It annoys the heck out of me that the Christians tore apart Roman temples and buildings to put up the churches in the first place, so not only would I cheer on a meteorite aimed at the Lateran/Vatican, I hope that Sulla* is riding it, Slim Picken’s style, all the way down to ground zero.
I get really het up when I lecture on the removal of the Altar of Victory and the Christian emperors closing up the temples and shutting down the games, and arrgghhhh :mad: Don’t get me started on Hypatia.
(On the other hand, the fifth century Athenians get up my back up, too. People, you do not launch an expedition to Sicily in the middle of a major war, nor do you decide that building a goofy temple – the Erechtheion – is a good idea when you’re broke because of said war. You know how, in Addams Family Values, when Debby can’t stop laughing while rehearsing her speech to the police – assuming she’s going to find poor Fester in the ruins of the house she blew up – ? That’s me when I get to the battle of Charonaea…)
Can we blow up both, and save the Coliseum?
*Yes, of course, I know he’s Late Republic, and I suppose the go-to guy would porbably be Julian, but I like Sulla’s response to the archons in Athens when they scolded him for bringing soldiers to town.
Exactly. The Parthenon is pretty much done for already anyway. When I visited Athens a couple of years ago, I was stunned at how bad a shape the entire Acropolis really is in - it’s mostly just a pile of rubble at this point. What’s more, some of the parts that look well preserved, like the caryatids on the Erechtheion, are actually replicas. The most interesting stuff is all taken to the Acropolis museum at the foot of the hill, or even hauled off to the British Museum.
So, off to the Vatican. Do I have restrict myself to *just *the Sistine Chapel, though? I’d very much like to save the entire Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s as well, while I’m there. It’s all one big complex of buildings.
Didn’t realize the Michelangelo work was in the SC, that sways my vote from ‘I don’t know’ to save the SC and move the Parthenon to a save location and perhaps move it back after.
There is a bit of an ambiguity in the question. Is the whole of the Vatican threatened, or only the Sistine Chapel, which is one tiny part of the whole complex?
I agree with IvoryTowerDenizen: the Parthenon relates to the distant past, whereas the Sistine Chapel is much more recent.
In the same sort of way, although I’d hate to lose any of these, I would preserve the Colosseum before the Eiffel Tower, or Stonehenge before the Colosseum.
The Sistine Chapel itself is reduced to a smoking crater, completely wiped out, but the Apostolic Palace and surrounding area would be more lightly damaged too. Likewise the Acropolis would be damaged if the Parthenon is hit.
@ monstro; both are invaluable cultural relics, the destruction of either would be an irreplaceable loss to all humankind. They say things about who we were and are.
@ kanicbird; you can’t dissemble them, move them and replace later - no time! Plus that’s cheating.
Thank Og we were able to disassemble and reassemble Abu Simbel…
In practice, both the Sistine Chapel and the Parthenon have been photographed in sufficient detail to create virtual 3-D graphic “walk thought” sims, so, even if they were magically to disappear right now (!) they wouldn’t be lost.
(And, as noted, there’s at least one reproduction Parthenon. I hadn’t know this. This is so way mighty doggone cool! I know I’ll never travel to Greece, but I might some day get as far as Nashville!)
I think, technically, in terms of information theory, the Sistine Chapel would take more Gigabytes of data to simulate – it’s more complex, “richer” in detail – and so it would represent the greater objective loss of human knowledge.
(Is there, anywhere online, a 3-D walk through of various famous places such as these? I remember reading about a 3-D sim of the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and also one that reproduced a Univac computer room…with a working “sim” Univac computer! Where do we go to walk through such sims? Google Earth has a few somewhat nifty low-res ones.)
We can’t stop the Parthenon from being destroyed, because it’s already destroyed. And being a ruin hasn’t hurt its value as a tourist attraction any. I’ll bet just as many tourists would go see the crater where it used to be.
Well, of course. But so are all the other things of olde that have been destroyed and aren’t even in our consciousness.
Like I said, it will hurt those who care about those things. But humanity will not be hurt. Most humans will not feel anything because most are trying to find food to eat and get through another day of drudgery. And people of the future will not know what they have missed.
Since those of us who care about such things are part of humanity, then, yes, to that degree, humanity would be hurt.
Neither of the two examples would cause as much real harm as, say, the loss of the Library at Alexandria. But the loss of information is a real loss to humanity.
I think there’d be more of an uproar if the Sistine Chapel was destroyed, what given the religious following of Christianity vs Athena. I like the Parthenon more, but I just think it makes more sense to preserve the chapel if for no reason other than quelling an uproar. I’d rather a bunch of gruff Ancient Grecophile archaeologists than the (admittedly probably pretty small) glut of annoying christian people that protest because we chose to save a dilapidated, pagan temple instead of a CHURCH.
I’ve seen the Sistine Chapel, and would truly mourn its demise. But I haven’t been to Athens yet, and the way things are going in Greece, I may never see it . . . so keep the Parthenon, and maybe someday I’ll get to it.
And I’m wondering . . . if the Sistine Chapel is hit, do we know where the Pope might be?
The Vatican has more than enough money to restore the Sistine Chapel. The Greek government doesn’t have enough money to build a plastic replica of the Parthenon. Just saying.
On a more serious note, if there’s no risk of a third rock that needs blasting before the defence laser is back online I’d save the Parthenon, more out of antipathy for the Catholic Church than anything else. If nothing else, at least Greece is more likely to give me the credit instead of God.
