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Marathon Memorials Coming to Terms with War through Public Monuments in 5th century B.C. Greece Prof. Dr. Natascha Sojc Inaugural lecture 4 February 2011 (Draft 28.January) Honoured rector, members of the Byvanck board and trustees of this special chair, distinguished guests! Some 2500 years ago, the Greeks defeated the Persians on the plain of Marathon. However, although it was only one of the many battles fought during what have come to be known as the Greco-Persian Wars, it has always been treated as a glorious victory in European history, and even in recent historical publications for the wider public one still finds Marathon defined as the “historical salvation of the cradle of Western civilisation”. While terms like “salvation” and “Western civilisation” now call for deconstruction in the world of academia, within the context of European education during 18th and 19th centuries, such admiration and fascination does not seem out of place. In his detailed and thrilling account, the Greek historian Herodotus had described how a smaller number of Athenians triumphed over the more numerous Persians while defending their homeland. Because Herodotus’s history, the most famous source of information on the Battle of Marathon, is literary, there was a need to find support for his claim of a glorious victory by the Greeks in the material realm. This is attested to by paintings like this one by Carl Rottmann from 1847 on the handout, where the glory of the victory is combined with the view of the battlefield painted as a beautiful landscape. In that period, elements of weaponry brought home from Greece as souvenirs catered to the same need. Archaeological investigation was ultimately initiated by politicians, topographers and military men who had been travelling through Greece since the 17th century and sought to determine exact findspots and original material remains in order to make Herodotus’s description of the battle and the fallen heroes’ burial grounds more manifest. But archaeological remains connected with the battle of Marathon can be studied as sources in their own right. Without the preconceived goal of using them to underpin the idea that Marathon was a proof of some impending cultural ascendancy. But what can be investigated instead? What is a battle beside victory or defeat and a mark in history? 1 That war in general was considered by the Greeks as something that has a downside to it, beside the positive aspects of winnng and gaining more wealth and power, is attested to by the tragedies, where myths where treated through a drastic narrative of victory and defeat following one another in close sequence. Also the negative aspects of war are alluded to by the Greek historians, for example by Thukydides (1,23), who equals a great war to a great amount of suffering. This goes to show that war for 5th century Greeks caused ambivalent thoughts, troubles in decisionmaking and questions which could not solved by custumary moral behaviour, war had to be coped with. When the archaeological remains of the Marathon monuments are investigated closely, it becomes apparent that they are linked together by one common trait: they were a means of coming to terms with an event of war. The fact that these monuments differ in form, and that they were erected over a period of time longer than one generation, points to a process from monument to memorial: The ‘materialiaized memory’ of war had ‘phases,’ changed over time. Today, I would like to show you how the first phase of Marathon monuments, constructed right after the battle, was linked directly to the realities of the event itself. Then I am going to point out how abstraction set in during a second phase; this means that the event of war was no longer mirrored directly in its formal representation, but was instead transformed into a monumentalised memorial. Finally, it will become apparent how only in a third phase of Marathon monuments, erected approximately one generation after the event, the battle is represented in a narrative, historical manner. This appears to be the concluding stage in coming to terms with the Marathon battle through public works of art, and it is only at the end of that process that a political instrumentalisation of the battle becomes apparent. But before starting with the investigation of the Marathon monuments, I would like to refresh your memories of the historical context of the Battle of Marathon in a brief review: The time of the Greco-Persian Wars: historical context of the Marathon battle in a brief review At the end of the 6th c. B.C. the Athenians had driven the tyrants out and were now governed by the assembly. The newly reformed city-state of Athens supported the revolts of the Greek cities in Asia Minor against the Persian Empire in the early 5th c. B.C. with their own troops out of self-interest. In retaliation for this support, Athens became the target of a campaign of Persian conquest, with the intention of installing a system of Greek aristocratic tyrannical control over a subjugated Athens that would be positively disposed towards Persia. On the 2 plain of Marathon the Athenians, along with their allies from Plataea clashed with the Persian army in their first military battle and emerged victorious. In the wake of this success, the Athenians were not only able to triumph over the Persians, but also against the political groups that had participated in the system of tyrannical rule. However, a decade later, Athens and other city-states in Greece were again the target of a campaign of Persian conquest. In the years 480 and 479 B.C., additional military altercations of importance followed: the battles at Thermopylae, Salamis und Plataea, as well as the evacuation of Athens, which was