Saturday 22 July, 2023, the Aspects of History pocast with Oliver Webb-Carter discussed the long running culural conundrum that keeps the Parthenon Marbles mainly divided between two great museums of the world: the Acropolis Museum, Athens and the British Museum, London.

Aspects of History's editor, Oliver welcomed Paul Cartledge, ancient historian and the author of countless books on ancient Greece with Dr Tessa Dunlop, author, biographer and presenter.

British Museum’s Parthenon gallery 10-month closure prompts concerns from Greek officials and campaigners

Βy Yannis Andritsopoulos, London Correspondent for the Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea, 09 October 2021 

To read the original article, follow the link here.

Six of the British Museum’s Greek galleries, including the museum’s display of the Parthenon Marbles, have been closed for almost ten months, prompting concerns from Greek officials and campaigners that wet and damp could damage the ancient artworks.

The museum was forced to close on 16 December 2020 when a national Covid-19 lockdown was put in place. It reopened on 17 May 2021, but some of its Greek galleries remained closed due to ‘essential repairs’.

Ta Nea Greek daily newspaper visited the museum last week and confirmed that a total of six galleries of Greek art have yet to reopen; Rooms 15, 16, 17 and 18 are closed due to "maintenance"; Rooms 19 and 20 are closed to "comply with social distancing measures".

The Duveen Gallery (Room 18) which houses the Parthenon Sculptures, has been closed since December 2020.

Its leaky roof has made news many times before.

In December 2018, the glass roof of Room 18 began leaking after heavy rainfall in London. Witnesses reported seeing water dripping just centimetres away from the west pediment figure of Iris. More recently, leaks were caused by a heavy rainfall on July 25th that flooded central London.

The Greek government as well as campaigners for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles have expressed concern about the poor state of the rooms.

On August 15, the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (IARPS), which represents 21 national committees around the world, wrote to the British Museum Chairman Sir Richard Lambert, its Director Dr. Hartwig Fischer and its Trustees. To read the letter, follow the link here.

A copy of the letter was also sent to Prime Minister Johnson, the newly appointed Chair of the Trustees, George Osborne and the then Secretary of Culture, Oliver Dowden.

It said that “the planned reopening of the Greek rooms, postponed ‘until further notice’, after months of lockdown, is a deep worry,” adding that the “possible humidity problem (creates) a dangerous condition for the sculptures”.

It also called on the Museum to "reconsider its viewpoint on the continued division of the Parthenon Sculptures", noting that “there is a moral obligation to return and to reunify all the surviving Parthenon Sculptures in the Acropolis Museum with a direct visual contact to the Parthenon”.

"It is saddening that Room 18 has been closed ‘until further notice’," IARPS President Dr Christiane Tytgat told Ta Nea, adding that "the inappropriate climate conditions in the room are upsetting".

"I hope," she said, " that we do not have to wait another 22 years before we can admire the Parthenon Sculptures on display in London again, as it happened before, when the Duveen Gallery was hit by a bomb in 1940 and reopened only in 1962! Even if the Sculptures were then stored in a safe place and undamaged."

Almost two months later, the Museum has not responded to the letter, which Dr. Tytgat described as "sad."

Dame Janet Suzman, Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), told Ta Nea: “I would be a happy person if Room 18 were permanently closed because those spectacular sculptures taken by the marauding Lord Elgin deserve to be reunited in the Acropolis Museum. No one can say for certain what remedial work is being done in the Greek galleries of the British Museum or for how long. The lack of climate controls in an old building are self-evident and has been questioned by BCRPM on other occasions: blow-heaters in winter, open exit doors in summer, leaking roof during the rainy season.”

“We urge the British Museum to stop repeating by rote the same mantra and to reunite those emblematic marble figures in the superlative Acropolis Museum, which has been built to the latest standards and allows visitors to view them in context with the Parthenon,” she added.

