My brief envoi to Olympics

The blue and white flag over the blue and white land
I hope I live long enough to see more, at least as broadcast.  Watching the modern ones helps me to wonder about everything that we do not know about ancient ones.  And I may never again be able to tramp all over Athens, so you will pardon my posting a couple of images from a decade ago.

2002.  From a very non-touristic position to the SE corner of the Acropolis
where (I noticed on TV) the flag still flies.  And that isn't a pile of rocks but
the Acropolis rock itself, with the Wall (of every pre-modern era) built on it.

I was thinking Sunday evening as I watched thousands of young athletes, as well as Prince Harry and his friends, singing almost all the words to songs I hadn't even heard before, that finally, six years after I retired from teaching, I was watching them with an almost anthropological interest.  No wonder that most of them know so little of what I know, when I know still less of their childhood.  My Afghanistan was where Sir Aurel Stein had traveled and Sir Mortimer Wheeler had excavated, whence I found to my relief the painting of Tocharian 'knights' in Berlin, endless delights of mixed cultures in the Musée Guimet, and big Buddhas that I might dream of visiting at Bamiyan.  Their Earth has hardly any mysterious places anymore.  And so on.

But Greece is still Greece.  I read several papers on line.  But when the flag is run up for Olympic Games, it is the one on the Acropolis, in the white of Clean Monday houses and the blue of the sea as dark as wine that you can see on any clear day near Delos, say, or Samos.  And the LSO played the Greek national anthem just right, just as they did our borrowed melody, To Anacreon in Heaven, better than our own Marine band plays it.  It wasn't a good year for Greece to be training and sending athletes, of course.

I shall never get used to light shows with music.  Not that I object.  You might say, if you know classical music pretty well, that the tunes and their limited harmonies (for the most part) need all the help they can get and haven't gotten since we lost John Lennon and Cole Porter (to name two).  But a huge light show with more going on than anyone (of my age, anyhow) can take in seems to be done for its own sake and to have nearly nothing to do with the songs and performers.  This already happened with some of the 'psychedelic' shows of the late 1960s, but they were very simple, like the little computers that went to Jupiter and, for that matter, in 1969 on the moon.  I'm not complaining; I'm not even objecting to the too-serious (?) standards that my favorite newspaper, besides the Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, applied.

This show wasn't put on for me.  It was put on for all those kids holding up medals for their friends to see and photographing each other, doubtless posted within minutes of taking.  

Coming back to my point.  These athletic games, both the original ones that I think of as Pindaric, and the retrospective ones of the Imperial Roman centuries, are for the age group who, for the most part, competed in them.  Perhaps originally they were aristoi and hippeis (Latin equites), educated and trained at their families' expense; perhaps by the Hellenistic age sponsorship was in place.  In any case, the Games were an aspect of a gymnasion education, which is why the pentathlon was central.  Training the military elite was like a military academy followed by West Point.  I was thinking as I watched the light show that ancient Youth cannot have been utterly different, even without any internet.  Yet it can be important in ways that an old lady might not quite understand to take these things seriously.  Of course, the S F Chronicle was right about the entertainer named Jessie J. (the Guardian agreed), but what do they expect from Rio next time?  All round, there was too much boasting openly about medals; perhaps certificates sent later (if the post offices last that long) would be better.  But why?  I don't think West Point's closing ceremonies are all that decorous.  No, let it be.  It isn't for retired professors of ancient art that it is done.  For us it is educational and a subject for meditation.
As for the athletics, the best were breathtaking and utterly wonderful.  The horsemanship (already part of the ancient Games) also was wonderful.  The Marathon through the streets of London was a treat.  I do wish that the broadcasters had the courtesy to realize that persons who like athletics would like to see a more balanced treatment.  It isn't only a question of fairness!  One wants to compare.
I close with the nearest I could come to a picture of my own of the 1896 Panathenaic Stadium.  Somewhere I do have a picture of Olympia's, but I couldn't find the image.  Similarly for Delphi and Isthmia.  In courses on Greek Art as taught in an Art Department, I didn't use them, I'm afraid.
But from the top of the Acropolis, leaning over the Wall, here is the context of the Panathenaic Stadium where they did end the Marathon race in the 2004 Games.

