In a recent paper by Angelos Delivorrias, Director of the Benaki Museum in Athens, the history of the Parthenon Marbles is re-visited, and the struggle to preserve and repatriate this cultural treasure is ongoing. This paper was delivered at a conference in Australia by Dr Stavros Vlizos, archaeologist and assistant to the director of the Benaki Museum, in Mr Delivorrias’ absence.
I shall try to summarise as succinctly as possible the individual remarkable episodes in the adventure of the Parthenon, the monument that crowns eternal the sacred rock of Athens and transmits its symbolic messages on wavelengths of ecumenical ambit. And in so doing, I cannot help but note that this adventure in a strange way recalls the dramatic epic of mankind in its double struggle for expression and survival. The Parthenon’s history begins long before building works commenced in 448 BC, from when the legislative interventions of Solon, the manifestations of the tyranny that followed and the reforms of Kleisthenes modeled as ideal a state formation without precedent. From when the new-born and first-born Athenian Democracy, together with the Persian plot, warded off the dangers of despotism and theocratic monarchy, to enjoy straight away its magnificent zenith – its vindication – in the years of Pericles. It has been stressed repeatedly that the ongoing struggle, of which both the architecture and the sculpted decoration of the Classical Doric temple of Athens are the culminant expression, records a historically exemplary transcendence of the dividing line between Matter and Mind, Mythos and Logos, religious expectations and social imperatives, theoretical declarations and practical applications, the past, the present and the future. In any case, the dialectical articulation of the ideological axis of its substance continues to radiate vitally and comfortingly from the official inauguration of the edifice in 438 BC to this day, recording with disarming honesty an existential angst which is supported by something more than the resilience of the Pentelic marble.
In the tardy historical course of Graeco-Roman Antiquity, the Parthenon did not, of course, escape serious wear and tear, just as it did not escape repairs. Even so, its sculptures escaped irremediable damage. Even the great fire in the third century AD had no catalytic effect on its structural makeup. And during the Early Christian period too, when around AD 600, with the conversion of the temple of Athena into a church of the Virgin Mary, the reliefs of the metopes were hacked away – except on the south side – and the central part of the east pediment was removed, the west pediment as well as the frieze escaped destruction. In fact, the Parthenon remained in good condition after the twelfth century as well, something which did not change either in 1204, with the capture of the Byzantine Empire by the Franks of the Fourth Crusade and the installation of the de la Roche family on the Acropolis, or in 1458 with the capture of Athens by the Ottomans and the re-baptizing of the temple as a Muslim mosque around 1460.
The reversal in the monument’s fate came essentially in the seventeenth century, with the failed attempt by Venice to win back her lost Greek possessions and the siege of the Acropolis by the forces of Francesco Morosini. With criminal imprudence those beleaguered on the rock had stored their gunpowder reserves in the Parthenon, and when a bomb fell on it, on 26 February 1687, it was literally blown up. This explosion resulted in the disjointing of the building, the dilapidation of its walls and colonnades – with the exception of the east and west sides – and the merciless dismemberment of its sculptures. To such an extent that if Jacques Carrey had not drawn a little earlier, in 1674 to be exact, a large part of the decorative elements, which were at that time unscathed, the endless efforts of archaeological research to restore the fragmented compositions and to approach their meaning, would have remained without the contribution of the most important testimony.
Another devastating blow was to strike the intactness of the Classical creation. During the two years 1801 to 1803, with a document of dubitable legality from the Ottoman authorities, but mainly with the shameless lack of any moral scruples, the teams of the infamous Lord Elgin literally stripped the monument of its sculpted decoration, removing what had till then escaped the ravages of time. Thus, the surviving metopes of the south side, most of the masterpiece figures from the two pedimental compositions, and the reliefs of the frieze, came to London. Indeed, in order to facilitate the transportation of the blocks of the frieze and to lighten their weight, their blank sides were viciously sawn off. Fragments of the sculptures, both large and small, had certainly attracted the interest of foreign travelers, both before and after Elgin’s assault, to end up after in various museum collections abroad, in Paris, Rome and Palermo, in Munich, Heidelberg and Würburg, in Vienna, Copenhagen, Stockholm.
