These Marbles Were Never White

The year is 2025. Matt Damon wears a red broom on his head in his first promotional image as the protagonist in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film adaptation of The Odyssey,¹ and I’m already too exhausted to argue about it on the internet. But perhaps I should backtrack a bit. 

The year is 1801. Lord Elgin, in his capacity as British ambassador in Ottoman-occupied Greece and after supposedly acquiring a permit from the occupiers, begins removing marble sculptures from the Acropolis. This highly destructive process continues until 1812, despite philhellenic voices like Lord Byron’s calling him a vandal. In 1816, Elgin sells what he henceforth refers to as the “Elgin Marbles” to the British government, to be displayed at the British Museum. 

Hmm. Perhaps I backtracked too much. 

Let me try this again: the year is 1983, 160 years since Greece clawed its way from under Ottoman rule and became independent. The Greek government formally asks the UK government to return the Parthenon marbles to Greece—but the UK states that Greece lacks a suitable location to display them in all their grandeur. 

The year is 2009, and Greece launches the Acropolis Museum. It amasses architectural awards and features plaster copies and poignant notes where these marbles should have been.²

The year is 2021, and UNESCO asks the UK government to resolve the issue. 

The year is 2023, and The Telegraph publishes an article titled, “If the British Museum loses its marbles, nationalism triumphs over humanity’s common heritage.”

The year is 2025, and the marbles have still not been returned. I know you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with Matt Damon and his broom-like helmet. This is proving very difficult for me, you see. Let me try another approach that might make more sense.

The year is 2011, and author and classicist Madeline Miller publishes The Song of Achilles, a tender retelling of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus during the Trojan War. The book sells several million copies worldwide, creating a renewed interest in Greek myth retellings from Anglophone publishers in the US and the UK. 

The year is 2025, and according to Goodreads lists, the number of Greek myth retellings currently out there is close to three hundred. These retellings range from sticking close to the source material to offering imaginative and subversive spins on the myths they handle. Some of them are masterpieces; some are haphazardly put together to capitalize on a trend; some are great fun and a breath of fresh air. But for all their qualitative range, they are, in their overwhelming majority, not written by Greek authors: out of three hundred or so Greek myth retellings, only two are written by contemporary Greek authors. Winter Harvest by Ioanna Papadopoulou, an exquisitely researched Demeter retelling, and the imaginative YA duology Threads That Bind and Hearts That Cut by Kika Hatzopoulou, about the descendants of the Moirai and the Muses. And in 2026, by the time my novel Vile Lady Villains comes out featuring one very angry Klytemnestra, the number of Greek authors writing Greek myth retellings might rise to a whopping three out of three-hundred-however-many. Am I making sense yet? 

Thankfully the short fiction landscape is more diverse. Although there was a Greek myth anthology published recently that contained zero Greek authors (leading to Lyndsie Manusos’s Book Riot article “In a Wave of Greek Mythology Retellings, Where Are the Greek Writers?”),³ Greek and diaspora authors are in fact out there, penning short stories filled with myth and wonder, rage and revolution. From reimaginings such as Eleanna Castroianni’s Ariadne and the Minotaur in “Darkness, Our Mother,” which showcases the differences between Athenian and Minoan culture,⁴ and Eugenia Triantafyllou’s Demeter–Persephone in “Always Be Returning,” which dissects the cyclical nature of mother–daughter relationships,⁵ to examinations of contemporary Greek culture weaved in with the folkloric, such as in Avra Margariti’s “Threnody in Dark Wood,” which centers moirologistres (Greek professional mourners, who have existed since antiquity),⁶ our relationship with Greek mythology is one enriched by the way our heritage has twisted and turned over the years. We’ve picked up influences from other Levant and Mediterranean nations, from the Balkans—which were also under Ottoman rule for centuries—and unavoidably from the Ottomans themselves. We are the sum of our collected ruins and the amalgamation of thousands of years of stories, stories that were neither perceived by nor sanitized for the Western lens. One such story I return to often is “The Trauma Tourist” by Christos Callow Jr.,⁷ which I had the honor to edit for khōréō’s Issue 4.4. “The Trauma Tourist” features a method actor who takes things too far to “authentically” portray a Greek hero—the story furiously, ingeniously interrogating who is entitled to, and who profits from, a culture’s myths and suffering. 

Of course, stories—unlike marbles—belong to everyone. You don’t have to be of a certain cultural heritage to explore said heritage through art. If anything, we only get richer when BIPOC authors write their versions of Greek retellings. From Rani Selvarajah’s Medea set in 1757 Calcutta in Savage Beasts, weaving in a critique of British colonialism, to Ayana Gray’s upcoming I, Medusa, which reimagines the Gorgon as a young Black woman, to Saara El-Arifi’s exciting upcoming take on Cleopatra, BIPOC engagement with Greek myths is not informed by Western appropriation, but by a critical understanding of different types of marginalization—a way of talking about historically maligned characters that adds depth and nuance. To me, that is more important than being “loyal” to the source material, because which source material are we talking about? The Greece of the Bronze Age (c. 3200 BCE–c. 1250 BCΕ) was wildly different from the Greece of classical antiquity (8th–5th century BCE), and neither existed as the homogenous construct the West now envisions. 

