Alexander The Great's Mountain PDF

American Geographical Society
Alexander the Great's Mountain

Author(s): Veronica Della Dora
Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 95, No. 4 (Oct., 2005), pp. 489-516
Published by: American Geographical Society
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The Geographical Review
VOLUME 95 October 2oo5 NUMBER 4
ALEXANDER THE GREAT'S MOUNTAIN*
VERONICA DELLA DORA
ABSTRACT. The metaphorical power of natural landscapes and geographical obje

tracted an increasing amount of critical interest. The myth of Dinocrates plann
Mount Athos into the figure of Alexander the Great epitomizes the complex r
between the insistent materiality of prominent geographical features such as mo
imagination. Through an iconographic reading of different renderings of the Dino
in western Europe, this article explores the way Mount Athos turned into a power
circulating across space and time. While considering the continuity of a Classical
jected on rock, the article focuses on its constant reappropriations and transfo
different historical and geographical contexts. Dinocratic Athos becomes a metap
tism, power, and desire but also a free-floating referent, reflecting a shifting rela
tween the microcosm of the human body and the natural macrocosm. Keywords
the Great, Greece, Mount Athos, natural landscapes, reception theory.
7In the summer of 2002 an eclectic Greek American sculptor made headlines in the
international press. He launched a campaign to carve a 73-meter-tall likeness of
Alexander the Great into a Greek craggy cliff--"four times the size of the presidents
of Mount Rushmore" (VRC 2002). At a time when Greek pride was smarting over
the Macedonian question, Anastasios Papadopoulos and his supporters presented
the colossal project as a true mission to render justice and honor to the memory of
the man who "brought Hellenism [and thus civilization] throughout the known
world" (Alexandros Foundation 2002) and to proclaim once and for all Macedonia's
Greekness.1 Although nothing came of it, the "Mountain of Alexander the Great"
was the object of an animated dispute. Besides the noble ideals of Papadopoulos's
Greek American supporters, economic promises allured the mayor of Agios Geor-
gios, a resort town on the Chalcidic peninsula. He hoped the project, complemented
by a museum, an amphitheater, and a parking lot, would give new impetus to the
area's declining tourist industry (Tzimas 2002). Environmental groups, however,
threatened legal action "to protect the pine-clad province from turning it into a
theme park" (VRC 2002). Aligned with them were Greek archaeologists and conser-
* I would like to thank Denis Cosgrove for reading and commenting on the first draft of this article, two anony-
mous referees for their valuable suggestions and insights, and Chris Eckerman for help with editing.
*t DR. DELLA DORA is a postdoctoral research associate in geography at the University of California,
Los Angeles, California 90095.
The Geographical Review 95 (4): 489-516, October 2005

Copyright @ 2006 by the American Geographical Society of New York
490 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
vationists who defended the Classical ideal o

monstrosity-"the quintessential example of
(VRC 2002). Other Greek opponents, respond
evoked the specter of a cold war-like rush
nonsense titanic competition: "should the
similar project, where would that lead?" (VR
In its boldness, Papadopoulos's project is
of Mount Kerdyllion, the craggy hill select
the dark outline of a far more majestic con
Gulf. According to the first century B.c. Rom
2: 1-2), the peak of Athos, the mountain pe
largest Orthodox Christian monastic commu
even more ambitious and eclectic artist. D
tect in the fourth century B.c., proposed
figure (by implication that of his patron), h
city (Alexandria) and in the right a bowl to r
mountain. Like Papadopoulos's, Dinocrates'
wisdom and rationality won out over the
And yet the "Dinocratic myth" remained a
and time: from the Classical world to the It
France to modern Greece. The "mountain of Alexander the Great" has been sub-
ject of not only treaties, satires, and poems but also engravings, paintings, and,
more recently, proposals for its realization. If on one hand it outraged ancient think-
ers, Renaissance artists, and present-day environmentalists, on the other it has never
ceased to stir imagination and desire. The image of Dinocratic Athos has been
exploited in the construction of national discourses, to exalt papal power, or sim-
ply to impart moral lessons. But why did Dinocratic Athos disturb and lure so
much?
This article investigates the complex intertwining of rock and imagination, be-
tween geographical objects and moral values. More specifically, it speculates on the
aptitude of "durable" physical objects such as mountains to be turned into meta-
phors and circulated. Metaphors, Alison Blunt argued, are "inherently spatial in
connecting two seemingly disconnected ideas to illuminate meaning with the term
itself originating from the Greek word meaning transfer or transport" (Blunt 1994,
64). The metaphorical power of natural landscapes has been object of increasing
numbers of publications, especially in the context of nation making (Nash 1994;
Warnke 1994; Schama 1995; 0 Tuathail 1996; Peckham 2001; Olwig 2002), but less
attention has been paid to the "transportation" of metaphors themselves across
space and time. Through the exploration of different appropriations and render-
ings of the Dinocratic myth, this study analyzes both movements: the two-way dia-
logue between physical referent and meaning on one hand and the dynamics of a
Classical "circulating vision" on the other.2 In the first case it considers how, through
a two-way exchange between the natural and the human, through a continual pro-
ALEXANDER THE GREAT'S MOUNTAIN 491
cess of embodiment and disembodiment, the Dinocratic m

