Clemens’ phrase is a cliché for anyone who knows about 5th century Greece as well as for those who do not, but get the drift. Pericles, who was running Athens as the time, planned the buildings on the hill above it and called them the Acropolis. He got the choice from the first democracy in the West.
Architects Iktinos and Kallicrates designed the Parthenon, a large Doric temple that dominated the Acropolis. It stands there yet, damaged but serene, against the Attic sky. The magnificent columns have slight differences of pitch and thickness that looked equidistant and straight. The frieze portrayed a myriad of people - some in chariots - some on horses – many on foot. They bore gifts and sacrifices to the goddess Athena, the golden beacon who stood inside the temple. The suffering of living animals that frieze reveals cries out to us still. How do I know? Lord Elgin, an English marauder and thief, stole it in the 19th century. I saw it at the British Museum in London, along with other heroic sculptures he took from the pediments.
Praxiteles, Pheidias, Socrates, Plato, Sophocles, Euripides Pericles, those 5th century Athenian guys, believed that the spirit’s highest aspirations could be expressed in reality. The Parthenon proves that they had it then and they have it now.
Did Roger Clemens think of the Parthenon on February 13th? Maybe. And maybe February 13th shall have been one of his last evenings on earth.
That Was in Another Country and Besides the Wench is Dead Department
Mets Pitcher Pedro Martinez (and Juan Marichal) made a stunning debut last week on You Tube - our own Interpol. They were spotted at a cockfight in the Dominican Republic, Martinez’ birthplace. Now I saw part of a cockfight on Guam. Nobody had to sing Viva Viagra there. But there was the acrid ooze of betting men’s sweat, and that was just one of the rewards. Large and beautiful cocks had been trained to be aggressive toward each other. Metal spurs on their legs curved upward like a scimitar drew blood. However long the fight may have lasted, the dead cock would have lost it - on Guam, anyway.
The Humane Society correctly had a fit over the Martinez clip. “Cockfighting is a part of my Dominican culture,” he explained. “It’s legal there.” And the Mets added, “We do not condone animal cruelty but we understand that many other countries’ activities such as bullfighting and cockfighting are both legal and part of the culture.”
