Lord Elgin’s Marbles

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When the Elgin Marbles appeared in London between 1802 and 1812, heady talk filled the air. They would create a revolution in the arts. They would change the tastes of the entire nation. New truths would be discovered in these old stones, carved under the direction of the sculptor Phidias in the fifth century B.C. to adorn the Parthenon, the crowning jewel of the Acropolis dedicated to the goddess Athena.

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Popular interest in the marbles came from the most unexpected quarters. Inspired by some of the sculpted female heads, hairdressers invented elegant new coiffures that became the rage among English ladies in the Regency period. One riding master, distressed by the poor riding postures of his students, took his entire class to see the spirited cavalcade of the Parthenon frieze (see photo of equestrian frieze), pointing out the ease, grace and perfection of pose with which the Greek equestrians rode their steeds—without saddles or stirrups.

Even pugilists got involved. Two professional British boxers were invited by Lord Elgin to a gathering of luminaries at his Park Lane home in London, where the marbles were first displayed. The fighters stripped naked alongside the figures of Theseus (or Dionysus^a) and Ilissus from the Parthenon pediments so that their physiques could be compared to the Greek statues. By unanimous agreement, the boxers lost this anatomical beauty contest.

On other occasions, the marbles managed to offend British tastes: The proper ladies of genteel society were scandalized by so much male nudity. But even this served to intensify interest in the Phidian sculptures. It is not hard to imagine the effect of such objections, when reported in the press, on the attendance at Elgin’s gallery.

Seen up close, the marbles turned out to be so different in style from what England had expected that they upset all traditional theories about the nature of Greek classical sculpture. Heated controversies soon arose, involving not only artistic and archaeological issues but legal, moral and political ones as well. On one side, artists, scholars and connoisseurs debated aesthetic questions. On the other side, politicians and statesmen cast a suspicious eye on the circumstances surrounding the marbles’ acquisition, the damage done to the Parthenon, Elgin’s 022financing of such an elaborate operation and the propriety of his private pursuits while serving as a public official. A grand battle between apostles and opponents of the marbles raged for more than a decade before it reached its climax in an unusual parliamentary event: a hearing in the House of Commons. For a brief moment the glory that was Greece blazed brightly again in England. All that was lacking was television.

How did the Scottish nobleman Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin, come to possess the Parthenon sculptures in the first place?¹

The story begins in 1799, when the 33-year-old Lord Elgin was appointed British Ambassador Extraordinary to the Ottoman Porte at Constantinople. A popular myth still persists that he immediately set out for Greece, which had been a Turkish protectorate since the Ottoman conquest of 1450, with the intention of using the political prerogatives of his new office to pilfer the Parthenon sculptures for himself. The truth is quite different.

Shortly before Elgin left to assume his duties in the East, he received a proposal from the architect Thomas Harrison, who had designed Elgin’s house in Scotland, suggesting that Elgin employ a company of artists and technicians to make drawings and produce plaster casts of architectural and sculptural details from such famous Athenian monuments as the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheum and the Theseum (or Hephaesteum). Harrison’s goal was more commercial than cultural. He wanted Elgin to bring back faithful reproductions of Greek motifs that could be used as handy references by contemporary British architects and craftsmen.

Elgin was delighted with the idea and tried to interest the British government in financing the project, but he was turned 023down. Undeterred, he decided to bear the expenses himself. He also tried to persuade a number of promising British artists, including the young William Turner, to accept positions in his company, but the salaries he offered were unacceptable to them. The artists and technicians Elgin ultimately hired all came from abroad.

No mention was ever made by Elgin or Harrison of doing anything to the originals. “It was no part of my plan,” Elgin later insisted, “to bring away anything but my models.”² In fact, when Harrison later received word that sculptures were actually being removed from the temples on the Acropolis, he was guilt-stricken and broke off all contact with Elgin.

