, Legitimacy, and Ownership: The Ethical Crisis in Archaeology (London: Duckworth, 2000); C. Renfrew, “Museum Acquisitions: Responsibilities for the Illicit Traffic in Antiquities,” in Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and the Antiquities Trade, ed. N. Brodie, M. Kersel, C. Luke, and K. W. Tubb (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2008), 245–57; N. Brodie and C. Renfrew, “Looting and the World’s Archaeological Heritage: The Inadequate Response,” Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (2005): 343–61; N. Brodie, J. Doole, and C. Renfrew, eds., Trade in Illicit Antiquities: The Destruction of the World’s Archaeological Heritage (Cambridge, U.K.: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2001); C. Renfrew, “The Fallacy of the ‘Good Collector’ of Looted Antiquities,” Public Archaeology 1 (2000): 76–78.

  44. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18373312.

  45. M. Anderson, “Ownership Isn’t Everything: The Future Will Be Shared,” Art Newspaper, September 15, 2010.

  46. By Robert A. McCabe, whom I warmly thank for his kindness in allowing his beautiful photographs to be published throughout this book.

  Selected Bibliography

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  Alcock, S. “Archaeologies of Memory.” In S. Alcock, Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscapes, Monuments, and Memories, 1–35. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

  Allen, D. Why Plato Wrote. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

  Andreae, B. “Dating and Significance of the Telephos Frieze in Relation to the Other Dedications of the Attalids of Pergamon.” In Dreyfus and Schraudolph, Pergamon, 2:120–26.