The Curse of Minerva

There has been a heated debate, recently fuelled by the unexpected decision of the British Museum to loan to the Russian Hermitage Museum the statue of the river god Ilissos. 

The marble sculpture is one of the disputed Parthenon Marbles pillaged by Thomas Bruce, the 7^th Earl of Elgin. The media coverage and the arguments put forward reminded me of a voice from the past, the voice of an eye-witness:

 “Mortal!”—’twas thus she (Minerva) spake—“that blush of shame

  Proclaims thee Briton, once a noble name;

     First of the mighty, foremost of the free,

     Now honour’d less by all, and least by me;

  Chief of thy foes shall Pallas still be found.

  Seek’st thou the cause of loathing?—look around.

     Lo! here, despite of war and wasting fire,

     I saw successive tyrannies expire.

  ’Scaped from the ravage of the Turk and Goth,

  Thy country sends a spoiler worse than both.

     Survey this vacant, violated fane;

     Recount the relics torn that yet remain:

  These Cecrops placed, this Pericles adorn’d,

  That Adrian rear’d when drooping Science mourn’d.

     What more I owe let gratitude attest—

     Know, Alaric and Elgin did the rest.

  That all may learn from whence the plunderer came,

  The insulted wall sustains his hated name:

  For Elgin’s fame thus grateful Pallas pleads,

  Below, his name—above, behold his deeds!

     Be ever hailed with equal honour here

     The Gothic monarch and the Pictish peer:

  arms gave the first his right, the last had none,

  But basely stole what less barbarians won.

     So when the lion quits his fell repast,

     Next prowls the wolf, the filthy jackal last;

  Flesh, limbs, and blood the former make their own,

  The last poor brute securely gnaws the bone.

     Yet still the gods are just, and crimes are cross’d:

     See here what Elgin won, and what he lost!

  Another name with his pollutes my shrine:

  Behold where Dian’s beams disdain to shine!

     Some retribution still might Pallas claim,

     When Venus half avenged Minerva’s shame.”

(The Curse of Minerva- composed on 17^th March 1811, in Athens, 

    by George Gordon Byron, aka Lord Byron)

It is probably worth watching a very short video made by Costas Gavras: