nm0005: on a double-sided sheet and once again i haven't put a summary on this 
one but what i have put er er as with the pictures before is extracts er in 
this case ancient documents which i'll explain briefly towards the end we've 
got a little bit of time i think to look at those but you can er read them in 
your own time as well the other sheet i will also talk about at the end it's it 
gives you information what's required for the seminars which are planned for 
next Tuesday now er there is nothing on Monday because it's the bank holiday 
but the seminar should go ahead as normal on Tuesday er i've got er a sort of a 
grid with times for you to sign up in the different groups all being well 
you'll be able to stay in the same groups you were er in before with namex but 
er if there's a problem if there's a timetable clash you can move to er another 
group er and if there are any problems with that you can consult me think it's 
best if i just put that up on the notice 
board afterwards and you can go and sign up er on the back of er that er page 
with the information about the seminar is er a couple of extracts from poems by 
Lord Byron which you can enjoy in your own time but the verses just er at the 
bottom of that page from the a poem called the Curse of Minerva are a suitable 
introduction to this phase in the story of the Acropolis and the reception of 
the Parthenon daughter of Jove in Britain's injured name a true born Briton may 
the deed disclaim frown not on England England owns him not Athena no thy 
plunderer was a Scot now those are not Byron's er best verses but they are a 
suitable start because the Scottish plunderer of course is Lord Elgin and er 
the plunder was the sculptures of the Parthenon and this is the controversy 
that still rages today that you'll be looking at in some detail you'll be 
looking at the contemporary controversy in next week's seminars the sorts of 
arguments that you'll be examining 
looking at er er the er contemporary er polemics er in most cases they have 
their origins right here at the start of the nineteenth century er we left the 
Parthenon er last time in sixteen-eighty-seven with the huge hole in the middle 
of it if you remember in sixteen-eighty-seven shortly after the sculptures had 
been drawn by Jacques Carrey er the Parthenon was destroyed in the Venetian 
bombardment of the Acropolis the Acropolis was a fortress ammunition was stored 
on it it was bombarded and the Parthenon which miraculously had remained intact 
up until that stage because it had er constantly been used er er really became 
the sort of ruin that we recognize today between then between the end of the 
seventeenth century and eighteen-hundred there had been several attempts by 
westerners western Europeans to remove little bits and pieces of the sculpture 
from the site er and from the building itself and er we think of the Parthenon 
sculptures as being mainly in the British 
Museum but there are little bits and pieces i-, in Paris and Copenhagen er in 
Vienna er and Rome and elsewhere nevertheless the sculptures of the Parthenon 
had remained largely intact er up until er the start of the nineteenth century 
in spite of this er i've said before in the two introductory lectures on the 
reception of classical art and er of architecture er i said that the eighteenth 
century er saw an increased understanding of the difference between Roman and 
Greek art and an increased interest in imitating specifically classical Greek 
models rather than just generally the sculpture or architecture of the ancients 
er so er though the sculptures of the Parthenon er remained largely intact in 
the eighteenth century they were becoming increasingly well known people to er 
a greater extent were aware that this was a real site that existed in 
contemporary Greece rather than just a famous temple mentioned in ancient 
literary sources now in seventeen-ninety-nine er Lord 
Elgin was appointed as er ambassador to the court of the Ottoman Empire and he 
took this opportunity of his dispatch to er Constantinople to Istanbul to er 
obtain permission er for his agents to do some limited work on the site of the 
Acropolis he was allowed in er a document called a firman which is a was an 
Ottoman a sort of permit to do er to granting certain favours er to outsiders 
he was granted this permission to do er limited excavation in a sense not 
excavation er er in in the modern sense er but retrieve some of the sculptures 
from the site and to draw and copy and study er the sculptures of the Parthenon 
now today there's controversy over what exactly that permission involved just 
what sort of legal right even in the terms of er the Ottoman Empire Lord Elgin 
had er to do what he did but from any point of view there's no doubt that he er 
interpreted er his permission er broadly and before he'd even set foot in 
Athens which he did briefly in eighteen-o-two his men had begun the 
process of removing everything that wasn't er attached to the building and er 
nearly everything that was in removing these sculptures from the temple the 
sculptures which were an integral part of the building not just decorations 
stuck on the outside Lord Elgin's men caused considerable damage to the 
building in his absence his agents shipped these sculptures [laugh] in his 
absence this er agents shipped these sculptures back to er back to England and 
