The event THE ATHENIANS ON THE BANKS OF ILISSOS is part of "Athens 2018 World Book Capital" City of Athens, of which major donor is Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

In collaboration with: National Archaeological Museum

— ... because the statues are no longer fragments.

We are.

SENSUAL ELPENOR, George Seferis

This figure*, like everyone else in the afternoon meeting on the banks of Ilissos in the Fall of 2018, comes from old Greek generations. They dwelt in the neighborhoods of Athens, then and today, having been honored with public roles and offices, for the sake of which art has rescued their forms from oblivion, with some gibberish. They are rude young and bearded men. They talk. Their lips in the shape of the vowels. The digamma (wau) and the coppa past. Their sweet names engraved in the Pentelic marble, shimmer like the nooks of their eyes. He is the kosmetes Heliodorus and the bearded warrior Prokles, son of Prokleides. The young man from the area of Olympieion is described as splachnoptes ready to spit-roast entrails for the sacrifice, simultaneously, blowing to light the fire. A snapshot of life on the bank of Ilissos, under the plane trees, where the priest of Dionysus, Pantaleon from district of Brahami, makes a libation for similar reasons. The elder Kifissocritos, son of Glaukon of the deme Kydathenaion, shakes hands with his daughter Stratyllis. The melancholy of separation** is over. And Alexos, the son of Stratocleus from Sounio, among relatives from Marathon who are also present on the shores of a utopia, where another young boy with his dog pursues the unseen hare of history... Some still anonymous but equally fit, they might have been there, completing the ancient company. And Plato too. Then, all of them return to the Museum, continuing to narrate the adventures of their past life in greater detail...

Notes:

* NAM Γ406. Portrait head of a kosmetes. Mid 3rd c. A.D.

** Separation due to death

The National Archaeological Museum kindly grants the use of the following twelve photographic details from the corresponding sculptures of its collections for the event The Athenians on the banks of Ilissos, carried out with its collaboration.

Athens 2018 World Book Capital - City of Athens is made possible thanks to its donors and contributors. Major Donor is Stavros Niarchos Foundation. Gold Donors are John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation and Core SA. Donors are Onassis Foundation, Welfare Foundation for Social & Cultural Affairs, Laskaridis Foundation and Greek Collecting Society for Literary Works (OSDEL). Valuable contributors are Aegean Airlines, Athens International Airport, Artion Events and Urban Rail Transport SA (STASY).