“Most ruins are – let’s face it – disappointing.”

Bara (Syria)
Above: Bara, Syria - Link

I don’t mean all ruins, of course. I challenge anyone to find Pompeii or the Parthenon or the Colosseum disappointing or boring (though, according to Peter Green, William Golding did mount the Athenian Acropolis, muttering, “the bloody Parthenon again” and sit down firmly with his back to the monument gazing out at the Eleusis cement works). I mean those ivy clad mouldering walls of some third rate English Abbey or the pile of stray stones outside some jolly Cretan village which claim to be the remains of a Minoan rural settlement.

To most people in the world, this disappointment will not seem a great revelation, but to archaeologists and cultural theorists ruins are an object of intense interest (and so they are to me when I am wearing one of those hats). Archaeologists will bang on for hours about the minute significance of the position of one stone against the next. Cultural theorists will bang on even longer about ruins as a metaphor for the past, the fragility of human success, the melancholy of contemplating the death of the past, and so on.

The voice that most academics refuse to hear is that of most other people in the world who do not share this enthusiasm.

- Mary Beard @ Times Online: Link.

Reader comment:

Speaking of ‘broken down’ ruins, my favourite line overheard from some Americans in a taverna in Athens.

She: “We’re going to Knossos tomorrow.”

He: “No more ruins! I’ve had enough ruins.”

She: “But these ruins are different.”

He: “You mean they’re not destroyed?”

- Lucy @ Times Online: Link.