All language subtitles for Treasures of Ancient Greece 3of3 The Long Shadow 810p_Subtitles01.ENG

The art of the Ancient Greeks
has dazzled the world.

With their mastery of technique
and their fascination with the

human form, they reached new heights
of beauty and sophistication.

But the story of Ancient Greek art
didn't die with the Ancient Greeks.

Their legacy has shaped the art
and culture,

the history and politics
of the Western world.

But I believe that the influence of
Greek art can be summed up

in the story of just
a handful of masterpieces.

And in this programme, I will be
travelling across Europe to

reveal the extraordinary
afterlives of five key works of art.

The Aphrodite of Knidos,

the first naked woman in Western art
and the mother of a million nudes.

The Laocoon, a dramatic study
in suffering that inspired

Michelangelo
and helped shape the Renaissance.

The Hamilton vases,

whose discovery created a new style
for domestic design in Britain.

The bronze horses
of St Mark's in Venice,

which became pawns
in an imperial game.

And the naked discus thrower,
the Discobolus,

bought by Adolf Hitler,

paraded as an emblem of Aryan
supremacy.

Together they tell
a fascinating story,

how succeeding generations
rediscovered and reinterpreted

Greek art for themselves,

finding in it inspiration
for their own ambitions.

And how it continued to shape
Western civilisation

long after Ancient Greece was no
more than a memory.

Early in the second century AD,
the Emperor Hadrian built himself

a pleasure palace at Tivoli,
outside Rome.

This ambitious Roman
wanted his palace to be

the epicentre of sophistication
in his empire.

He looked to his greatest
predecessors,

the Ancient Greeks, for inspiration.

And he filled this vast site
with hundreds of copies

of Greek masterpieces.

One work in particular was more
infamous than any other.

When it was created in the fourth
century BC, it sparked a sensation

because it was so provocative
and also ground-breaking.

It marked a real sea change in the
history of art,

inspiring some
60 scandalous direct copies,

as well as countless titillating
variations.

It was Western art's first
full-sized female nude.

She is known as the Aphrodite
of Knidos.

She was created
by the great sculptor Praxiteles

for the Greek island of Knidos
in the fourth century BC.

Aphrodite appears startled,

as though she has been surprised
before or after bathing.

With her left hand, she is dropping
her robe onto a water jar

or perhaps grabbing it to cover
herself up.

The ambiguity is deliberate.

With her other hand, she would have
been attempting at least to

shield and protect her modesty.

That gesture is a real coup, it is

a watershed moment in art history

because this goddess
isn't static and timeless,

idealised or otherworldly
but instead,

caught unawares in
a particular moment

as though we have just chanced upon
a bashful girlfriend.

So, this sculpture isn't just
irreverent, it is also sexy,

and it has its own particular
narrative that involves us,

the viewer, by casting us
provocatively as the voyeur.

With this nude, Praxiteles created
a highly sexualised

template of female beauty.

Most cities in Ancient Greece,
women were fairly covered up,

they did wear veils out in public
and they certainly didn't

run around topless or without any
clothes at all.

However, I think

there's something about Praxiteles'
statue that went

way beyond just being a nude, it
wasn't a matter of a woman who just

had no clothes on or a goddess
who just had no clothes on.

It was a woman that you could
really fantasise about

because she is actually in the act
of taking something off

or putting something on and you don't
know quite what she's doing.

The position of this modern,

horribly weather-beaten
copy at Tivoli preserves

one of the original statue's most
innovative aspects, its setting.

The Aphrodite was displayed
right in the middle of a special

circular temple.

It seems that Hadrian wanted to
recreate the whole enclosure

for the notorious cult statue
back on Knidos.

And that setting was a real
innovation at the time,

because it invited you to consider
the sculpture in the round

and admire the goddess's sensuous
curves from every angle.

Aphrodite's allure made her the
must-see statue

of the ancient world.

The Roman author Lucian
recorded a particularly scandalous

event in her history.

One night,

an amorous young man snuck in to
Aphrodite's holy temple and hid.

The crowds dispersed,
finally he was alone with her.

Lucian goes on to describe
the aftermath of what

he calls this
"unspeakable night of bravado".

"Traces of the clinches of lust were
spotted when daylight returned.

"The goddess had the stain
to prove the traumas

"that she had been through."

