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280 Mirage of Greek Continuity
dans sa jeunesse est tombé en enfance par la décrépitude de
l’âge’ (Riedesel (1774/1802), 319).
Some archaeological metaphors significantly turn modern
Greeks into living monuments of the past and assimilate them
to ruins, parts of broken statues or obliterated coins, providing a
clear demonstration that the perception of modern Greeks was
to a large extent conditioned by the interest in classical antiquity
and its physical remains. Reconciling ethnography with their
primary antiquarian interest, the traveller becomes epigraphist,
numismatist, art historian. Tournefort is epigraphical: ‘I looked
at the brain of these poor Greeks as I would at living inscriptions,
which serve to conserve us the names cited by Theophrastus
and Dioscorides’ (1717, 87–8). Guys is numismatic:
Look at me as an antiquarian who instead of neglecting a copper
coin . . . because it is unpolished and badly preserved takes the trouble
to wash it, to clean it carefully and finally discovers the characters that
were believed to be entirely effaced . . . I have all the satisfactions of
the antiquarian when, by observing the modern Greeks step by step
and comparing them to the ancient, all of whose signs I have,
I recognize the one I am looking for (1772, ii. 14).
Similarly Choiseul-Gouffier:
aussi cherchais-je, au milieu de la dégradation que j’avais sous les
yeux, à démêler quelques traits héréditaires du caractère des Grecs
comme j’eusse cherché l’empreinte d’une médaille antique sous la
rouille qui la couvre et qui la dévore. (1782, p.v)
Guys is the art historian: ‘you must already perceive a great
conformity between the ancient and modern Greeks: like those
mutilated statues still to be found, where all admire the attitudes,
the drapery . . . ’ (1772, i. 26). Likewise Riedesel:
Il est vrai qu’on découvre encore ces traits originaux et caractéristiques
qui donnent la ressemblance déjà à l’esquisse d’un portrait.
Mais ce sont des traits si obscurs, si mal prononcés, si dénaturésmême
qu’il faut aujourd’hui chercher à y suppléer le mieux qu’on peut;
semblable en cela à l’antiquaire qui, pour expliquer un ancien bas
relief, est obliger d’y supposer les parties que la main du temps a
détruites. (1773, 321)
Far from being innocuous, all these metaphors are fraught with
consequences. If the remains of the ancient Greek character are