and at the same time epitomizes the ancient cosmological con
body as a microcosm (Tuan 1977, 88). Second, while tracing th
tion of a topographical myth from ancient writings, it shows
Mount Athos becomes a hybrid free-floating referent, chang
ten form) while moving through the complex circuits of cul
Over the past few years, there has been an increasing inter
lation and circulation of knowledge among historians of scien
historical geographers. Bruno Latour has demonstrated ho
world is "packed" and circulated through scientific practice,
laboratory, or what he calls "calculation centers" (Latour 199
convincingly, however, "information is never simply transf
cally transformed from one medium to the next.... It pays fo
a heavy price in transformations" (Latour 1998, 425). David L
the argument further and explored, from a geographical
specific locations have in the making of scientific knowledge
cally, how "spaces both enable and constrain discourse" (2003
A key issue in the geographies of knowledge is the way in
means of texts) "are differently received and mobilized
(Livingstone 2005, 393), how the public reacts and affects cir
text itself. Nicholaas Rupke has shown how "translations for
example of the perception that context of production and co
two different things, because ... the translator imposes his/h
book, [ ... offering it] to a wholly new readership, far remov
both geographical and cultural terms" (2000, 211). In art hist
tion can be compared with stylistic changes. After the so-ca
theory, in the mid-198os, the German art historian Wolfgang
mulated a "visual reception theory," or "work-oriented re
costa Kaufmann 1996, 62). To the cartographies of textual
Rupke and Livingstone, one could therefore add cartographie
ence and change. An effort in this direction can be envisaged
mas Dacosta Kaufmann's recent book Toward a Geography of
Drawing from art history and Classical studies, this article
this approach and provide a potential point of dialogue be
and cultural geography in light of these recent debates. While
cally issues of circulation, compelling attempts at linking Clas
ern geographical discourse have recently been made by Denis
2003b) and by William Koelsch (2004). Tracing the history of
ing of an ancient topographical myth through iconographic an
considers landscape representations (such as written texts
medium for the circulation of knowledge rather than as tex
phorical sense (Cosgrove and Daniels 1988). Never physically r
Great's Mountain remains an evocative fantasy in Western im
landscape of myth, and like any landscap

that is itself in motion from one place or t
ROCK AND METAPHOR
Metaphor, Trevor Barnes and James Duncan argued, "touches a deep level of un-
derstanding ... for it points to the process of learning and discovery-to those ana-
logical leaps from the familiar to the unfamiliar which rally imagination and emotion
as well as intellect" (1992, io). A bridge between the known and the unknown, meta-
phors lie at the foundation of cognitive and scientific knowledge (Harvey 1996,164).
Geographical metaphors permeate everyday speech: we talk about regions of knowl-
edge, disciplinary fields, areas of interest, and so on (see Livingstone 2003, 6). Even
more effectively, we employ geographical objects in a metaphorical sense to materi-
alize the abstract, or quantify the indefinite: people cross oceans of space, reach the
peak of glory, let themselves be transported by streams of thoughts, are overwhelmed
by a mountain of work, and so on. If metaphors draw much of their effectiveness
from material practices and experiences of the world, geographical objects are par-
ticularly powerful (Harvey 1996, 164). As Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote, they are
"the most stable of all; in fact it is not very easy to remove mountains, or divert the
course of a river, or turn the sea into mainland" (quoted in Farinelli 1992, 112; my
translation). Metaphors help us reduce the unknown "to a visible, self-present, and
docile object in space set before the eye of the subject to be mastered and managed
... to transform that which defies naming into manageable and exploitable objects"
(Spanos 2000, 18-19; italics in the original): to turn "think" into "thing."
The exchange between physical geographical objects and culture, matter and
meaning, signifier and signified, however, is not one-way. It is, rather, a two-way
dialogue, simultaneously representational and phenomenological (Debarbieux 1998,
422). Recently, increasing critical interest has also focused on "things" turning into
"thinks." How does a known, defined object of nature come to embody abstract
moral values or speak for human institutions? According to the historian Simon
Schama, "once a certain idea of a landscape, a myth, a vision, establishes itself in an
actual place, it has a peculiar way of muddling categories, of making metaphors
more real than their referents; of becoming, in fact, part of the scenery" (1995, 61).
Natural landscapes and geographical objects are not blank screens onto which cul-
ture, or power relations, are simply projected. They are active protagonists in the
process of signification. If it is true that "objects anchor time" (Tuan 1977, 187), one
could easily argue that geographical objects, the most stable of all, crystalize myth.
Not all of them, however, do, or do to the same extent. In Martin Warnke's words,
"before I assign meaning to a natural object, I must first have been struck by its
special qualities" (1994, 95). Primeval understanding of place (and thus the inscrip-
tion of mythologies on it) "takes its point of departure and relates them to concrete
natural elements, or things. Most ancient cosmogonies concentrate on this aspect
and explain how 'everything' has come into being" (Norberg-Schultz 1980, 24; ital-
ics in the original).
Mountains, the most impressive and "fixed" ph

become depositories of myths and legends across cu
475). The ancient Greeks considered them among
ation. In his Theogony, the Greek poet Hesiod attrib
([eighth century B.C.] 1983, vv. 116-138). He related
with the ocean, created from the union of heaven an
tains, therefore, [were] understandably significant
cause of their age, size, and especially since, un
unchanging" (Williams 1991, 79). Mountains were al
myths and (human) egotism.3 "Thessalian legend
the cataclysm as they recount how giants, attemptin
piled rock on rock Ossa on Pelion" (Williams 1991
imagination, mountains endure as the natural abode
of "colonization of nature by culture, the altera
(Schama 1995, 396). Natural giantism seeks "to unite
landscape in a grandiose monumental form, so that
overwhelming" (Warnke 1994, 145). In Western cult
narrated as loci of desire and conquest. On one hand
against which men (for this was a distinctively m
sure the stature of humanity, the reach of empire
original); on the other, their rock evokes a sense of
[man] something that transcends the precariousnes
lute mode of being" (Eliade 1963, 216).
MOUNT ATHOS
Mount Athos is a paradoxical place. A 50-kilometer-long peninsula culminating in