Although granted, when working on Greek myth retellings, or any retellings, it helps to have at least some consultants with genuine interest in that culture. In Christopher Nolan’s case, someone could have pointed out that Bronze Age Greece was a vibrant place and that was reflected in the colors men wore—even to battle. It’s not like we don’t have the artifacts to point to. In fact, someone could have taken that a step further and talked about how the idea of masculinity in dark leather and muted colors has absolutely nothing to do with ancient Greece and everything to do with the Western gaze (and indeed with Frank Miller’s 300 comics series from 1998). Yet no one did. Apparently there was no need: a Universal Studios exec after all stated “that Homer himself would quite likely be proud,”⁸ and who am I to disagree with such a surreal claim? Please, I’m exhausted. Being a Greek person on the internet is a peculiar minefield: whenever I’ve spoken out on a subject relevant to my culture, whether it’s sharing my opinion on Emily Wilson’s powerful Odyssey translation or simply writing stories inspired by the myths I grew up with, I’ve been accused of everything from lying to . . . plagiarizing Percy Jackson. 

And it’s not about me. Western civilization has always had an entitlement when it comes to Greek myths, culture, and architecture; it has consistently used and whitewashed our culture, to further everything from imperialistic narratives to WASP aesthetics to white supremacy. What’s extra baffling is that the “white” past they are enamored of never existed—and then they become hilariously and hypocritically offended whenever new adaptations of Greek myths feature BIPOC actors or characters. Nolan casting Zendaya and Lupita Nyong’o in The Odyssey is not what’s offensive; not involving a single Greek actor in the whole $250 million production is. Not only because BIPOC Greek people very much exist, but also because “Greekness” (however nebulous the term) was never equated with “whiteness” until the West took an interest in it.

The ancient Greek world was inherently pluralistic, with city-states having distinct cultural identities and worldviews but united by language and worship, rallying together during wartime—particularly during the Greco-Persian Wars (499–449 BCE). While this world was not without its many issues around gender and class oppression, prejudice based on skin color was largely not a thing: according to Herodotus, Greeks viewed different skin colors as something neutral that denoted a people’s proximity to sunny climates. Even our marbles were never white: they were painted in vivid colors (that I’m sure would give Nolan a conniption), the color of their eyebrows black and stormy, their skin toasted olive, their hair curly and wild. They wore gaudy blues and reds and yellows, and they were even perfumed.⁹ I often wonder if Elgin would have left the sixth Caryatid be with her sisters in Erechtheion, had she retained her colors; had she not fit his misinformed idea of the perfect alabaster maiden, shaped by the British Empire’s colonialist and imperialist minds.  

The year is 2025, and my hope is that Greek myth retellings and adaptations will finally get the colors they deserve, and that Matt Damon will take a look at himself in the mirror and see what I see: a red broom worn as a helmet, so hilariously bad it’s not even worth my arguing about it on the internet. Maybe he should read “The Trauma Tourist” while he’s at it.

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1. “Matt Damon Is Odysseus In First Look At Christopher Nolan’s Epic Greek Mythology Reimagining ‘The Odyssey’”, Deadline, https://deadline.com/2025/02/the-odyssey-first-look-matt-damon-odysseus-christopher-nolan-1236292883/. ↩︎
2. The Parthenon Gallery, https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/exhibit-halls/parthenon-gall. ↩︎
3. Lyndsie Manusos, “In a Wave of Greek Mythology Retellings, Where Are the Greek Writers?”, Book Riot, https://bookriot.com/greek-writers-of-greek-mythology-retellings/. ↩︎
4. Eleanna Castroianni, “Darkness, Our Mother”, Clarkesworld, https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/castroianni_12_17/. ↩︎
5. Eugenia Triantafyllou, “Always Be Returning”, The Sunday Morning Transport, https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/p/always-be-returning. ↩︎
6. Avra Margariti, “Threnody in Dark Wood”, Psychopomp, https://psychopomp.com/deadlands/issue-33/threnody-in-dark-wood/. ↩︎
7. Christos Callow Jr., “The Trauma Tourist”, khōréō magazine, https://www.khoreomag.com/fiction/the-trauma-tourist/. ↩︎
8. “Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Is a ‘Masterpiece That Homer Himself Would Likely Be Proud Of,’ Universal Executive Declares”, Variety, https://variety.com/2025/film/news/christopher-nolan-odyssey-masterpiece-universal-says-1236358279/. ↩︎
9.  “Ancient Greek and Roman Statues Were Not Only Beautiful, but Also Smelled Nice, Too”, Smithsonian magazine, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-greek-and-roman-statues-were-not-only-beautiful-but-also-smelled-nice-too-180986280/. ↩︎

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