"Words are Stones". Of Tombs, Walls, and the Memory of the Mythical Kings on the Athenian Akropolis

As is well known, “Words are stones” is the title of Carlo Levi’s most famous book;1 by borrowing the title of this paper from this Italian classic of about sixty years ago, I intend to focus my attention on the dynamic relationship occurring between ancient monuments and the elaboration of ancient traditions. On the one hand, “words”, that is, traditional tales transferred from one generation to another, deeply affect the way by which communities perceive and make sense of the vestiges left by earlier generations – in a sense, their meaning carries more weight than the very stones raised by men who lived somewhere in a past “foreign country”.2 On the other hand, however, “stones” often have a story of their own to tell, since they show peculiarities that conjure up a definitely limited range of images and ideas.3 In such a view, communities may decide to differentiate ancient remains from the wider built environment, by either restoring them or making them inaccessible, unlike others, that can be pulled down, thereby falling into oblivion.4 In T.S. Eliot’s words, “human kind cannot bear very much reality”;5 communities may accordingly manipulate the existing material record, by relocating or even creating anew their own “antiquities”. The result is the creation from time to time of a new built environment, centered upon a place or a construction conceived as a “memory place” because of its ritual and/or political connotations.