It is a remarkably salacious
and gossipy little story

but, at the very least, it suggests
that Praxiteles' sexy statue

was so intoxicating she could
incite actual palpable desire

within her infatuated young
beholders.

The famous statue
stimulated dozens

of variations on the theme.

The Knidian Aphrodite proved
enormously influential.

Where Praxiteles had dared to tread,
other sculptors quickly followed,

each trying to outdo the master in
terms of sexiness and provocation.

This sculpture of another bathing
goddess,

Aphrodite, crouching by a water jar,
is a very good example.

It takes the principal elements
of the Knidian Aphrodite,

the sense of surprise,
the storytelling setting,

the implication of the viewer
as a Peeping Tom and of course,

lots of voluptuous naked flesh.

And then, amps them up with several
titillating flourishes.

So this figure appears much
more alarmed

and defensive than her predecessor.

That heightens the general
sense of trespass

and so ups the erotic charge.

Aphrodite spawned a multitude

of paintings and sculptures
of the naked female body.

This was the beginning of a staple
of great Western art.

The ideal form of the female
that we were given from antiquity

is a sexualised one.

It makes it difficult for us
to conceive of female beauty,

or female excellence,
divorced from erotic appeal.

However, the Ancient Greeks
believed in excellence

in whatever was your department.

So men's department of excellence

had to do with athletics
and fighting.

The idealised man in art gets
to do athletics or wave spears.

Women's department of excellence
had to do with beauty.

So, you see women being naked
and very, very beautiful.

That is just about being
an excellent female.

We may find this sexist,
we may find this disturbing,

but we're misunderstanding
the Ancient Greek cult of excellence

in the aesthetic sphere.

CHORAL SINGING

By commissioning copies
of the Aphrodite of Knidos,

as well as other Greek masterpieces,

Hadrian bought himself his very own
slice of Greek sophistication.

And in doing so, he cemented
the idea of Ancient Greek art

as a touchstone of excellence.

It's a tradition that would
live on for a further 2,000 years.

It's the Romans we have to thank
for our knowledge of Greek art.

Ancient Greece may have
succumbed to the armies of Rome,

but her art left the rough-and-ready
Romans awestruck.

As the Roman poet Horace put it,

"The conquered Greeks in turn
conquered their savage victor."

Ancient Roman collectors
energetically plundered and copied

Greek masterpieces.

But their empire, too, would crumble

and Rome would become
a graveyard of Greek genius...

..until the city was rebuilt for a
new age of wealthy patrons

and ambitious popes.

In January, 1506,
one messenger from the Greek world

made a dramatic reappearance.

It was a chilly winter's day
more than five centuries ago

when workmen scrabbling around here
on the Esquiline Hill in Rome

chanced upon a piece of white marble
poking out of the soil.

As they dug deeper,
excavating layer by layer,

they uncovered something
magnificent.

And although the marble was still
partially covered with dirt,

one of them realised that this was
a spectacular work of art.

A breathtaking
masterpiece from antiquity

known as the Laocoon.

This was a sculpture of high drama,

action, tragedy and pathos.

The Trojan priest and his two sons

are under attack from a pair
of vicious gigantic sea serpents,

whose thick,
writhing coils grip and constrict

the agonised forms of their bodies.

And in the process, accelerate
our eyes all around the composition,

as we follow those snaking,
lightning-quick lines.

And there's tremendous chutzpah,
even in attempting

to represent slippery,
constantly mobile serpents

in a material as stiff
and unyielding as stone.

The whole sculpture then was
a bravura, elaborate showpiece.

It allowed its maker
to demonstrate his skill

at mastering such a complex
tangle of thrusting limbs.

And the representation
of the muscles under this immense

stress and strain, is breathtaking.

As are the woeful
expressions of anguish,

frozen for ever.

As an image of intense suffering,

the Laocoon has never
been surpassed.

BELLS CHIME

The Laocoon fuelled
a passion for the ancient world

that spread
throughout 16th century Rome.

The Papal city was being
remodelled in the classical style.

Learning of the Laocoon's
discovery, Pope Julius II

sent his favourite artist,
Michelangelo,

to witness its excavation.

The sculpture was brought
here to the Papal Palace.

The Laocoon was to be
the centrepiece of Julius'

growing collection of classical art.

And the art of Christendom
would be transformed.

The Church,
and the artists it employed,

were at the forefront of the most
powerful cultural

revolution in history -
the Renaissance.

The Renaissance saw Greek art
rediscovered, celebrated,

and reborn for a new generation.