That Elgin initially intended simply to abide by Harrison’s proposal is clear from the composition of the workforce dispatched to Athens in the summer of 1800 under the supervision of William Richard Hamilton, Elgin’s private secretary, and the Reverend Philip Hunt, a chaplain. The company consisted of six members headed by Giovanni Battista Lusieri, a skilled Neapolitan painter of panoramic views. The other five members included a figurative illustrator, two architectural draftsmen and two formatori, or molders of casts. Had Elgin decided from the outset to remove the originals, none of these artists and technicians would have been necessary. A crew of stonecutters, riggers and day laborers would have sufficed—and at much less expense.

What changed his mind?

When Elgin’s men arrived in Athens in August 1800, the Turkish authorities in charge immediately thwarted their efforts to make casts. Both the governor of Athens (the Voivode) and the commander of the military fortress on the Acropolis (the Disdar) ruled that Elgin’s workmen would be permitted only to make drawings, for which they would be charged a fee of five guineas a day. Castings were out of the question. For this, they were told, they would need a firman, a special permit issued from headquarters in Constantinople. Elgin repeatedly tried to procure the necessary authorization, but to no avail.

The firman that Elgin sought was not unprecedented. Casting privileges had previously been granted to the French artist and antiquarian Louis-Francois-Sebastien Fauvel, who had been brought to Athens in 1783 by the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, the French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, to serve as the count’s personal agent for the procurement of classical antiquities. Choiseul-Gouffier really wanted the Parthenon sculptures themselves. He succeeded in obtaining only two original pieces—one south metope and one section of the east frieze, both now in the Louvre.³ Imagine his chagrin when, years later, Elgin, who had come well after him, managed to acquire almost all the remaining sculptures. Ironically, the ambassador who wanted only casts ended up with originals, whereas the one who wanted only originals had to settle for casts.⁴

It was not Elgin’s idea, however, to remove the Parthenon sculptures. That thought emanated from his young chaplain, Philip Hunt, whose clerical facade masked a secular eagerness to make his name and fortune in Elgin’s service. Hunt was no mere opportunist. He was an educated and enthusiastic Hellenist with an intense admiration for the Athenian monuments. But after ten fruitless months of waiting in Athens for a permit to make casts, his patience ran out. Operating on the assumption that the best defense is a good offense, he went to Constantinople and convinced Elgin to petition for a firman covering more than just casting privileges. A memorandum dated July 1, 1801, contains the first mention of taking sculptures from the Acropolis:

Mr. Hunt recommends that a Fermaun [firman] should be procured from the Porte … stating that the artists … be permitted to erect scaffolding and dig where they may to discover the ancient foundations, [and that they are at] 024liberty to take away any sculptures or inscriptions that do not interfere with the works or walls of the Citadel.⁵

This memorandum nowhere specifically requests the right to remove sculptures from the Parthenon or from any other temple. (On the other hand, nowhere is this expressly forbidden.) Some insist that the language here was intended to refer only to pieces of sculpture that had already fallen to the ground and might be recovered by excavation. They are probably right. But others see no explicit restrictions on removing figures still extant on the temples. The bottom line is that there is sufficient ambiguity in the phrase “liberty to take away any sculptures” to allow for either interpretation. Was this vagueness deliberate on Hunt’s part? Did he anticipate the advantage that could be taken from such linguistic latitude? We may never know.

What we do know is that such a firman would never have been granted to Elgin, Hunt or any other Englishman at the time were it not for an unusual turn of events in Anglo-Turkish relations. From the 16th century on, the French had wielded greater influence at the Turkish court than had the British. (The goal of Elgin’s ambassadorship was to strengthen British ties with the Ottoman Empire, thereby lessening the power of the French in the East.) In 1798 Napoleon shattered traditional Franco-Turkish amity by invading Egypt, which, like Greece, had been a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire. But the French occupation of Egypt turned into an albatross. The British navy, under Admiral Nelson, had destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile and taken control of the Mediterranean, blocking all escape routes for the French forces stranded in Egypt. Here was the opportunity the British had been waiting for to break French influence in the Ottoman court and replace it with their own.

