From bcuthill@us.net Sun Mar 4 07:59:51 2001 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id HAA36442 for ; Sun, 4 Mar 2001 07:59:50 -0800 Received: from us.net (newmail2.us.net [216.23.22.192] (may be forged)) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with SMTP id HAA03739 for ; Sun, 4 Mar 2001 07:59:50 -0800 Received: (qmail 14277 invoked by uid 0); 4 Mar 2001 15:58:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?198.240.90.96?) (198.240.90.96) by newmail2.us.net with SMTP; 4 Mar 2001 15:58:51 -0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: bcuthill@mail.us.net Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <5E5B5397B92DA849874262D1AF191C2C011D6A22@exchange2.ColoradoCollege.edu> References: <5E5B5397B92DA849874262D1AF191C2C011D6A22@exchange2.ColoradoCollege.edu> Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 10:45:27 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Sally Winchester Subject: RE: Done Deed in Afghanistan -- Greek 'idols' are next perhaps Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" If you are looking for Classical content in all of this, other than what has already been mentioned, trying checking out this article in which Greek 'idols' are also on the hit list. http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/stories/02040003.htm My original intent in posting the report to the list was prompted by the presupposition that, as lovers of the ancient past, we would be interested/concerned/outraged in *any* destruction, particularly mass destruction for no rational reason, of ancient monunments -- mea culpa if I was incorrect and caused offense to some. At 7:21 AM -0700 3/4/01, Owen Cramer wrote: >Looking for classical content, I think about PTR's thousand-year curse and >the truly multicultural conflict that blew up the Parthenon in 1687: Muslim >Turks storing black powder inside, Catholic Venetian Doge in command of the >other army but using German Evangelical artillerists do the deed. Of course >nobody thought of this as abuse of a world cultural treasure, back then. Some of us revere and honor the past. Perhaps this example of a change in attitude toward the preservation of the cultural history of the world is one small sign that human beings can evolve morally. What would you say if Rome decided to blow up all remaining Classical monuments for some fundamentalist reason? Sally Winchester >But >the tatters of the past, and their very tatteredness, do form much of the >contemporary Greek "identity". G. B. Shaw once wrote that he was glad to get >out of Athens "with its stupid classical Acropolis and smashed pillars", >evincing a figurative iconoclasm which I'm inclined to honor, as I also >honor Nietzsche's image [sic, I guess] of the Twilight of the Idols. Yet >we're terribly upset when a madman with a hammer takes after the Pieta\ or >this Taleban does what it seems to be doing to the sculptures. Is it >possible that those seeking the put the Second Commandment on all schoolroom >walls could eventually provoke similar events and fall under the curse >themselves? >Owen Cramer .