ML161601
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Subject 1: (Interview). Subtitle: John M. Camp. Timecode In: 00:02:27. Timecode out: 00:18:47. Notes: Ancient stone documents; History of Ancient Athens. Subject 2: (Interview). Subtitle: John M. Camp. Timecode In: 00:25:51. Timecode out: 00:33:23. Notes: Archaeology and history of Ancient Athens. Subject 3: (Interview). Subtitle: Pedro Olalla. Timecode In: 00:40:21. Timecode out: 01:24:33. Notes: Greek mythology; Interview in Spanish. Subject 4: (Environmental Recording). Subtitle: City ambi. Timecode In: 01:38:19. Timecode out: 01:48:00. Habitat: ; ; ; ; ; ; Equipment Notes: Split Track to 0:34:11; Decoded MS Stereo after 0:34:11. NPR/NGS RADIO EXPEDITIONS Show: GREECE Dat # 10 Engineer: Rogosin Date: 6/8/04 JC = John Camp CJ = Chris Joyce JG = Jessica Goldstein JR = Josh Rogosin 1:01 ok welcome to tape #10. This is going to be split track interview with Christopher Joyce in the right channel. And John Camp on the left channel in the basement of the museum at Avara of Athens. 01:18 Whatever you can say on tape and not with me is for the best. 01:32 Ambi: Sound of air-conditioning rumbling, birds chirping outside. JC: Did you talk to Susan, you got something from her? Did you talk to Susan or have you not talked to Susan. JG: We have not talked to Susan 02:05 Ambi: Keys being turned into a lock. 02:29 CJ: So can you tell us first of all where we are and what's contained here? 2:31 We're down in the basement of the museum and there are several very large storerooms and the one we're in at the moment is for the inscriptions. About seven and a half thousand inscriptions come out and these are a particularly useful class of antiquities because we're not going to get any more Herodotus or Fusidites or other ancient authors. We do find these documents written on stone which were set all the time and all over Athens and we find several a year and they provide a wide variety of information. This one here although very worn has a reference to violent death and a reference to the democracy and a few lines lower down a reference to orphans. 3:16 CJ: Orphans¿ 3:17 JC: And we can associate it with the events of 403 bc when the Athenians were beaten by the Spartans at the end of the Peloponnesian war and had 30 tyrants installed to run the government. The democrats went into exile, and within months came back and there was a civil war and the democracy was restored. And what you have hear is a record of those who died a violent death fighting to restore a democracy. Their orphans are going to be fed and maintained at public expense until they become adults and along the side of the stone is a list of the names of the young men whose fathers died as heroes fighting to restore the democracy. 4:03 CJ: I know it seems obvious to you perhaps but all records of this period that we have other than the writing that have been copied over the years but really the records that you have to work with are all in stone. 04:17 JC: Many of them are. In antiquity they would have copies on papyrus or on lead sheets and we don't necessarily recover those but you need in a democracy very good record keeping because in the case of the Athenian democracy the whole government is going to change every year so you have to have very good records of how people are going to come in and run things so in Athens more than any other Greek city we find inscriptions. There's another one over here, this one's kind of nice. It's dated to the year by the chief magistrate. It dates to the 370s bc and it concerns the circulation of counterfeit coinage in the market place and how they're going to deal with that and withdraw the bad silver out so that only reliable money is circulated. 05:05 CJ: I wonder when you have to work with stone like this, these are slabs of stone that are 4 or 5 feet high, 2 or 3 feet... (Notes truncated)
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- Cataloged
- 6 Apr 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 5 Apr 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 6 Apr 2010 - Ben Brotman