• Jan 24 class

• For fun: Horatio's Drive. A great film about a Vermonter!
  

• Most important thing to get out of class today
• The two articles we read are real research sources, the sort of thing that one should cite in formal academic prose.
• WHY?
  
• They try to fill a gap that nothing else fills
• They answer questions or report on things that no one else has talked about
• Or they offer answers/views that have not been approached before or maybe that have not been approached that way before
• They offer something new, or at least claim to.
• ALL of the sources we have read up to now do nothing like that. They simply report other sources.
• Remember the assignment for Friday: it is meant to make you look at research sources, not simply reference sources.
  
• USE JSTOR and the LOEB LIBRARY (or other reputable research tools)
  

• Destruction and Memory on the Athenian Acropolis, Rachel Kousser, The Art Bulletin, Sept. 2009, pp. 263-282.

• Some interesting concepts in the article:
• "Heuristics"
• A "heuristic" is a device that helps you to ask and answer a question. It's a theory, a concept, an assumption.
  
• The idea that physical remains contain memory is the heuristic device of this article.
  
• More general examples of heuristic devices:
• Believer's game.
• The idea that EVERYTHING in a poem is deliberate and meaningful.
• Iconoclasm: a phenomenon that recurs in many times and places.
• The destruction of images and representations, particularly meaningful art, sculpture, architecture.
  
• Orientalism
• a view, held by the west, of the "orient" which builds up a picture of what being "oriental" or "eastern" means: violent (destruction of temple), despotic (rule by empire, all Persians are "slaves" of the king, etc.)
• interesting that Kousser is claiming both that the Parthenon is a site of ur-orientalism AND that scholars have paid little attention to that.
• Oh, by the way, "ur-" means "the original prototypical grandmammy of all-" + _____. You can attach it like a prefix to anything.
  
• "Other"
• construction of oneself, one's culture and identity, in contrast and distinct from an "other."
• Juxtaposition as a creator of meaning
• Because Amazons/Centaurs/Giants/Persians fight against the good guys (gods, Athenians, humans), when you put any given pairing up next to another, you are saying they are equivalent
• This is a heuristic device, an assumption, a tool used to detect or create meaning.
  

• Dates worth knowing
• 490 Battle of Marathon: Athenians and allies defeat Persians: Persians had been held back at Thermopylae by "the 300" Spartans.
• 480 Battle of Salamis: Athenians and allies defeat Persians again, this time at sea.
• 447 start of the great Periclean building program in Athens
  

• Gods
• Greek gods are not just "Athena" or "Zeus"
• The temple is the "Athena Parthenos" temple: Athena the virgin: hence Parthenon the name
  
• The little temple in front of it is Athena Nike "Victory Athena"
• A tiny site of Athena Ergane was incorporated into the site of the Parthenon.
  
• The same holds true of other temples
• It has to do with how a god is worshipped and what for
  

• Note Kousser's rhetorical tactics:
• Claim that study of iconoclasm has been shut off, has been limited and marginalized.
• Frankly, that is not true: she produces no evidence that anyone cares whether it is studied or says that it is a bad idea to study it.
• She's setting up a situation that makes her research seem to be groundbreaking, rule-breaking, and innovative.
• She overdoes it.
• BUT, she now gets to do something that is seen as "new."
  

• Function of the space
• Fortification
• Kousser argues that it made sense to destroy it qua fortification.
  
• Place to worship gods
• Kousser claims that the Persians went well beyong merely destroying the defensive structures.

FROM HERE ON, THESE ARE BAILLY's NOTES ABOUT THE ARTICLE: WHAT HE WROTE FOR HIMSELF TO UNDERSTAND AND FOLLOW THE ARTICLE.  JUST READING IS RARELY ENOUGH.

• Destruction
• In general, in wars, destruction was practiced by both Greeks and foreigners; it was just what one did, apparently. Sack, pillage, loot.
• When barbarians do it, it is barbarian, but when Greeks do it to their own things (there were instances) or others' things, it is the act of one element of society, not "Greek," or justified.
  
• In 499, 19 years before Persian Destruction of Acropolis, the Athenians had partaken in the sack of the Persian capital Sardis, and Herodotus reports that the Persians considered this payback.
  
• Destruction Of statues
• Like destruction of statues and temples by Persians elsewhere
• More than just pragmatic destruction of fortification
• Statues show signs of mutilation, unlike those purposefully repurposed for building.
• This mutilation is because the statue has a powerful connection with the god/person: investment of an artefact with meaning.
  

• Parthenon constructed and Acropolis rebuilt 447-432 BCE: 33 years after the Persians sacked the Acropolis.
  
