From Enemy to Ruins: Roman Empire and Decadence in the Poetry of Dan Pagis and Haim Gouri

This chapter shows how archaeology occupies a central role in the relationship between the Israeli Jewish public and the classical past. Graeco-Roman ruins are physically present, scattered throughout the country; on an ideological level, Roman ruins represent the defeat of the Romans, the destroyers of the ancient Jewish state. The chapter illustrates the political nature of this relationship through the archaeologist Yigael Yadin’s presentation of his excavations at the Bar Kochba Caves (1960–61). It is against this broader ideological background that the chapter presents two Israeli Hebrew-language poems dealing with archaeological ruins: Dan Pagis’s ‘Decline of the Empire’ (1946) and Haim Gouri’s ‘Change’ (1979).