The Laocoon was at the heart
of that rediscovery.

It had an immense impact on artists.

Why?

Because the idea of depicting,

erm, an extreme expression,

which completely distorts all
the features and, in fact,

somehow or other feeds
itself into the wild hair

could be immediately
read as a certain type of emotion -

fear, anxiety, terror, horror -

all these little distinctions
between all these things.

All that goes back to the Laocoon.

I can't think of this
type of expression existing

really very much in European
painting before that date.

It represented an ideal in itself,

people were
interested in imitating it,

interested in copying it and so on,

but the really important influence
of Laocoon is in the fact it set

a kind of standard,

it was something you wanted to try
and do if you were a great artist.

It was Michelangelo who had been
present at the rebirth

of the statue who was most
inspired by Laocoon's tragic beauty.

Just imagine how thrilled
Michelangelo must have felt

when he saw the Laocoon
emerging from the ground.

Admiring its grandeur, its pathos,

its vigorous expression,

he began sketching
the sculpture immediately,

he just couldn't help himself.

And in that moment of discovery,

the torch of antiquity was being
passed to the modern world.

Renaissance artists throughout
Europe

strove to achieve a new
sense of humanity in their work.

For Michelangelo,
the image of the naked body,

long excluded from Christian art,
fired his imagination.

It wasn't just the grandeur
of ancient statues that appealed

to Michelangelo,

he also became obsessed with
the animation,

the plasticity of their anatomy,

and by studying the agitated plains

and surfaces of Laocoon's
straining chest,

he could unleash in his own work
a forceful new sense of energy

and expression.

The work Michelangelo
went on to create

was imbued with profound emotion...

Celebrating the human
form in all its glory.

His paintings and sculptures paid
homage to the Greeks and to God

in equal measure.

And sculptures
like his Rebellious Slave

owe much to Laocoon's writhing form.

The curious thing about art history
is that sometimes the afterlife

of a work of art can be as important
as the moment of its creation.

When an artist with Michelangelo's
reputation

expressed admiration for the
sculptures unearthed in Rome,

then the fame of those statues
was actually enhanced.

His enthusiasm helped to shape
European culture.

It was an overwhelming factor

in the consecration of Greek
sculpture as the pinnacle of art.

Two centuries after the Renaissance,

it was the turn of British
aristocrats and gentlemen

to fall under the spell
of Ancient Greece.

On the Grand Tour,

they travelled to see these
legendary works for themselves.

When they returned to Britain,

their country retreats were
overhauled in the classical style.

The antique became
the height of 18th-century fashion.

But one discovery would take Greek
art in a surprising new direction.

It was made by the diplomat,
antiquarian and doyen of taste,

Sir William Hamilton.

From ancient classical burial sites,
he had unearthed an enormous

horde of Greek vases and
he sold them to the British Museum.

The finest vase in Hamilton's
collection was this.

It's an imposing water jar by the
fifth-century-BC potter, Meidias.

It's decorated with this
highly complex composition,

divided into two different scenes.

The top half of the vase depicts a
violent scene from Greek mythology.

The twins, Castor and Pollux,
assault the daughters of Leukippos.

At the bottom, Heracles undergoes
his final trial,

stealing the famous golden apples,

fiercely guarded
by the Hesperides nymphs.

But thanks to the really delicate
draughtsmanship,

the general mood isn't tumultuous,
or frenzied,

but rather refined
and sophisticated.

Everything here feels peaceful,
almost courtly.

The daughters look more like models
participating in a fashion parade

while Heracles,
sitting on his lion skin

and holding his hefty club,

he's more of a pretty boy in this
scene

that his usual bearded, burly self.

While those guardian nymphs, well,

they seem more than willing
to let their golden apples go.

Hamilton loved the vase
so much that he had it by his side

when he sat for the great portrait
painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds.

But it was a very different
18th-century figure who would make

the Hamilton vases truly famous.

A Stoke potter called
Josiah Wedgwood.

Wedgwood was a hugely
successful businessman.

He'd made his fortune creating
imitation porcelain tea sets

for Britain's new self-made men.

Not super-rich,
though far from poor,

the middling sort of merchants
and administrators

who wanted all the trappings
of the upper classes,

at a fraction of the price.

From that point on,

Wedgwood dedicated his every
waking moment to creating

a range of wares
inspired by Ancient Greece,

calling himself Vase-Maker
General to the Universe.

