tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6588247216777605704.post2063022772738895697..comments2023-04-05T08:04:07.514-04:00Comments on Bryn Mawr Classical Review: 2009.12.18Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6588247216777605704.post-84929955010842620472009-12-14T15:07:53.845-05:002009-12-14T15:07:53.845-05:00My first acquaintance with this book comes from th...My first acquaintance with this book comes from the present review, so that I have not had the opportunity to read it. The review convinces me, however that I need a copy for my own library, even though it leaves me with one or two serious questions. I pose them here because it will be some weeks before I can hope to have the book in hand and it would then be rather late for such a comment. <br /><br />It is noted that "Kaldellis draws mainly from textual sources," but it is also said that, "he makes judicious use of archaeological evidence." Later on in the review there is mention of the apse that was built into the remains of the pronaos and out into the eastern colonnade, replacing the center of the east pediment. The whole is summed up as creating "a truly bizarre interior." Nowhere, however, is there a mention of the catastrophic fire, dated sometime between 300 and 600 CE, which destroyed the entire interior colonnade, the ceiling, and the larger part of the exterior roof, and so seriously calcined the huge wall blocks of the northwest corner of the cella that it is remarkable they held up during the explosion of 1687. Silence about such a momentous change in the basic organization of the building is puzzling. <br /><br />The fire is not documented in the exiguous sources for Athens from the 4th through the 6th centuries, but Manolis Korres has supplied circumstantial evidence for it, and<br />it is also mentioned in Mary Beard's <i>The Parthenon</i>, (2002). Anyone who has had the privilege of going in to look at the northwest corner where Korres has scraped away the structurally worthless chalk to reveal how little load-bearing stone survives can all too easily imagine the utter devastation that left the late Roman or early Byzantine Athenians with only the damaged shell of the cella standing, surrounded by an outer colonnade most of which was no longer attached to it except at the west end. Even before the Parthenon had been refashioned into a Christian church, it was a very different building from the late Roman temple, let alone the Periclean original.<br /><br />It is hard to imagine any event before 1687 that so completely changed the Parthenon and so absolutely governed the initial decisions leading to the church that Kaldellis rightly celebrates as a focus for Christian interest in the middle centuries of the Byzantine era. It may be that the necessary limitations of space in a review led to omission of any mention of the fire, but it still seems an odd omission. I shall be interested to see how, or whether, Kaldellis deals with it. <br /><br />It is also curious to see the word "Pilgrimage" used so strongly after the Dumbarton Oaks symposium <i>Pilgrimage in the Byzantine Empire: 7th–15th Centuries</i>,<br />Dumbarton Oaks Symposium 2000) Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56 (2002), where the general consensus developed, particularly in the summing up, that while there was pious sightseeing carried on by residents of the Empire throughout the middle Byzantine years, there was very little that resembled formal, communal pilgrimage such as the regular journeys to sites like Santiago di Compostella in the west. "Pilgrimage" runs the risk of privileging (that dreadful word!) accounts of individual visits to Athens more than perhaps they deserve.Pierre MacKayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06539446944905632852noreply@blogger.com