Posted on 03/28/2005 10:31:47 AM PST by nickcarraway
A 0.45-hectare roof will be set up to protect the architectural fragments and famous mosaics at Eva in Kynouria from the elements
Enough sculptures have been excavated at Eva in Kynouria over the past 25 years to fill an entire museum. There is no museum as yet and most of the finds are in storage, but the architectural fragments and the famous mosaics, which cover 1,500 square meters, are to be protected by roofing.
The Supreme Archaeological Council has decided on a roof that will cover an area of 0.45 hectares, protecting a large part of the villa of Herod Atticus from the weather. Climatic change has caused increasing damage, from erosion, disintegration of mosaic and tiled floors, subsidence and collapse.
The villa that Thodoros Spyropopoulos began excavating in the early 1990s covers 20,000 square meters. It contains remarkable collections that reveal the history of Herod himself, who dreamed of a happy home filled with original works of ancient Greek art and Roman copies of ancient works. But he succumbed to depression when his wife Rigilla died, children and pupils died, and turned the luxurious villa into a museum and site for the mystical worship of his dead.
«Throughout the villa he put up funeral stelae, scenes of funeral feasts from classical cemeteries and heroes' monuments in Attica, and above the famous stelae of the Marathon warriors, a supreme monument to the heroized dead,» said Giorgos Spyropoulos, curator and co-excavator with his father of Eva, Kynouria, who compared Herod's villa with the Vatican Museum.
Sports
The sculptures that decorated Herod's villa (stelae and statues of athletes) expressed «his deep concern with Greek educational values and Greek virtue, and referred to the sports practiced by him and by his father, who had led a chorus of ephebes in Sparta that revived the Lycurgan institutions and the team games of children and ephebes,» said the curator.
The construction of the villa resembles that of Hadrian's villa at Tivoli. As the curator explained: «Hadrian was a friend and protector of Herod and he visited Mantineia, Tega and possibly Eva in 131-132 AD. The capitals of the peristyle in the garden, which are from Hadrian's era, like those in the Olympeion in Athens, indicate that the villa was completed in Hadrian's time, around 117-138 AD.
The hundreds of finds are evidence of Herod's desire to collect original works. Among the most important finds are the Orchoumenous Lakaines, statues of dancing Laconian women made by Callimachus (420 BC), which were in a stoa opposite the Caryatid Amazons.
Only one has survived intact, along with a few fragments. «The young woman has leapt up in a dance movement, clasping her floating hymation,» said Spyropoulos junior. She looks like a stylized image of dance, and her sensuality, he said, is an «exhibition of technical skill that is equal to that of the Maenads, which are also attributed to Callimachus.»
We know from Pliny that the artist created these sculptures. The scholar Wolters believed that the Orchoumenous Lakaines represented the girls of Sparta who performed religious dances in honor of Artemis, where the ceremony included dances by virgins from leading families.
Other finds include fragments of bronze statues, copies of classical masterpieces (Lysippus' athlete, Polycleitus' Hercules and Praxiteles' Aphrodite), copies of Opera Nobilia (the group with Achilles and Penthesileia), copies of Amazons of the Mattei type by Pheidias, centaurs, nymphs, athletes and busts of philosophers.
His biographer Philostratus relates that Herod Atticus had the misfortune to lose the people who were closest to him, Spyropoulos explained, «and in 165 AD he succumbed to depression.»
When misfortune struck, he clad his villa in marble from Lesvos, turning it into a mausoleum. He mourned extravagantly, «acting out the pain of his wounded heart.» This was not just empty theatricality, said the curator: «These events were in the ancient Greek spirit of expressing grief for one's dead.»
Two fine statues of Hercules were found in the villa's garden, which is in the shape of a hippodrome. Skopas' Hercules (a copy of a statue in Malipo) was sited exactly opposite one of Hercules holding the apples of the Hesperides.
Among the stelae of athletes there is an exceptional relief of a naked young man with an ornate carved hairdo and another depicting a barefoot athlete wearing a hymation and boxing gloves. Other important reliefs include those of the Nine Muses and of Apollo.
After Herod
The finds date from the archaic era to the second century AD and even later, since a portrait was found of an emperor who lived after Herod.
«This means that the villa was still in use and his heirs continued to enrich the collection. Portraits were found of Septimus Severus and others, and mosaics from the time of Constantine,» said Spyropoulos.
The column capitals indicated the two phases in which the villa was built. Those from the time of the Flavians were found in the villa's basilica while those from Hadrian's time (second century AD) adorned the apse.
The dig yielded only sporadic discoveries until August 1995, when more and more treasures started coming to light. That was when the striking complex of Achilles and Penthesileia and the fragments of the Orchoumenous Lakaines were found among the portraits on the western side of the villa.
An excavation that started 25 years ago
The archaeological site of Herod Atticus's Roman villa is four kilometers northwest of Astros, next to the Monastery of the Transfiguration of Christ. The heart of the villa is a rectangular courtyard with a garden surrounded by an artificial stream. It is framed on three sides by arcades and corridors with superb mosaic floors in the atrium, and on the fourth side by an exedra or platform.
To the west is a small basilica, and on the south side an octagonal sentrypost, baths, a semicircular Nymphaion and another basilica (a temple to Antinoos) were discovered.
To the east is a series of rooms that lead to a courtyard, from which the gardens probably continued. A third basilica is on the northern side, with a library running lengthwise between it and another stoa.
Research conducted 25 years ago revealed three chronological stages. The finds show that the villa was in continual use from the first or second century AD to the sixth.
The first antiquities were found in the area in the 19th century and in 1962 it was declared an archaeological site by the name of Colones. Around 1978, the Ephor of that time, G. Steinhauser, began the first excavations.
The discovery of the monument was made by Thodoros Spyropoulos in the 1990s, and led to a need for the site to be protected.
The Supreme Archaeological Council decided that the greater part of the villa should be covered by a mesh supported on six pairs of central columns, which is thought to be the only way to preserve the antiquities. The next step might be a museum.
This is the greek Herodus Atticus, not the Jewish King.
ping
Who was this fellow? The Herodeion as it is called by modern Greeks, was built in AD161 by Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes, an important figure of his time. He was a teacher and philosopher who had inherited a great fortune from his father. When his wife Rigilla died, he built this roofed Odeion for musical performances to honour her memory. The ancient Greeks used to give music and recital concerts there. Today the Athens Festival takes place at the Odeion every summer.
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