One object above all would give
Wedgwood the inspiration he
needed...

..the catalogue of Hamilton's
discoveries, compiled in 1766.

What was the point for someone
like Hamilton to produce these

clearly quite lavish books?

It was noblesse oblige.
As a travelling aristocrat,

as a diplomat, he was expected to
bring back antiquities

and other artworks that would improve
the arts and manufacturers

at home and raise the level of taste
in his native England.

It doesn't ostensibly
look like, you know...

It's not a cheap Penguin paperback?

It's certainly not that

and this book cost the equivalent
of millions for Hamilton to produce.

I mean, it nearly broke
him because of its ambition.

It was for connoisseurs who liked
to look at such things

but also for manufacturers who liked
to make such things.

Here is the best vase as it was
thought to be then in

Sir William's collection,
the Volute-krater.

Here we see the vase as a diagram.

And these are actually explicit
measurements? Oh, yes, exactly.

So, very explicitly this book
is aimed at people who might

want to reproduce this vase?
Exactly so.

This seems such a lavish thing.

It's not the kind of thing I can
imagine being used in a studio.

You wouldn't want to get it dirty.
It looks like a collectors' item

in its own sense but yet people like
Wedgwood they would have used this?

Yes, you mentioned Wedgwood.
Wedgwood is an interesting protege

for Hamilton because he fulfils
Hamilton's dream

of transforming the arts at home.

And the rising middle classes
had new money with which to buy

new things and Wedgwood served that
community of bourgeois collecting

and decorating of the home.

So, he almost... He raided this.

It became a pattern book for him?
Yes, exactly.

That's a very good
way of describing it.

He quoted the figures from different
vessels and made new versions

and it was, for him,
a creative exercise.

Just as Hamilton enjoyed seeing these
ancient vases laid down on paper,

he enjoyed seeing those paper
versions that laid down on ceramic.

Distilled within these pages
is the essence of Greek art

and culture, but for manufacturers
like Wedgwood,

this was a sort of philosopher's
stone that would enable him

to transform the clay of Stoke
into something really beautiful.

Back in Stoke, Wedgwood
set about turning Hamilton's designs

into something that could be
reproduced and sold at a profit.

Wedgwood was a brilliant chemist
and craftsmen

and at his factory in Stoke
he set to work tirelessly

experimenting with English clay,
in search of a more affordable

but still beautiful alternative
to the ancient originals

that could also be mass produced.

This vase was handmade by
Wedgwood himself,

as a star example of a new
range of pottery.

He used traditional shapes
and colours

and even copied the figure
of Heracles from the Meidias vase.

Unfortunately, it didn't sell.

Wedgwood soon realised why.

Increasingly women were taking
care of interior decor

and they wanted something
a little more fun.

Wedgwood looked to one of the days
leading architects, Robert Adam.

He too had come under the spell
of the Ancient Greek style.

His houses were classical,
elegant, refined.

And he'd pioneered a feminine

and delicate colour
scheme for his interiors.

Wedgwood went back to the
drawing board.

For years he experimented with
clays, pigments and moulds

until finally he struck upon
the perfect concoction.

What he came up with was
revolutionary.

This is it, it's known as Jasper

and the idea was that Wedgwood
would marry the pale

backgrounds of Adam
with some of the designs

that he'd encountered
in the folio of Hamilton.

But Wedgwood decided to
take his vases one step further

because rather than simply
replicating Greek figures

in 2D on the surface
of the vase,

he actually wanted to attach them,

modelled in three dimensions
like cameos onto the sides.

And he hired some of the great
neoclassical sculptors

of the day, people like John
Flaxman, to do the modelling.

So, Wedgwood's new range
was everything that the discerning

18th-century Greek-obsessed shopper
could hope for.

A Stoke potter and an English gent
had brought Ancient Greek art

into the shops, homes and minds
of 18th-century Britain...

..and transformed Greek art
from a cultivated hobby

into a modern commodity.

Do we know much about the
relationship between Hamilton

and Wedgwood? It was largely
conducted through letters.

But the letters are revealing of a
kindness between them, an intimacy.

Because they were people
of fellow feeling.

In the 18th century, manufacturers
were not just manufacturers,

they were also moral thinkers.

This was the world of ideas,
the world of the Enlightenment,

the world of intellectual
humanism.

And these people would be
sensitive to the idea

of improvements through education.

