Acropolis: Liz C

I am by no means a Classics person or History major or anything of the sort, so being here and learning about all of these sites has been quite interesting and informative for me. On our tour around the Acropolis something really caught my attention that I was not aware of previously. We learned that the Parthenon and the other monuments on the Acropolis were once painted. I had no idea that they were ever painted especially to the extent that our tour guide was mentioning. I always just pictured it being the white marble. That always seemed more fancy or godly in my mind, like something that the Athenians would have built for a god. I feel like it would make it completely different feeling and maybe more of a human or mortal place, instead of being divine or god-like. Then I got to thinking how that is probably just my perception because of everything that I have been taught throughout my childhood. There are certain things that you are taught over and over again, and then you only have one picture in your mind about the way they are. Even watching the Disney movie Hercules, all of the gods are up in the clouds in their magnificent white glowing marble temples and such. I suppose it just struck me as interesting because I have never thought of it being any different.

Another thing that I was thinking about with all of the painted monuments is that we can never know what they actually looked like. Archeologists have ideas of what it could have looked like, but we can never know for sure. We were discussing it as a class and some thought that it might seem kind of gaudy in our eyes if we saw it the way they think it was painted. Like I mentioned before, our perception of it has always been the white, so to think of it any differently seems a little strange for us.

Something else that was new to me, and I think a lot of other people, was the comment about the caryatids of the Erechtheum actually being slaves, instead of the great strong women that most think about when they see them. We aren’t sure if this story is actually true about these women that are depicted on the pillars, however it is still shocking to me. I couldn’t believe how discriminating that image is of those women being slaves. Apparently it was for the purpose of embarrassing these women even further than already having the title of being a slave. The fact that they are carrying the entire weight of the roof of the monument on their heads is supposedly looked at as a bad or shameful thing. Our tour guide also mentioned that they dressed the women in their best robes to embarrass them even further because they would never have actually worn those garments as slaves. Learning about the exploitation of these women was just quite surprising to me. Again, this is something that I would never have thought or known about due to things that I have learned in the past. Everyone always thinks about what they were taught or assume, but it is always interesting to learn different facts, things that maybe the rest of society doesn’t want to know.