a 2,o33-meter peak (Figures 1 and 2), it started to be colonized by ascetics during the
ninth century A.D. Maintaining its special status as a self-ruled monastic commu-
nity under the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, today it hosts more than 1,8oo
Christian orthodox monks of different nationalities, dwelling in fortress-like mon-
asteries and hermitages. Rough, wild, and isolated, Athos has traditionally repre-
sented a spiritual refuge from the outside world, a place of humbleness and
meditation on death, where patristic asceticism still finds its most severe expression
(Speake 2002). Mount Athos, today better known as "Agion Oros" (Holy Moun-
tain), nevertheless betrays a mythical pre-Christian past marked by hubris. Athos
was the name of a rebellious Thracian giant who "hurled that whole stony mass at
Poseidon in a clash between gods and giants" (Kadas 1979, 9; my translation). Athos
also constituted the set for the most extraordinary human challenges to nature.
According to the fifth century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus ([ca. 440 B.C.] 1987, 7:
22-24), after the famous Persian shipwreck occurred in 492 B.c. off Athos's tempes-
tuous point, Xerxes, the son of Darius, decided to cut a canal on the neck of the
peninsula, in order to avoid its circumnavigation and the repetition of a similar
disaster.
21 24 270
Macedonia Bulgaria
Turkey
Mount Kerdyllionw
AlIb. SAgie Georgies
Qalcidic Peninsula.
Thessalonica_
Mount
Athos
Greece
39 Aegean 390
Sea
Turkey
Athens
Ionian
Sea
360
360 -
Sea of Crete
0 50 100km
0 50 100 ml
210 240 270
FIG. 1-Mount Athos, Greece, and environs. (Cartography by the author)
Because of its dramatic grandeur and inaccessibility, Athos was then chosen by
Dinocrates for his bold project and became implicitly associated with Alexander
the Great and his worldly power (the antithesis of the monastic ideal). Over the
centuries the figure of Alexander mutated into one of the most pliant heroes that
Western culture has spawned (Wilson-Chevalier 1997, 25). If his fantastic embodi-
ment in the prominent Athonite cone exaggerated Alexander's eternal power, the
Dinocratic myth itself, as narrated by Vitruvius and appropriated by other Classical
authors, crystalized him as a champion of virtue. According to the Roman architect,
Dinocrates' project was never realized, because the Macedonian king, from the height
of his wisdom, declared it impracticable, for "as an infant is nourished by the milk
FIG. 2-Majestic Mount Athos, in the Chalcidic Peninsula of northeastern

of metaphorical power and the subject of myths for thousands of years. (P
Docheiariou Monastery, Mount Athos, February 2004; reproduced courtes
of its mother, depending thereon for its progress to maturity,

the fertility of the country surrounding it for its riches, its st
and not less for its defence against an enemy"-all character
lacked (Vitruvius [27-23 B.C.] 2004, 2: 3).
One of the main landmarks in the northern Aegean Sea,
served as a repository of often contrasting metaphors. Human v
ings were projected on the mountain peninsula, making it
hybrid of nature and meaning (Latour 1993) but also a powe
for Classical writers. Athos allowed a direct comparison be
Alexander and Xerxes. The isthmus of the peninsula and the
came to embody opposite poles. Herodotus had criticized X
asserting that the enterprise was primarily intended as a pr
the extent of Persian power ([ca. 440 B.C.] 1987, 7: 22-24). T
evidence of the canal dug in the rock, the "father of histor
barbarian arrogance (even before the forces of nature) to the
rium, to the peaceful conciliation between man and environm
sical architecture (see Scully 1979).
Athos stood metaphorically on the mythical boundary betw
West. It served as a powerful moral landmark, helping histo
Orient, the great threatening "otherness" in Greek (a

1979, 56-58). In The Persians, by the fifth century B
the foolish and irrational figure of Xerxes incarnates
. . the European imagination, which is depicted as vi
'other' world beyond the seas. To Asia are given the f
disaster that seem thereafter to reward Oriental chal
"other" is projected on Asia, Asia on Xerxes, and eve
memorial of his challenge to the West, to nature, an
foolishness.4 By contrast (and not without a certain
lomaniac) conqueror of Asia, came to epitomize west
the Greek writer Plutarch (first century-early secon
responded to Dinocrates: "Let Athos remain as it is.
morial of the arrogance of one king" (Plutarch [A
Alexander's words of wisdom reverberated throug
writers, the idea of Dinocratic Athos turned into a po
and time.
ATHOS AND THE VITRUVIAN BODY
[Dinocrates] was, I should state, a man of tall stature, pleasing countenance,

and altogether of dignified appearance. Trusting to the gifts with which nature
had thus endowed him, he put off his ordinary clothing, and having anointed
himself with oil, crowned his head with a wreath of poplar, slung a lion's skin
across his left shoulder, and carrying a large club in his right hand, he sallied
forth to the royal tribunal, at a period when the king was dispensing justice.
The novelty of his appearance excited the attention of the people; and Alexander
soon discovering, with astonishment, the object of their curiosity, ordered the
crowd to make way for him, and demanded to know who he was. "A Mace-
donian architect," replied Dinocrates, "who suggests schemes and designs wor-
thy of your royal renown. I propose to form Mount Athos into the statue of a
man holding a spacious city in his left hand, and in his right a huge cup, into
which shall be collected all the streams of the mountain, which shall then be
poured into the sea."
--Vitruvius, [27-23 B.C.] 2004
The Dinocratic myth, narrated and appropriated by various Classical authors (for
example, Plutarch [75 A.D.] 1914, 72: 8; [75 A.D.] 1925, 1: 17-20, Lucian [second cen-
tury A.D.] 1905a, 26; [second century A.D.] 1905d, 115), owes most of its popularity in
the West to Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. An aging military architect, Vitruvius presented
Augustus Caesar, the new ruler of the Roman Empire, with his ten-book De
architectura in the mid-2os B.C.E. Here the vision of the human body as a global
microcosm was translated into architectural terms (Cosgrove 2ool0, 53). Almost un-
known in antiquity, Vitruvius's work was rediscovered in the early fifteenth century
and had a tremendous impact throughout the European Renaissance (McEwen 200oo3,
1). Vitruvius's conception of architecture as a scientia, or formalized, theoretically
founded knowledge (Cosgrove 200oo3b, 22), became pivotal at a time when art, breaking
from its subservient function, became "a mirror of measurable reality" (Kruft 1994,
ALEXANDER THE GREAT S MOUNTAIN 497
41). It was in this context, and through humanist and cou