plundered and razed by the Persians. Nevertheless, the Battle of Marathon has taken an extraordinary place not only in Athenian but also in Greek history as one of the decisive events in these wars. The historian Herodotus (ca. 484-430) wrote about the Battle of Marathon for the first time a little more than a generation afterwards. In an historical work compiled by Thucydides (ca. 460-396) some time later, the Battle of Marathon is also discussed. And centuries later, during Roman times, authors such as the writer and geographer Pausanias, extensively discuss the event and the forms in which it was commemorated. Marathon monuments, first phase: The remains of the battle The grave monuments The Greek historian Thucydides reported that the Athenians who fell at Marathon were buried in the middle of the battlefield in honour of their extraordinary valour. Although we have no certain knowledge regarding the course of the battle on the plain of Marathon – neither archaeological nor historical sources provide sufficient information here, and the natural geography of this swampy area has changed markedly since ancient times – researchers have often attempted to find this grave, which written sources led them to believe was very monumental. Since the topographical expeditions undertaken by the British consul Leake (19th century), a hill measuring roughly 50 x 9 meters on the plain of Marathon has been associated with this heroes’ grave, particularly since the size is extraordinary and the scattered finds in the area surrounding it appeared (falsely) to be of ancient provenance. Many still view the burial mound, which is often referred to as a ‘soros’, as a monumental grave in honour of the fallen Athenians. Excavation of the hill has been undertaken repeatedly, Schliemann initially began at the top (1884), followed by V. Staïs (1890) who also examined an additional section (26 x 6 m). Their analyses could, however, not produce clear results and provide the desired information. This soros did, however, undoubtedly serve as a burial mound, as it was possible to determine that a large number of burials had taken place there. In addition, none of the funerary objects date from any later than 490 B.C. 3 However, the ceramics that were used as funerary objects date, for the most part, from the first half of the 6th c. B.C., as is the case with this Sophilos amphora from 580-570 B.C.. Since this is considerably earlier than the Battle of Marathon, they do not really come into question as funerary objects for the dead that resulted from this event. During his excavations, Staïs also found the remains of two females, an argument against a battle related burial. Furthermore the excavator found two offering trenches in the section of the soros that he excavated, evidence of a funerary cult practice that is more characteristic of the Archaic period and which has otherwise almost never been in evidence for the period in which the Battle of Marathon took place. Burial mounds with dimensions similar to those of the soros, which was by far the largest known burial mound when it was discovered, have since been found: during the Archaic period, such burial mounds served, above all, as tombs for the private burials of a clan or an entire village community. Since we are now forced to remove the soros from the list of Marathon monuments, the question may be posed as to whether there are really any funerary monuments related to the battle on the plain of Marathon? In examining an additional burial mound (35-30m x 3m) in the area around Marathon in the 1970s, Marinatos found evidence of the burial of eleven males, three of whom clearly died as a result of violent head injuries. The ceramics deposited in the grave all date from the turn of the 6th to the 5th century. Thus it seems plausible that there was some connection between these burials and the Battle of Marathon. Regardless of which Greek warriors were buried in the tumulus, it allows us to justifiably assume that the soldiers who fell on the battlefield were buried in a burial mound of the type associated with old rural funerary traditions. The fact that fallen soldiers were not buried individually in this monument, which is by no means monumental, indicates that the relationship to the combat troop clearly took precedence over family or other social ties. This type of burial also determined how the dead were commemorated: it can be assumed that, from that point on, those who fell at Marathon were collectively remembered on the occasion of an annual festival in honour of a deity. With regard to the question at hand, it can be ascertained that the process of coming to terms with violent events related to the experience of war was already partially concluded directly after the battle, when the dead were buried on the battlefield and were thus consigned to a second – ‘symbolic’ – death in the form of the burial. The tomb for the fallen Greeks represented the event of war – as the price of victory in a certain sense. Conversely, the Persians that were killed, as later sources report, were buried in a mass grave (the traveller and geographer Pausanias Paus. I, 32, 5). The remains of the enemy were thus not used to symbolise the Greeks’ victory – i.e. the result of the successful use of force – but instead consigned to obscurity. 