Ancient Greece accomplished a cultural miracle in the short period from the time of Homer in the eighth century to Alexander the Great (336–323 bce) and the Roman conquest shortly thereafter. It takes a brave person to master the vast literature on this period and introduce a new topic of research. The book under review has this rare ambition in an apparent attempt to carve a niche in the extremely busy world of Greek sculpture.
The first two chapters aim at establishing the theoretical foundation of the book, beginning with the exotic use of ‘voodoo dolls’. K. assembles a list of 42 of them – the useful catalogue hidden in endnote 1.7 – most from Hellenistic Palestine and Israel (18), Athens and Delos (8 each), Arcadia (5) and 3 more from Greece. Realising that these dolls do not amount to sculpture, she justifies their inclusion as they offer a perspective parallel to the ‘ontology of Greek sculpture’, the subject of Chapter 2. It is illuminating to quote part of the introductory sentence to this chapter: ‘[the voodoo dolls] forcefully undermine the familiar presumption that the Greeks did not maliciously injure sculptures’ (p. 43).
Chapter 2 includes terminology, literary evidence from Plato and others on positive interactions such as clothing, cleansing, feeding, touching sculptures and negative ones such as symbolic violence, accidents and recycling. The destructions by the Persians in 480 bce and Philip V three centuries later are presented as important case studies. Images on vases of satyrs attacking sculptures become important evidence, such as a pelike by the Geras Painter and a column crater by Myson (figs 24–5, pp. 72–3). The latter adorns the handsome front jacket, only to be unfortunately identified as the former on the back jacket.
The rest of the book amplifies the contents of Chapter 2, beginning in Chapter 3 with the destruction of Athens by the Persians that becomes critical for the analysis of ‘the Greeks’ negative interactions with sculptures’ (p. 93). There is a slippery argument here on whether it is justifiable to attribute negative rather than pious interactions to the Athenians. The complicated events surrounding the Persian Wars of 490–479 inspired the Histories by Herodotus, written c. 450 bce, and still require a great modern historian to explain things for us, like the old classic by J.B. Bury, A History of Greece (3rd edition 1951) and thus avoid pitfalls. The battle of Plataea in 479 was not strictly the ‘final victory of the Athenians’ (p. 99), but of a major alliance of Greek cities, Sparta being the most important. The Athenians did not engage in commemorative practices ‘creating, in essence, ruins, relics, and ritual burials’ (p. 100), but decided to rebuild their homes and fortifications first and the temples later (Bury [1951], p. 333). The statues of the Tyrannicides – taken away by the Persians – were not on the Acropolis (p. 308), but in the Agora (correctly stated on p. 99).
The documented vandalism of the herms in 415 bce Athens serves as the prime case of impiety towards sculptures in the book (Chapter 4). This mysterious episode involved political intrigue and religious superstitions and is undoubtedly the worst case of Greeks conspiring to damage their own monuments. W. Burkert (Greek Religion [1985], pp. 156–9) explains the origin of both herms and Hermes as existing already in the Bronze Age as herma, i.e. a heap of stones marking boundaries (cf. Linear B e-ma-a, meaning Hermes). Though religious in nature, herms were revered street markers in Athens, but perhaps not deserving the title ‘divine statues’ (p. 119), a term used for cult and votive images in temples, sanctuaries or religious sites. It would be unthinkable to any sane Greek to purposely damage a divine statue. The herms are just below the divine level and, rather than describe them as ‘accessible and unintimidating’ (p. 123), they are meant to threaten with their erect penises anyone who violates properties, sharing this task with Priapus. Other than these minor deviations, K. offers in this, her strongest, chapter an interesting discussion on herms, the mutilation of which she correctly connects to the declining political conditions during the Peloponnesian War.
In her next and also strong Chapter 5, K. offers a thorough discussion on the complicated subject of the Kerameikos cemetery during the late fourth century, when the Athenians restored it and thus revived a great deal of their history. K. skilfully handles the complicated evidence of damaged, removed or restored monuments, using many illustrations that show re-erected sculptures, rebuilt precinct walls, as well as new and simpler monuments, but refrains from discussing the more impressive sculptures of monarchs that appear here for the first time. The latter are the subject of Chapter 6, only this time embracing the entire Hellenistic world with particular emphasis on the Macedonian dynasties that succeeded Alexander the Great.
Prominent kings and civic leaders were honoured with portraits or statues that quite often became targets of public anger and damage, sometimes inviting vengeful reaction by them or their descendants. K. first explains the function of these works of art and then explores their fortunes, focusing on the well-documented rulers of Ptolemaic Egypt and on the long reign of Philip V of Macedon (221–179 bce) who ruthlessly ravaged Attica, Aetolia as well as other regions of Greece. In her discussion of the few fragments from an over-life-sized equestrian statue found in the Athenian Agora, K. implies that it may have belonged to Philip V, a conclusion based on the sandaled foot, the most prominent of the remains. Sandals are difficult to date unless one consults K.D. Morrow, Greek Footwear and the Dating of Sculpture (1985), and the one in question must be Hellenistic, a fact that favours K.’s suggestion.
The brief conclusion explores the afterlives of Greek sculptures in the Roman and Early Christian periods. In case the reader decides that respect for art in ancient Greece was awful, what followed would make it look saintly. Obviously, K. did not have a chance to consult T.M. Kristensen and L. Stirling (edd.), The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture: Late Antique Responses and Practices published in 2016, a coincidental sequel to her book.
Athens was not a city characteristic of ancient Greece, but more like its unofficial capital for culture, finance and, at times, its colonial centre. Like so many scholars, K. focuses most of her book on Athens and Chapters 3–5 exclusively. It becomes, therefore, disconcerting to constantly read the generalising ethnic ‘the Greeks’. Even after spending two chapters on Athens only, this ethnic appears at the beginning of Chapter 5 (p. 149) where ‘the Athenians’ would have been more appropriate. The reader may also wonder whether the stated thesis of the book to be ‘the first comprehensive historical account of the Greeks’ negative interactions with monumental sculptures’ (p. 2) is fulfilled. Certainly the ‘voodoo dolls’ and arguably the herms (Chapters 2 and 4) are not monumental. Also, the Athenians are in no way responsible for the Persian destruction (Chapter 3), only for the unprecedented task of disposing of the sad remains. These three chapters could have been incorporated either in the introduction or in Chapter 2 – where parts of them appear anyway – and more space given to Chapters 5 and 6. The cases of Philip V and recycled sculptures are very close to the goals of the book and could have deserved their own chapters.