British forces entered Egypt in March 1801; in June they won decisive victories at Cairo and Alexandria. An attempt by French naval forces sailing from Toulon to evacuate their troops failed. Now, caught between the British navy and the British army, the French commander in chief saw the futility of his position and surrendered.⁶

An instantaneous turnabout in Turkish policy toward Britain followed. Overnight, the antipathy of the Turks toward Elgin vanished. He was showered with celebrations, gifts and favors, not the least of which was issuance of the firman he and Hunt had so long sought.

Drawn up in early July 1801 at the office of the grand vizier in Constantinople and addressed to the chief judge (the Cadi) and governor (Voivode) of Athens, the firman exceeded Hunt’s fondest expectations. Not only did it grant all of his requests regarding access to the temples on the Acropolis, the use of scaffolding, the making of casts and the excavation of fallen pieces, but its final clause sealed the fate of the Parthenon marbles: Turkish officials in Athens were instructed that “when they [the English] wish to take away any pieces of stone with inscriptions or figures, no hindrance or opposition be made thereto.”⁷

Nonetheless, there is no real evidence that the Turks’ generosity toward their new British friends included granting them the right to violate the Parthenon by removing attached sculptures. Hunt quickly realized that an admonition from Turkish authorities to their subordinates in Athens—thou shalt not hinder them from taking away—carried even more weight psychologically than his own phrase, “liberty to take away.” On the strength (or on the weakness) of this fateful final clause, the door was opened for Elgin and his colleagues to set about acquiring the Parthenon sculptures.

Hunt later described to the Select Committee of Parliament how he had proceeded:

When the original of the Firmaun was read to the Voivode in Athens he seemed disposed to grant any wish of mine in respect to Lord Elgin’s pursuits, in consequence of which I asked him permission to remove the most perfect, and as it appeared to me the most beautiful Metope. I obtained that permission and acted on it immediately … The facility with which this had been obtained induced Lord Elgin to apply for permission to lower other groups of sculpture which he did to a considerable extent.⁸

Not entirely satisfied with this account, the committee members pressed Hunt further by asking whether he thought the firman gave actual permission to remove pieces of sculpture from the structures. Hunt would not take the bait:

That was the interpretation which the Voivode of Athens was induced to allow it to bear … It was to gratify what he conceived to be the favourable wishes of the Turkish government toward Lord Elgin … which induced him rather to extend than contract the precise permissions of the Firmaun.⁹

Hunt had cleverly absolved himself of any blame by shifting the responsibility for the decision to remove the sculptures entirely to the Turks.

What gave Hunt the freedom to act as he did was the absence of Elgin, who had been serving in Constantinople and was unable to visit Athens until the following year. Hunt’s bold seizure of the first metope took Elgin completely by surprise; there is no evidence that Elgin himself had ever interpreted the firman as granting permission to detach sculptures from the temples. That leaves us with the disturbing thought that things might have gone very differently had Elgin been on the scene in Athens. In any case, nothing succeeds like success: Hunt’s coup emboldened Elgin to ask for more 025Parthenon sculptures. Still mindful of the original mission, however, he urged Lusieri to continue making casts of anything that could not be removed.

The justification for taking the originals had already been provided to Elgin by Hunt, Hamilton and Lusieri. In their letters they had repeatedly informed him that the Turks were ruthlessly mistreating and destroying the remaining Greek antiquities. In the belief that he was rescuing precious works of art from inevitable extinction at the hands of barbarians, Elgin authorized further acquisitions.