4 What else happened right after the battle? The Marathon Tropaion After the battle, weapons that had either been abandoned or belonged to the enemy dead were collected. They were then used within the context of making a sacrificial offering to the gods by erecting a symbol, a so-called tropaion. Some of the weapons obtained in this manner were used for this purpose; our knowledge of this custom is based largely on descriptions provided by the Greek historian Thucydides. Tropaia were either made of wood onto which the spoils were nailed (handout: picture of Nike, attaching a helmet to a tropaion) or took the form of a pile of weapons. The tropaion was either erected where the battle began or where the course of a war took a fortunate turn. Hence, the weapons that were actually used in the battle, which were both valuable metal objects and a means of exercising force in Antiquity, were diverted from their intended use and put together to form a ‘monument’. This gives rise to numerous associations: the enemy is unprotected, robbed of his weapons, the weapons will no longer pose a threat to any Greek, or the gods are thanked by means of this offering, which allows them to participate in the spoils. Because the monument was erected directly on the battlefield, the ‘tropaion’ maintains a direct connection to the actual battle which is also maintained in the memories of the contemporaries. The Marathon Tropaion in Olympia While the existence of a tropaion on the plain of Marathon, i.e. on the battlefield itself, can only be postulated on the basis of historical sources and determined only in a general manner, by means of archaeological finds, it can be assumed that there was at least one more tropaion, which was also dedicated immediately after the Battle of Marathon, this one in a sanctuary: Finds unearthed at the extensive sanctury of Zeus in Olympia, where not only temple buildings where housed but also the Ancient Olympic Games were held, and were all Greek city-states participated in religious rituals, could be used to reconstruct at least one tropaion commemorating the battle. In addition to a scattering of spearheads and quiver fittings, nearly 50 trefoil arrowheads were found. Some of these exhibit evidence of having been bent on impact (Handout: trefoil Persian arrowheads). The findspot of all these Persian weapons is extremely interesting because it is located on the site of the Ancient Olympic Games, in the so-called late Archaic stadium II, which was used in the first quarter of the 5th c., i.e. at the time of Marathon. The Tropaion that consisted of weaponry and was dedicated to Zeus was erected in the area of the finish line. A conical helmet that was found at the same end of the stadium seems to 5 belong to the same tropaion: The inscription stamped into the helmet tells us that the Athenians had taken it from the Persians and were now dedicating it to Zeus (Handout: conical helmet). It was ritually deposited into a well (34 StN) when the late Archaic stadium was rebuilt between 470 and 460, as the fill in of Elean ceramics attests. In addition, a votive offering, a Corinthian helmet with the remains of an inscription that cites Miltiades as donator, one of the Athenian generals in the battle of Marathon, was also found in this area of the sanctury with the same terminus ante quem, as the tropaion (see handout). This helmet an indication of additional private offerings to Zeus related to the battle of Marathon. To sum up: The military action that took place at Marathon is represented in the Olympic sanctury of Zeus especially through the dedication of weaponry, mainly attack weapons. At the same time, both the Athenian city state and individuals gave thanks to the highest deity in this manner, paid their due to the god in order to not evoke his envy and also they put symbolically some part of the battle into his hands. Whereas the individual dedication is in keeping with the old aristocratic traditions the collective offering is a representation of ‘democratic’ Athens. This ritual practice is generally familiar from other Greek battles and attested to in the sanctuary in Olympia – thanking the gods, documenting the victory and, at the same time, establishing a direct reminder of a violent conflict. The Athenian Marthon tropaion erected in the region of the stadium’s finish line held a very prominent place in this sanctuary. Especially during the Olympic games when they where used by the athletes form the different Greek city states competing against each other, they where on public display for all fellow Greeks to admire what spoils the Athenians had taken from the Persians. Marathon monuments, second phase: Transformation of war into abstract form Tropaion again: Partial Replacement of the battle’s remains In the 1960s, ancient spoils that had been built into a medieval structure erected on the plain of Marathon were found. By augmenting them, it was possible to reconstruct a monumental column. Using the five non-fluted column drums and the Ionic capital, it was possible to reconstruct a column measuring some 10 meters in height (handout picture). In addition, grooves on the upper side of the capital indicate that the column supported a figure. The asymmetrically elongated indentations for the plinth of a statue and a sculptural fragment of a robe found with these building elements allow us to clearly narrow down the type of sculpture that came into question: the column was originally crowned by the goddess of victory, a striding Nike, similar to the one familiar to us from later tropaia of this type; by way of illustration I refer to the most famous monument of this type in the handout, the Nike of 6 Paeonios from Olympia (a monument of the Messenians and Naupactians, erected in the 420s B.C.). The replacement of the tropaion erected using weaponry directly after the Battle of Marathon with a stone monument at a date further removed from the battle is the first example of this practice in Greek culture. It is also notable, because its outer appearance had nothing to do with the real violence of the military action. What does this tell us with regard to how monuments provided the Athenians in that period with a means of coming to terms with a military altercation? Due to the