How much do you think that Hamilton
and Wedgwood should be credited

with democratising the art
of Ancient Greece?

They had, as far as I understand it,

very much at the fore of their minds
a desire to reach a wide audience.

Indeed, so, from... The key to
the richest of the Birmingham

New Industrialists,
everybody would have a Wedgwood vase

in his household.

And it would serve the same purpose
for one and all,

it would be, in a sense,
a democratising object.

Wedgwood's innovations gave Greek
life an unexpected afterlife.

Thanks to him, it was no longer
the preserve of connoisseurs

and the elite.
And by the end of the 18th century,

his Greek-inspired pottery could be
found in ordinary homes

up and down the country and across
the British Empire,

as far afield as America
and the West Indies.

The Greek style was now
recognisable the world over

as a symbol of elegance and taste.

Over the centuries,
people had found cultural cachet,

creative inspiration and commercial
profit in the art of Ancient Greece.

But at the start
of the 19th century,

a new obsession gripped Europe -
the quest for Empire.

And the art of Ancient Greece
found itself playing

a very different role.

One summer's day, in late July 1798,

an extraordinary event took place
here on the Champs de Mars in Paris.

Thousands of citizens thronged
this military parade ground

in anticipation of
something spectacular.

A triumphal procession worthy
of the emperors of Ancient Rome.

As light glinted on the swords
of the cavalry

and a marching band struck up,

this great procession wound its way
into view, with caged lions,

four camels, a bear,

and lots of wagons bearing
mysterious large packing cases.

But where the Romans had shown off
unfortunate foreign captives,

these returning soldiers
were bringing very different

victory spoils.

Art looted from the great
collections of Europe

by Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon had waged
a savage campaign.

He conquered territory
throughout Europe.

And he had sent his so-called
representatives of the people

to bring back as much cultural
booty as they could.

Napoleon wanted the people of Paris

to admire their new
cultural treasures.

Labels and slogans
on the sides of the cases

proclaimed their prestigious
contents, boxed-up masterpieces

plundered from Rome,
including the world-famous Laocoon.

But the booty that Napoleon
prized above all was left

deliberately unpacked
to dazzle the crowd.

Four monumental gilded horses.

They had travelled by road, and by
water, all the way from Venice.

Napoleon's prized stallions
are more commonly known

as the Horses of St Mark's Basilica.

From the moment that his armies
arrived here,

Napoleon was determined
to possess them.

Ignoring the heartfelt protests
of all of the Venetians

massed in St Mark's Square,
the French soldiers ripped down

those gilded horses
from their parapet.

Full-sized copies now adorn
the facade of the basilica.

They are no more Venetian
than they are French.

Most likely they are Ancient Greek.

And Napoleon wasn't the first
to covet them.

Ever since they were created,
they have proved particularly

bewitching for powerful
and ambitious men.

The magnificent originals
were returned to St Mark's

and they are now kept indoors
to protect them from the elements.

These four proud stallions
are the only full team of horses

to have survived from antiquity.

A fact that lends them
distinction enough.

And they are all powerful
horses in their prime.

The glamorous A-Listers
of the equine world, if you like.

These well-muscled, manicured
specimens with close-cropped manes

and beautifully perky,
feathery textured ears.

And they boast all of these
lovely details.

From the veins on their muzzles
and also on the legs to these

intricate folds around their eyes
and the creases at their necks.

And then these crest-like tufts of
hair in the centre of their heads.

And they all have this wonderful
sense of flickering,

irrepressible animal instinct.

Twitching, champing at the bit,

but at the same time, we can see
that they are wearing bridles

as well as these big collars
around their necks.

So we know that their rampant
spirits are being kept in check.

And that's the point
about this sculpture.

As a group,
it's a piece of flattery,

flattering whoever was in command,
literally holding the reins.

Able to wield the sort of power
usually reserved for kings or gods.

Napoleon wasn't the first conqueror
who longed to possess these horses.

They were adored by the Emperor
Constantine in Constantinople,

copied by succeeding generations,

and finally brought here to
Venice during the Fourth Crusade.

Over the centuries, the horses have
genuinely become icons of power.

Plundered time and time again.

So, by looting them, Napoleon wanted
to make something very plain -

that he belonged in the front
rank of history's greatest men.

Napoleon, like many people
before him, wanted to see himself

as either Alexander the
Great or above all, Julius Caesar.

Those were the great classical
models of the military heroes.