Professor Paul Cartledge, Vice-Chair of the BCRPM and Vice-President of the IARPS, told Ta Nea that he has found “the Trustees' failure to respond at all to the letter deeply disappointing - not at all the way to begin dialogueon this pressing cultural issue in a way fitting of its importance. Dismissing this very specific request is tantamount to not understanding the importance of cultural diplomacy. Time for the British Museum and the UK to join the 21st century, although it would have been good and great if they were to lead the way.”

Closed ‘until further notice’.

The website of the British Museum states that the Greek galleries are "closed until further notice", due to "regular maintenance works".

UNESCO recently expressed “concern that the Duveen Gallery of the British Museum is not currently open to the public due to essential repairs”, adding that it “looks forward to its reopening in due course.”

In his interview with Ta Nea, in January 2019, the director of the Museum, Dr. Hartwig Fischer, claimed that there was "a tiny leak" (in Room 18’s roof) which was “fixed right away ".

Lina Mendoni, Greece’s Culture minister has said that the conditions for exhibiting the Parthenon Sculptures at the British Museum “are not only inappropriate, but also dangerous”.

A British Museum spokesperson told Ta Nea that “there has previously been some water ingress in some gallery spaces closure”, adding that “there is no confirmed date for their reopening, but we are working towards later this autumn.”

The British Museum’s comment to Ta Nea in full:

“The Museum is an historic and listed building and there are ongoing infrastructure assessments across the site. We have a team of specialists who make regular checks across the Museum to monitor and ensure appropriate management of risks to the collection. The care of the collection and the safety of our visitors and staff are our utmost priority.

“The essential works being undertaken are part of a programme of building maintenance and conservation which will help enable future works on the Museum estate. Alongside these essential repairs, we are developing a strategic masterplan to transform the British Museum for the future. It will involve actively renovating our historic buildings and estate, improving our visitor experience and undertaking an ambitious redisplay of the collection in the years to come.

“Galleries 14 to 18 on the ground floor have been temporarily removed from the public access route. The Museum has undertaken a programme of work within these galleries and the scheduling of this work was delayed due to the impact of the pandemic on the Museum’s programme.

“Further works and surveys were undertaken this summer and these galleries are currently closed to ensure the safety of our visitors and the collection whilst these surveys are carried out. There has previously been some water ingress in some gallery spaces closure.

“There is no confirmed date for their reopening, but we are working towards later this autumn.”

Images below showing the closed door that has been temporaily erected across the entrance of Room 23 of the British Museu's Greek galleries. With a notice explaining that Rooms 12-18 are closed. Some of the galleries are closed for social distancing purposes with others closed for maintenance.

Photo credit: Yannis Andritsopoulos, London Correspondent for the Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea, 09.10.2010 

Dr Tom Flynn's tweet below echoes the thoughts of many millions across the globe that support the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles:

Simon Bertin invites Classics Professor Paul Cartledge to talk on the Parthenon Marbles and talks over returning them to Greece.

During the programme, Paul points that the Parthenon is the most complex, and most architecturally distinguished monument of ancient Greece. He goes on to explain the significance of the stunningly sculpted elements from the frieze, to the metopes and pedimental sculptures.

Paul also takes listeners through the story of Lord Elgin's removal of the best sculptued pieces. How just three decades after they had been removed, and  once Greece gained independence,  the new Greek state formally request the return of what Lord Elgin had removed from the Parthenon and sold to Parliament in 1816. The point on the 'permission' is also covered. "There is no firman", Paul points out but a letter written in Italian, which one can access at the British Museum, and this does not give Lord Elgin's men specific permission to remove all that was removed.

The fragments returned to Greece from Heidelberg, Palermo and most recently the Vatican Museums, although a fraction of what the British Museum holds, have made a great difference to Greece's continued request for the reunification of all of the surviving pieces from the Parthenon.

The support for finding a solution at UNESCO was overwhelming, and Paul praised Greece's efforts, highlighting how isolated the UK has become in this matter.

Paul concludes that the Parthenon and its sculptures are an astnishing feat of human social and political endevour.

 To listen to this programme follow the link, here.

An exclusive by UK Correspondent Yannis Andritsopoulos in Ta Nea.