2002.  I carefully checked the Google air view map.  You are looking down at the Choregic Monument of Lysikrates (334 BCE) which, commemorating a victory in the dramatic festival, has tripods on it; the Street of the Tripods runs straight to the Arch of Hadrian (partly encased in green mesh for cleaning) and, in its temenos, to the Olympieion, begun in the sixth century BCE but Hellenistic in the standing Corinthian columns.  At the top left and center of this photo, in its hollow and much hidden by trees, is the Panathenaic stadium of 1896.  Above the Choregic Munument, on the steep slope at the bottom of the image, is the Plaka.

There.  Next time I'll write about something else.  London and Athens have such historical depth and complexity, they are a real joy.  I had no TV for Rome, alas.  Beijing has the depth but not the same feeling for the West (not that it can be put down on that account).  I am very eager to see what Brazil will do.

1984 Just Yesterday

Last week's traces of iced tea in Big M trophy of 1984 Olympic Games

Why I watch ceremonies and Games on television 

I just watched the complete opening ceremonies from London.  I also cannot bypass watching rites of passage, of all kinds, that are telecast.  It certainly isn't that I like the music, barring a Zadok the Priest or an exceptional rendering of John Philip Sousa.  I like parades and inaugurations, usually.  But modern Olympics are an odd taste, perhaps, until I tell you that I know something of the Games of the Roman Empire period and am familiar with the way they were commemorated on coins from all over the Empire, especially in the 3rd century CE.  I'd love to see and hear the commentaries on the spot of games celebrated at Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv) or Bizye in Thrace for Caracalla or for Philip "the Arab", for example,  and in cities all over Asia Minor.  We know about them, and we know their names, from the coins that survive, showing the prize table and the athletic events or the youths holding palms of victory.  In high school I used to wonder why there was a football tune called "Palms of Victory".  It shows that a century ago a modicum of classical learning was universal among those who got a secondary or university education, since, even in California, where there are plenty of palms, they weren't carried around except on Palm Sunday.

I loved the Athens games of 2004 especially for the purpose-grown plantings of young olives and the weaving of the olive (real laurel being less available) into crowns for every winner in every event as well as for all the dancing schoolchildren.  I loved the drafting of practically every school in the nation to teach the dances and other choreography and the thousands of mothers to sew their costumes (and do it beautifully).  I mean, finally getting the Games cost them dearly (the infrastructure!), and I cannot admire Greece enough for spending its ingenuity and huge efforts for everything possible.  I mean, they could do the Marathon from Marathon and use the modern (1896) stadium for whatever it wasn't too short for (or had too little seating space), and they had the real Pindaric sites (Lerna and Isthmia besides Olympia and Delphi being excavated) besides, but they had to improve the road to Marathon and build an adequate airport.  One thing that has been very important was their taking the opportunity to build the Metro.  It hired many, many workers, since it was practically dug by hand, having to be an archaeological project, too.  I thought of those years of digging as I watched the Stratford City Londoners celebrated for rebuilding their own district.  When smart commentators talk of excessive government employment in Greece, I hope they aren't so stupid as to include the Metro.  That wasn't the same as too much bureaucracy!  Greece is a much greater asset to the whole of Europe for the infrastructure required by the 2004 Olympics.  And there was nothing "slick" about it.  As for why Greece should have had  the Games in 2004 (if not in 1996 or 2000), we ought not even to ask.  It is for the Olympic idea that so great a man as Daniel Barenboim helped to carry in the Olympic flag.
The cities of the Roman Empire certainly profited, or at least hoped to profit, from putting on games, for which they competed.  It was the fame of the Pindaric games (I have in mind Greek games before Alexander the Great) and the glory in which they were wrapped that they wanted to identify with and, of course, to bring honor to themselves for honoring an emperor like Caracalla, who seems to have been thought to respond to that honor, as Nero had done.
It seems very likely that the cities that put on the games labeled Pythia, Serdica, Alexandreia and the like spent a lot to make the occasions as splendid, worth coming to compete in, worth staying and eating and sleeping in, as they could.  The expense of being impressive is not a new development, although London has perhaps outdone herself in the matter of light show and fireworks, not to mention delivering the queen by air mail (well, if G. H. W. Bush can, ...).
I was thinking as I dutifully registered all the costumes of the smaller national contingents that there is less difference between the ancient and the modern Olympics than the TV commentators seem to realize.  When I saw Daniel Barenboim participating, I no longer felt even slightly silly for watching so closely: he must understand.
As for my keeping my glass cup from MacDonald's (can it really be 28 years ago?), well, I like Things, and the cup is well designed and just right for cold drinks; I wouldn't have taken it when offered if I hadn't liked it.
And then, at the end, as "Hey Jude" was being sung, it occurred to me (for folks who write blogs are expected to have opinions) that Mitt Romney's problem is that he is unimaginative.  It took one of those sharp English wisecracks to make me see it (that he had run an Olympics Games in the middle of nowhere!), and it isn't even impolite but utterly undiplomatic, utterly insensitive to tell one's hosts what they have already confessed to, publicly, that the security plans may have been inadequate!  For I know from Mr. Romney's father that our current candidate is from a perfectly decent family.  I don't mean to blame him, of course.
Here's for Caracalla at Philippopolis.

