The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [61]
Travelling around Athens today it is still hard to escape the Parthenon. Gleaming at dawn, ghosting at twilight, it is always there: a double exposure on an old-fashioned photograph. Plutarch, writing 500 years after the Periclean building programme, marvels:
Though built in a short time they have lasted for a very long time … in its perfection, each looks even at the present time as if it were fresh and newly built … It is as if some ever-flowering life and un-ageing spirit had been infused into the creation of these works.10
Enduring spirit indeed. In the Byzantine era, from the mid-sixth century AD (the precise date has not been recorded), the Parthenon became no longer Athena’s, but the ‘Mother of God – The Lady of Athens’’ earthly home. Shadowed remnants of those days as an early Christian centre are still visible: carved on the columns of the Parthenon are the names of two Byzantine bishops – it is still just possible to make them out – Theodosios, Marinos. In about AD 1175 the new Byzantine Archbishop of Athens, Michael Choniates, praised the city during his inaugural sermon within the booming interior of the Parthenon as ‘the queen of cities’, ‘nurse of reason and virtue … exalted in fame not just for the monuments, but for virtue and wisdom of every description’. Choniates’ new church was a particular delight to him: ‘lovely’, he declared. Three hundred years later it would be a Muslim leader’s turn to eulogise. When Mehmet the Conqueror took over Byzantine lands he made a state visit to Athens in 1458. The Acropolis left him staggered; he was ‘absolutely passionate’ about the town. In 1687, while Venetian forces attacked the Turks who still held the territory, no fewer than 700 cannonballs were fired into the sides of the building (the pockmarks are still visible). Locals described rescuing the scraps of precious Arabic manuscripts that had been stored inside. For the first time in more than 2,000 years, Pericles’ Parthenon had suffered a true body-blow, walls were cracked, columns collapsed, the roof fell in. At last it resembed a ruin, and from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, diplomats, tomb-raiders and adventurers did their bit to further decay. The Parthenon was chipped away at like an old Stilton.11 The new Acropolis Museum is subtly, quietly doing what it can to gather back in from all corners of the globe the sculptural and architectural crumbs that have been removed.
But more of the Parthenon has lasted than we realise. Each time there is building work in the central area of Athens another fragment appears: a hand here, an arm there, a sliver of the side of a face, a stone spear. Archaeological teams are working week in, week out to reunite body-parts.12
The Parthenon has become a hallmark of the tenacity of ‘Western’ civilisation. For many it is a symbol of a certain set of values. But at the time of its construction there were those who raised their voices in protest. Is this really what a juvenile, wet-behind-the-ears political system should be focusing on? One sclerotic critic opined that Pericles was way out of order as he tarted up Athens with tribute money, dressing her up ‘like a courtesan’. Around 443 BC the naysayer found himself ostracised.13
But Pericles knew of the value of nourishing a society that has confidence in itself, that is reminded day in, day out that it can achieve great things. Just listen to the General, in a grand finale of one of his speeches to the people of Athens, delivered to recorded history with a flourish by Thucydides:
Yet you must remember that you are citizens