DEVELOPMENTS OF GREEK ART IN THE FOURTH CENTURY. (W.A.P.) Childs Greek Art and Aesthetics in the Fourth Centuryb.c. Pp. xxxvi + 364, ills, b/w & colour pls. Princeton and Oxford: Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University / Princeton University Press, 2018. Paper, £50, US$65. ISBN: 9...
The Classical Review, 2018
often became targets of public anger and damage, sometimes inviting vengeful reaction by them or ... more often became targets of public anger and damage, sometimes inviting vengeful reaction by them or their descendants. K. first explains the function of these works of art and then explores their fortunes, focusing on the well-documented rulers of Ptolemaic Egypt and on the long reign of Philip V of Macedon (221–179 BCE) who ruthlessly ravaged Attica, Aetolia as well as other regions of Greece. In her discussion of the few fragments from an over-life-sized equestrian statue found in the Athenian Agora, K. implies that it may have belonged to Philip V, a conclusion based on the sandaled foot, the most prominent of the remains. Sandals are difficult to date unless one consults K.D. Morrow, Greek Footwear and the Dating of Sculpture (1985), and the one in question must be Hellenistic, a fact that favours K.’s suggestion. The brief conclusion explores the afterlives of Greek sculptures in the Roman and Early Christian periods. In case the reader decides that respect for art in ancient Greece was awful, what followed would make it look saintly. Obviously, K. did not have a chance to consult T. M. Kristensen and L. Stirling (edd.), The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture: Late Antique Responses and Practices published in 2016, a coincidental sequel to her book. Athens was not a city characteristic of ancient Greece, but more like its unofficial capital for culture, finance and, at times, its colonial centre. Like so many scholars, K. focuses most of her book on Athens and Chapters 3–5 exclusively. It becomes, therefore, disconcerting to constantly read the generalising ethnic ‘the Greeks’. Even after spending two chapters on Athens only, this ethnic appears at the beginning of Chapter 5 (p. 149) where ‘the Athenians’ would have been more appropriate. The reader may also wonder whether the stated thesis of the book to be ‘the first comprehensive historical account of the Greeks’ negative interactions with monumental sculptures’ (p. 2) is fulfilled. Certainly the ‘voodoo dolls’ and arguably the herms (Chapters 2 and 4) are not monumental. Also, the Athenians are in no way responsible for the Persian destruction (Chapter 3), only for the unprecedented task of disposing of the sad remains. These three chapters could have been incorporated either in the introduction or in Chapter 2 – where parts of them appear anyway – and more space given to Chapters 5 and 6. The cases of Philip V and recycled sculptures are very close to the goals of the book and could have deserved their own chapters.
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