A parable on authenticity

Some time ago in Athens, a meeting took place concerning the restoration of the Acropolis Monuments. Naturally, the Parthenon was a central topic. For several decades, the temple has incurred intense debate as to the most appropriate means of maintaining this ruin when confronted with the choice between a careful restoration of selected parts and an actual reinsertion of elements in what is now believed to be their proper positions. Previous restorations are re-established, yet at the same time friezes and metopes are removed from the positions they have held since the erection of the temple in order to protect them in the museum to be constructed just towards the south of the Acropolis. Instead exact copies are inserted, cut from pentelic marble side by side with the recovered original building stones and fragments which after intense in-depth studies are meticulously put together using the most advanced techniques and modern binders. The numerous discussions concerning these difficult and contradictory problems brought to mind Plutarch's famous "case study" and gave rise to the following essay over the differing perspectives on history that often appear when we seek to preserve irreplaceable values.