28 02 03 AE 30  Philippopolis.  14,56g.  Caracalla, laureate, head to r. AVT K M AVR SEV   |    ANTONEINOS.  Rev., Zeus enthroned to l., patera rather than Nike (Varbanov 1301) in his extended r. hand, leaning on his scepter in his l.  KOINON ThRAKON ALEXANDRIA EN and in exergue in 2 lines PhILIPPO / POLI and across field PY   |   ThIA.  Vile example of a bombastic issue, but with the full length maximum legend.

P. S. I didn't mention the first thing that delighted me in the opening spectacle, the dray horses, the great hairy-fetlocked horses, in the pre-industrial sequence; I love such horses (not to disparage thoroughbreds or ponies).  And the second and most remarkable thing, the scene celebrating the Great Ormond Street Hospital,  the Children's Hospital (and, of course, the NHS: I have never forgotten the excellent, regular well-baby clinics that served resident U.S. servicemen's infants as well as English ones in the village, all the young wives who didn't have cars to drive into Newmarket or Cambridge to see a doctor, when my sister's family was stationed in England).  I didn't want to seem "political" in my admiration of the NHS (I don't say it's perfect), but there it is.  The hospital scene was most beautifully conceived and filmed, and I just learned, on line, that actual patients had participated.

What Calls is Vocation

13 July 2012  If Vocation is doing what calls you...  I didn't think the summer sun would ever reach this far into the room, or that I'd happen to see it.  Luckily, the paper-naptkin holder was empty.  This is what I saw first; the others followed.

Like all the other visual media, photography offers innumerable choices and products, both Absolute and Illustrative, based on personal vision and the use of selected tools (which may be imposed by availability).  One can no more take casual photos with most specialized cameras and their specific lenses than definitive scientific photos with miniature point-and-shoot or the newest cell phone.  Within one's budget and physical limitations (say, to climb or to carry heavy equipment) one decides what seems possible.  The still life here was taken with a Nikon S9100, one of a handful of quite remarkable tiny cameras currently available.
After a year I have become very comfortable with it.  Yesterday afternoon I was working with minimum available light, so I used some zoom to avoid wide-angle distortion (since I needed the wide angle to maximize aperture) while retaining as much depth of field as reasonably possible.
I keep a couple of cameras with charged batteries close at hand, just as someone documenting growing children might do.  Afternoon sunlight changes very quickly, and in this particular 'calling' of mine the feeling that light is both the object and the means of photography and its Absolute subject is the Game.  In my form of it (not mine alone, of course), neither the things involved nor their illumination should be altered, but used as seen.  That rule is inherent.  Irving Penn's great photographs of still-life subjects (tulips, playing cards, dead cigarettes, and all the rest) are a different Game with different inherent rules, though both, in my opinion, are Absolute rather than Illustrative (recognizability of the things involved being irrelevant to the distinction).
As I moved around the stuff on the end of the tabletop, the composition of vertical lines and diagonally dispersed almost melodic curved dark and light shapes became defined.  The image might not have enough light to be tolerably sharp, but it had to be taken, just as it presented itself.  So it heads this post.

Standing on a stool to look down, and zooming a bit more, an entirely different image, with all the shadows changing their shapes. 

