Free Republic

Temple of Apollo, built ca. 540 BC by the ancient greeks Temple of the Greek god Apollo, built ca. 540 BC, Corinth, Greece. Credit: Following Hadrian/CC BY-SA 2.0 Recent research shows that ancient Greeks used a primitive type of lifting machine to move heavy stones before they began using cranes 2,500 years ago. It is commonly believed that the foremost discovery of the ancient Greeks in building technology is the crane. Yet, enormous stone structures were known to have been built in Greece at least 150 years before the use of cranes themselves. Cranes first appeared in the late sixth...

"I knew that scholars didn't really understand why it's called the Parthenon," says Utrecht University archaeologist Janric van Rookhuijzen, "so I started looking into a giant puzzle of ancient texts, inscriptions, and archaeological remains." His surprising, perhaps even heretical, theory suggests that "Parthenon" may not have originally referred to the structure we know today -- which is sometimes called the Great Temple of Athena -- but to part of an altogether different temple on the Acropolis. For van Rookhuijzen, the crux of the issue lies in the meaning of the Greek word parthenon -- "a room for virgins or unwed...

The idea is to show how the headless figures taught Rodin that the body could express emotion, as shown in his masterpiece 'The Kiss' and because he never visited Greece, experts say he may have picked up the idea from some of his 15 visits to the British Museum. This, it is argued by British Museum, shows why the museum is the right setting for the Marbles, acquired from the ruins of the Parthenon by Lord Elgin and brought to Britain about 200 years ago.

In February 2014, while promoting his World War Two film, The Monuments Men, Hollywood A-List actor George Clooney declared that Britain should send the Elgin Marbles back to Greece. Despite claiming they came from the Pantheon in Rome rather than the Parthenon in Athens (and also that they had been taken by Lord "Eljin"), he felt that returning them was now appropriate. This was fiercely controversial territory. However, once the furore had died down, most people wrote it off as a kooky PR stunt. Until last week, when it emerged that George Clooney’s new wife, Amal Clooney, a lawyer specialising...

The Parthenon represents, for many, a golden age in human achievement: the 5th-century b.c. Greek flowering of democracy, sciences, and the arts. But what if its chief ornament, the Parthenon frieze, turned out to be not an embodiment of reason and proportion—of stillness at the heart of motion, quiet piety, and enlightened civic responsibility—but (or, rather, also) something darker, more primitive: a representation of the critical moment in an ancient story of a king at war, a human sacrifice, and a goddess’s demand for virgin blood? That’s the argument at the heart of The Parthenon Engima. The plot involves not...

During the past 2,500 years, the Parthenon—the apotheosis of ancient Greek architecture—has been rocked by earthquakes, set on fire, shattered by exploding gunpowder, looted for its stunning sculptures and defaced by misguided preservation efforts. Amazingly, the ancient Athenians built the Parthenon in just eight or nine years. Repairing it is taking a bit longer.

Lights, camera, Acropolis! Officials in cash-strapped Greece approved a cheaper pricing plan meant to lure film crews and photographers to its historic attractions — including the home of the Parthenon. The Greek culture ministry slashed the cost of a one-day film shoot at the Acropolis by more than half, from more than $5,000 a day to about $2,050. The rate for photographers was cut by roughly one-third, from $385 a day to $256. The reduced rates come with a plan to speed up approval of the permits.

Parthenon MoonExplanation: Did you see the Full Moon last night? Near the horizon, the lunar orb may have seemed to loom large, swollen in appearance by the famous Moon illusion. But the Full Moon really was a large Full Moon last night, reaching its exact full phase within an hour of lunar perigee, the point in the Moon's elliptical orbit closest to planet Earth. A similar near perigee Full Moon last occured on December 12, 2008. The difference in the Moon's apparent size as it moves from perigee to apogee, its farthest point from Earth, is about 14 percent. Of...

ATHENS (Reuters Life!) - Greece welcomed home a small fragment of the Parthenon marbles on Wednesday and expressed hope the gesture by the Italian government would prompt Britain to return its own prized collection of Greek sculpture

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece on Sunday began moving the ancient sculptures from the temples of the Athens Acropolis to a new museum, designed specifically to prod the British Museum into returning its own prized collection of Parthenon marbles. Dozens of bystanders, some in tears, watched as three cranes relayed a massive stone slab from the 2,500-year-old Parthenon. It was carved with four youths leading bulls to sacrifice to the goddess Athena. "I am trembling, it touches my soul," said pensioner Pelagia Boulamatsi, 71, unable to hold back tears. "This is an ancient civilization that is the foundation of the world."...

ATHENS (AFP) - Its austere white is on every postcard, but the Athens Parthenon was originally daubed with red, blue and green, the Greek archaeologist supervising conservation work on the 2,400-year-old temple said. "A recent cleaning operation by laser revealed traces of haematite (red), Egyptian blue and malachite-azurite (green-blue) on the sculptures of the western frieze," senior archaeologist Evi Papakonstantinou-Zioti told AFP. While archaeologists had found traces of the first two colours elsewhere on the temple years ago, the malachite-azurite colouring was only revealed in the latest restoration process, Papakonstantinou-Zioti said. Given the testimony of ancient writers, it is not...

Publisher's summary: "The events of Eden were part of the Greeks' collective cultural memory, and their special interpretation of those events made up the very basis of their religious system. Greek myth/art is human history. The Book of Genesis is human history. While the viewpoints of each are opposite, the recounted events match each other in convincing detail. "The Greeks knew exactly who Noah was. They called him Nereus, the "Wet One." While it is true that the Greeks built the Parthenon to glorify the serpent-worshipping Eve of Genesis, it is also true that they built it to celebrate their...

Dispute between Greece, England resumes with Olympics Games With the Olympic Games soon to open in Athens, one of the more bitter rivalries in history is set to resume, and it doesn't involve parallel bars or water polo. The Greek government is spending tens of millions of dollars on a museum atop the Acropolis in hopes that Britain will choose this occasion to return the Elgin Marbles, the elaborate sets of sculptures pried off the Parthenon and shipped to London two centuries ago. The British, unsurprisingly, have not complied. To understand why the sculptures mean so much to both...

2 firms buy controlling stake in nutritional goods company Two investment firms have acquired a controlling stake in the rapidly growing low-carb food marketing company founded by diet guru Dr. Robert C. Atkins. Seeing long-term growth opportunities, Boston-based Parthenon Capital and Manhattan-based Goldman Sachs Capital Partners have made an unspecified investment in Ronkonkoma-based Atkins Nutritional Inc. The deal announced yesterday, less than two weeks after Atkins' Manhattan medical practice closed its doors for the last time, comes as consumers are beginning to spend freely on an ever-growing array of foods labeled low carb. The investment is essential to drive the...