parallels in Ionic-Attic architecture, the Marathon Monument can be dated either one or two decades after the Battle of Marathon. In formal terms, it stands in the tradition of votive and funerary monuments. They seem to be quite closely related to the urban offerings known to us from the various temple grounds since the Archaic period. And as was already mentioned, the stone tropaion of Marathon is considered the first of its kind: similar columns memorialising Greek battles against the Persians at Salamis and Plataea, a decade later (as you can see on the timeline of the handout), have also been reconstructed. Earlier stone tropaia on battlefields have, however, neither been found as references in the literature nor as archaeological sources. While the weapons of the first tropaion were material proof of a victory, here it is the sculptural figure of Nike, the image of the goddess on the stone monument, that attests to the victory. The direct references to the military action have disappeared, they are masked by a perfect marble column, obscured. While the first tropaion was replaced by the other monumentalised, the burial mound continued to exist in its original form in the battle field of Marathon. Another monumental memorial column is related to the marble tropaion in Marathon: this is a private offering in the publicly accessible area of the Acropolis in Athens, the city’s main sanctuary dedicated to Athena. It was donated following the Battle of Marathon, where it was recovered from the so-called Persian rubble, i.e. from the layer that came from the Persian destruction of Athens in 480 B.C., which allows us to determine the terminus ante quem. This is again only a fragment of a column crowned by a striding Nike. The fragmentarily preserved inscription establishes a connection between the votive offering and the Battle of Marathon. Based on stylistic considerations, the Ionic capital and the figure can be dated to the period directly around 490 B.C.: although the inscription does not tell us to whom it was dedicated, but rather only where he was from, part of the word, ‘….marchos’, has been preserved and it can be augmented to form the word Polemarchos. A polemarch is the designation for a military commander elected by the people’s assembly and assigned to assist the generals of the individual Athenian tribes during Marathon. The name of this polemarch cannot be found on the monument today, however his origins in the Attic district 7 of Aphidnai are still legible. This information ultimately allows us to attribute the monument to the polemarch of the Battle of Marathon: Since he fell at Marathon, the monumental column is seen as a votive offering posthumously erected by his relatives in the name of the military commander. But these where not the only Marathon memorials and Nike not the only personification symbolising the battle: The mythical Attic kings, idealised leaders of Attic troops The Athenians used a part of the profits of the spoils from Marathon to make an offering to the god Apollo. The fragmentary inscription that supports this assumption is found in the sanctury of Apollo in Delphi, on a base, which, as the many indentations show, originally carried a row of statues. This elaborate and costly votive offering was erected right next to the Athenian treasury, which was completed in roughly 500 B.C.. Adjoining this building, the base originally carried the statues of the gods and mythical heroes of the city of Athens and also the ten mythical kings of Attica, which are depicted as idealised male figures (see illustration in the handout). These mythical kings, also called phyle heroes, personified the ten eponymous Attic tribes into which the citizens of Athens were organised after Cleisthenes’ democratic reforms. Within the context of the Marathon monument at Delphi, the phyle heroes seem to primarily symbolize the troops of the individual tribes that came together to form the Attic army in the battle. The fighting force is not depicted here as the mass of Athenians, but rather as the sum of ten brigades. During the battle, they acted as independent tactical units, each led by its own general. This is reported by the historian Herodotus, who also saw this principle, which was used to organise the fighting force, as a decisive key to the victory over the Persians. The phyle heroes, the idealized male figures, also represent the individual warriors who participated in the battle. By focusing on the phyles as an identifying element for the individual armies of the tribes, the Marathon Monument in Delphi is a precursor of something that was later to become customary in Athens: as of the late 5th c., Athenians who fell in battle were buried in a state tomb in Athens according to phyles, and the names of the dead were inscribed in lists on publicly displayed tablets according to phyles. Hence, what is the meaning of the Marathon Monument, which can be dated roughly to 465 B.C.? Various interpretations are possible: the votive offering to the god Apollo was, of course, errected ‘for the pleasure of the god’. However, this offering is justifiably seen as a monument with a concrete political message: it served to demonstrate the new democratic order in Athens and sent a message addressed to the other Greek city-states. 