This one had to be cropped a little at right, because the beam of sunlight hit the lucite too directly.  I liked adding the black dots provided by the old dime-store salt shaker.

For the record, to avoid distracting anyone by the question, the faux-moiré pattern is a box of Kleenex-brand tissues.

One of the most important things about this kind of photography is realizing that seeing color depends on light.  Our wonderful eyes and brain adjust to help us see the colors we expect or (in the wild) need to see, but the camera relies on supplementary light, floods or flash, for which fact I am very grateful,  because I have only to defeat the auto flash (and this camera, for which I am even more grateful, makes no flash the default) to obtain images as the camera chip (or formerly the film emulsion) registers them and which, to my eyes, have many of the virtues of both grayscale and color.  The chip does this better than any film ever did.  None of the special effects offered by post-processing programs give such subtlety as the camera itself, in response to nature, provides.

I leave to you to decide whether these images are interesting as such: Absolute.

Just a Postcard

Lentoid disk of crystal, Early Neolithic

Just to share something wonderful, a postcard that I received in 2006.  All I know is that it came from Çatal Hüyük in southern Anatolia, modern Turkey, where the most productive strata (now in all the basic art history textbooks) dated to about 6,000 BCE.  The rest we can see.  It has to be a remarkable piece of natural crystal (the region is volcanic), because if far outdates the invention of glass.  It has to have been carefully and knowingly polished to a regularly rounded surface to produce the image we see (I presume that the back side is encrusted or coated) patiently using emery (again, volcanic).  This site even produced a picture that can hardly be anything but a representation of an erupting volcano.  I am from California and sentimentally attached to Mt. Lassen and Mt. Shasta as well as to the story of Ishi, the last survivor of his tribe in the foothills of Lassen.  These town dwellers of Anatolia, though, are both similar to our native Americans and different, being far older and making some use of copper and representing the human figure in both active (hunting) and cultic depictions, but even for Çatal Hüyük this crystal mirror (photographed over the shoulder, apparently, of a modern girl) is astonishing.  To me, Asia Minor is the most wondrous part of the ancient world.  I wish I could live long enough to understand better how technical and linguistic and social and religious ideas spread from Asia Minor—not to compare Mesopotamia and the other great river valleys in any invidious or belittling way, but we knew about them much earlier owing to Judaeo-Christian interest in Egypt and Mesopotamia, especially.  At the same time, the Book that we have also skewed our point of view.

I want to take time right now to write a Post for Opera Nobilia, but this postcard must be shared.

The enchantment of nebulae

In a recent Post I mentioned a childhood friend whose father worked for Bell.
Jean Ellen (for that was her name) was my own age and went to school with me.  Her mother, who may have been mentally unsound (well, my father thought so) talked with my mother on the phone, sometimes for more than an hour at a time, but whether her talk was beyond my mother's comprehension or incomprehensible per se, I do not know.  I never met her father, but Jean Ellen said that he worked "for Bell".  I had the impression that her access to a telescope, her maps of the heavens, her vocabulary were from her father.
Other little girls might hide under the covers with flashlights to conceal their discussion of what they surmised about boys, but when I was invited to overnight at her house it was astronomy, such as was known in 1944, that we talked about.  Remember that the Mt. Wilson telescope was still new, was in My Weekly Reader, was in Life magazine (though the 200" Hale telescope at Palomar was delayed until 1949), but Jean Ellen was far more interested and well informed than I was.
The thing that I came to wonder most about was the nature of nebulae.  We knew, of course, from the dictionary that the word meant just "cloud", but by 1944 it was known that they were spiral (we did not know that they were not uniformly so), and I remember Jean Ellen's telling me that they might be whole galaxies like our Milky Way.  I also remember (and there was little science fiction worthy of the name at that time) that there might be other stars with planets, but, owing to their being so distant, probably unknowable.
So, whether her father worked for Bell Labs or just for the Telephone Company, through him and his very bright daughter, a goodly part of my mental curiosity was established for life.  It was not as if there were anything beyond a National Geographic sky map then to learn from.  I mean, one was prepared to mock Buck Rogers, for sure!  There was no television, no serious documentaries and no dream, even, of IT permitting me to communicate my childhood's initiations to persons on several continents almost in real time.  Once, in Berkeley, Jean Ellen who was then in Hawaii, came by for a brief visit, but we never again became closely acquainted, no longer children.
I remember the 1944 thoughts about nebulae whenever NOVA, for example, has programs about telescopes and "the edges of the universe".  For, naturally, I could never imagine a simply finite universe, once the reality of galactic nebulae had been grasped.  And whenever a new telescope is announced and then put to work, you can find me at the NASA site.  One knows that the color is digitally induced though it expresses, so to speak, real differentions.  More annoying is the very predictable one-point perspective and telescopic (in the non-scientific sense) action and, worst of all, the awfully uniform speed of these animated reconstructions, very obviously revealing the speed of the digital processors and network servers that were employed.  Also, there is the dreadful background "music" or echoic soundtrack.  Ickypoo!  These things, like the 'period' costumes and 'period' mimicry of light are very serious distractions from science.
I may be too old to tire my eyes and find time enough to learn the subject properly, but I doubt whether I am the only person to be annoyed by the extraneous stuff, and the young woman scientist who obviously has been repeatedly photographed and recorded making a statement off a teleprompter--and other such debasements of the material.
Not that I ought to gripe about NOVA.  I am indeed grateful, but...
And no youngster now has much excuse for not knowing at least what I do.  I, too, had to fight to listen to the NBC Symphony or the Metropolitan Opera when there was a major sports event at the same hour; I wasn't the one who bought the radio or paid the electricity.  I am sure that in many, many families, just as the parents work themselves weary for their children, the sacrifice may not extend to the things most important to their young.  It is understandable, just one of the facts of life that are mastered during the early adolescent years.

