Near Marathi, at the base of the Paros island mountains, a king now sleeps. The King has not always slept; aroused, his influence stretched across millennia. At the peak of the King’s authority, all of Hellenic civilization pursued his favor. The God of Love, Aphrodite, sought his perfection so as to imitate it. Nike, the God of Victory, determined the King’s divinity an appropriate accommodation to house her imm
ortality.
So powerful was the King, all of Hellenic history was carved onto the King’s torso. His Chronicle cites The Trojan War in a footnote. The King told the tale of the Argonauts, an amusing anecdote of the Heroic Age, in passing. The King used history, from the Age of Origins, to today, as demonstration of his flawlessness.
The King sleeps, though, and his monuments are scattered across the world: the marble statue Nike of Samothrace resides at the Louvre where its display of triumph is accessible to many. The marble figure of Venus de’ Medici is not shy, and the God Aphrodite’s beauty is appreciated at its home in Florence. The inscribed marble, the Parian Chronicle, is fragmented between two homes in Oxford and Paros, but remains an essential interpretation of the Greek Chronology.
The King is the Parian marble: the stone of Paros island. Its remains are the exhausted mines in Paros island’s mountains… and I took a peak.
Today, we took a trip 5 miles inland from Parikia to investigate the ancient quarries of Paros. Parian marble, a nearly pure and translucent white marble, was mined in these quarries, and it is a proud monument of ancient Greek industry. Since the 6th century BC, until well into the Roman period, the treasured Parian marble was shipped across the Aegean Sea for the construction of temples and monuments.
What the ancient marble industry left behind are hand-carved tunnels on rocky terrain going 100ft into (and downward) the mountain. Our class acquired headlamps and grippy shoes to see what was left: staggered chisel marks of ancient miners at regular intervals, modest gems of Parian marble, and a startled yelp as one of us slipped on rocky terrain. The mine merged with other shafts as we groped for secure footing. And behind us was only a pinprick of light: our exit.
We huddled together to share our lamps and humor. Society was far away, but its toys captured the quiet in video and pictures. We came to a crossroads, and our professors asked us to choose a destination: our journey’s end… or the slower route of exploration.
– Daniel Spivey