Despite these depredations, a significant number of sculptures remained in situ, as evidence of the monument’s historicity and identity. The salvation of virtually the entire west frieze is due to the inability of Elgin’s teams to remove the immensely heavy overlying architectural members of the building. The removal of the frieze and its transfer to the Acropolis Museum was imposed in 1993 by the severe damage to the skin of the reliefs from atmospheric pollution. Several of the blocks of the other three sides remained in place too, an ensemble which is estimated at about 40% of the original length of the representation. Trapped under the masses of the blown-up marbles and having escaped the danger of illicit trafficking, they began to be seen again immediately after the declaration of independence of the Modern Greek State, when the first measures were taken to clear the sacred rock and to restore its monuments. Already from the century before last, these pieces found a hospitable home and the appropriate care in the Acropolis Museum, so avoiding the harmful interventions that the expatriated pieces suffered elsewhere. Thus, for example, the fragment of the block of the east frieze, which shows Poseidon with Apollo and his sister Artemis, offers us an eloquent example of the perfect chiseling, preserving the skin of the relief unblemished and delighting not just the sense of sight but of touch. The same applies to other pieces from the other sides, which are rightly included among the highpoints of the monumental composition.
Despite the denudation of the two pedimental compositions, with the depredation of their basic components, those parts which have survived and remained for the same reasons in Greece are far from negligible in quantity and quality. From the east pediment, for example, there are the inner horses of the quadrigae of Helios (Sun) and Selene (Moon), as well as the torso of the latter, but primarily a series of sculptures of decisive importance for the restoration of the lost figures at the centre. Passing over numerous smaller but precious fragments, I shall pause at the lower part of a female figure with raised leg, two parts of an impressive peplophoros female figure, a male torso and certain heads. However, I shall persist more on those parts of the west pediment which secure a large part of the original composition and will certainly play a leading role in every future effort to reconstruct it: the group of Kekrops and his daughter, the torso of the boy next but one and the part of the adjacent female figure, very recently recomposed from three large fragments. I shall not trouble you with those fragments that have been attributed to Nike, to the charioteer of Athena’s chariot. Even so, I have to say that I am convinced that it will not be long before the second leg of Hermes, who remains truncated in London, will be found in Athens. Most of the fragments of the horses that drew the chariots of Athena and Poseidon, as well as their supports, are gathered in the Acropolis Museum. That is why it is so sad that the expatriated torsos of the two gods do not permit even a partial restitution of their original image with the many parts belonging to them in Athens, only some of which I shall show you.
The fragments which fit to the next two figures in London, of Iris and of Amphitrite, leave no doubt that someday what else is missing from them will come to light in Athens. Perhaps also the upper part of the body of Oreithyia, if not of the next female figure too, from which only a fragment has been abducted to London, while the upper part of the boy who sat at her feet has been won back from three pieces in Athens. Last, the remnants of all the rest of the figures from the right angle of the west pediment are kept in the Acropolis Museum.
The same ruthless fragmentation scars many of the individual thematic units of the frieze, beyond the vicious cuts in the narrative flow, which the splitting of the continuity in the development of the representation has brought. I shall focus on only a very few cases: the looting, for example, of the first and second blocks of the west side; the butchering and breaking of blocks IV and V, XXVI to XXIX, XXXIII to XXXIV, XXXVI and XXXVII of the north side; the dispersal of fragments from block XII. Analogous is the fragmentation of the south side, on blocks I, IV, XXI, as well as the interruption of the continuity on blocks XIII to XV, XXXVI and XXXVII. Last, from the east side the truly lamentable picture presented by the sharing out of blocks I to III, and VII to IX with the procession of the female figures, in the most important part of the composition, is intolerable. As too is the alienation of Iris from her parents Zeus and Hera, now in London.
