The Greeks have been told that Pericles may soon have to shake a little in the name of progress. If the Athens Metro company has its way, the golden age statesman will be one of many who will have to endure trains passing under his grave.
The idea that the foundations of democracy should be so rudely rocked has sparked uproar. How, cry archaeologists, can works on the capital's long-awaited new subway system be allowed to destroy the Kerameikos cemetery, one of antiquity's greatest sites? Doesn't Pericles deserve better than to vibrate in peace?
As Metro workers prepare to dig a test tunnel under the site, the fracas shows every sign of getting worse.
From its inception, the $2.8 billion Athens Metro project was being hailed for its ability to break records.
As a result of EU munificence and vital loans from the European Investment Bank, the project's primary financiers, archaeologists got their dream-ticket excavation. At 69,000 square metres it is a dig of unprecedented dimensions.
When the trains are finally running on the network's 21 km of lines, officials claim it will remove some 250,000 cars from the streets - another record. But it seems the real record lies in the delay of the project. At $720,000 a day, time has rarely been so costly.
"We'll be lucky to have part of the subway in operation by the time Athens stages the Olympics in 2004," says Mr Dimitris Anagnostopoulos, a local transit expert.
This month, in full view of television cameras and pedestrians, a huge tunnel-boring machine swallowed up large chunks of Athens's main avenue. As the earth opened up above it, a roadside kiosk disappeared into the cavity, after scores of residents had been relocated from apartment blocks that had begun to list dangerously.
Angry archaeologists claim that building a station near the cemetery has destroyed a thousand ancient graves. The government recently agreed to abandon using a tunnelboring machine on the Kerameikos line, and Olympic Metro has been told to use more conventional methods - such as the hand and spade.