Simonides,” in which the distant events of Troy are a template for the heroism of
the contemporary Greeks in their battle against the Asiatics at Plataea.^9 Again, the
Athenian tradition of funeral orations shows a heightened self-consciousness about
the relationship between the status of the recently dead and the great heroes of the
mythic past.^10 The author of the funeral speech preserved in the Demosthenic cor-
pus reflects on the different levels of commemoration represented by the different
levels of time that the dead inhabit (Dem. 60.8 – 10). The old Athenians (at the time
of the Amazons, Heraclids, and Seven against Thebes) are celebrated in recited and
sung poetry and in histories; the speaker then goes on to mention the Athenians
who fought in the Persian Wars, whose deeds, he says, have not yet reached the
same status: “things which, in terms of evaluation of achievement, are no lesser
than the ones I’ve mentioned, but through being closer in time have not yet been
mythologized nor lifted up to heroic rank”(a} de; th'/ me;n ajxiva/ tw'n e[rgwn oujdevn
ejsti touvtwn ejlavttw, tw'/ dÆ uJpoguwvterÆ ei\nai toi'" crovnoi" ou[pw memuqolovghtai
oujdÆ eij" th;n hJrwi>kh;n ejpanh'ktai tavxin, Dem. 60.9).^11
The public monuments of classical times work with a similar dialectic between
events of a stratified mythic past and a contemporary present. A highly complex
monument such as the Athenian Parthenon shows an intuition of multitiered lay-
ers of past time.^12 The earliest event depicted in the programme is the birth of
Athena on the east pediment, part of the beginning of the current cosmic order.
Directly underneath this pediment the metopes show the Gigantomachy, from pri-
mordial mythic time, and this is the next phase in chronological order, for Athena
participated in the Gigantomachy to protect the new divine cosmos against this
threat. The next items in chronological order are on the western side, showing
exactly the same pattern of establishment of order on the pediment with a threat to
it on the metopes underneath. On the west pediment we see the birth of the city;
here is the contest of Athena and Poseidon for the honor of being the city’s patron
god, at the very beginning of the city’s time. Directly underneath this western
pediment, in the metopes, we see a crisis in the life of the now established city in
the form of the Amazonomachy, a mortal threat to the city’s existence from the
time of King Theseus. Likewise from the lifetime of Theseus is the Centaur-
omachy, depicted on the metopes of the south side. The metopes on the north side
show the sack of Troy, which took place after the death of Theseus (to anticipate
this chapter’s main focus on Rome, it is worth pausing here to note that one of
these metopes showed Aeneas escaping from the doomed city, with his father and
son).^13 Finally, whatever we may decide about the question of the identity of the
horsemen in the frieze itself, they are either in the idealized contemporary world
Stratifying Time: Homer, Hesiod, Athens. 71