Constitutional Law

Part 2: “What Were They Thinking?”

Digression: “A History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia”

Pg 132: “Bronze Age Athens”

 

 

PANEL 1

A topographic map of Attica, with a scale of miles and with Athens located.

 

NARRATION:

Athens is located on a little peninsula called Attica.

Attica looks a bit like… a horse’s head?

 

 

PANEL 2

A nighttime view of the Aegean region, showing Greece, Crete, Anatolia, Thrace, and all the little islands. Scores of settlements are brightly lit, and major urban sites are shown in reddish orange. Athens is located.

 

NARRATION:

Bronze Age Athens was part of the flourishing Mycenaean civilization…

…A cosmopolitan, highly interconnected world of cities, trade, and high culture.

 

 

PANEL 3

An overhead view of the palace complex of Mycenae, as it would have looked around 1250 B.C. Smoke rises from the stepped roof of the main temple building.

 

NARRATION:

Each city centered on a “palace”—the usual compound of ritual spaces and administrative buildings. Just like everywhere else, government was religion, religion was government, and you demonstrated your patriotic identity by participating in the festivals and sacrifices for the civic gods.

(Your core identity, of course, would always be your ancestral lineage: Your family. Your tribe.)

 

 

PANEL 4

A 3-D spherical panorama of the interior of the main temple room of the palace at Pylos, as it would have looked around 1250 B.C. Readers can click, drag, and zoom to explore the chamber. Explanatory narrations hang suspended in midair near various parts of the room. There are several Easter eggs hidden throughout the illustration.

 

The walls are covered in colorful frescoes, the ceiling and support beams are intricately decorated, and the floor is tiled with an array of diverse colorful patterns. In the center of the room is a great hearth. The king/high priest is seated before a fresco of a mythical of griffin caught between a lion and a leopard. A procession of priests and priestesses bearing offerings is entering from chambers outside, past murals depicting such processions. They are led by a woman wearing a brightly-colored tiered dress, open at the bosom.

 

On the wall opposite the high priest, Poseidon rules over the creatures of the deep, while Artemis receives homage from birds, deer, and two leashed dogs.

 

NARRATION:

The two main gods at Pylos were Poseidon, god of the sea, and Artemis, goddess of nature, wild animals, and the dance.

 

Looking straight up, we see there is a second story that is open to the sky above the hearth fire. More women in tiered dresses with open bosoms stand at railings to watch the proceedings below and chat. The ceiling of the second story is decorated like a night sky, and the pillars are decorated with frescoes of birds.

 

NARRATION:

Women had a big space all their own on the second level. It was decorated with many frescoes of animals and nature scenes.

 

On the wall behind the chief priest, to his right, is a fresco depicting young men leaping over a charging bull.

 

NARRATION:

Bull-leaping demonstrated that this force of nature was at its peak vitality when sacrificed. (The bull, that is. Probably not the athletes. Then again, consider the human sacrifices of Etruscan gladiators and Mayan ball players.) The ritual lives on in Mediterranean sports like Course Landaise, Recortes, and Bullfighting.

 

The woman leading the procession holds a long brass rod, shaped like the hand-crank to an old car, with a wooden handle.

 

NARRATION:

That bronze thing she’s holding is a key. Who is she? What’s that key for? I’ll tell you in a moment.

 

In the great hearth, a fire burns inside a large metal footed vessel, intricately decorated.

 

NARRATION:

This hearth fire is the living soul of the city—just as your home’s hearth fire is the soul of your lineage. Don’t let either one go out!

 

There are four great red columns holding up the ceiling, and others like them are visible in the chambers beyond.

 

NARRATION:

This is a re-creation of the throne room or “megaron” (“big room”) of the palace complex at Pylos.

If you’ve read Homer’s Iliad, this was the palace of King Nestor.

I’ve taken a lot of artistic license here. If you want more info about what it actually looked like, first check out Mabel Lang, The Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Western Messenia, Vol. 2: The Frescoes, Princeton University Press, 1969. Then look at more recent interpretations like Shannon Lafayette Hogue, “The Palatial Megaron and Upper Story in the Palace of Nestor: Evidence for a New Reconstruction,” Hespera, Vol. 92, No. 1 (2023).