Monuments, Men and Metaphors

Commenting on the relative unpopularity and uncommonness of historical Greece on the cinematic screen when compared to Rome, Nisbet lists four underlying factors: cities, sex, sources and Socrates. ¹ Ancient Greece—and Athens—has, he claims, no distinctive urban image, is too laden with connotations of homosexuality for a traditionally heterosexual, Christianised industry, was unpopular in the 19th-century novels that typically inspire ancient world films, and is too bound up with elitist ideas of philosophy, culture and democracy. Athens in particular is “too fragmentary, too small, too wound up in the history of cinema-unfriendly Ideas” and thus “fails to measure up.” ² Nisbet is not alone in his analyses: Blanshard and Shahabudin also cite the fantastical elements in Greek sources, the complicated geopolitical landscape of ancient Greece, its ethical complexity and its intricate interpersonal relationships as reasons for the paucity of films on Greek history. ³ Again, this is particularly so of Athens.