All I want is dignity

Kavala.  1960.

For Greece
As I write, about 8 hours later in Greece, the people I love best besides a few of my own are voting.  I have known Greece since 1959, and I speak the language well enough that after about 48 hours through Customs I think in Greek, except when I am among other English speakers.
I have no specific political allegiance in Greece, except that I didn't like the Colonels and I would not have liked it if after WW II the country had become permanently Communist, like Albania.
For most of my life, whenever I traveled in Greece, I conversed with all sorts of Greeks.  I heard the stories of women who had to give up a baby for adoption, knowing only that it was in, e.g., Texas; I heard, as still vivid personal memories, stories of people discarding out of the KTEL bus windows fistfuls of paper money with lots of zeroes but no value, though by the late 1950s the Bretton Woods plans had fixed the drachma at just about 30 to the dollar.  It was fistfuls of aluminum lepta that one left on the taverna table for the paidi who cleared the tables and was otherwise unsalaried (with 100 lepta to the drachma and 30 dr to the dollar...).  In the country some of the children were obviously very, very poor, but every time I went to other Mediterranean countries I noticed how clean and self-respecting Greeks were compared with anyone else with equally little money.  And so forth; I could tell you detail after detail to the same effect.
I do not want to suggest that I ever thought Greeks perfect.  But the way people have been talking in the media and generally north of the Alps is very grievous to me, though I am not myself Greek.  I know they are tax-averse, but as an American what have I to say about that?
Only yesterday, from John Psaropoulos on NPR (I also read his blog), I finally heard him talk plainly about the psychological effect on all the older half of the population of the post WW II trouble and poverty.  Just as I can, barely, remember the 1930s recession (my father earned $12 / week in a grocery when I was born), so Greeks who grew up pre-Euro and, especially, pre-Bretton Woods and Marshall Plan (not that that was perfect, but it did make a difference) have a pride in being Greek (because of their whole history, not just antiquity) that is grounded in self-respect based on what one truly is.  The last years have been horribly, cruelly painful for them, but we can trust Greece to keep its children in school and keep them close to the family.
Yes, of course, I know that there were professional beggars and that they used their children, but there were many, many more who sold combs and Chiclets from trays at the bus stations and who polished shoes (luckily, shoes were still made of leather) at almost every street corner, and trays of koulouria (rings of bread with sesame), for example.  Again, images keep coming to mind, of all the little goods and services that eked out a living.
Yes, I did notice that with the preparation for the Olympics, which Greece wanted so much, with the year when Athens was the Cultrual Capital of Eurose, with the importance of Greek fruits and vegetables as a cash crop, with the cultivation of viniculture for very good wines and the oenology to maintain their excellence, with the disappearance of the donkey for the most part, with the replacement of the buses sold to Greece when nearly worn out by other countries with Mercedes-Benz ones, most even with AC, and the beautifully banked and faced highways (not autobahn or freeway, but...), such as that which made the trip along the kaki skala en route to Corinth so much less hair-raising, that joining the European community did fairly rapidly bring the standard of living to the lower margin of "respectability" in transalpine Europe.
And it is true that Greeks (barring shipping barons and such, who are few) do work harder than most other workers, and certainly not less.
And it is true that Greeks are profoundly democratic, it being, for example, normal to see the best dressed persons on a bus or train or ship talking politics or philosophies or almost anything fit for discussion with the shabbiest of their fellow passengers or, of course, with everyone else in a kapheneion or a koureion.
So I hope the outcome of the election will be beneficial for Greece, because I also firmly believe that a Europe that abandoned Greece would somehow have lost its soul.
I don't know enough about international banking to have an opinion of my own about its responsibility (though I shall never forget how Enron tried to deprive California of sufficient electricity).
I guess that in about eight hours from this posting we shall begin to hear at least speculation about polling.