Experts believe that the British Museum has made a “massive shift” in its policy regarding the loaning of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece, possibly opening the way for the first constructive discussions on the artefacts’ return after decades of dead-ends.

In what appears to be a softening of its earlier stance, a museum spokesperson told Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea that borrowers “normally” acknowledge that the lender has title to the objects they want to borrow.

This is significant because until now, the museum has insisted that the acceptance of the lending institution’s ownership is a “precondition” for any loan.

However, when questioned by Ta Nea, the museum’s spokesperson stopped short of reiterating the word “precondition”, used by the museum for many years, repeatedly nixing the concerted campaign for the Marbles’ return Greece has been carrying out since the 1980s. Instead, the spokesperson replaced “precondition” with the word “normally”.

Experts in art and museum law and cultural heritage, British campaigners and Greek officials said that the new language marks an “important shift” and indicates that the museum is taking a step back by demonstrating a “greater openness” towards negotiating a possible loan with Greece.

Successive Greek governments have rejected offers from the British Museum to discuss the possibility of returning the 2,500-year-old sculptures on loan, arguing that it would mean renouncing any Greek claim to Phidias’s masterpieces, which have been in London for more than two centuries.

The British Museum claims to have legal title to the fifth-century B.C. antiquities. Greece, however, insists that the museum possesses the sculptures illegally and has been demanding their permanent reunification with the rest of the Parthenon frieze.

The apparent softening of the museum’s wording made some experts and lawyers think that the UK might be open for discussion about a loan without the once non-negotiable precondition of acknowledging ownership.

The museum has always said in written statements that “a pre-condition for any loan is the acceptance of the lending institution’s ownership”.

Last week, however, a British Museum spokesperson told Ta Nea that the borrowing institution “normally” acknowledges the museum’s ownership of the object they wish to borrow.

Asked three times whether it still stands by its previous statement, the spokesperson declined to answer.

“All loan requests are considered in exactly the same way. Of primary importance is the conservation of historical significant and delicate objects and whether travel would impact on their condition,” the museum said in a written statement.

“Borrowers also normally acknowledge that the lender has title to the objects they want to borrow. The Greek government doesn’t agree that the British Museum has title to the Sculptures which makes discussion of loans very difficult,” the spokesperson added.

‘Major shift’

“This is a major shift – and an admission in part – in the carefully calibrated language of diplomacy,” leading cultural property lawyer Mark Stephens told Ta Nea.

“This marks a changing of the guard at the British Museum and a softening of their stance, indicating a desire to do the ‘right thing’: return the marbles,” he added.

Stephens, an expert on museum, art, and cultural heritage law, explained that “previously, the museum had been very clear about not allowing the Marbles to go; it was always a complete blockage. But now it appears that that's no longer the case. I think they're drawing the distinction between their own previous position and the current one”.

He said: “they’re saying that loan requests are considered in light of three subjects: Historical significance, delicacy and whether they would be damaged in transit. Obviously, the Acropolis Museum in Athens meets those three criteria.”

“Previously, there was a certainty; that a precondition for a loan was that the Greek government had to acknowledge the British Museum's ownership. Now, they're saying that borrowers also ‘normally’ acknowledge ownership, so they’re saying ‘we don't always require this’. They're not saying that it is a precondition anymore. So, what you are seeing is a massive shift. They're opening the door,” said Stephens, who has been twice listed among the “100 most influential people in London” by the Evening Standard newspaper.

“They also say that the Greek government doesn't agree that the British Museum is the legal owner, which makes discussions of loans ‘very difficult’, but not impossible”, he added.

“I think there is a difference here, and I think it's a very marked difference. And so I think now is the time to begin the discussion and see if they're as good as their word,” Stephens said.

A Greek official noted that the new wording "potentially gives some leeway as to how the two parties could negotiate the reunification of the Sculptures through a Palermo-style solution".