treatise, along with Ptolemy's, became the focus of s
works reflected, and yet at the same time legitimize
the kosmos as well as of the human subject (Cosgrov
In 1450 Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), a promin
pleted the ten books of his De re aedificatoria, a f
Vitruvius's work (Kruft 1994, 42). Like Vitruvius, Alb
as "the" architectural canon, or unit of measure.5 The
of body, consisting of lines and materials, in which
mind and the material obtained from Nature" (Kruft
nal). Alberti employed the body metaphor with archite
tures, such as the state. These, he said, are all held t
members of the body are correspondent to each othe
taken farther by the fifteenth-century Italian sculpt
compared a building to a living being in physiological
by Francesco di Giorgio Martini.
Given the preoccupation with the Vitruvian man a
and the continual metaphorical exchange between bo
Dinocratic myth as narrated by Vitruvius must have
to fifteenth century humanists.6 According to the Ro
Great himself would have employed a powerful body
the city to an infant and the surrounding territory t
Alberti, however, the Dinocratic myth served primari
dangers and monstrosities to which he would give bi
dict laws of nature out of pure egotism ([1450] 1988,
ists, Schama argued, the Dinocratic myth constituted
threat to the ideal combination of balance, harmony,
"a commentator such as Buonaccorso Ghilberti was so
that he had Dinocrates ... withdraw the whole idea af
elaborate explanations of its impracticability" (1995,
In addition to the traditional exaltation of Alexander's wisdom versus moral
and artistic excesses, the Dinocratic myth provided Renaissance men with fertile
ground for more subtle elaborations. In 1470 Francesco di Giorgio Martini of Siena,
famous as painter, sculptor, and military architect, translated from Latin into ver-
nacular (and for the first time published) Vitruvius's De architectura and wrote a
famous architectural treatise containing profusely illustrated discussions on the
machinery of architecture, fortifications, and harbors. Inspired by earlier writings,
Martini attempted to work out "a system of ideal architectural proportions based
on the form of the human body, with many drawings in which the human figure
appears superimposed on the plans, facades, and details of religious buildings"
(Weller 1943, 270).
In his Trattati Martini employs the Dinocratic myth to demonstrate the neces-
sity of anthropomorphism in urban planning (Fiore 1978, 69) and to exalt the vir-
V!
At
cirrt) ar
Vr,43 -
(-,* jl-
~I F-
.. ~
~ 4
FIG. 3-Anthropomorphic rendering of the Dinocratic myth in Francesco di Giorgio Martini's Trattati
di architettura, ca. 1476. (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Firenze; reproduced courtesy of the Ministero
per i Beni e le Attivita' Culturali)
tues of the Classical body. Returning to the original, one notes

particular attention to the physical description of Dinocrates. T
naked body anointed with oil incarnates perfection. It is the
which the head of Dinocrates has been applied (McEwen 2003,
this body that Alexander's attention is captured, and the archite
to engage in a Herculean dialogue with the king, himself claim
Hercules. The response he receives, however, makes Alexander
than the Hercules' look-alike who stands before him (p. o101).
Martini illustrates the Dinocratic myth in the Trattati with t
guid, but well proportioned, nude male figure wearing a lion
and holding a bowl in his right hand and a model of a fortress
As the lion skin and the nakedness seem to suggest, the youn
Dinocrates, presenting himself to Alexander. The fortified cita
however, reveals a more subtle identification between the Mace
Martini himself, offering his patron Federico, duke of Urbino
service as his military architect. It is to Federico that the Trattati
Latin preface Martini glances briefly at ancient history, with w
tron was well acquainted, mentioning great conquering prince
the Great or Julius Caesar. The latter tells us that he sometim
Vitruvius in his camp and treated him with great kindness an
1978, 87). If Vitruvius, who addressed his De architectura to A
linked himself to Dinocrates and the Roman emperor to Alexan
fail to perpetuate this historical chain of mutual trust between
The nude youth, however, could be also identified as an ant
dering of the colossus of Mount Athos, holding in its hands a
youth's languid pose was characteristic of sculptural renderin
Great in the Hellenistic period, and later also of Roman gener
male statues of Classical masters such as Polycletus (fifth centu
(fourth century B.C.), the standard Alexander pose is gene
Lysippus, a contemporary of the Macedonian king. It usual
hanging over the hero's right shoulder, a sword in his left han
right (see Queyrel 1991). In Martini's Dinocratic representation
city may even have been a direct play on these two objects (and
mantle) in Hellenistic and Roman statuettes, with which the ar
tor of mythological subjects, was surely well acquainted (Well
artist's drawings, ancient statues acted as material vehicles fo
spatial diffusion of ancient visions: In as early as 1415 the Flor
mous cartographer Cristoforo Buondelmonti was exploring th
of material vestiges of the ancient past, and in the 1440s the m
Ciriaco d'Ancona started a profitable traffic in antiquities (inc
tween Greece and Italy (Weiss 1964; Landolfi 1998, 444)-
If we are to believe the Dinocratic myth, Dinocrates would
ceived his Colossus standing in a fashion similar to Martini's s
sitting on the mountain (as in later rende

