The statues originally adorned Emperor Hadrian's sumptuous bathhouse in Leptis Magna, the mighty Roman city east of Tripoli. Near a statue of a young man wearing a Greek-style robe I found a pair of abandoned size 42 army boots. The soldiers had also left uneaten baguettes, a wardrobe full of khaki clothing and a tube of toothpaste. There was an unfinished bowl of soup. They had left in a hurry.
Naiem told me how he and other locals liberated the museum on Sunday 21 August – the day the rebels surged into western Tripoli, and a popular insurrection erupted inside it. The Gaddafi soldiers were armed; the locals had no weapons other than a small harpoon used for fishing trips. "Gaddafi was mad. He had hid soldiers in hospitals, museums and schools," Naiem said. "They left their clothes here and ran away."
Not all escaped: the rebels captured two of Gaddafi's soldiers trying to flee. One, Naiem said, admitted he genuinely liked Gaddafi. The other, however, explained that his officers had told him he wasn't fighting fellow Libyans but was going to war against France, Britain and Nato. "He didn't know the truth," Islam said. Both soldiers were now in a rebel prison, their fate unclear in a city without a justice system.
In a room devoted to Sabratha – Libya's other stunning Roman city – I found a bust of Marcus Aurelius. He had been taken out of his niche and propped carefully against a wall. Nearby was a female bust from a Roman necropolis, her expression dignified and mournful. I discovered more soldiers' mattresses in a room of Neolithic grinding stones and panels of early Saharan rock art – their primitive strokes recognisable as palm trees. [...]
ler mais aqui.
Li isto: "Someone had carefully lain a Roman statue of Venus on a wooden palette; one of Gaddafi's soldiers had been sleeping next to her on a mattress."
ResponderEliminare lembrei-me disto: "But the attendant woman who was standing near us told us a strange, incredible story. For she said that a young man of a not undistinguished family -- though his deed has caused him to be left nameless -- who often visited the precinct, was so ill-starred as to fall in love with the goddess. He would spend all day in the temple and at first gave the impression of pious awe. For in the morning he would leave his bed long before dawn to go to the temple and only return home reluctantly after sunset. All day long would he sit facing the goddess with his eyes fixed uninterruptedly upon her, whispering indistinctly and carrying on a lover's complaints in secret conversation.
(...) In the end the violent tension of his desires turned to desperation and he found in audacity a procurer for his lusts. For, when the sun was now sinking to its setting, quietly and unnoticed by those present, he slipped in behind the door and, standing invisible in the inmost part of the chamber, he kept still, hardly even breathing. When the attendants closed the door from the outside in the normal way, this new Anchises was locked in. But why do I chatter on and tell you in every detail the reckless deed of that unmentionable night? These marks of his amorous embraces were seen after day came and the goddess had that blemish to prove what she'd suffered. The youth concerned is said, according to the popular story told, to have hurled himself over a cliff or down into the waves of the sea and to have vanished utterly."
(http://www.well.com/user/aquarius/lucian-amores.htm)
Obrigado pela partilha! Recomendo, a propósito de estórias semelhantes da Antiguidade, o artigo de 2007 de Nuno Simões Rodrigues: "A donzela de marfim. A agalmatofilia como representação estética na Antiguidade Clássica", Artis, 6: 61 - 72. Faz um levantamento e análise muito bom deste atópico 'topos' clássico.
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