Ineradicable falsity

Color in ancient sculpture

24 04 07 Æ32  16.62g  axis 12h.  Copper drachm.  Egypt, Alexandria.  Severus Alexander, laureate, "draped and cuirassed bust from behind" (surely with the aid of other specimens!)  Rev., bust of Serapis, with ornamented kalathos; palm at r., date L I (year 10) at l.

Also supplied by the dealer, who, I'm sure is right, "Köln --Dattari 4439; Milne 3043l Ennett 3174"

Late in the 19th century, when Greek independence was well established and new excavations and firsthand study by both Greek and transalpine scholars became very important, not least because photography and in due course color lithography led to broadly distributed publication of new finds and ideas, in the non-specialized press and in popular books great emphasis was given to the put-down of sculptors who, like Canova, had made their statues white and poets like Keats whose Grecian Urn was of white marble (that urn, of course, was part of the neo-classicism of the Augustan age).  Of course, Canova, when he first saw original Greek sculptures is said to have cried, Oh, if only I could begin again!
Inevitably, since the idea of an all-white Greek world was patently ridiculous, the popular press began exaggerating and generalizing the use of color.  As recently as the 1980s I found a freshman-level history textbook asserting that the Parthenon was red: you could see its traces.  When writing for or lecturing to students who might not be in another course on ancient art, especially if they were working for degrees in Nursing or Accounting or Economics (or any other that left little room for elective coursework), it is inexcusable that the author paid to produce the textbook and the lecturers allowed to regurgitate it did not wonder about the rusty color of the Parthenon, which is due to the amount of iron in Pentelic marble, and of a hue quite different from the genuine paint-traces of red and blue and green that do exist.  What is worse is that similar false platitudes now are copied and pasted, from out-of-copyright sources, or second- or third-hand from such sources, on the internet.
Coin collectors usually encounter some of the primary evidence for statuary, especially cult images, that were richly colored and so are led to read the ancient sources that describe their color and rich materials, sources that were, of course, always available to those who were interested.  So, invited to contribute to Numiswiki in Forum Ancient Coins, I wrote a brief article summarizing that evidence.  There you will find the principal texts for the statues at Alexandria and Antioch, illustrated by the coins that show the details of the decoration most emphatically.  I also can show you one of Antioch with that same Sol-Serapis image where only the patterns on the garment are not quite so emphatic:

