Olympeion: temple of the Olympian Zeus in the agora, bellow the Acropolis of Athens. The construction of the temple lasted for several centuries. The Roman Emperor Hadrian finished it in 131-132. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos. A Civilization of Fragile Images   Unless one visits Hellas / Greece and sees the ruins of ancient temples, theaters, and stadia, it is difficult to understand the magnificence of the country more than 2,500 years ago.  Museums (in Greece and other Western countries) remain the depositories of mere fractions of the treasures that used to be all over ancient Greece.   Decline and fall of ancient Greece   The main reasons for the decline and fall of Greece include the civil conflict, Peloponnesian War, in the last quarter of the fifth century BCE, the failure of Alexander the Great and his successors to grasp the danger from Rome, the Roman occupation of Greece in 146 BCE, and the decision of the Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth centur...

 Celebrating Dionysos, Archaeological Museum of Melos. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos. In mid-April 2022, I visited one of my favorable museums, which is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). I had not been there since 2020, the year of the dreadful pandemic.   I expected to see and admire the museum’s collections of Greek and Roman art and substantial collection of modern paintings and other artifacts.   Hiding Greek art in the basement of LACMA   But the moment I stepped into the expansive museum I sensed something was wrong. I could not find the Greek collection of statues and vases and jewelry.    I asked a museum guard to direct me to the Greek antiquities and he said the Greek and Roman antiquities were out of reach. To my astonishment, he explained the museum stored those ancient treasures in the basement to accommodate renovation or more construction. I looked at the guard with anger, saying to him the managers of the museum should see a psych...