Strolling again across the sulfurous terrain of Baudrillard's Stoa
Poikile (theory as "the painted porch") leads me to the inescapable conclusion that here was a man not opposed to coming down off his perch if he felt like it, even if he sometimes refused to climb back up again.
461 or later, among the murals on the Stoa
Poikile and the completion of Pheidias's statue of Athena Promachos.
The Stoa
Poikile, or Painted Porch, in Athens was the covered colonnade to which the paradox-fond philosopher Zeno and his followers resorted.
These people, after all, saw long-dead heroes in action in their battles: Echetlus mowed down Persians with his plough at Marathon; Theseus and the hero Marathon himself rose out of the earth to help--all duly represented at Athens, along with Heracles and Athena, in the famous painting of the baffle publicly commissioned and displayed in the Stoa
Poikile.(65) It was of course familiar to the tragedians and their audiences.
At first glance, it is true, this seems but a pendant to the fictitious representation of the battle of Salamis, but there is more to it than meets the eye: it is in fact a reference to the famous |Battle of Marathon' by Panaenus -- brother (or nephew) of Phidias -- in the Stoa
Poikile at Athens, the classic account of which is to be found in Pausanias:
Zeno's school was continued by Cleanthes and Chrysippus and derived its name from the Stoa
Poikile, a painted colonnade or porch at Athens in which Zeno and his successors lectured.
The Stoa
Poikile is specifically referenced in 678-9.