“We honored our statues as representing excellence and divinity-but we have also at times violently hated our own art. Statues like my namesake (Aura), for instance, and like many others that will never be found, are not just headless because of accidents, but because they were attacked by angry Christians, or by the emperor’s troops who would decapitate them. And sometimes bury them, neutralizing their demonic powers by building churches over them. Imagine lynchings of statues. Saint Augustine himself cheered like a football fan when he saw a crowd attack a statue of Hercules.”
Patricia Storace, “dinner with Persephone: Travels in Greece”, 1996
Photo: R. Kennedy Stephen
