Aphrodisias and the Art Critics
A couple of years ago I was filming in Turkey (Gods and Gold) and we managed to get ahead of our schedule - a very unusual occurance! Seeking for a way in which to fill in the afternoon, I consulted the map and noted that not too far away there was an ancient site called "Aphrodisias" about which I knew nothing and had certainly never visited. I managed to persuade my colleagues that a visit there would be a good idea, so off we went.
The road, though tar-sealed, was certainly no super highway, so it took over an hour to reach the site, set among a thicket of hills. We drove through a small village, constantly looking out for signs (and nearly missing them several times) and finally reached the car park and museum.
There was a well-marked path taking you round the site and plenty of bilingual information boards, which greatly enhanced the visit. Two things particularly stand out about the place: the theatre and the statuary.
The theatre was your ordinary, standard, Greek theatre - a half-circle of marble steps that served as seats for the clientele, a stage whose backdrop was no more than ordinarily ruined, and the small semi-circular pit which was where the chorus stood or sat to sing their responses to the action on the stage - except that here there was no chorus!
During Roman times the first couple of rows of "seats" had been removed to create a larger chorus surrounded by a four-foot wall. Instead of a chorus, the pit had become a setting for gladiatorial combats! So much for the alleged Roman love of culture - they had cast out Euripides and Menander in favour of cold steel and hot blood.
The garden around the museum was crammed with marble sarcophagii and other objects, the car park was ringed with a frieze of theatrical masks, the museum was filled with marble statues, the majority in a pretty good condition. According to one of the information boards, Aphrodisias was blessed with a source of high-quality marble only just over a mile away. This meant that it was not too expensive for the citizens of Aphrodisias to build a gleaming white city while their less fortunate neighbours had to make do with grubby basalt or rusty sandstone, in which the occasional statue of expensive imported marble stood out like the proverbial sore thumb.
In fact, there was so much marble that the good people of Aphrodisias became tired of the stuff and not only painted their statues - which was normal - but actually gilded many of them, just to make a change from the bland whiteness of the city.
One of the interesting features of the museum was the fact that nearly all the statues were found either still standing on their bases or else toppled from the bases but still close enough to them that they could be identified with the base. This means that we can identify the subjects of these portrait statues - unlike, say, Ephesus, where some highly individualistic portrait heads are totally anonymous.
Of course the features of the various emperors are sufficiently familiar that we can identify them by face alone, but the host of local dignitaries who are depicted would be without names but for this fortunate accident. Thus we can identify a rather grim-faced man with a mushroom-shaped mop of hair as Flavius Palmatus, governor of Aphrodisias; a bearded ancient with an extraordinary bonnet perched on a head of ragged curls is Lucius Dometeion - his niece Tatiana wears her hair in the style made popular by Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus, but is rather provocatively posed like the goddess after whom the city is named.
All told there are 18 Roman officials, 107 local men who were government officials or priests, 28 family groups and 27 women who held office as priestesses. Surprisingly there are only 23 athletes - presumably the comforts of Aphrodisias did not conduce to athleticism!
Another consequence of these bases, which bear inscriptions ranging from a couple of words to 30 lines of self-adulation, is that we are able to date most of the statues. The result has not been very comfortable for those experts who pontificate about "style" and "development" and so on. Instead of showing a neat and tidy progression from purely Greek styles in the early years, through a blend of Greek and Roman, then purely Roman, and finally the "corrupt" Byzantine styles, the statues show a happy and eclectic mix of styles.
It is obvious that when Joius Bloggus and his friend Billious Smithious went down to the sculptor's workshop to order their commemorative statues, they went through some sort of catalogue and picked out the style that took their fancy and were not at all bothered by the concerns of the art critics. Joius might go for something you would swear was pure archaic Greek while Billious ordered something that was pure 2nd century Roman. Meanwhile their wives were picking out a happy - or in one or two cases, an unhappy - blend of both with some local features added in.
It rather calls in question any proposed dating based solely on stylistic grounds, particularly if it contradicts other less contentious evidence!
Immediately outside the museum is the Tetrapylon, the monumental gateway that welcomed visitors to the Forum. The towering columns which held up the marble roof were, of course, made of marble, but the fluting which marks the Corinthian order was here made to spiral around the columns so that they looked like nothing so much as giant pencil sharpeners and one constantly expected Salvador Dali to pop out from behind a pylon and grin manically.
We nearly missed the most impressive building in Aphrodisias, for it stands a little distance away from the rest of the ruins and is hidden by the high earth banks which are an integral part of its construction. It is the Stadium - perhaps more accurately a hippodrome - which is 877' 6" long and has 30 rows of seats all along both sides and around the curved ends. Although many of the seats have collapsed so that they droop down onto the row beneath and large swathes are badly overgrown with weeds, it is still a most impressive structure.
Even as it is, it could hold 30,000 spectators, but there are walls and arcades round the top of the banks which indicate that the rows of seats once went higher, perhaps extending the capacity by another 10,000 or so. It is probably the best preserved stadium of the ancient world.
Unfortunately even horse racing was not enough to keep the bored citizens of Aphrodisias happy. Just as our modern television programmes have to become more and more gory in order to keep the interest of a jaded audience, so the entertainment offered in the stadium became more and more bloody, until finally even deliberately staged "accidents" were no longer enough and the whole business of racing horses was abandoned. One of the semi-circular ends of the stadium was walled off to make a complete circle so that gladiatorial combats could be staged in the makeshift amphitheatre.
Unfortunately little is known of the history of Aphrodisias and all these local big-wigs who were so keen to commemorate their achievements and honours might just as well have saved their money, for history has totally passed them by. No doubt what they did was very important to themselves and fairly important to their contemporaries, but that is all. Thus the futility of most of human life is starkly revealed.
If you would like a quick tour of Aphrodisias, pop along to NWTV and watch the film I made on the place.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