Elgin’s fear of Turkish destructiveness was by no means a disingenuous rationalization. While officially the Ottoman court professed a protective attitude toward Greek antiquities as sacred religious objects, in reality the Voivode and the Disdar of Athens could not (or would not) prevent soldiers or other occupants of the Acropolis from desecrating them. One favorite Turkish practice was to pulverize fallen pieces of sculpture or architecture and burn them in a lime kiln, yielding a mortar used to construct Turkish houses. Elgin recounted one such story of a Turkish resident on the Acropolis whose house was bought and torn down by Elgin’s crew so they could dig for sculptures buried in the ground beneath. Several major figures from the west pediment had already been found in nearby excavations. But this time the digging yielded nothing. Only after the work team had given up the search did the owner of the house laughingly inform them that he had long ago used the marbles that had fallen at that very spot in the construction of the dwelling they had just destroyed.¹⁰

The abuse of antiquities had started centuries before the Turks arrived in Greece. There is a long and gruesome history of damage to the Parthenon. In the third century A.D., its roof and interior were 066completely destroyed by fire and had to be rebuilt.¹¹ In the early sixth century, when the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church, all the sculptures in the central section of the east pediment were removed to permit the building of the apse. They have never been found. Thereafter, religious iconoclasm, directed at pagan statuary during the Middle Ages, accounted for the mutilation, beheading or defacement of many figures whose identities are no longer recognizable.

The severest blow came in 1687 during a war between the Turks and the Venetians. A Venetian shell scored a direct hit on the Parthenon, which was being used by the Turks as an ammunition depot for their fortress. The resulting explosion devastated the structure. The roof, most of the walls of the cella (the temple’s main chamber) and the whole interior were demolished. Numerous columns of the magnificent peristyle and porticoes were felled and their drums fragmented. Many of the sculptures from the west pediment and the north and south metopes were disfigured or destroyed. Whole sections of the frieze vanished. To add insult to injury, General Morosini, of the victorious Venetian army, decided to take a souvenir of his triumph home to Venice; he attempted to remove from the center of the west pediment the colossal figures of the god Poseidon and two horses leading Poseidon’s chariot, which had fortunately survived the bombing. But when the tackle used to lower the figures broke, the entire group fell to earth and shattered beyond repair.

These catastrophes had disastrous consequences. Not only did they turn the temple into a skeletal ruin, but they begot further ruination. Instead of sounding universal warnings of the temple’s vulnerability, they became a declaration to the world that henceforth it was open season on the Parthenon.

As interest in Greece rose in the 18th and 19th centuries, thousands of western travelers came to pay homage to the venerable wreck—and everybody wanted to take home a piece of it. Would-be collectors scavenged the mounds of rubble for scraps of sculpture or architecture. They bought pieces of the marbles at outrageous prices from Turks who had illicitly acquired them. They broke off noses, fingers, toes and anything else they could reach from the figures still extant, and they bribed the soldiers on the Acropolis to assist them.¹² Such nefarious practices could not have flourished without the collusion of Turkish officials in Athens, for whom antiquities dealing had become a lucrative business. Today, numerous fragments of Parthenon sculpture, acquired illegally but long since laundered into respectability, grace the walls of museums throughout the world.

There was something else that Elgin feared even more than vandalism by Turks and travelers: He was afraid that if he did not take the Parthenon sculptures, the French would. Elgin wrote to Lusieri on August 9, 1802:

It seems clear to me that the French have it in their minds to occupy themselves immensely with Greece, both in the arts and in politics. I have reason to believe … that artists will be sent into Greece not without the hope of preventing the completion of my work and my collections and not even without the hopes of presenting the same subjects to the public before my works can appear.¹³

When Elgin’s term as ambassador to Turkey ended in 1803, he decided to return to England via Rome and Paris. In Paris his luck ran out. While he was there, the intermittent war between France and England again broke out. All Englishmen in Paris between the ages of 18 and 60 were declared prisoners of war. Contrary to assurances that as an ambassador he had the privilege of diplomatic immunity, Elgin was seized by gendarmes and placed under house arrest.

His detention was, indeed, a mistake, and he would have been released were it not for the intervention of Napoleon, who 067saw Elgin’s captivity as an opportunity to wrest the Parthenon sculptures from him. Elgin was kept in France for the next three years under constant pressure from the French government to exchange his antiquities for his freedom. When that strategy failed to work, Napoleon offered to purchase the marbles from Elgin at any price. But Elgin would not sell. Neither for freedom nor for profit would he betray his goal of preserving the collection for his own country. That persistent hope, at least, helped offset some of the stigma he bore for having taken the Parthenon marbles in the first place.

