Poetry wednesday; Byron and the Marbles,

Lord Thomas Elgin (British Ambassador to Constantinople 1799-1803) removed whole boatloads of ancient sculpture from Greece's capital city of Athens. Most important of these was the fifth-century BC sculptures taken from the Parthenon, the temple to the goddess Athena, which stood on the Acropolis hill in the centre of the city.

The Parthenon sculpture included about a half (some 75 metres) of the sculpted frieze that once ran all round the building, plus 17 life-sized marble figures from its gable ends and 15 of the 92 metopes, sculpted panels, originally displayed high up above its columns. These were brutally and savagely hacked away from their original and rightful position along the Parthenon. To this day the British Museum refuses to apologise for this theft or to return these priceless works of antiquity and have them restored to their rightful position

Before all the sculptures - soon known as the Elgin Marbles – even reached their destination, Lord Byron attacked Elgin in stinging verses, lamenting (in 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage') how the antiquities of Greece had been 'defac'd by British hands'

 

Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!

"I stood,
Among them, but not of them;
In a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts"
-----Lord Byron, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

 

add your name to those who demand to see the marbles returned.

http://www.marblesreunited.org.uk/