Last month, a marble fragment that once adorned the Parthenon was returned to the Acropolis Museum in Athens. Stone VI on the eastern frieze of the Parthenon was previously held by the Antonino Salinas Regional Archeological Museum in Palermo, Italy. According to the Greek government, the fragment was returned as a “long-term deposit (‘deposito’)”, which means that ownership was not mentioned in the agreement.

‘Greater openness’

“I think (the new language) marks a slight but very important shift in the British Museum's position,” Alexander Herman, Director of the UK-based Institute of Art and Law and author of the recent book Restitution - The Return of Cultural Artefacts told Ta Nea.

“For a long time, the British Museum referred to the 'pre-condition' that Greece accept the Trustees’ title before a loan could be considered. This pre-condition was always unusual, since nowhere else was it required by the British Museum: it isn't referred to in the British Museum's Loans Policy, meaning that it would not have been a requirement for borrowers other than Greece,” he said.

According to Herman, “the new language is more in keeping with how loans usually work at the British Museum and elsewhere. It might be assumed that borrowers will accept a lender's title (otherwise why would they borrow?), but one never sees this expressly worded in a loan agreement.”

“In fact, in most cases one sees the opposite: lenders warrant that they have title to borrowers, since borrowers usually need assurances to avoid the risk of third-party claims during the course of an exhibition.”

He said: “So the new wording is certainly less categorical and appears to indicate a greater openness on the part of the British Museum to negotiate around the possibility of a loan. This is sensible. In Chapter 2 of my book, I show an example of a long-term loan secured by a Canadian First Nations group from the British Museum in 2005 that is still in place today. So there is precedent, even though it might only relate to a single object.”

“I realise that in Greece the idea of recognising the British Museum's title and of accepting a loan are unwelcome, but as I wrote in The Art Newspaper in 2019 there are ways of putting title aside, so as to avoid any political fallout. And a loan was acceptable in the case of the Artemis foot from Palermo, so there appears to at least be some tolerance for the L-word in Greece,” Herman concluded.

“‘Normally’ is always put into such statements in cases where there's a (no matter how remote) possibility of the 'norm' being violated, i.e. an exception to it being made. Therefore, the Greek Government could seek to take advantage of the possibility of an exception. But I would guess that the British Museum’s Trustees would not be willing to make an exception in such a case as the Marbles and moreover in favour of another state's Government,” Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture emeritus at the University of Cambridge and Vice-Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), told Ta Nea.

Growing pressure

Several recent repatriations of artefacts whose ownership has been in question has led to pressure being ratcheted up on the British Museum to follow suit.

The Parthenon Sculptures are regarded as some of the finest ever works of art and a symbol of the birth of Western civilisation. The campaign for their return was boosted by the recent about-turn by The Times, which argued for the ancient treasures to be returned to Greece. The newspaper had maintained for more than 50 years that the marbles should remain in the UK.

Ed Vaizey, who served as Culture minister under David Cameron, has also said that the Marbles should go back to Greece. In repeated polls, Britons have voiced support for the repatriation of the carvings.

Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, has been accused of hypocrisy after Ta Nea unearthed a 1986 article in which he accused Lord Elgin of “wholesale pillage” of the Parthenon and urged the British government to return the artefacts to Greece in a complete reversal of the position he now holds.

In an exclusive interview with Ta Nea published in March 2021, Johnson claimed that the Parthenon Marbles “were legally acquired by Lord Elgin under the appropriate laws of the time and have been legally owned by the British Museum’s Trustees since their acquisition.”

Asked if it would consider returning the Parthenon Marbles to Athens permanently and displaying identical copies in London (as was recently suggested by the Oxford-based Institute for Digital Archaeology and by two members of the House of Lords), the British Museum’s spokesperson told Ta Nea:

“The Parthenon Sculptures play a pivotal role in telling a world story at the British Museum. Together with the wider collection, they help modern-day audiences see how the world they know is shaped by the past. Millions of people visit each year to learn the stories of people and cultures from the earliest moments of human history to the present day”.

“There are replicas of the British Museum’s Sculptures in the Acropolis Museum, where they are displayed alongside the remaining sculptures removed from the Parthenon during the past few decades,” the spokesperson added.

