#Rome 2 total war wonders series

They went in for making plaster casts of sculpture when theyвЂ™d got the real stuff sitting right there in front of them. Mary Beard: ThatвЂ™s partly it вЂ“ but one thing thatвЂ™s curious is that the modern city of Rome produced and displayed loads of plaster casts until quite recently (and there is still a great collection in the University gallery in Rome). Д«LDGBLOG: That seems to be as much about the desire to encounter the thing itself as to use convenient stand-ins for that thing, when вЂњauthenticityвЂќ is simply too expensive to afford. TheyвЂ™re not framing it as a copy вЂ“ theyвЂ™re framing it as if it was it вЂ“ or at least as if was sufficiently like the вЂњreal thingвЂќ to be able to prompt some of the same language and emotions. I think itвЂ™s actually quite moving sometimes, reading peopleвЂ™s accounts of Greek and Roman sculpture in the eighteenth and nineteenth century вЂ“ because theyвЂ™re describing plaster casts using a language which we would not now use for copies. It wasnвЂ™t that the casts were actually valued the same, but that viewers could happily see these things, side by side, in order to experience the Parthenon sculptures. The plaster cast was, in a sense, the fount of classical art and classical knowledge, and people like Goethe were inspired not so much by what we would think of as the authentic marble object, but by looking at plaster casts.ДЄt one point in the Parthenon book вЂ“ I mention it just very briefly вЂ“ there was a moment, in the 1930s, when the British Museum had got all of ElginвЂ™s marbles there, but the bits they didnвЂ™t have they filled in with plaster casts from Greece.

But, certainly, in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, plaster casts were the object that provided people with вЂњrealвЂќ connection with the classical world. Now вЂ“ and I mean since the total commitment within modernism to вЂњauthenticityвЂќ вЂ“ we regard plaster casts as cheap and perhaps awkward copies of the original. IвЂ™ve been thinking recently about the role of the plaster cast, and about collections of plaster casts and, in a sense, it seems to me that the cult of the plaster cast, in seventeenth to early mid-nineteenth century Europe, had much in common with what StilleвЂ™s describing in China. Mary Beard: This idea, of the meticulous copy being used as a stand-in for the ancient artifact вЂ“ and that, somehow, this substitution can be its own historical object вЂ“ well thatвЂ™s one we actually find our own past.

Stille writes that, in China, copying вЂњis a sign of reverence rather than lack of originality.вЂќ Do you foresee any sort of interpretive conflict on the horizon between these different cultural notions of authenticity and the past? ThereвЂ™s an essay by Alexander Stille, for instance, called вЂњ The Culture of the Copy and the Disappearance of ChinaвЂ™s Past,вЂќ where he describes how meticulous copies are often used in China as stand-ins for ancient artifacts вЂ“ without that substitution being acknowledged. In this installment we discuss cultural authenticity and the rise of archaeo-tourism China, the pirating of ancient history, and plaster casts of statuary A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum the little-understood lost lifestyle patterns of the pyroclastically entombed Pompeii and the urban military spectacles of imperial Rome.Д«LDGBLOG: IвЂ™d like to ask you about different cultural attitudes toward copying and historical reproduction.

#Rome 2 total war wonders series

This is Part Two of a two-part interview with Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Cambridge University and general editor of the Wonders of the World, a new series published by Profile and Harvard University Press.