The National Archeological Museum in Athens is a spectacularly impressive repository of ancient Greek art and sculpture. Yesterday I waded through Mycenaean and Cycladic artifacts, kore, stele, classical bronzes and sculpture, my buddies Hercules and Silenus, Dionysus… Standing in front of Poseidon, a bronze work from the 5th century BC, I was moved to tears, the body is so serenely balanced, the gesture so confident, such power and intensity—and just exquisite craftsmanship. Most of the surviving bronzes from antiquity were found in shipwrecks, or buried, the rest melted down for military use. We can speculate on some of what has been lost, as many copies were made in marble, but because of the relative lightness of bronze, and the cast being hollow, something like the life-sized galloping horse below couldn’t be easily replicated.
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flow’ry tale more sweetly than our rhyme…
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