8 Third phase: War monument and emotional response of the viewer Political instumentalisation of the war event In the 460s, i.e. after the Persians Wars, a structure was built on the Athenian Agora, thus in the political centre of the city, the so-called Stoa Poikile or Painted Stoa. This was a new building that was closed along one of the long sides and open to the Agora on the other (see illustration in the handout). In this stoa, four paintings were exhibited for public viewing that were planned as a cohesive ensemble from the outset. These depictions are known to us as a result of descriptions found in classical sources (e.g. Aishines, Pausanias). They depicted various battles, including the Battle of Marathon. The first painting in the series showed the Athenian army marching off to the battle of Oinoe, regarding which to this day there is little certainty as to which Athenian battle it was. It was followed by two images of mythical battles: the battle of the Athenians against the Amazons and a scene from the Trojan War. The gallery was completed by the painting of the Battle of Marathon. The schematic description on the handout depicts the order of various elements in the painting. The painting depicts the course of the battle. It shows the beginning: the Athenians leaving the camp they established on the plain of Marathon, in the temple district of the mythical hero Herakles. Aided by a troop from Plataea, they determinedly march against the enemy. Particularly prominent in this picture are the individual clashes between Greeks and fleeing Persians, man-to-man combat. As the last phase of the battle, the pictures show the flight of the Persians, initially in hasty retreat through the swamps and finally attempting to embark on their ships. Various deities can be seen in the painting, including Athena and mythical heroes such as Theseus and Herakles: they support the Athenians in battle with superhuman powers. In addition, a number of “renowned Athenians” can be recognised in the picture and are spotlighted in the battle scenes, mainly generals. The general Miltiades is depicted as providing the Greeks encouragement in the opening phase of the battle, the polemarch was characterised in the decisive phase of the battle as “continuing to fight to his death“. Another strategist, Kynegeiros, is attempting to prevent a Persian ship from fleeing, which ultimately leads to his arm being severed from his body by a Persian wielding an axe. Thus the painting not only depicts the phases of the battle and the intercession of superhuman forces, it also allows feats of heroism by individual historical figures to be clearly recognised. Hence, the Marathon painting is considered the first historical painting in Classical Antiquity. Remarkably, it was created a decade before Herodotus’s historical work in which the 9 individual episodes of the battle are described in a similar manner. Thus, Epizelos, an Athenian who was blinded in the battle and saw a giant fighting on the side of the Persians, is not only depicted in the painting on the Stoa Poikile, his story is also related by Herodotus, who claims to have heard the story firsthand. This is the first time that the violent struggle, combat, injury and death related to the Battle of Marathon were depicted in the public sphere, and it undoubtedly gave rise to emotional reactions on the part of the viewers. This had never previously been the case with regard to all of the monuments and other sources related to the Battle of Marathon. Exhibited alongside images of mythical battles, the battle of Marathon was now so far removed from the present that it could be represented as a violent event through the medium of painting. It can, therefore, be seen as the final stage or step in the process of coming to terms with the event: From then on every later allusion to Marathon in the public sphere, like the frieze on the Athena Nike temple on the Athenian Acropolis seems to refer back to the painting in the Stoa Poikile. The painting in the Stoa Poikile is also clearly represents the first instance in which the Battle of Marathon was politically instrumentalised: exhibited at the centre of political life, no longer connected to a sanctuary or dedicated to a god, it glorifies the Athenian victory. With the complex emotional reaction it provoked in the contemporaries it could be used to motivate to new military campaigns. (Brief sum up follows, then☺ But, one wonders, happened in the private sphere? Weren’t there any reflections of coping, or coming to terms with the battle of Marathon conceivable in the material culture of the private sphere? Coping with events of war as expressed in the material culture of the “private” sphere before the 460s In the material culture of the private sphere, on vases and vessels used in the home by men during feasts and for drinking wine, depictions of man-to-man combat were a favoured motif. The dynamics of these scenes, produced and used in the years immediately after the Battle of Marathon, often show drastic depictions of violence, including traces of blood depicted by using red paint, or the finishing off of an already wounded enemy. (See the picture of the Brygos painter on the handout). Despite the clear increase in the number of such scenes painted after the battle of Marathon, the fighters are interestingly not identified as Greeks or Persians. Instead, the battles are idealised and shown to take place in the realm of myths, as in the example of this drinking cup at hand, which is dated on stylistic grounds to the years 10 490 B.C. to 480 B.C.. It shows the battle in which the Olympian gods triumphed over the power-usurping giants. Even though the connection to the battle of Marathon is not straightforward, one function of these pictures is very clear: they where calculated to evoke an affective, emotional reaction from those who saw them during Ancient times. Only c. twenty years after the battle of Marathon the violance and combat is shown by Athenian vasepainters in scenes where a Greek is fighting a Perisan. To all who contributed to my appointment, the board of the university, the faculty board. members of the Byvanck board and trustees of this special chair, thank you all! (Some more thanks and words to the students.) Ik heb gezegd. 11