An ancient marketplace
March 3rd 2007 00:49
Usually, I am not a culture hawk. I do not gush into tears hearing a syncopated symphony, I do not refuse to scratch my head when reading a modernist poem and I blink and stare at modern art without claiming any epiphanies. You can call me moronic that way or simply middle class. But when I read this small news item I felt a twinge of wistfulness and immense reverence that ancient monuments and great art are supposed to generate in us. An archaeological discovery was made and what was dug up was not a fort or a temple but a marketplace. A rather anonymous place that probably was not mentioned in any literature and hence has not entered our mental landscape.
This is the news item from Yahoo:
There it is. I have blogged before about capitalism in Assyrian and Islamic worlds. I wrote about their immense efficacy and wealth but I did not write about their cultural impac, about how lively they were, how picturesque to behold and most of all, how sacred. The sacredness of a marketplace is a given in ancient world. I was blogging, rather fitfully, about Herodotus, wasn't I? The first book of Herodotus brings that sacredness to the fore. Some of the greatest epics are set in market milieu and the perfumes on the streets of Baghdad bazaars, the art works commissioned by Florentine businessmen still haunt us to this day. I will write about it later.
Most ardent proponets of market capitalism regard it s a system antithetical to cultural efflorescense. They are wrong. And of course the culture vultures are always ascribing cultural erosion to markets. This is nothing new. There were Spengler and Fromm who noted that the new era of nineteenth century capitalism eroded "the sense of wonder" of the feudal days.
A random discovery of a random marketplace has evoked such a sense of cultural recognition in me, who is removed from it by centuries and continents. After the effete cultural mores imposed on us by a century of a welfare statism, it is time to reclaim the romance and the adventure of markets and restore them their rightful cultural potency. It won't be easy. As a steady diet of poison inures people to poison itself, we as a people generally have ceased to care about cultre at all. Many liberal commentators ( the post-modern types) readily ascribe this to globalization, liberalization, in a word, to market capitalism. According to their theories, cultural vibrancy was greater in nanny states where morsels of high and low culture were carefully rationed. If anything after a systematic starvation, people have simply ceased to care about culture.
But as the world become more and more capitalized, people will also remember the important role makets played in their own cultural heritage, they will begin to understand the part played by markets in their own imagination and they will eventually reclaim back the "sense of wonder."
This is the news item from Yahoo:
Archaeologists have discovered extensive remains of what is believed to be an ancient marketplace with shops and a religious center at the southern edge of Athens, the Culture Ministry said Friday. The finds, in the coastal neighborhood of Voula, date from the 4th or 5th century B.C.
"It is a very large complex," the ministry said. "It was a site of rich financial and religious activity, which was most probably a marketplace."
Marketplaces — or agoras — teemed with shops, open-air stalls and administrative buildings, and were the financial, political and social center of ancient Greek life.
Archaeologists believe the complex belonged to the municipality of Aexonides Halai, among the largest settlements surrounding ancient Athens.
The main building was a hollow square with a rock-cut reservoir in the center. The building had 12 rooms — probably shops — and a small temple with an open-air altar.
Finds included large quantities of pottery, coins and lead weights that would have been used in transactions by traders.
Last month, archaeologists discovered an ancient theater in the northwestern Athens suburb of Menidi.
"It is a very large complex," the ministry said. "It was a site of rich financial and religious activity, which was most probably a marketplace."
Marketplaces — or agoras — teemed with shops, open-air stalls and administrative buildings, and were the financial, political and social center of ancient Greek life.
Archaeologists believe the complex belonged to the municipality of Aexonides Halai, among the largest settlements surrounding ancient Athens.
The main building was a hollow square with a rock-cut reservoir in the center. The building had 12 rooms — probably shops — and a small temple with an open-air altar.
Finds included large quantities of pottery, coins and lead weights that would have been used in transactions by traders.
Last month, archaeologists discovered an ancient theater in the northwestern Athens suburb of Menidi.
There it is. I have blogged before about capitalism in Assyrian and Islamic worlds. I wrote about their immense efficacy and wealth but I did not write about their cultural impac, about how lively they were, how picturesque to behold and most of all, how sacred. The sacredness of a marketplace is a given in ancient world. I was blogging, rather fitfully, about Herodotus, wasn't I? The first book of Herodotus brings that sacredness to the fore. Some of the greatest epics are set in market milieu and the perfumes on the streets of Baghdad bazaars, the art works commissioned by Florentine businessmen still haunt us to this day. I will write about it later.
Most ardent proponets of market capitalism regard it s a system antithetical to cultural efflorescense. They are wrong. And of course the culture vultures are always ascribing cultural erosion to markets. This is nothing new. There were Spengler and Fromm who noted that the new era of nineteenth century capitalism eroded "the sense of wonder" of the feudal days.
A random discovery of a random marketplace has evoked such a sense of cultural recognition in me, who is removed from it by centuries and continents. After the effete cultural mores imposed on us by a century of a welfare statism, it is time to reclaim the romance and the adventure of markets and restore them their rightful cultural potency. It won't be easy. As a steady diet of poison inures people to poison itself, we as a people generally have ceased to care about cultre at all. Many liberal commentators ( the post-modern types) readily ascribe this to globalization, liberalization, in a word, to market capitalism. According to their theories, cultural vibrancy was greater in nanny states where morsels of high and low culture were carefully rationed. If anything after a systematic starvation, people have simply ceased to care about culture.
But as the world become more and more capitalized, people will also remember the important role makets played in their own cultural heritage, they will begin to understand the part played by markets in their own imagination and they will eventually reclaim back the "sense of wonder."
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