Of the metopes, the slabs with the hacked-off reliefs on three sides of the building remained in Greece. The only one essentially unscathed in situ is the last on the north side, probably because the religious sentiments of the first Christians misinterpreted the content of the subject represented. Why the metopes of the south side were not disfigured is a mystery. Whereas in the 1687 explosion the central part of the original composition, with 32 slabs, was blown to smithereens, the two end ones, albeit damaged and with many of the projecting limbs of the figures broken, remained in situ. These two unities were removed by Elgin, with the exception of the first slab, because of the insuperable technical difficulties that shifting the overlying marble volumes of the temple presented. Nevertheless, the amputation of the figures and the dispersal of their members raises spontaneous raises questions about the meaning of the British Museum’s ‘ownership’ of slab no. 4, for example, when the heads from it are in Copenhagen, of slab no. 5 with the head of the Centaur in Würzburg, of slab no. 6 with the head of the Lapith in Athens, of slab no. 7 with heads in the Louvre and in Athens respectively, of slab no. 9 with the heads in Athens. In the case of metope 12, which is in Athens, the leg of the Lapith woman is in London.
In recent years, the systematic checking of the scattered marbles accumulated on the rock of the Acropolis and all around, carried out in the framework of works for the conservation and rehabilitation of the Acropolis monuments, but mainly for the scientifically flawless restoration of the Parthenon, has brought many new fragments to light. Their number is increased by the likewise systematic reassessments of an abundant material stored away earlier, filling in gaps in the injured decorative compositions as well as lacunae in our knowledge of their content. I shall remind you in passing of the painstaking and admirable, almost superhuman endeavour to restore substance to the lost central metopes of the south side, nos 13, 17, 19, 20 and 21. Not to mention several other discoveries, thanks to which many of the obscure aspects of the monument and the decoration are being gradually illuminated, precisely because basic material remains fortunately in Greece, stimulating scholarly competition of international character between colleagues.
After what I have presented so far, albeit superficially, I do not think anyone would disagree with my contention that intactness, integrity, of form is perhaps the most basic precondition not only for the conception and the realisation, but also for the perception of a great artistic creation such as the Parthenon. So that it might transmit its messages as fully as possible. I feel equally sure that no one will disagree with me if I add that the concept of form automatically contains the crystallized concept of its content. In other words, there is nothing original in my contention that when we speak about form and its content, we imply a unity. Or rather, we imply the integral whole of the individual, interconnected parts that compose an organism, determining not only the particularity of its existence, but also its spiritual/intellectual substance. Indeed, I would argue that in the repository of mankind’s intellectual achievements – in our true property – the achievements of artistic expression are equal to all others. For I believe – contrary to the Manicheist trends of our time – that the functions of intellect and sentiment are reciprocally unific.
There is, of course, no doubt that our present period tends to glorify the de-structuring of everything: from the articulation of theoretical deliberation to the formation of consciousnesses; from the logic of the critical process to the cohesion of historical criteria; from respect for geographical specifications on the world map to tolerance of racial and cultural otherness. It is therefore difficult for us to promote as a claim, as a creed, the intactness of form and content, the intactness of the style and the ethos of things, the intactness of our debt to man and to the values that he himself has forged. That is, to the infrangible unity of space and time, which underpins the fascinating diversity of man’s cultural achievements. A unity whose significance will have increasing gravitas in the dynamic of the future; a unity which will eventually erase all tendencies to resort to deviant solutions to problems, with the violation of international order and the apotheosis of the principle “Might is Right”, merciless bombardments and colonial exploitations, the toleration – if not the cultivation – of under-development in the name of an economic euphoria of self interest.
The Europe and the world that we continue to envisage, will together form a power which will pay a more active role in securing the unity and the balance that the globe needs, in securing respect for the intactness, the integrity, that guarantees its diversity. It will be a power, first of all and above all, that will respect the principles governing its own internal cohesion: the intactness of its time and space, the intactness of its geographical and historical reality, the intactness of its common humanist substrate, upon which the single axis of its civilization is articulated: from the Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment, and from the intellectual achievements of the nineteenth century to the fervid experiences of the twentieth. It will be a power which, beyond adopting the single currency, will have embraced the need to keep intact its manifold yet single cultural tradition, the need to invest more in its imperishable values and teachings, as well as the need to defend this tradition as unique safety valve in the face of the asphyxiating threat of technocratic uniformity and the leveling tendencies of the new age.
