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 7th 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 17th March 1811, in Athens,
by George Gordon Byron, aka Lord Byron)
It is probably worth watching a very short video made by Costas Gavras:
