[MUSIC PLAYING] DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: I
love Greek sculpture. I love the Archaic. I love the Classical and all
of its restraint and harmony. But I have to tell you, I
really love the Hellenistic. And the reason I do is
because of two fragments from a great frieze
from Pergamon. One has Athena at its
center, and one has Zeus. DR. BETH HARRIS: And I can see
why you love these sculptures. They combine what's
most wonderful about ancient Greek sculpture--
the love of the body. But also the sense of
expressiveness and drama, which we associate so
much with the Hellenistic. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
The Hellenistic refers to the last period
of Greek art, the last phase of Greek art after the death
of Alexander the Great. Now Alexander, whose father had
been a king in northern Greece, in Macedonia, had been able
to conquer all of Greece, and ultimately, conquer
an enormous territory well beyond Greece's
original borders. DR. BETH HARRIS:
And in so doing, he expanded the influence
of Greek culture across a much wider area. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That's right. He, in a sense, Hellenized
this area, or made it Greek. His expanded territory reached
from the ancient civilization of Egypt all the way to the
border between Persia and India to the Indus Valley itself. It was an enormous territory. But after he died,
his empire was divided among his four generals. And one of those
generals saw a hill top near the coast of
Turkey, which he believed was an important
defensive position, and there founded the garrison
of Pergamon that became, ultimately, the
kingdom of Pergamon. DR. BETH HARRIS: And
those are the people that built this fabulous
altar and sculpted this fabulous frieze. So what's going on here is
a battle between the giants and the gods and goddesses
of Mount Olympus. We're witnessing a celestial
battle of enormous proportions. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: This is
the great mythic battle, where the giants battle the
Olympian gods for supremacy of the Earth and the universe. So let's take a
close look at it. Let's start with the fragment
that has Athena at its center. She is graceful
and beautiful, even as she battles a
ferocious giant, a Titan. DR. BETH HARRIS: It's
clear who's going to win. Athena looks totally in control. She's grabbed Alcyoneus by
the hair, pulling him out of the Earth, disempowering him. His mother, on the other side,
completely unable to help him. Although she's
wild with fear over what's about to
happen to her son. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Look at the
way the artist, whoever it is, has actually
constructed this image. My eye starts with
Athena herself, where her head would have been. My eye rides down
that beautiful arm until it's grasped almost
tenderly by Alcyoneus. It continues around his elbow,
and then across his face, and down his chest. I notice that one
of Athena's snakes is biting him on his right side. My eye then sweeps down
that gorgeous curve that is his body, his torso,
that leads into his leg. But it's slowed down
by almost the staccato of the intersections of the
deeply carved drape that belongs to Athena. And of course, that
all leads us right back to Alcyoneus' mother. DR. BETH HARRIS: So it's as
though Athena, this powerful, in control goddess, is
bracketed on either side by these passionate, wild
figures who are being defeated. And at the same
time, Athena is being crowned by winged
Nike, who comes from behind with a the
crown for her head. So there's really a sense here
of figures coming from behind, of figures coming from below,
of something that's completely in flux, something
that's completely in motion with an
incredible sense of drama. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It's
as if the entire surface of this marble is swirling in a
kind of counterclockwise motion around Athena's shield,
which is at its very center. It is full of diagonals,
which activates the surface. It is full of the
deepest carving that creates this brilliant
contrast between the highlights of the exposed bodies and
the dark shadows behind them. DR. BETH HARRIS: But
what's also amazing to me is the complexity of the
positions of their bodies. Athena, who moves
toward the left, keeps her arm to the right. And then Alcyoneus lifts his
head up, twists his shoulders. His legs spill back behind him. And we're really talking
about virtuoso sculpting here of the human body. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
Imagine what this would have looked like
when it was painted. We think so often
about Greek sculpture as being just this
brilliant white marble. But we have to remember
that all of this was brilliantly painted. Let's take a look at
the fragment with Zeus at its center. DR. BETH HARRIS:
Like Athena, he seems composed and totally in control. Even as he rushes
forward, we have no doubt that he is the victor here. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: So Zeus is
an enormously powerful figure. We have this beautiful
exposed chest and abdomen and this wildly,
almost living drapery that seems to whip
around his legs. And he is taking on not
one, but three giants at the same moment. DR. BETH HARRIS: But luckily,
he's the king of the gods. So he's got things like
eagles and thunderbolts to help him out. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That's right. If you look at the
upper right, you can see that an
eagle, Zeus' emblem, is taking on the elder Titan. As the eagle is
preoccupying that giant, Zeus is able to turn his
attention to the giant at his feet, who is on
his knees and is shortly going to be vanquished. You can see that on
Zeus' other side, he has just finished
putting away a giant who almost seems
to be sitting on a rock. He's got stuck in his thigh
what looks like a torch, but is actually the way
that the Greeks represented Zeus' thunderbolts. DR. BETH HARRIS: Ouch. That has to hurt. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It does. There's a sense of heroism,
a sense of balance, even as there is a
sense of the momentary and a kind of excitement
that really pulls us in. The story of the
gods and the giants is a story that was really
important to the Greeks. It was really a set of symbols
that spoke of the Greeks fear, but also optimism that
they could overcome chaos. DR. BETH HARRIS: So
this battle is really a metaphor for the victory of
Greek culture over the unknown, over the chaotic
forces of nature. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Right. And it also represents
their military victories over cultures that
they didn't understand and that they feared. So let's walk up the stairs of
the Great Altar into the most sacred part of the altar, where
the fire, presumably to Zeus, would have been lit
and where sacrifices might have been offered. You had mentioned earlier that
the figures seem to almost spill out away from the wall. And I think that's most clearly
seen as we walk up the stairs. There are moments
when the figures that are carved in this
high relief actually rest their knee on
the stairs, actually, literally enter our space. For instance, one
of the sea nymphs, whose legs actually end in
the tail of a great serpent, coils her tail on
one of the stairs. There is this wonderful
way in which they literally pour out into our world. DR. BETH HARRIS: And
so this whole drama is unfolding around us,
moving into our space. And it must have been an
amazing thing to have seen. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: One of the
questions that comes to mind is why are these
sculptures here in Berlin? And the answer can be found
in the political ambitions of Prussia at the time. They very much wanted
to be the equal of the French and the British. And that meant, in part,
to have great museums that express the civilizations of
the past, so they could be, in a sense, the inheritors of
the great classical tradition, which was so revered
in the 19th century. Berlin, in some ways,
wanted to be the new Rome. DR. BETH HARRIS: And so
one of the great things about being in the
Pergamon Museum in Berlin is that instead of
just putting what remains of the frieze on wall,
they've reconstructed the altar and as much of the
frieze as possible. And so we really
get a sense of what this was like in the
city of Pergamon, in the third century BC. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Right. And so if this was
the third century, we would be on the
Acropolis, this hill top, in the city of
Pergamon, about 20 miles from the coast, in
what is now Turkey. We would walk up this hill. And we would find the
Altar of Zeus surrounded by a great library
that is reported to have had 200,000 scrolls,
a garrison for soldiers, a royal palace for the king. DR. BETH HARRIS: And
so this whole drama is unfolding around us,
moving into our space. And it must have
been an amazing thing to have seen in the
second century BC. [MUSIC PLAYING]