Diver from Paestum. Youth, Eros and the Sea in Ancient Greece

The famous German archaeologist Tonio Hölscher (b. 1940) offers his interpretation of the frescoes of the so-called Tomb of the Diver in Paestum, discovered in 1968, a unique monument of Greek painting of the classical period. Restoring the historical context... of the work, Hölscher diverges from its metaphysical interpretations and examines the scene of the young man’s deft jump into the water based on the significance of the physical, bodily principle for the way of life of the ancient Greeks. The culture of growing up, the prestige of a trained body, and eroticism turn out, according to his conclusions, to be key elements of social life both in the Greek polis and beyond, in the “anti-world” of wild spaces.