To do that, you have to have
a strong engagement

with classical culture.

Possessing classical culture was the
sign of class. Classics - class.

it was the sign of being
authoritative and in power.

We want our cities to look like
Roman and Greek cities,

we want to decorate our houses
with Greek and Roman art,

it becomes the sign
of being the big man.

And for Napoleon, that was important.

Napoleon knew just where
he wanted his treasures.

All of them were brought here,
to the old royal palace

at the heart of the French
capital, the Louvre.

Plunder from around the world filled
with the palace with treasures

of every conceivable
material and form.

And the palace got a new name.

The Musee du Napoleon.

Although much of Napoleon's
collection has now been returned,

the Louvre is still
one of the greatest repositories

of Greek art anywhere in the world.

As for the horses,

they were displayed in the most
exalted position of all.

At the heart of the palace complex.

They have since been replaced
with replicas,

but the effect is unchanged.

What better way to proclaim
his almighty power

than by erecting a classical arch in
the manner of the ancient emperors,

surmounted by one of the most
powerful works of art in history?

But deep in the vaults
of the Louvre,

there's an object that tells
a rather different story.

This statue of Napoleon
as an emperor was created

to ride behind the horses.

But Napoleon found it too much.

He demanded the statue
be banished from sight.

It seems that even Napoleon's
egoism had its limits.

By the 19th century, masterpieces
like these had come to be seen

as the wellspring
of European civilisation.

A fountain from which artists,
aesthetes and statesmen might drink.

But in the 20th century,

the story of Greek art
would take its darkest turn.

The setting was
the German city of Munich.

The 20th of April, 1938, was a very
special day here in Munich.

It was Adolf Hitler's birthday.

Five years after taking power,

things were going well for
the Fuhrer

and he decided to
celebrate turning 49

with a screening
of his favourite film.

TRIUMPHAL MUSIC PLAYS

The film was Olympia,

directed by Hitler's star
film-maker Leni Riefenstahl.

And it was a celebration
of the recent Olympic Games

held in Germany, which Hitler had
used as an occasion to promote

his vision of a strong, healthy,
not to say aggressive new nation.

The film opened with
a remarkable sequence.

A montage of
Ancient Greek sculpture.

The star of the show was a sculpture
known as the Discobolus,

the discus thrower,

created in the fifth century BC
by the sculptor Myron.

Riefenstahl showed this statue
morphing into a real-life

German athlete.

This image, of the perfect
classical body reborn,

utterly entranced the Fuhrer.

Scarcely a month after Hitler's
birthday screening of Olympia,

the statue itself arrived in Munich,

bought by the Nazis for a record
price of 5 million lire.

A cast of the statue can still
be found

at the former Nazi headquarters
in Munich.

To really understand
Myron's discus thrower,

you have to put it in context
and compare it with the sort

of statues that were common
just a generation or two earlier.

For a century or more,

Greek artists had created thousands
of standing nude men.

They had a certain presence.

But they were also fairly stiff and
formal and distinctly un-lifelike.

And then, in the fifth century BC,

with his bronze Discobolus,
Myron blew all of that apart.

Suddenly, we find this naturalistic
athlete mid-flow,

and that spiralling composition
is so dynamic,

so fluid, a vortex of compressed,
pent-up, soon-to-be-released energy.

Myron wanted here to advertise
an ephemeral moment,

an instant that he'd ripped
from reality and yet the result

was so satisfying and harmonious

that it felt timeless, all the same.

Munich was the perfect new home
for this timeless masterpiece.

Much of the city, its town squares
and grand public architecture,

had been remodelled more than
a century earlier by Hitler's hero,

Ludwig of Bavaria,
as a new Athens.

At its heart was a temple to
Greek art called the Glyptothek.

But as the politics of
Germany took a dark turn,

so, too, did the symbolism
of these masterpieces.

Hitler insisted that
the Germans were descended

from the Ancient Greeks.

A pure, Aryan race to whom the
Germans could look for inspiration

and he hoped that Greek art could
inspire his countrymen to glory.

But to Hitler, Greek art wasn't
just about evoking a noble past.

He wanted it to inform
Germany's future.

With great pomp and ceremony,
on the 9th of July 1938,

he presented the Discobolus
as a gift to the German people.

Hitler gave a speech that day,

extolling the "miraculous power
and vision", as he put it,

of Myron's discus thrower.

