Those Ancient Greeks follow me everywhere!

Reproduction in the Royal Ontario Museum
of Phidias' statue of Athena,
finished 438 BC for inside the Parthenon in Athens.

Not long ago, I was in Toronto, Canada, spending holiday time with family. They had asked me to stop thinking about writing for a few days, as we don't see each other very often. 'No problem,' I said. 'No writing.'

We decided to go to the Royal Ontario Museum as a worth-while afternoon occupation during a snowy weekend. Once there, I walked round a corner into the Greek gallery, and look who I found!

I have seen photographs of this reproduction of Phidias' statue of Athena in the Parthenon again and again. In my ignorance, I thought it was in New York or somewhere, and 12 metres tall like the original (and the reproduction in Nashville). But it's in a small alcove protected from people who would like to touch (like me) by a sheet of glass. Athena is only about two and a half feet (70cms) tall. 

According to Plutarch, Phidias* had a lot of trouble with that statue of Athena, culminating in two court cases. Apart from his obviously supreme talents, Phidias was a close friend of the powerful politician Perikles, and so he was a target for the jealousy of lesser mortals. 

One court case accused him of stealing some of the gold Athena was covered in. That fact became part of the plot of my novel The Boy with Two Heads. In my story Phidias and Themis' father had had to invest their own gold when they discovered that indeed some gold and jewels were missing from the Athena. They had never got their money back, but the oracle had told them, 'When the boy with two heads ... wins without a fight, Athena will pay her dues.' 

You can see why Phidias and statues of Athena are quite important to me as I research the sequel to The Boy.

left to right: Amazon, ?Perikles, ?Phidias, ?Greek soldier
from the reproduction shield of Athena
in the Royal Ontario Museum.

And evidence for Phidias' other court case is there in the Royal Ontario Museum, too. They have made a reproduction of the shield of this Athena, where Phidias is supposed to have incorporated a self portrait (and one of Perikles) among the fighters in the battle between Greeks and Amazons depicted there. These portraits constituted a punishable offence in the Athens of the 430s BC, and led to a court case that saw Phidias supposedly imprisoned.

Athena Lemnias
Roman copy of bronze
by Phidias in circa 450 BC

Zeus
Roman copy of bronze
by circle of Phidias

However, he then went on to make the huge statue of Zeus that features so strongly in The Boy with Two Heads, which became one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. He made many statues, and, in the museum hall adjacent, there are two marble heads, alleged copies of bronzes also by Phidias or his circle. Again I had seen pictures of them. but never expected to find them unprotected and at eye level. 

For me this was an afternoon of treasure trove. 

As for my companions, they just rolled their eyes and went off to see the bat cave and the dinosaur fossils. Much more fun, they said! 


*Phidias in Greek is spelled Pheidias, but he is pronounced simply Phidias, so I use this spelling.


All photos ©Julia M Newsome. Please credit me if you borrow them. 

Olympic colossi

The Orbit from inside the Olympic Park

As you probably know by now, I enjoy drawing comparisons between the Modern and the Ancient Olympic Games.
The other day we drove past the Olympic Park on the A12, and I noticed that  more of the Orbit sculpture is visible from the road now. 

Building the Orbit, from Anish Kapoor's website 

I followed progress with interest last year while they built it, as I was writing about building a different kind of Olympic colossus at the time. I never quite believed that something as odd as the Orbit would be identified with the excitement of the Games, but I was always in awe of those huge cranes ...

The sculptor of the Orbit, Anish Kapoor, always takes me by surprise with his creations - sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not.

Sian Frances' magnificent impression of the statue

In Ancient Olympia it seems there were many amazing sculptures, more and more as the years wore on. The most famous sadly no longer exists. I've tried to describe the building of it in The Boy with Two Heads. As you probably know, it was made by Phidias, the famous Athenian sculptor who was responsible for much of the decoration and design of the Parthenon on the Athens Akropolis. According to Pausanias, this statue was a wooden structure overlaid with gold and ivory (see § 5.11.1). It stood (or sat!) 14 metres high, and was one of the Seven Wonders of the World for hundreds of years. It represented Zeus in his Temple in the sacred precinct of the Altis at Olympia. The Olympic Games were held in his honour. I had to guess about how the statue was built as I could not find any descriptions of the process, but I enjoyed imagining it. 

You may remember the scene in The Boy with Two Heads where the hero, Themis, helps install the face, one of the last components to be put in place:

   Themis lay along the beam and watched as a huge parcel, crated and wrapped, was brought to the door [of the Temple] by a team of ten men. He could hear the stamping of the oxen at the Temple ramp. The hubbub inside suddenly stilled.

   Phidias strode into the Temple and stopped in the middle of the floor, in front of the cloth-covered statue. He turned towards the doors.

   ‘Master Harpist!’ he called, and a musician stepped out from behind a column. ‘You and your musicians should be up in the gallery. When I make this signal with my hand you will play in the rhythm we agreed.’

   ‘Certainly, Master Phidias,’ said the harpist with a nod, and he and his two colleagues ran up the stairs to appear opposite Panainos.

   The great bundle was carried into the open space beside Phidias. The slatted casing fell away and a sling of ropes was tied round the wrapped disc inside.

   At the signal from Phidias, the musicians began to play. Themis and the men in the roof all shuffled into their places. Men on the floor pulled on their ropes. Curtains of dust drifted down as the wrapped disc rose towards the ceiling, swaying in time to the music. When it was almost touching the beams there, Themis and his team began work. They pulled and stopped as directed by the music. The disc moved towards the gaping front of the head. Men wriggled along beams, moved pulleys and re-laid ropes. 

So Phidias and Anish Kapoor both created world-famous colossal Olympian sculptures, although for very different reasons. And of course, their building methods were a bit different, too.