Hailing from Tiberius’ famous grotto in Sperlonga (south of Rome) this is Diomedes (that gorgeous hand!) absconding with the palladion of Troy (its protectress and cult statue of Athena carved from wood) as that city was pillaged. There is a lot to be said about Sperlonga and the Trojan palladion. But not here!
What I really want to bang on about is the Athenian version. Centuries before Phidias’ ivory and gold glorious behemoth in the mid-5th cent. B.C. Parthenon, the holiest of holies was a smaller rudimentary statue (a xoanon) of Athena that had been carved from olive wood. And each year, as a focal point of the Panathenaic festival, the little goddess would be dressed in a freshly woven and very fancy woollen peplos on her home on the Akropolis. And I just love this idea – perpetually honoured, perpetually beautified, perpetually renewed.
When the Persian sack of Athens was imminent, the Athenians retreated to safety with the little goddess (not left to suffer the same fate as Troy’s!). Her temple was razed, but when the coast was clear after Salamis they restored her to the Akropolis and continued to dress her annually (presumably even in the decades when that rocky crag was a scrum of construction). Pious, conservative, superstitious, sentimental? Wonderful.
Eventually the little goddess is thought to have been installed in the Erechtheion, that multi-purpose, architecturally weird, jewel-box of a building also housing Athena’s olive tree and honouring various other cults. The little wooden Athena has not survived, of course, but the annual presentation of her peplos was appropriately commemorated in monumental fashion on the east center of the Parthenon’s frieze – presented by one of its honorary maiden weavers.
[I partially excuse my use of this Sperlongan image to start my tangential discussion of Athens’s Athena, because it is a rare example of a photograph that is somehow more affective than the work in person – the unique talent of Guido A. Petruccioli – the prodigiously talented (if reclusive) Italian archaeologist and photographer. Prints of his photography are available for sale on agoraia.com, please email or use the contact form if you are interested in learning more.]
