October 8, 2017:
Hadrian, the Romans, the Greeks. Who's got taste? After ten seconds that's pretty fukkin' obvious.
Romans: busy, gaudy, overwrought. A civilization of pink flamingos, false and second-rate, like the tacky Christmas decorations with which American home-owners inflate their lawns.
Greeks: simple, even understated, matching the setting. A civilization which values harmony, assuming you're neither a slave nor female.
Of course, in their day the Greeks were just as flash as their later Roman epigones. They painted their monuments bright red and gold and blue, and they spit-shined their mighty bronze statues. Like Joyce's dead Roman grandmother we today see just the bones, for centuries bleached white by sun, turned sadly brown in our day by pollution.
Those Romans, though. Loud. Like Texans in Las Vegas they crashed brashly through the world, leaving behind them their tons of crass statuary which unlike the Greeks' are unable to stand on their own two feet. Also like Texans in Las Vegas.
I'd like to see the ancient sites fully restored. Not only their marble but their wood and bronze and paint and incense. Put it back the way it was and I'd even sacrifice a goat. Or a Texan.