they included well things you've seen before that should be er quite familiar 
er fifty slabs representing fifty separate slabs er representing the Parthenon 
frieze er that's one of the individual slabs here er er and then a little 
drawing as you saw before reconstructing the sort of view from the ground as 
you look at the frieze in situ up inside the colonnade of the Parthenon the 
sides of the frieze er he retrieved fifteen of the metopes the high relief 
sculptures from the outside of the temple most of the the best preserved ones 
representing the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs and you removed er 
what was left of the er pedimental sculptures from the gables at each end er of 
the temple er these are what's left of the er of the east pediment in the 
British Museum representing the birth of Athene these had already been damaged 
in the course of the eighteenth century by previous attempts to remove bits and 
pieces er individual figures from the pedimental sculptures had been removed 
and there'd been a Venetian attempt to remove quite a lot so they'd been 
damaged before Lord Elgin came along and just to give you some idea of their 
state before the Venetian bombardment in sixteen-eighteen-seven these are er 
Jacques Carrey's drawings er of er the er the west pediment representing the 
struggle between Athene and Poseidon so most of this material brought back to 
the British Museum er and that's where it is now of course how many of you how 
many of you have seen the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum 
nearly everybody the rest of you probably have without remembering anything 
about it it's not far away so next time you're in London take take er take the 
opportunity to go and look at them and also think about the way they're 
displayed in the British Museum which is quite interesting what it implies 
about the nineteenth century view er of what these sculptures are and why 
they're important you'll also notice in the British Museum just to one in one 
of the smaller galleries off to one side partly in response to the contemporary 
controversy the Greek demands for the return of the Elgin Marbles er there are 
new displays which put much more emphasis on the original context of the 
sculptures and what sort of role they had on the temple itself er Elgin also 
removed other bits and pieces from the Acropolis er including you know one of 
the caryatids one of the architectural er female figures from the Erectheum 
which if you remember on the plan was next to er next to the 
Parthenon well there's no doubt that Elgin was acting from personal er from 
motives of personal gain he wanted these sculptures er as as many other 
aristocrats in that period wanted classical sculptures as the suitable 
cultivated adornments for his home these sculptures were exceptional they were 
beyond the means of most aristocratic collectors in this period but it's the 
same kind of thing he wanted them er as er the suitable adornments of his er s-,
specifically of the property he was building in Scotland it may or may not be 
true what he later claimed that he was bringing these things back and his 
drawings and plaster casts as well for the s-, for the good of the arts and 
crafts of Britain that these things were going to be a sort of inspiring 
example to nineteenth century er British designers and artists er i suppose 
it's really fair to say that those two motives were rather blurred in Elgin's 
own mind er as well as some of his supporters 
now it's very easy especially in light of the contemporary debate and our 
attitudes to er the plundering of cultural heritage to condemn Lord Elgin er 
there's a book which you will look at you should look at especially if you're 
answering er if you're writing an essay on er the Elgin controversy which is 
this book by Christopher Hitchens which is on your general bibliography er and 
and today's handout as well The Elgin Marbles Should They Be Returned To Greece 
if you see a book with a title like that you know that it's not he's not 
genuinely asking that question and that what he really means is the Elgin 
Marbles why they should be returned to Greece it's a very polemical book it's a 
political tract er it's factually wrong in many places it's er it twists the er 
historical evidence er it's very er rhetorical last year i devoted a whole 
lecture to analysing the rhetoric er which he uses to put his point across not 
time to do that this year but it would be good if you er have a look at that 
anyway er Hitchens is er obviously very hostile to Elgin and he sees him as a 
sort of grasping hypocrite er totally unscrupulous and he finds it deeply 
ironic that Lord Elgin and his contemporaries his associates could talk about 
er Napoleon's plundering of Italy at that time Napoleon taking paintings and 
sculptures from Italy back to France er and and even Elgin and and his er 
friends could compare their own er depredations with those of er Napoleon and 
yet they didn't see anything wrong in what they were doing Napoleon's actions 
were self-evidently wrong he was plundering these cultural treasures of Italy 
there was nothing wrong with what Elgin was doing and i think to understand 
that apparent er double double standard er we have to remember that the er the 
there's a kind of er difference in the way that er western Europe and its 
cultural treasures would have been viewed a-, a-, and and the way in which the 
the r-, er ancient ruins of of Greece would have 
been viewed just at that period we've a very clear idea of cultural treasures 
of cultural heritage but in that period there was a difference in i-, in 
people's minds between the plundering of the galleries of the established 
states of western Europe and the recovering of outdoor ruins from a small 
fortress settlement on the very edge of the Ottoman Empire which is what Athens 
was er in that period having said that there is er an inconsistency a deep 
tension in the way in which Elgin and his like-minded contemporaries were 
thinking they clearly recognized the documents show that they clearly 
recognized er Elgin's enemies recognized that er hi-, the way that he went 
about recovering these sculptures was clumsy and self-interested and it 
resulted in the demolition of a well preserved and and well known classical 
monument Elgin was much criticized in his own time as we'll see on the other 
hand you could easily argue that he was just doing on a grander scale what er 
other aristocrats from Britain and and western European countries were doing in 
the the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and the British Museum is 
full of er monuments that were brought back from Turkey and Greece and other 
countries in a time when really the-, there didn't seem to be anything er wrong 
with er in a sense recovering these outdoor remains for civilization so in that 
sort of tension between the criticism of Elgin er the the er er er near 
acceptability of what he was doing you can see that really att-, er 
contemporary attitudes are wavering between those two extremes we're on the er 
the edge of acceptability and unacceptability it didn't take long for that 
balance to tip one way so we do very quickly have outspoken romantic 
nationalist attacks on Elgin from people like Byron and Byron is the most 
outspoken of all who have already developed a clear idea of Greece as a 
distinct modern nation with its own special cultural 
heritage now we should find that attitude rather surprising in this period 
remember that Greece doesn't exist at this time the state of Greece doesn't 
exist and had never existed at the start of the nineteenth century it had 
existed in a sense as a province of the Roman Empire but it's a few years after 
this in the eighteen-twenties that er Greece won its independence and became a 
nation state so in a sense Byron's er attitudes his idea of the Greek nation 
and its er spiritual property i-, is a a rather novel one today those sorts of 
sentiments are er perfectly familiar to us still we should bear in mind the 
ambiguities of the time and these are particularly clear if you er if for 
example when you start to look at the letters exchanged between er the the 
painter called er Lusieri who was or-, er Elgin's er agent that's L-U-S- I-E-R-
I he was in charge of Elgin's operations on the ground in Athens er if you look 
at his letters to his patron er it's quite interesting it's almost a 
sort of matter of fact almost an innocent attitude to what they were doing 
which in retrospact er in retrospect appears absolutely outrageous and er 
Christopher Hitchens represents Lusieri er and his colleagues as being s-, er 
sort of er er greedy psychopaths er there's one extract from a letter in 
eighteen-o-one which Hitchens makes much of about the er er er in eighteen-o-
one the they Elgin's people were just beginning to remove some of the larger 
sculptures from the Parthenon and Lusieri writes to him and says i hope that no 
further difficulties will be raised as to continuing the diggings at the Temple 
of Minerva er the Temple of Athene that is the Parthenon and i shall be able to 
get possession of all the fragments i find Mr Hunt another of Elgin's er 
employees Mr Hunt wrote to Your excellen-, Excellency on my behalf to send a 
dozen marble saws of different sizes to Athens as quickly as possible i should 
require three or four twenty feet in length to saw a great bas-relief 
that we could not transport unless we reduce its height he's actually talking 
about the centre of the east frieze of the Parthenon it's such a lovely idea 
that they had this practical problem we-, oh take ten centimetres off the top 
and then it'll work but it is al-, an almost innocent attitude he doesn't seem 
at all aware that there would be any criticism of what he's doing he has a task 
to perform and he's doing it in a a a matter of fact way well the work went on 
in Elgin's absence for several years and in fact Lusieri was there still oh er 
fifteen years after the removal of sculptures ended still drawing things and 
and doing bits and pieces of work for Elgin returning from his post in the 
Ottoman Empire er Elgin's fortunes started to take a turn for the worse his 
life fell to pieces in fact he was kidnapped he was taken hostage by the French 
on his way home and held for i think it was three years as a as a hostage er 
this er is the period of the 
Napoleonic Wars Napoleon's France is at war with Britain er while he's er 
detained and his wife his wife left him ran off with his next-door neighbour in 
Scotland and his fortunes were dissolving and he'd spent something it's a 
little bit unclear but maybe something like seventy or eighty-thousand pounds 
on his operations in the Acropolis you imagine what that is in modern terms 
we're talking about many millions of pounds i suspect he'd spent a fortune and 
he really returned er to Britain er maybe penniless isn't the right word er for 
somebody who had properties in London and Scotland but he er h-, h-, his 
fortune er had been lost so by eighteen-ten he's abandoned his original plan of 
keeping the sculptures er displaying them in his er home in Scotland he's 
abandoned his fallback plan of er er displaying them at in his house in London 
and allowing paying visitors to view them not going to make enough money from 
the entrance fees so in eighteen-ten he starts 
negotiations to sell these sculptures to the British Museum that is to say to 
the British state er to give them to the British Museum for safe keeping he 
wanted something like seventy or eighty-thousand pounds to cover his expenses 
course he was aiming high in the expectation that he wouldn't get that much but 
er he he was offered well initially thirty-thousand pounds and then finally 
thirty-five-thousand pounds 
maybe half what he'd spent acquiring these things in the first place and there 
was much opposition to the state's purchase of these sculptures at a time of 
war but finally after a series er of discussions in the House of Commons 
through eighteen-fifteen and eighteen-sixteen er the er Parliament agreed in 
eighteen-sixteen to to pay er Elgin er for the marbles and to deposit them in 
the British Museum and that's where they have been ever since once again these 
debates these parliamentary debates which are represented er lot of the 
documents are in Hitchens' book but i've put extracts in your handout these 
arguments are really the basis of the er contemporary controversy and you'll 
see the same sorts of arguments er in you know the second decade of the 
nineteenth century as you'll find once you start to look in the internet for er 
er arguments in the nineteen-nineties well despite this consistency in the 
nature of the debate and the nature of the 
controversy over two centuries there was another controversy in Elgin's own 
time which may appear more surprising to us and that is the contemporary 
aesthetic attitudes to the Elgin marbles the way in which people responded to 
them as ancient art at the beginning of the nineteenth century individually 
some Greek sculptures had been admired appreciated since the seventeenth 
century or before certainly Roman copies er of Greek sculptures or versions of 
the er recreations of the style of Greek sculpture er had been admired and 
collected for a long time but really there had been very little public 
demonstration of what Greek what real classical Greek sculptures looked like 
people had an idea of what classical sculpture looked like which was especially 
built on on later Hellenistic and Roman er works and this is a period when as 
i've said before Greece was just becoming more accessible to western Europe 
with the products and er well the the er relics of Greece were just 
becoming er better known er to collectors in the west we looked before at the 
er realization that Greek vases came from Athens and not from Italy er from 
about the middle of the eighteenth century er as a result of this people 
weren't quite ready for what they f-, saw in the Elgin marbles and while er w-, 
some people had their breath taken away by these sculptures and thought they 
were the most wonderful works of art that had been seen in western Europe but 
others were rather shocked and surprised by what they found er they saw 
sculptures which were very realistic in some respects that paid close attention 
to details of anantomy including the veins and individual muscles in the body 
er less idealized in that sense than some of the freestanding sculptures that 
had been known up until then they saw sculptures that had hints of facial 
expression figures expressing emotion rather than just having blank classical 
faces and bodies engaged in lively action twisting around er 
dynamic figures very unlike the still impassive er Greco-Roman sculptures that 
had been so much admired in the eighteenth century and there was one particular 
critic who dealt a serious blow to Elgin's er his claim for for money and and 
er his his attempt to er get the importance of the sculptures recognized in 
Britain that was a figure called Richard Payne Knight now Richard Payne Knight 
nowadays you'd call him a classicist he's er quite well known for translating 
er some obscene Latin poems er called the er the Priapic Songs er but better 
known as a connoisseur of art he's a leading figure in an organization called 
the Society of Dilettante the Society of Dilettante still exists if any of you 
want some money to go on holiday to Greece you should look out on the 
noticeboard in the corridor and they sometimes send out the advertisements for 
the er you know they give awards for pe-, er undergraduates to go and study 
sculpture in Greece er the Society of Dilettante 
was a society a sort of gentlemen's society er er of connoisseurs scholars of 
ancient art er and it doesn't quite have the sort of amateur associations that 
the n-, the the name might suggest today they sponsored a lot of very serious 
er scientific study of ancient sculptures so Richard Payne Knight was a leading 
figure in this organization and a kind of expert witness gave evidence to 
Parliament on the er value of the sculptures and he had a devastating judgement 
of them he said that far from being works of the greatest sculptors of the high 
classical period in the fifth century B-C these sculptures that Elgin had 
brought back had been made in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian in the first 
half of the second century A-D now Christopher Hitchens talking about this 
argument thinks it's absolutely ridiculous he calls Richard Payne Knight a 
buffoon and says that this suggestion that the sculptures are Hadrianic is 
absolutely ridiculous and taking taking their cue er 
from Hitchens everybody who wrote an essay on this subject last year said er 
Richard Payne Knight thought the sculptures were Hadrianic er wasn't that 
ridiculous and i'm sure that some of you will try and do the same thing this 
year as well and i felt very sorry for Payne Knight when i was reading the 
essays last year because even today i bet if i i i could show you a picture of 
a fifth century B-C sculpture and a Hadrianic sculpture er and you wouldn't be 
able to tell the difference between them i bet i could choose examples that 
would er er you you'd find difficult to tell apart there are differences but 
they're subtle differences and even today generally with the dating of ancient 
sculpture we sometimes have great difficulty our judgements tend to be based on 
style and the age of Hadrian was a period in which classical Greek sculpture 
was much imitated er so imagine the early nineteenth century imagine a period 
when people are only just beginning to try and impose some sort 
of historical chronological framework on this mass of bits and pieces of 
diverse sculpture from Greece and Rome how on earth would you be able to tell 
the difference between the fifth century material and Hadrianic material the 
fact that these things were found on the Parthenon is suggestive i admit but 
there are other monuments in Greece famous temples which had been restored in 
Roman in the Roman period and had later sculptures on them so it's not an 
absurd suggestion at all i-, it has to be admitted it wasn't the er opinion of 
most people in this period but even without Payne Knight's specific 
controversial judgement there was er on the part of many people er at the start 
of the nineteenth century er a feeling of er a bit people felt uncomfortable 
about the er form of the Elgin marbles er which defied their expectations of 
classical art in the neoclassical period well the upshot of all this is that 
there are really two lessons from the material we've 
looked at firstly this is a period of flux we've seen that er attitudes were er 
to the nation and to cultural heritage were changing ideas like those expressed 
by Byron were just starting to emerge we'll look at that m-, more er er in the 
next lecture but besides that classical studies classical art history classical 
archaeology are are beginning to take form in somethi-, er something like the 
the the the the form we see them today things that we take for granted ideas 
and assumptions that we take for granted are just starting to take shape in 
classical scholarship 
the second thing is that if you look at er h-, Hitchens' particular objections 
er to Lord Elgin's action and hi-, his argument for the return of the Elgin 
marbles they are ultimately underpinned by his own personal passion for the 
what he sees as the sublime artistic achievement represented by the sculptures 
in the Parthenon because he has that assumption 'cause his argument his 
political argument depends on it it is unthinkable that the er classic quality 
he observes in these sculptures might not be instinctively evident to everybody 
it's out of the question as far as Hitchens is concerned that anyone might have 
an alternative view of the Elgin marbles and for that reason he has to devote 
special effort to rubbishing Payne Knight or any other er aesthetic criti-, 
critics of the Elgin marbles er from er Elgin's own period what Hitchens is 
doing is really er what what many of us are 
doing all the time we're looking back on er recent history of the reception of 
the this material er and on the classical past er from a position of knowledge 
and we're secure in our assumptions and our expectations and our prejudices 
about the classical past and what it what what its significance is today so our 
er everything we look at in the past is orientated towards our own contemporary 
standpoint you look at a polemical tract like Hitchens and that becomes 
particularly clear but i think it's part of what we're all doing another point 
worth making is in this er particular respect is er Hitchens' attitude to the 
er to the creator of the Parthenon sculptures if you look at the the blurb on 
the back of his book it begins the Elgin marbles designed and executed by 
Phidias to adorn the Parthenon are some of the most beautiful sculptures of 
Ancient Greece and that's his first factual mistake that these sculptures were 
made by Phidias we're told by ancient sources that 
Phidias was in some sense responsible for the sculptures of the Parthenon he 
couldn't have been actively involved in the production of all of them er it's 
usually thought that he had some sort of role as a supervisor nevertheless we 
know that Phidias was the most great the the the greatest er most famous er 
sculpture of the classical wor-, er er sculptor of the classical world er Roman 
sources er always cite him as the example of a classical er sculptor he's a bit 
like Michelangelo in more recent centuries th-, the most famous figure of all 
in the history of classical art and so Hitchens and many with similar views 
latch on to that supposed association between Phidias and the Parthenon 
sculptures er to er demonstrate er that er the the these works are er self-
evidently er the the er er s-, sometimes called the crown jewels of Greece 
something of er er exceptional er importance has cultural heritage not just 
like anything else that w-, may have been er removed from Greece or other 
countries 
but something special er that er deserves er exceptional treatment but do take 
an opportunity at some stage to look at his arguments and the way he 
manipulates that sort of er historical material er to serve his own arguments 
er well i i do before i finish i want to i want to er discuss what you're doing 
for the seminar but in the last er ten minutes or so before that i wanted to er 
look a little bit at the extracts you have in your handout and to point out 
some features of er there's interesting features of the the form the debate was 
taking er at the time when Elgin was trying to sell these sculptures to the 
state i'll not read all of this you can y-, you should read them in your own 
time and think about them but there are one or two bits i wanted to er pay 
particular attention to er first of all if you look under A on the first page 
of your handout 
om0006: thanks very much 
nm0005: er if you look under A there er the-, these are the minutes of the er 
Parliamentary debate well of the last Parliamentary debate that occurred 
in June of eighteen-sixteen er trying to decide whether Parliament should er er 
pay er thirty-five-thousand pounds to Elgin for these sculptures you see right 
at the beginning Mr Hammersley Member of Parliament Mr Hammersley he said he 
should oppose the resolution on the ground of the dishonesty of the transaction 
by which the collection was obtained as to the value of the statues he was 
inclined to go as far as the honourable mover person proposing the motion that 
er Elgin should be paid but he was not so enamoured of those headless ladies as 
to forget another lady which was justice er standards of of rhetoric in 
Parliament haven't improved er so that's er would seem the beginning of the 
sort of argument that's used today that er er e-, Elgin er was acting er er 
dishonestly er effectively bribing the officials in Athens er and exploiting 
his position but then the next bit is particularly er interesting to us if a 
restitution of these marbles was demanded from this country 
was it supposed that our title to them could be supported on the vague words of 
the firman which only gave authority to remove some small pieces of stone it 
was well known th-, that the empress Catharine the empress Catharine of Russia 
had entertained the idea of establishing the Archduke Constantine in Greece 
setting up a monarchy in Greece if the project of that extraordinary woman 
should ever be accomplished and Greece ranked among independent nations with 
what feelings would she contemplate the people who had stripped from this 
celebrated temple of its noblest ornaments now that too seems like a very 
modern argument the idea that you know that er Greece might one day call for 
these things to be returned er and er that er er there would be ill feeling 
because Britain had had robbed that nation of its most treasured cultural 
possessions so superficially it looks like a modern argument but then think 
again about the terms in which it's presented it is not he 
doesn't say maybe in er five years time er there will be a Greek revolution and 
Greece will become a nation state and the Greek people will want their cer-, er 
their cultural heritage back as a symbol of their newly founded nation er and 
then we should er be er feel guilty that we have this material he doesn't say 
that he assumes that Greece becoming a nation depends on the 
establishment of a monarchy from outside which effectively is what happened so 
it's not quite even a n-, nationalist conception of Greece that's represented 
by Byron there's still this deeply ingrained assumption that at the moment 
Greece isn't like the states of western Europe but if it did become like that 
it would be dependent on it having er er a monarchy er er established from 
outside nothing about the Greek people or their nationalist sentiments well Mr 
Hammersley goes on to er talk about the er you know the question of whether the 
Turks the Ottoman Turks occupying Athens er value these pieces whether 
it was true er that they didn't care about them so that Elgin was justified in 
removing er things that literally have no value er he er goes on to suggest 
that er Elgin's marb-, er Elgin's er agents used er bribery to obtain this 
material er six lines down on the seven lines down on the third column of page 
one you see er he he he uses the word spoliation very emotive word still used 
today er by critics of Elgin and then he proposes er an amendment to the er to 
the er bill that's being discussed and er the s-, really significant bit of 
this amendment is the last bit just down towards the bottom bottom right hand 
er corner of your page one this this is part of his amendment this wasn't 
passed this committee therefore feels justified under the particular 
circumstances of the case in recommending that twenty-five-thousand pounds be 
offered to the Earl of Elgin for the collection in order to recover and keep it 
together for that government from which it has been improperly taken 
and to which this committee is of the opinion that a communication should be 
immediately made stating that Great Britain holds these marbles only in trust 
till they're demanded by the present or any future possessors of the city of 
Athens and upon such demand engages without question or negotiation to restore 
them as far as can be effected to the places from whence they were taken and 
that they shall be in the meantime carefully preserved in the British Museum 
and once again he's not talking about the people of Greece he's not talking 
about the Greek nation he's talking about the Turkish government that's what he 
means by the government of er Athens government of Greece and he er er again 
alludes to the possibility that Greece may become er er a sovereign state but 
it's n-, not in any sense the the people would rise up and and claim their 
cultural er heritage er to summarize some of the other points made i-, in in 
the rest of page two of your handout er under B Mr 
Croker another Member of Parliament er he er thinks that this argument of Mr 
Hammersley's is ridiculous the suggestion that we should be holding the 
sculptures in trust until the Russians come along and take them that's how he 
presents it slightly distorting what er Hammersley had said er he then er 
suggests that the er the economic objections to buying the Elgin marbles were 
unfounded he thinks this is a good investment and will i-, it'll have 
tremendous impact on the the art and industry of Britain he says that when 
Pericles wanted to build the Parthenon he was er er he faced objections from 
people who said it's a needless expense er so er he he compares their position 
to Pericles to his er obviously no one would object to the Parthenon having 
been made in the first place and er finally he says that there was no sign that 
Lord Elgin had shown any rapacity er he had touched things he had he'd laid his 
hands on things which were already ruins he didn't go to Greece 
with the intention of ravaging it or despoiling its temples he went with the 
highest motives and has brought back material which will be of great benefit to 
his nation er he also uses the argument which is still used today that if the 
sculptures had stayed in the Parthenon they would have been er very quickly 
destroyed and he gives e-, rather dubious evidence for er er the the the the 
idea that er the local inhabitants of Athens were er er they're smashing up 
these sculptures and er turning them into mortar and that sort of thing clearly 
that was happening but there's a little bit of doubt over the particular er er 
pieces of evidence that he uses er and then again the sentiments that he 
expresses er are er echoed er in the final column there under C right at the 
bottom er Mr Banks says that the most eminent artists had been consulted by the 
committee by the select committee 
discussing the issue er he says that the sculptures by many were classed above 
and by others little below the highest works obtained since the restoration of 
art since the Renaissance er and er for forming a school of art they were 
considered as absolutely invaluable so they'd be an inspiration to the current 
neoclassical movement in art so you can read through those for yourself and 
look at the details and really you'll see the whole repertoire of arguments 
that are still used today er don't rush off because we'll discuss the seminar 
er in the next lecture i will look a little bit more on the issues of of 
nationalism in Greece and the way in which archaeology was implicated in the 
growth of the Greek state as well as the actual impact that the er Elgin 
marbles did in fact have on the art and architecture of Britain 
now very quickly your er handout for the seminar giving you your instructions 
er er i i no longer have a copy but er i er if i recall i i'd asked you to do 
two things to look er for web sites that as well as the literature on your 
general bibliography which will er help you to work out what the arguments are 
on both sides of the contemporary er debate of the Elgin marbles should they be 
returned to Greece and of course you can make up your own mind where you stand 
for that argument it's not really our purpose to to f-, fight it out and come 
to a conclusion er but especially what i want you to do is to find er a 
polemical web site you will find them or if necessary to find some er er an 
article or a or er i-, i-, if you really can't cope with the er computers er 
you could look at Hitchens' book but find some sort of argument about the Elgin 
marbles today and analyse it think about how the er where the person's coming 
from how they're pitching their arguments er how they're er organizing their 
material how they're organizing historical evidence er to back up the 
particular er ideas that they hold er so that's the important thing not that 
you should come up with a view on the Elgin marbles but that you should be able 
to analyse