Ancient Places of Performance as “Realms of Memory”.

The Case of Greece

In aerial views of the Acropolis of Athens, the Odeion of Herodes Atticus is the most present architectural monument on the South Slope while the theatre of Dionysus often appears as a void due to its unrestored state despite its acknowledged importance as the birthplace of Western drama and archetype of Greco-Roman theaters. This paper adopts Pierre Nora’s “realms of memory” framework to explain this disparity as the outcome of a national heritage management policy to preserve “first quality” Ancient Greek theaters in their unrestored state as lieux de mémoire for the modern Greek nation while restoring “second quality” Roman performance buildings as milieux de mémoire that bring the nation together in modern performances of Ancient Greek drama, as two aspects of the same desire to revive the Ancient Greek civilization in the modern Greek state.

Supporting examples are found in restorations, for modern festivals, of Roman period odeia and of “polluted/desacralized” Greek theaters that had been modified for Roman amphitheater games, employing terminology suggested by Eleana Yalouri who coined also the “first-and-second-quality” distinction. Culture-based specificity and validity of the adopted framework is then discussed based on odeion restorations on the Aegean Islands that date from a period of Italian control instead of nation-building in modern Greece. This distinction is proposed to reveal the validity of Fernand Braudel’s “total history” paradigm that suggests surface phenomena (including architectural monuments) to be unintelligible without understanding the underlying economic, social, and political conjuncture that is, in its turn, largely shaped by geo-history. Concluding observations involve themes for future studies along this path.