5 - Reclaiming Ancient Greece

Summary

Chapter 5 investigates the political uses of antiquity during wartime. It argues that the War of the Morea was a turning point in the reception of classical tradition that enacted the imperial topos of translatio imperii et studii. The mastery of Greek territories was also a mastery of archaeological sites and artifacts that renewed the culture of antiquity in Venice. The chapter shows that patrician collecting and the public display of antiquities as war trophies were inseparable from an aggressive military antiquarianism that supported the Republic’s new imperial regime with intellectual and cultural power from ancient Greece. Specifically, the occupation of Athens, with its famous history and symbolic potency, inspired strong associations between Venetian maritime supremacy and the fifth-century Athenian empire. But it also launched a new phase in the European rediscovery of Greek art and architecture through one of the darkest episodes of Venetian history: the bombardment and despoliation of the Parthenon.