When he was first arrested, Elgin sent instructions to his family in Scotland to turn over his entire collection to the government, unconditionally. But his family, out of doubt or misunderstanding, simply left the cases of marbles unopened at the various ports in England where they had arrived. Of this Elgin remained completely unaware, believing that the marbles were safely in the hands of the British government. Why then didn’t he simply inform Napoleon that the marbles were no longer in his control—that they were not his to sell? Perhaps he kept the secret as a means of manipulating the emperor, on the theory that it never hurts to hold some cards close to one’s chest. In any event, Napoleon finally gave up, and Elgin was released, unharmed, in 1806. He returned to London, where his collection awaited him. The Napoleonic episode leaves no doubt about the sincerity of Elgin’s intention to nationalize his collection.

Perhaps what speaks loudest of all on Elgin’s behalf is something that never took place. All suspicions to the contrary, no plan on his part to domesticate the Parthenon sculptures at his family estate in Scotland has ever been demonstrated. His steadfast intention, it appears, was to present the precious sculptures to his countrymen.

But it was not until a decade after Elgin returned to England, on June 7, 1816, that the British government finally decided to purchase the sculptures, which ever since have been housed in the British Museum. These years were a contentious time in which British understanding (or misunderstanding) of the aesthetics of classical antiquity was put to the test (see “How the Marbles Changed History,” sidebar to “Lord Elgin’s Marbles”). And the ten years of strife took their toll on Elgin.

By 1815, Elgin’s total expenses had reached a staggering £72,240. To sustain the operation on the Acropolis, which continued after he left Greece, Elgin went into tremendous debt. In 1811, Spencer Perceval, the prime minister of England, offered him £30,000 for the whole collection. Though far below what Elgin expected, he would have taken it had Perceval, in recognition of the service Elgin had rendered his country, been willing to sweeten the pot by granting Elgin an English peerage, whose privileges were far superior to those of a Scottish earldom.¹⁴ But the prime minister would not hear of it, and the negotiations fell through.¹⁵

In the end, Elgin settled for only £35,000. By then, however, money was no longer among his principal interests. Hounded by accusations of vandalism, greed, hypocrisy, misuse of public funds and collusion with foreign agents to sell the marbles abroad, Elgin wanted desperately to clear his name. The best way to accomplish that, he reasoned, was to persuade his countrymen that he had brought them a treasure of unsurpassed brilliance and value.

He took the bold step in 1815 of proposing that Parliament, before deciding on the monetary value of the collection, appoint a Select Committee of the House of Commons to hear not only Elgin’s own story of the acquisition but the testimony of expert witnesses on the artistic and historical value of the Parthenon sculptures. This time Elgin agreed in advance to accept whatever amount the committee offered at the end of its deliberations.

Elgin’s courageous decision to place his reputation and the fate of his collection in the hands of the nation is beyond reproach. Elgin acted honorably, out of the conviction that great art cannot be given mere monetary value. In its report, the committee deliberately exonerated Elgin of any official or personal misconduct. The marbles he had collected, moreover, were beginning to foment a lasting revolution in taste.

But the long ordeal had ruined him. He remained in debt for the rest of his life and was forced to flee to France to escape his creditors. Once the matter of the marbles was settled, his country had no further use for him. He died in Paris in 1841, a broken man.

When the Elgin Marbles appeared in London between 1802 and 1812, heady talk filled the air. They would create a revolution in the arts. They would change the tastes of the entire nation. New truths would be discovered in these old stones, carved under the direction of the sculptor Phidias in the fifth century B.C. to adorn the Parthenon, the crowning jewel of the Acropolis dedicated to the goddess Athena. 020 Popular interest in the marbles came from the most unexpected quarters. Inspired by some of the sculpted female heads, hairdressers invented elegant new coiffures that became the rage […]