"May none of you fail
to visit the Glyptothek,"

he told the crowds, "for there you
will see how splendid man used to be

"in the beauty of his body.

"And you will realise that we can
speak of progress only when

"we have not only attained
such beauty but surpassed it."

Hundreds of miles, and thousands
of years from home,

Myron's great discus thrower
became the ultimate symbol

of Hitler's evil race politics.

How much can we see any sort
of links

between the classical tradition

and the ideology of the Nazis?

I think without
the classical tradition,

the Nazi visual ideology would
have been rather different.

Well, let's talk about
the Discobolus specifically.

What do you think Hitler really
admired about this sculpture?

As all hunters...

They...hunted for a priceless object.

And as the object could not
argue against it,

the statue cannot say no.

Yeah?

They could use it for
their perverse ideologies.

This is the crux of the story
about the Discobolus and the Nazis.

How did they use this statue
for these perverse ideologies?

The perfect Arian body.

The athletic habitus.

The beautiful, you see...

ideal, white male.

And if you like, a kind of...

not very suitable image to me
of the Herrenrasse

the "race of masters",

that is what the Nazis called
themselves and the Germans.

"Herren" means simply "master".

Herrenrasse, to put it very bluntly.

So, they weren't interested
in understanding the history

of Ancient Greece, particularly,
setting the art in context? No. No.

They were very much interested
to set them in their own context.

And for example, when they talked
about the Greek Olympic Games,

they definitely understood
something completely different

as we understood today when we talk
about Greek Olympic Games.

Just to give you one example.
What did they understand?

I think they compared it very much
to their own understanding

of Olympic Games, showing the world
that Germany is on top.

The Discobolus became the unwitting
pin-up boy of Nazi supremacist.

And Hitler encouraged artists of the
day to use the statue's optimism

and life force to help him
in his battle against

what he called "degenerate art".

This so-called degenerate art
is today accepted as

the most pioneering artistic
movement of the 20th century.

Modernism.

The great modernists
of the early 20th century,

they wanted to turn away from
the sort of beauty which had been

perfected by the Ancient Greeks.

Instead of naturalism,
they wanted to explore abstract

or expressionistic images
evoking thoughts and feelings.

But for Hitler, their revolutionary
art was inferior,

it was Jewish and, he said,
corrupted

with rootless intellectualism.

He ridiculed it, before setting out
systematically to destroy it.

In its place, he commissioned
state-sponsored Greek style art.

Most has now been destroyed,
but a few statues remain,

abandoned in the forest
on the outskirts of Munich.

When Hitler unveiled the Discobolus,

he compared Myron to the
state-sponsored sculptor,

Josef Thorak, who created these
two monumental reliefs.

And in a sense, the comparison
wasn't entirely ridiculous

because like his Greek predecessors,

Thorak was interested in
idealising the human body.

But unlike the sculptors
of classical Greece,

he unleashed a race of super men
who are neither dazzlingly beautiful

nor graceful, but instead
surprisingly awkward, blocky,

overmuscled and squat.

Semi obscured by moss,

and abandoned out here
in the elements,

these reliefs offer a potent,
melancholic reminder

of the way that Greek art
and its tradition

became corrupted under the Nazis.

2,000 years after the fall
of Ancient Greece,

its great art had suffered
the ultimate indignity.

Wedded to a fascist ideology,

pitted against artistic progress

and reduced
to a malignant caricature.

After the war, the Discobolus
was returned to Italy.

The state-sponsored art of the Third
Reich was torn down and disowned.

For some, Greek art seemed
irredeemably tainted.

Ancient Greek art seemed emblematic
of an outdated, imperial world view.

It was the go-to official
style of the Establishment

and, consequently,
irrelevant for younger artists.

And as the century wore on,

witnessing one calamity
after another,

the idealising art
of the Ancient Greeks

felt completely inappropriate for
a barbarous and chaotic New Age.

Those in the vanguard of the
modernist revolution

wanted a new kind of art.

All over Europe, the great
collections of casts

that had inspired so many
were hidden away or pulverised.

Yet the taste of the public
has proved less volatile.

The beauty and power of Ancient
Greek art has never stopped

amazing the millions who throng
the great museums of Europe.

Struck time and again
by its enduring perfection.

For centuries,

the art of Ancient Greece has been
held up as a kind of gold standard.

An ideal against which the Western
world has understood itself...

..revealing who we are...

..and where we come from.