“This Marble Head in My Hands”: Green Greeks and the Question of the Parthenon

Abstract

Nobel laureate George Seferis once shared his nightmare wherein the Americans win the Acropolis in an auction and replace its Doric columns with tubes of toothpaste.1 In his dream, a bespectacled and cleanshaven man in a black suit holds an ivory mallet and decides on the future of the Parthenon. Seferis’s fears of rampant consumerism and cultural dilution are truer in the twentyfirst century than he could have imagined. Greece is in its seventh consecutive year of an economic recession underscored by deep salary and pension cuts. These days, as one walks around a country ravaged by financial depression, Seferis’s nightmare of losing the Acropolis to the highest bidder on a world stage feels more like a moot point than a ghoulish dreamscape.2 The last few winters in Greece have manifested such apocalyptic visions as those of the Parthenon, its most famous monument, enveloped in smoke. Waste has a choke hold on Greece’s crown jewel, the Parthenon, which serves as a constant reminder of the disenfranchisement of the poor to the benefit of the rich. Reflecting on the winter of 2013, reporter James Lewis writes, “People cut down the trees in the city parks for firewood. . . . The resulting wood smoke created the worst smog in decades, obscuring even the Parthenon.”3 Unable to afford heat, debtridden and disempowered Greeks are choosing cheaper and more toxic fuel alternatives.4 Beginning in 2008, wood, coal, and garbage burned by desperate Athenians has been filling the air with invisible and airborne fine particles and carcinogenic compounds that the Environmental Protection Agency (epa) deems extremely harmful; the small-