body, however, itself seemed to have a
"Dinocrates personally presented himself t
wanted to edify a new city [Alexandria]; h
a man holding in his left hand a cup into w
and in the right the walls of the new city
tion). The Sienese artist envisioned Athos
rents constituting the circulatory system an
The living body of Dinocratic Athos magn
as "a microcosmic measure of the world m
the western Renaissance idea that "man, ca
the general perfections of the whole wor
Martini argued, "touching things inanima
affinity with plants, in his feelings with bru
world of spirit; so that the Greeks came to
a little world" (Martini [1476] 1967, prolog
and nature, between Dinocrates' traits and
the ideal of microcosmic man in the mind
manists. In its absurd disproportionatene
gave visual consistency to an ancient drea
ATHOS AND THE PONTIFICAL BODY
Though invoked as a negative architectural and moral model from Lucian to Alberti,
Dinocrates' project never ceased to stir the Western imagination, and "the fantasy
of a mountain colossus haunted the dreams of the superegoistical" (Schama 1995,
404). If early Renaissance humanists felt a little embarrassed at envisioning the
Dinocratic monstrosity in their mind's eye, in the late seventeenth century all the
conditions for its visual materialization seemed to exist. Baroque excesses and taste
for theatricality took the place of the early Renaissance search for Classical beauty
and equilibrium. Monumentality overcame proportions. Antiquarianism mixed with
fascination for the curious and the exotic. Nature turned into spectacle; miracle
into wonder; the Vitruvian man into the apotheosis of egotism. It is in this cultural
context that Fabio Chigi, from Siena, assumed the papacy under the name of
Alexander VII in 1655, and it is in this context that the Alexander Mountain was first
represented "as if it had really existed" (Frankfort 1997, 249; my translation) and
turned into a personal emblem (Figure 4).
Shamelessly invoking Athos to flatter the egotism of his patron, Pietro da Cortona
(1596-1669), official painter and architect of the pontifical court, took the Dinocratic
obsequious tradition seriously. To the visual directness of the message, one must
add the explicit play allowed by the name of the pope, here superimposed on that of
the mythical Macedonian king-a common activity among ancient Roman emper-
ors and the pope's own contemporaries (Metzger Habel 2002, 307). Pietro da Cortona
wove together nature and the Chigian symbols through myth. Athos became the
pyramidal Chigian mountain, enlightened by the s

of the Chigi coat of arms (Angelini 1998, 135). Thr
phors and erudite associations, the artist probably
tuousness of his patron, paralleling Alexander the
FIG. 4-Acquaforte by Pietro da Cortona representing

and Dinocratic Athos, ca. mid-seventeenth century. (@
Trustees of The British Museum, reproduced courtesy
Museum, London)
plan with the pope's rejection of the Roman Senate'

in the Campidoglio square to commemorate his heroic
from the city (Metzger Habel 2002, 308).
Alexander VII's modesty seemed, however, to ha
ascent to the papal throne, as lamented by John Ba
Canterbury:
FIG. 5-Alexander VII's funerary monument in the B

the author, winter 1997)
In the first months of his elevation to the Popedom, he

the profession of an evangelical life that he was wont to
to sleep upon a hard couch, to hate riches, glory and pom
give audience of ambassadors in a chamber full of dead m
of his coffin, which stood there to put him in mind of h
called his relations about him he changed his nature. Inst
vanity; his mortification vanished, his hard couch was tu
his dead men's sculls into jewels, and his thoughts of dea
empty coffin with money as if he would corrupt death, a
(quoted in Metzger Habel 2002, 8)
The paradoxical combination of the former and latter

tively encapsulated in his tomb, a Baroque masterpiec
Bernini (1598-1680) and the most imposing sepulc
(Figure 5). The remembrance of death and of the flow
winged skeleton holding a sandglass, unveils a female
ing her left foot upon a terrestrial globe engraved wit
bol of the pontifical dreams of a universal Christi
2001, 159-160). Counterbalanced by Charity and topp
the defunct pope, the funereal monument, with its
inserts, does not fail to reflect the theatricality and p
during his pontificate. The corporality of stone, maste
and echoed in the mountain representations engrave
Alexander's robes (but also in the mountain-like stan
his memory and deeds new consistency. At the same t
Athos, it tells us much about Alexander's greatest add
ies named mal di pietra (stone disease).
The pope's building mania ruined the state finance
become one of the great architectural popes. During t
cate (1655-1667), he changed "the map, the appear
(Krautheimer 1982, 1). Alexander aimed to embellish
the great emperors had done in the past, Caesar Augu
raphy of his Alexandrian Rome consciously echoed im
the great capital cities of the late-antique Roman
stagelike squares such as the Piazza Navona, with i
scenic openings onto the great monuments of antiqu
Rome conceived to strike the foreign visitor. Alexan
been observed, was aimed at creating an eminently p
reasserting it (at least in popular imagination) as the
Alexander in fact "knew that the Church no longer
had possessed early in the century.... The wars of re
nant among the world powers, England and the Neth
and among the Catholic powers Rome no longer
(Krautheimer 1982, 31, 32).
But although "the illustrious foreigner was

teatro to teatro" (Krautheimer 1982, 32; ita
parodied in the streets as the "papa di grand
on his intellectual capacity and achievement
geous building exploits" (Metzger Habel 200
ambassadors that "the pope [had] Rome in
room as though nothing was more importa
(Krautheimer 1982, 12). Right after Alexand
tory, "designing amphitheatres and fountai
with Rome" (p. 13). From the top of the Q
oramic view of the city (Metzger Habel 200
to abandon their dwellings to make room f
graphic gaze of the pope might have had the
on the Mount of Temptation (Matt. 4:8).8 T
capital, the Chigian mount depicted on the
monuments, plates, and coins might well h
and egotism of mountains (see Nicholson [1
consciously and unconsciously, Pietro da Co
well suited. Along with his tomb, Dinocratic
memorial to the pope, to his legendary lega
Through his Athos acquaforte (etching), P
both the pope's pragmatism as an urban plan
Habel 2002, 310). Here Alexander seems to
logue with his flattering architects (Dinocra
time, as the upper inscription states, "his g
ventures." Alexandrian Rome is in fact also i
to Dinocrates' imaginary city (on the right h
perspective line formed by the arms of the
down from his bowl into the sea. The river
past toward a pragmatic present, joining the
contemporary Rome and the figure of Alex
This river of time (superimposed on the
copiousness of pontifical wealth and creativ
Pietro da Cortona's Athos acquaforte se
Frangois Spierre (1639-1681) dedicated to Al
recycled to celebrate pope Clement XI (1700-
lost most of its geographical and symbolic
type, into a free-floating metaphor more an
cal and historical context. Nevertheless, the
Athos remained unique. The evocative icon
the Chigian mountain, and between Alexand
tively expressed the pope's unique relationsh
tic aspirations and the presumed immortali
FIG. 6-Guillaume Chasteau after Ciro Ferri, Allegorical Portrait ofAlexan

Nazionale dei Lincei, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Roma; reproduced c
per i Beni e le Attivith Culturali).
FIG. 7-Map of the Eastern Mediterranean and its ancient monum

von Erlach's Entwurff einer Historischen Architectur, 1712. (Reprodu
Institute's Special Collections and Visual Resources, Los Angeles)
It was probably this fortunate coincidence of elemen

like Ciro Ferri to explicitly associate Dinocratic repres
pontifical body. A disciple of Pietro da Cortona, Ferri w
that comprised the best available talent in Rome (D
Alexander VII repeatedly turned for fresco commission
artists at the pontifical court, Ferri produced a series
weave together sacred and mythological elements with Chi
probably inspired by his master's Athos acquaforte, Fer
own allegory of the Alexander Mountain (Figure 6).
Taking the place of Dinocrates' colossus, here Alexand
mountain. Almost one with rock, the body of the po
most prominent of the seven hills of Rome, rendered
figures that also embody different virtues. Just as in real
gaze from the Quirinal dominates the city, here his rocky
anthropomorphic hills (and thus human virtues). Alex
manding gesture inspires awe and fear. In the Chigian
holds the papal sphaera munda, reminding us of the unive
embracing earth and heaven, as stated in the dedicator
FIG. 8-Johann Bernard Fischer von Erlach's Dinocratic Athos in Entwurf

tectur, 1712. (Reproduced courtesy of the Getty Research Institute's S
Resources, Los Angeles)
ATHOS AND THE BODY POLITIC
The mountain of Alexander the Great saw unprecedented popularity in seven-

teenth-century Italy. It appeared on the frontispieces of theses as a symbol of ex-
cellence, in curiosity cabinets, and in carnival parades (see Frankfort 1997).
Assuming the most bizarre forms, it lost all contact with its original referent. At the
beginning of the following century Johann Bernard Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723)
attempted to return Dinocratic Athos to its original form and geographical coor-
dinates. Among the most prominent representatives of Austrian Baroque, von Erlach
had a long-standing interest in the history of architecture. In 1712 he published his
Entwurff einer Historischen Architectur, an extraordinary atlas in which he illus-
trated the whole development and diffusion of architecture through evocative en-
gravings of different types of buildings. The seven wonders of the world and most
of the great monuments of ancient Egypt, Persia, and Greece were reconstructed
directly from myth and evocatively mapped back to their place (Figure 7). In the
Baroque European geographical imagination, the eastern Mediterranean resonated
with cyclopean enterprises whose traces survived only in myth. The temple of Diana
at Ephesus, the Pharos of Alexandria, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Tower of
Babel are just a few examples. Placed outside the Chalcidic Peninsula, the illustra-
tion of Mount Athos is represented as the Macedonian node of this mythical net of
colossi.
FIG. 9-Frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, 1651. (Repr

partment of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Libra
Los Angeles)
Von Erlach's plate is probably the most evocative reconstruct

myth extant (Figure 8). Here the body of Alexander is exalted
nation of rock, water, and vegetation. While remaining a bizar
like object, von Erlach's Athos can tell us much about the phys
in the late Baroque geographical imagination. Alpine pine t
garments on one hand, and Egyptian palms and camels on the o
imaginary setting on the border between two worlds: Greek an
ent.9 On von Erlach's representation, Athos stands in the midd
nean Sea, between its familiar northern and exotic southeaste
Von Erlach's Athos is also emblematic of the relationship be
political power peculiar to the seventeenth century and the em
nation-states. Although, unlike other Baroque Dinocratic repr
lustration served no explicit celebratory purpose, the colossal
can be easily reconducted to the same colossal tradition th
Hobbes's Leviathan (Figure 9). The illustration on the frontisp
graved edition expresses well what Kenneth Olwig (2002) name
the state as "a sublimated force of nature" (p. 161). The monst
up beyond the mountains that tower above an extensive landsc
teenth century, "the scenic illusion of landscape made it easier t
ent historically constituted polities and places could be unified
body politic as embodied by a geographical body" (p. 218). In t
sentation, as well as in contemporary iconography, mountains
liberality. As the Spanish diplomat and emblematist Saavedra Fa
"The mountains are the princes of the earth, being closest to th
the other works of nature. Moreover, they resemble princes by
with which their great bowels slake the thirst of the fields a
haustible springs and so clothe them with leaves and flowers; t
proper to a prince" (quoted in Warnke 1994, 91). In von Erlach
the Athos colossus, all these elements are present. Alexander,
generously lavishes water upon the inhabitants of the city and
Princely prodigality is also reflected in the abundant vegetal
helmeted head is leaned. As in Hobbes's Leviathan illustration,
pies a central position. If the body of the Leviathan was const
the citizens, here Alexander (the ruler) is one with the utopian
its inhabitants), as well as with nature. It was this natural(ized
art and nature, human and nonhuman, individual and collectiv
idea of natural giantism so appealing to Baroque artists and ru
political theoreticians.
If von Erlach's Athos, "among the last flickers of the rampan
expression in the Baroque" (Hadjinikolaos 1997, 253; my transl
untary vision of power, toward the end of the century Alexa
came consciously political. In so doing, however, it once again
with its original referent: from a bizarre physical object, it b
entity, a pure ideal. In 1796 Pierre-Henri de

Dinocratic Athos, a benevolent rework
Polyphemus (Schama 1995, 404) (Figure lo).
background, while "a group of figures in the
back from the summit" (p. 404). The traditi
Mountain almost disappear within its massi
are transferred from the body of Athos to
to the whole tranquil scene, and no longer o
observer's gaze is now redirected. Athos
becomes a purely fantastic mountain in the
The painting was exhibited at the salon of
thusiasms were running high for both H
Shrewdly marrying the two together, Vale
benevolent republican sovereignty, where t
dant and gently watered, is shown directly
ity of the paternal state" (Schama 1995, 404-
works of historical painting commissioned b
emy, the salon played an important didacti
ited in the salon informed the citizen, "from
glory, of his duties, and of public or private
or immortalizing the deeds of great men" (
revolution, historical painting remained ind
tions of power. Neoclassical aesthetics becam
The architecture of public buildings spoke t
democracy, justice, and liberty. The mytho
and engravings were no longer antiquarian o
no longer "exotic othernesses" crystalized in
and moral agents. In the late eighteenth and
and literature of ancient Greece were used a
cepts, exalted characters, and exemplary at
Historical landscapes consisted of the com
ting, completely reconstructed by the artist
Classical antiquity (Godlewska 1999, 30). In r
and nature-or, rather, the Classical ideal
moral and political agents. As Warnke (1994
edly attach themselves to the landscape, tak
their needs." Hanging on the walls of the
spired its viewers with a sense of moral an
into the harmonious Neoclassical facades of
If, as with Hobbes's Leviathan, natural gig
sies of rulers like Frederick the Great of An
democratic precedents, the earliest being th
plain as a symbol of democratic community
was of the function of this colossus that Valencien

his benevolent Dinocratic Athos. "The irony is that
lessly autocratic monarch, had now become an ico
delectation of supporters of the French Revolutio
doxes, however, probably went unnoticed. The origina
perfection of Valenciennes's Arcadian landscape. H
ized, nature, detached from reality yet utterly re
FIG. lo-Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Mount Athos Carved as

ca. 1796. Oil on canvas. (Reproduced courtesy of the Art Insti
disembody through the Enlightenment rhetoric of

tude of its details collected in the green forest of Fon
barren hills of Greece.
Through a curious loop, French-domesticated Classical landscapes bounced back

to nineteenth-century Greece, becoming major protagonists of literature and na-
tion making. In the newborn kingdom of Greece, integration was achieved textu-
ally before it was realized politically. While heroic figures such as Alexander the
Great were resurrected as symbols of unity, Greece's mutilated body was being re-
stored through the natural setting of Romantic poems and novels (Dimaras 1971,
122-123; Peckham 2001, 4, 43). Though deeply patriotic, Greek Romanticism was
first of all a French product (Dimaras 1982, 142). As Kolokotronis, the fighter of the
War of Independence, observed, "the French Revolution and the doings of Napo-
leon opened the eyes of the world" (quoted in Peckham 2001, 3). The culture that
the Phanariots admired was French,'o as was their poetry, now celebrating a nostal-
gic return to antiquity imbued with Romantic elements, now superimposing the
figure of Napoleon upon that of Alexander (Dimaras 1982, 156; Beaton 1994, 24;
Aikaterinides 1996, 31; Hadjinikolaos 1997, 22).
Panagiotis Soutsos, one of the main exponents of Greek Romanticism, was him-
self a Phanariot educated in Paris (Politis 1973, 139). His The Wayfarer, a tragedy in
five acts, first published in 1831, is among

movement. A "recognizably imported confec
world" (Beaton 1994, 38), The Wayfarer is d
of the inner tragedy of the protagonist, per
beloved, and sublime natural settings. Throu
landscapes, transforming natural monument
Lost in the ecstatic contemplation of Athos,
the wayfarer weaves one of the most impres
(Lephas 1991, 169), awakening the Dinocratic
1842, vv. 51-64, quoted in Lephas 1991, 192; m
Crystaline Athos! Bewildered I stare at you,

stature.
You stretch your roots to the guts of the Earth, and join the dark
hell with the heavens.
A diamonded diadem crowns your summit, the woods are your
belt, the clouds your hair, the lighting your gaze, the torrent
your voice, the whirlwind your rumbly breath.
Like the first man of creation,
first you took life, and last among all
you are to offer your neck to murdering time.
You look at the dust of time flowing below you.
No cataclysm ever washed your face away; the sea kisses your feet.
Soutsos's Athos embeds a true Humboldtian microcosm. The immutable rocky cone
assumes anthropomorphic traits: From the height of his immortality, the giant ob-
serves the caducity of mankind, takes the word, breathes. Within the colossus's body,
Aristotelian elements mix all their drama. Rock and vegetation, torrents and waves,
thunder and lightning-all fuse into a creature at once eternal and pulsating with
life. As in von Erlach's representation, the microscale of the human organism and
the macroscale of the cosmos collapse in the majesty, but at the same time in the
circumscription of this amazing geographical object. Athos becomes an emblem of
Hellas's body politic, at once an eternal monument and a dynamic creature. Athos
becomes a naturalizing link between human transience and the immortality of a
newborn nation-state, and also between Greek religious sentiment and European
Romantic sensibility (Blachos 1874, 14-15).
TRAVELING LANDSCAPE METAPHORS
If landscape is "a medium of exchange between the human and natural, the self and
the other" (Mitchell 2002a, 5), geographical objects are among the most powerful
instruments for crystalizing myths and naturalizing national discourses-themselves
myths (Peckham 2001). This article shows the continuity and evolution of a Classi-
cal vision through a number of complex interplays: between matter and imagina-
tion; between the scale of the human body (Alexander, Vitruvius, the pope), of a
geographical object (Mount Athos), of the nation-state (France and Greece). It has
looked at Dinocratic Athos as an emblematic hybrid of hum