And, at the head of this post, for the headdress of Serapis at Alexandria, a lovely big bronze of Severus Alexander, dated to the tenth year of his reign (222–235), the most evocative portrait of this last of the Severans that I know.  The kalathos (basket) headdress of the Serapis, with all its figure work, also is reproduced, not always exactly alike, in most of the sculptured replicas of that famous image, of a god that because almost as important as Zeus himself, and sometimes subsumed Hades as well, as came about easily given his Egyptian heritage.  Of course, Clement of Alexandria's description leaves no doubt as to the rich color in mixed media of that image.  And, we must add, such statues did not of course stand outdoors, any more than the Virgin Mary at Seville does.
Yet these big cult statues in mixed media (not to mention chryselephantine work with pieces of gold and ivory mounted on a wood and metal armature / framework, such as the Zeus at Olympia by Pheidias) are exceptional.  What about color used more routinely?
Following Egyptian usage, Greek sculpture in wood or limestone was usually sealed with gesso and painted with encaustic (or anything other than plain water-based paint).  Pigments with egg, for example, or honey were available, and naturally also beeswax.  As for a fine icon, the gesso surface was carefully smoothed.  As soon as color was added to give emphasis to the details in architectural orders, it was important to use mineral pigments and a medium that would adhere to marble (limestone temples, of course, were coated with fine marble-dust stucco to protect them and provide a surface for color) and withstand weather.
Now, in the seventh century BC, a whole limestone statue might be wholly painted.  The little "Dame d'Auxerre" now in the Louvre was so painted, but the poster-paint colors used on top of plaster of Paris in illustrations purporting to show the use of color are misleading.  Not that such statues weren't bright, but they would have had the brightness of a fine Byzantine icon or of Duccio's Maestà altarpiece.
The statues that actually preserve quite a lot of original color, the Korai from the Athens Acropolis, have it on their hair, eyes, mouths, details of their garments.  They did stand in the full sunlight of the Acropolis and, no matter how good the paint, owe their preservation of it to their having been buried less than a century after they were set up.  If most of the traces of paint are red, that is because the other pigments were less permanent, not that ancient Greek girls had red hair and eyes!

Athens, Acropolis #679, the Kore wearing a peplos, c. 530 BC

The Kore from Keratea in Berlin, often called a Goddess, of c. 580, does have a wholly red garment (not the same red as, mixed with black, made brown hair), but that must be because she had died unmarried, and was set up dressed as a bride, like the Kore found in my own lifetime, Phrasiklea, a funerary statue, found with her own epitaph that informs us that she died still a maid, though of marriageable age.  Greek brides wore red.
How soon, if ever, Greek statues of deities and mortals had blank eyes, even if the beauty of marble came to be more and more valued for its own sake, I do not know, but even the portrait of Caligula in Copenhagen has the eyes of a living person, and, at the other end of the empire, eyes were given a glint of life (and one in Berlin preserves colored inlay in that carving) with drillwork, and hair was often painted.  Of course, the artists who worked for the Roman upper class were usually Greeks themselves.

*****

So, what prompted me to write this essay and call it "Ineradicable Falsity"?  I was opening my mail and having a MacD cherry-berry drink when a man, easily about my own age, came by my booth and caught sight of a brochure I'd just opened from the Hixenbaugh Gallery in NYC.  On its cover is a statuette, just over a foot tall, of Aphrodite Anaydyomene, with dolphin support, and a quite good one for a statuette, obviously a nice cabinet piece and probably datable to the Late Republican period as the dealer suggests, since the very popular late-Roman statuettes of deities do not preserve such proportions or such delicate nudity.  Needless to say, it has no paint, perhaps never had any, since at just that dating one expects the sort of classicism that makes whiteness one of its ideals; still, this statuette lacks its head, and, frankly, I'd expect an Anadyomene to have color to her hair and to her eyes, at least, and a bit of color would set off the dolphin nicely.

Anyhow, the man who saw her just as I took the brochure from its envelope, immediately expostulated that the Greeks always painted their sculpture, that "we" (speak for yourself, sir) were wrong to think they didn't, that all those temples were gaudily painted, that he was a philosopher who lectured on the Greeks, and so on.  After trying to qualify his assertions (especially about a Parthenon with red columns), to no avail, and he kept saying that the experts who knew all agreed with him, I just decided to be rude and identified myself as a classical archaeologist.  He said, well, he was a philosopher and had read everything for himself.  He really didn't seem to be drunk or high on anything, merely to hold a century-old and always ill informed package of unexamined popularizing.  

Indeed, there is something ineradicable about generalizations and simplifications that are felt to be éclatants or even impressive.  There was nothing the man said (sorry, he didn't introduce himself) that I haven't heard and read over and over.  Just like the Sunday School paper that talked about the whoredom of Corinth that tried to tempt ancient sailors...

Is there no cure for talk about "the Greeks", "the Romans", "the Americans", not to mention "the liberals", and the rest?  Why does the infinite variety of humanity and human history always need to be ruthlessly reduced so as to be disposed of?