Greeks, Pergamenes, and Gauls

Last week, we talked about Pergamon. There were really striking differences between sculptures of Pergamon and those that we did earlier. First of all, in Pergamene sculptures submission was not military, but spiritual and moral. They depicted the war with Gauls as “agon (struggle, contest) or a mache (battle), not simply as a nike (victory).” They had sympathy for them, maybe because they regretted that they had to kill such powerful people, maybe due to their humanity, as can be seen in the depictions, or maybe just due to their interest in using them as mercenary soldiers. Unlike the Assyrian depictions of enemies, they didn’t reflect any disdain against them. They were by themselves without the victor, dying in dignity, no one stepping on them to prove their own strength and authority. Moreover showing them strong also increased the perception of their own strengths, as they were able to beat such strong opponents. Gauls reminded me of Asterix comics in which Romans were never able to take control over one small Gaul village because Gauls had an elixir that gave them unnatural powers. This could be the only possible explanation about how an empire wasn’t able to take hold of a small village. By depicting enemies, who didn’t have to have the same constrains with Gods, as did they, they were able to convey more emotion. Finally, though today we consider the artifacts as pieces of history probably due to many other artifacts’ qualities, Aristotle suggests that poetry was much more important for them than history, because history was just facts, but poetry was more logic as it showed what should happen instead of what had happened, enabling logical hypothesis as well as a space for creativity. Therefore, the depictions were probably not just historical but also poetic, as they also look quite embellished.

In Telephos frieze the height of figures were reduced to give space for the depictions of background, which reflected movement through depicting change in time. Though in archaic and classical art humans had control over the situations, in Telephos frieze the context was controlling the humans. I really like the comparison of Telephos frieze with motion picture and Roman continuous narratives with Hollywood movie posters.

I realized that I had many wrong believes about Greek culture: Though participation in Panathenaia seemed to be voluntary, it was mandatory. They hated open space. They used festivals, such as Panathenaia, as it was an occasion that gathered the majority of the voting populace, as a means for political propaganda. They fabricated myths. Bloodless succession was unusual as in one article it stated that this property made Pergamon unusual in Hellenistic world. Time changed not only the humans, but also the Gods.

I really like the idea of Ionic city-states. I think those would be the best political solution if the whole world consisted of them. They didn’t usually fight one another. Science improved since they didn’t have any constrains. Economy was good, which enabled communication and exchange of knowledge with other city states. There was usually peace, at least definitely more compared to other political forms of states. Eumenes, one of the kings of Pergamon, was considered as “patron of philosophers,” which reflects that the ruler was someone able to think properly. Pergamene kings, such as Eumenes and his brother Attalos, “viewed themselves not only as saviors of Greek culture, as their father Attalos I had seen himself, but also as its promulgators” (The sculpture of Pergamon, 82). They were so unselfish that they invested their money for their state, which today doesn’t happen often if at all. So it should be pretty nice to live in such small economically and scientifically competitive states.

It was also very amazing to see how archeologists decided that …onou e… was actually gonou erga (works of Epigonos). I think this shows how much archeologists have to guess to reach a conclusion based on such small evidences. I mean maybe the first word makes sense as you need only one letter to complete it and as you have 4 letters that help you to deduce. But for the second word, though it might make sense together with the first word, you just have one letter to guess the rest of the whole word, which doesn’t seem to be solid at all.

The restoration of Parthenon and its display of brand new marble buildings together with those that were old, presenting an incongruity, reminds of today’s museums but in a more advanced way as it revealed its own archeology. Moreover, it is even more striking to think that by presenting the old relics, they revenged on Persians. For the contemporary viewer, it would also allude to and remind of the phoenix, which rose from its ashes.

The explanation of the reason why there wasn’t a chronological sequence in Classical Art was very interesting and convincing. I totally agree that there is a huge difference between oral and written culture, which I think affected the whole culture of the society. As was seen in the case with Greeks, oral culture reinforced the rituals, which didn’t rely on text, on the other hand, written culture reinforced the theaters, which were usually script based. Indeed, as libraries appeared, there was more emphasis on the effect of time since oral culture disabled to remember details, such as the time order of events. Thus their order of appearance was their order of importance, like it happens in newspapers today. More important one covers more space and goes first. Indeed, it is not the first time that we see a weird sequence of events. In Balawat Gates, the sequence was geographical, in Narmer Palet one had to flip constantly to have the various possible patterns, and in the Stele of Vultures, the sequence of events are still open to discussion. So, though the word set of events seem more safe to use than the word sequence since sequence has to have a relationship between consecutive events depicted, I believe that it is still safe and indeed more accurate to use the term sequence as the depictions are put in an order, not of time, but of importance.