also at its mobile genealogy.
As Livingstone (2003) suggests, all knowledge is knowled
and circulated in specific geographical and cultural context
historical-movement "is never simply a relocation; mig
modification," either in form, or meaning-or both (Living
versal models traditionally envisioned in myth and nature
process of continual appropriation, transformation, and re
on the contexts through which they are moving. Rather th
eternal metaphors, Dinocratic Athos can thus be interpreted
(Re)produced in Martini's utopian fortified city, in Alexan
Vienna, in revolutionary Paris, or even in the contemporar
ism industry of northern Greece, the Mountain of Alexand
on shifting perceptions of nature and the body in western E
sought in the Classical world to the bizarre wonder encoun
from the Neoclassical idyll to Romantic drama, and, finall
strosity. Embodied and disembodied, Dinocratic Athos r
scape of myth, a geographical object no longer as solid as its
waters and meanings that surround it.
NOTES
1. The bold idea was initially conceived by Papadopoulos in 1996, at the height of Greek nation-
alist resentment against the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. The dispute arose in 1991, when
Yugoslav Macedonia proclaimed its independence. "The Greek government announced that it could
not accept an independent country with the historic Greek name of Macedonia, or one which used
any of the symbols of ancient Macedonia, including much of Northern Greece" (Agnew 2001, 23). In
addition to the various territorial issues, the dispute soon turned into a true war on symbol property,
the Greeks as the legitimate inheritors of the ancient Greeks claiming monopoly on ancient Macedonian
symbols and thus accusing their neighbors of usurpation. The figure of Alexander the Great, the
quintessential incarnation of Greek civilization, soon became synonymous with the slogan and served
"as the final stamp of authenticity for the Greekness of Alexander" (VRC 2002).
2. On the duration of myth and the recurrence of Classical motives in Renaissance and Baroque
art, see the work of the famous art historian and iconographer Aby Warburg ([1932] 1999).
3. This negative attitude toward mountains was also typical of the Middle Ages and lasted until
the Romantic appraisal of sublime sceneries (see Nicolson [1959] 1997).
4. Xerxes' canal remained proverbial, as did the powerful paradoxical image of navigating Athos
and marching on the Hellespont evoked by the fourth century B.C. Greek writer Isocrates and repeat-
edly exploited by the rhetorician and satirist Lucian of Samosata-"And Unendingly Let Athos Be
Crossed in Ships and the Hellespont Afoot" (Lucian [second century A.D.] 1905b, 140; see also Lucian
[second century A.D.] 1905C, 226).
5. This powerful metaphor was later visually rendered by Leonardo da Vinci's famous encircled
Vitruvian man.
6. Among the ancient authors reporting the Dinocratic myth, Vitruvius is the one who gives the
strongest emphasis to the bodily element. He is also the only one to provide an accurate description of
Dinocrates and his body.
7. Note the correspondence between the head of the pope in the monument and Athos's peak on
Pietro da Cortona's drawing, both of them topped by the Chigian star(s). The movement of the drap-
ing-and thus of time-is also reflected in Cortona's Athos representation by the flow of the river.
8. Because of its striking height, popular traditions i

9. Von Erlach's fascination with the East and the n
eastern Mediterranean region is apparent in the arrange
ture, where he progressively moves from Jerusalem,
East (Arabia and Persia) to the Far East (China, Japan,
engraving, he compares the Dinocratic project with tw
a mountain of Suchen Province in China, and the Sem
to have her bust and that of many other figures hewn
latter anecdote is reported also by Ciro Ferri, on the e
10o. Phanariots were the Greeks of Constantinople, t
and mainly responsible for the Greek Romantic mov
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American Geographical Society

Alexander the Great's Mountain

ALEXANDER THE GREAT'S MOUNTAIN*

VERONICA DELLA DORA

ABSTRACT. The metaphorical power of natural landscapes and geographical obje

The Geographical Review 95 (4): 489-516, October 2005

vationists who defended the Classical ideal o

cess of embodiment and disembodiment, the Dinocratic m

landscape of myth, and like any landscap

ROCK AND METAPHOR

Mountains, the most impressive and "fixed" ph

Mount Athos is a paradoxical place. A 50-kilometer-long peninsula culminating in

210 240 270

FIG. 1-Mount Athos, Greece, and environs. (Cartography by the author)

FIG. 2-Majestic Mount Athos, in the Chalcidic Peninsula of northeastern

of its mother, depending thereon for its progress to maturity,

Orient, the great threatening "otherness" in Greek (a

ATHOS AND THE VITRUVIAN BODY

[Dinocrates] was, I should state, a man of tall stature, pleasing countenance,

41). It was in this context, and through humanist and cou

tues of the Classical body. Returning to the original, one notes

sitting on the mountain (as in later rende

ATHOS AND THE PONTIFICAL BODY

pyramidal Chigian mountain, enlightened by the s

FIG. 4-Acquaforte by Pietro da Cortona representing

plan with the pope's rejection of the Roman Senate'

FIG. 5-Alexander VII's funerary monument in the B

In the first months of his elevation to the Popedom, he

The paradoxical combination of the former and latter

But although "the illustrious foreigner was

FIG. 6-Guillaume Chasteau after Ciro Ferri, Allegorical Portrait ofAlexan

FIG. 7-Map of the Eastern Mediterranean and its ancient monum

It was probably this fortunate coincidence of elemen

FIG. 8-Johann Bernard Fischer von Erlach's Dinocratic Athos in Entwurf

ATHOS AND THE BODY POLITIC

The mountain of Alexander the Great saw unprecedented popularity in seven-

FIG. 9-Frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, 1651. (Repr

Von Erlach's plate is probably the most evocative reconstruct

entity, a pure ideal. In 1796 Pierre-Henri de

was of the function of this colossus that Valencien

FIG. lo-Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Mount Athos Carved as

disembody through the Enlightenment rhetoric of

Through a curious loop, French-domesticated Classical landscapes bounced back

five acts, first published in 1831, is among

Crystaline Athos! Bewildered I stare at you,

TRAVELING LANDSCAPE METAPHORS

looked at Dinocratic Athos as an emblematic hybrid of hum

8. Because of its striking height, popular traditions i

Farinelli, F. 1992. I segni del mondo: immagine cartografica e discorso geografico

Metzger Habel, D. 2002. The Urban Development of Rome in th

Tzimas, S. 2002. Mount Rushmore, Greek Style? Kathimerini, 21 August. [www.ekathimerini.com /

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