Here I must declare that I in no way undervalue the significance of the repatriation of other plundered cultural treasures, from South America, Africa and Asia, which too are found fragmented in the great museum organisations, of colonial inspiration, in the West. That is I do not undervalue our imperative obligation to recompose and restore their intactness. And I do not, of course, exclude the comparable greediness of museum behaviour towards, for example, Italian masterpieces of Roman Antiquity or the Renaissance. Even so the problem of the Parthenon is par excellence a European one and the demand for its intactness has to do first and foremost with the deeper meaning of the so-called European Idea. To which, if I may be permitted, I shall devote my concluding remarks.
It is my assertion – one that is shared by many – that the single cultural tradition of the European world was not generated during the reign of Charlemagne, nor during the thousand-year Byzantine Empire which, together with the legacy of ancient Letters (wisdom), protected the eastern frontiers of the European continent from never-ending barbarian incursions. Nor was it generated during the era of the Roman Empire, when, for the first time before the discovery of America, the conditions were formed for globalisation, albeit on another scale and of another type. Nor with the spectacular entry of the East onto the forestage of Western Civilization, thanks to the cosmopolitan spirit that transmuted the character of the conquests of Alexander the Great. The single cultural tradition of Europe was generated at an infinitesimal moment in ecumenical time, upon a barely visible dot in Hellenic space: it was generated between the heroic repulsion of an external attack that etched the names of Marathon and Salamis indelibly in human memory, and the collapse of the first political system in History that continues to cajole the expectations of every change with the seminal word Democracy.
The stupendous concentration of the parameters of time and space led Athens in the fifth century BC to the “Big Bang” of the Epic which is written by the great discoveries of Politics and Education, of Urban-Planning and Architecture, of Sculpture and Painting, of Music and Drama, of Poetry, Philosophy and History. The Epic that bequeathed to mankind the inexhaustible fund of teachings contained in the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles, of Euripides and Aristophanes, of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Phidias and Iktinos, of Protagoras and Pericles. A fund that, filtered with crystal clarity, is, in its turn, concentrated in the semantics of the Parthenon.
The Parthenon, Ladies and Gentlemen, is not merely one of the architectural masterpieces of the past. In fact I would go so far as to say that it is wrongly included on equal footing among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, since it is outstanding neither for its size nor for the material of its construction. The Parthenon is a monument unique in the history of human achievements. It is a monument outstanding for the transmutation of quantitative parameters into qualitative values, in other words, the transmutation of material preconditions into intellectual virtues. It is a monument that sets its seal on the awakening of individual consciousness, an awakening that took place within the collective social context that only the principles of Democracy can guarantee: equality of the sexes, generations and classes; lifting of the contradiction that distinguishes the divine from the human world; the experience of historicity through referring its components back to mythical examples; the importance of memory for moulding self-knowledge; the measures of humanity and the values of moral order; the duty to defend the paradigm of the State and the Laws that support it; the consciousness of the superiority of the democratic model of government.
All these are elevated as symbols in perpetuity, through the dialectic of harmonisation of opposites, with an awareness of the impact of indirect, allusive discourse that stimulates both the sensitivity of the intellect and the intellect of sensitivity, something virtually unknown today. The mood for “conversation” that beholding its sculptural decoration evokes is heightened by the subjunctive as opposed to a sequential articulation of the narrative fields, by the covert as opposed to the overt mechanisms that orchestrate their ambit, aimed at stimulating multiple mental associations. That is why the lesson it bequeaths to our cultural experience is perhaps most effectively expressed in terms of music rather than of any other artistic creation. In terms with a special and a specific significance, such as harmony and composition, rhythm and melody, point and counterpoint, beat, tonality and concord. And if I may say so, in conclusion, it is criminal for this harmony to remain disrupted.
Ladies and Gentlemen, if the principle of intactness or integrity holds as a general rule for every creation, in the case of the Parthenon you have to admit that it acquires the status of an absolute; because it imposes upon us the obligation of waging that continuous struggle to reconstitute the monument, in transcendence of the consequences of its history, of the wounds inflicted by the prevailing of Christianity and the Ottoman Occupation, by Morosini’s explosion and Elgin’s looting, and the dispersal of its component parts. A continuous struggle, so that some day the unity of the ensemble – the integrity of the whole – will be restored. So that the ever-essential message of humanity which it transmits will be heard again. So that the debasement of some of the fundamental principles that articulate the European Idea will be averted.