• Commemoration of victory over Persia in the "Persian Wars" about which Herodotus wrote his work, "The Persian War."
• All marble: lavish
• Immense
• Housed a huge gold and ivory statue of Athena, the chryselephantine statue of the patron deity of Athens, particularly Athena Nike (Athena of Victory)
• There are carved sculptures up in the gable ends and in the "metopes" of the temple: metopes are slabs high up on the exterior sides. There are also things depicted on the Athena statue's shield.
  
• They depict battles: humans v. centaurs, Athenians/Amazons, Greeks/Trojans, Gods/Giants.
• Not only victory by victors, but also anguish of loss. Humans are depicted in some scenes losing, being wounded, etc.
• The temple is situated on the site of an older temple, destroyed by Persians
• So it commemorates the victory over the Persians but also replaces a temple that used to be there and continues what the Persians destroyed as if their destruction hadn't happened.
• The New Parthenon is, at least partially, a response to the destruction of the older temple that was there:
• reuse of stone as part of walls supporting the building site
  
• sculpture on the New Parthenon
• Between the Athenian victory over the Persians and the rebuilding program, says Kousser, 33 years passed:
• For 33 years, Athenians continued their rituals and festivals on the acropolis, with ruins around them.
• There is evidence from an oration, that the Greeks in general did not rebild what the Persians sacked, "the oath of Plataia" as found in Lykourgos' Against Leokrates 81, and the Ionian Greeks (Asia Minor) swore a similar oath, says Isocrates' Panegyricus 155. Pausanias and Diodorus Siculus report the oaths as well.
• SO, whatever the details of these oaths, there was a literary record that the ruins of temples were sites that signified a cultural memory and commemoration of Persian violence/impiety/violence.
  
• Wait a second, it was also a victory over a huge threatening foreign force: could it be that they commemorate that? Discuss that.
• BUT, the "oaths" are open to question: there is no contemporary record of them, Lykourgos has many errors, etc.
  
• AND, the Athenians reconstructed not only the Parthenon, but also temples of Poseidon at Sounion, Nemesis at Rhamnous, and Athena at Pallene.
• BUT, the Athenians built bits of sacked-by-Persian temples into walls that were highly visible: a different kind of commemoration than a ruin. Better than a ruin, because a wall is symbolic of power and function and does not prevent other space from being used: a vibrant alive city.
• Parts of the temple architecture were repurposed, but the mutilated statues were buried: they couldn't be so easily repurposed: you can't grow stone back.
• BUT WAIT, the Athenians were busy building A LOT between 480 and when they started the great Periclean building on the Acropolis, as Kousser admits (but not in a way that undermines her argument, although it might a bit).
  
• The Athenians built a HUGE bronze statue of Athena about 13 years after their victory. Its shield had scenes of battle of men v. centaurs.
• I URGE YOU AS YOU READ HERODOTUS TO SEE IF HE 'DEMONIZES' THE PERSIANS IN THE WAYS THAT KOUSSER SAYS WAS DONE. WERE THE PERSIANS "IMPIOUS, UNCONTROLLABY VIOLENT" PEOPLE according to Herodotus? Were they slavish, ruled by a despot?
• ALSO, the Athenians built the Stoa Poikile (aka The Painted Stoa) in 470-460 (10-20 years after Athenians defeat Persians at Salamis in 480), which had paintings of the Trojan War, Athenians v. Amazons, and The Athenian Victory over the Persians in 490 at Marathon.
• What can be made of juxtaposition of paintings? Is this a theme? Can we conclude that they all represent the same theme?
• Juxtaposition is a spatial concept: how does it create meaning?
• The shrine of Theseus had paintings of a battle between centaurs and Amazons.
• "Like the Stoa Poikile, then the shrine to Theseus had a clear connection to contemporary politics, those of Kimon: its paintings were also executed by some of the same artists. IT consequently seems reasonable to assume that here as well the paintings were intended to commemorate the Persian Wars, with the centaurs and Amazons standing n for the bestial and effeminate Persians." PLEASE DON'T JUST ACCEPT THIS.
• We would need, however, to examine a lot of vase paintings to really assess Kousser's argument, which relies on the claim that Amazons and Persians are not only depicted together on many vases, but their tactics are ungalland and ineffective. I want to see a lot more evidence here, but I know it may be there to be seen.
• Remember that in the Iliad and Odyssey as well as elsewhere, many Greeks perpetrated sacrilegious acts: Kousser doesn't really address that.
• Also, if you read the Persians by Aeschylus, you may be struck less by the selective quotations Kousser uses and more by the impression that Aeschylus, who himself fought at Marathon, does NOT demonize the Persians much. Or go read Xenophon's account of Cyrus, definitely not a Greek, rather a ruler from Persia: he practically idolizes his character. Greece is not a xenophobic culture. Did they resent the Persians for trying to conquer them? YES. Of course. But they did nothing like what the US did in their depiciton of Germans in WWI or Japanese in WWII.
• I have not considered these matters sufficiently: you be the judge, at least as you read Herodotus.