“The British Museum’s purpose is to prompt debate, thought, understanding and learning. Only 50% of the Parthenon sculptures survive today, with much lost to history. Now two great museums share custodianship of the majority of the surviving sculptures. The British Museum is confident that these two institutions have well-defined roles.”

Asked about the possibility of a loan, the museum’s spokesperson said: “We have never been asked for a loan of the Parthenon sculptures by Greece or the Acropolis Museum. We have a strong relationship with colleagues at the Acropolis Museum and are very willing to explore any requests for a loan with them.

“We lend objects from the collection to countries all over the world. We believe in the importance of lending our collection, it strengthens the stories the collection tells and when displayed alongside other objects, they create new stories and conversations. In 2014 the museum lent one of the Parthenon sculptures to the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia, on the anniversary of that museum's foundation.”

However, the museum did not respond when asked whether an ‘indefinite’ loan could be agreed upon.

Instead, it said that “the British Museum will lend only in circumstances when the borrower guarantees that the object will be returned to the museum at the end of the loan period (the Trustees will normally expect the borrower to provide assurance of immunity from judicial seizure or comparable assurance from a government body or representative of appropriate authority).”

“The British Museum is not changing its tune as it still persists in the myth that a full story is being told by keeping half the figures taken from the Parthenon in London while the other half is shown in Athens which is so obviously a concocted story. Try telling it to a child whose natural logic will instantly spy the hole in the argument; they know perfectly well that half and half makes a whole,” Dame Janet Suzman, Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, told Ta Nea.

“The Marbles were made to be together and one day they will be where they belong. The same goes for all the disfigured reliefs, with half a horse here and the other half galloping over there, it’s crazy! The Fat Lady of Bloomsbury is still singing her old song, silly old thing, but the world is already tiring of it,” she added.

“The change in the wording from the British Museum has been noted. We sincerely hope this means a change of heart. Greece has been doing an exemplary job of conserving its ancient monuments on the Acropolis and in the Acropolis Museum. The primary historically significant story of the sculptures is that which they tell as one and in reference to the Parthenon, which still stands,” commented BCRPM's Marlen Godwin.

“The British Museum’s insistence that the narratives it creates with the fragmented sculptures it holds is of greater importance, is out of step with the changes that are already happening. Respect for such a peerless collection should trump any selfish need or greed to keep the sculptures so brutally (and criminally) divided. These sculptures belong to the Parthenon and that is still, firmly on Greek soil. Today’s inequalities of the past, such as the continued division of the sculptures isn’t going to erase the sublime display they command in Athens nor the understanding they provide to visitors. Here’s to the bright, best practice museum curators that are getting it right,” she added.

This news report was published in the Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea on 12 February 2022. To read it in Greek follow the link here or follow the link for the English version.

Today, 25 March 2020, Greece celebrates 200 years of independence.

Photos and videos from all around the world showed iconic building and emblems lit up by white and blue, the logo of #Greece2021. The highlight for many, was being able to follow on line the celebrations that took place in Athens.

HRH The Prince of Wales flew out to Athens last night, Wednesday 24 March and attended a dinner at the Presidential residence with Her Excellency, Katerina Sakellaropoulou and Greece's Primie Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and other dignitaries. The Prince of Wales was in Greece as the official representative for the UK and spoke of his love of Greece. His speech can be read in full here.

The Evening Standard and other media outlets covered the Prince of Wales' Athens visit. The Evening Stard article has a video of HRH The Prince of Wales delivering his speech.

His final words were:

"The ties between us are strong and vital, and make a profound difference to our shared prosperity and security. Just as our histories are closely bound together, so too are our futures. In this spirit, tomorrow, stood beside you once again, your British friends will take great pride in Dionýsios Solomós’s rousing exhortation:

Χαίρε, ω χαίρε, ελευθεριά

[Hail, O Hail Liberty].

Ζήτω η Ελλάς!

[Long live Greece].

In London, the Embassy of Greece celebrates the anniversary of  the 200 years after the Greek revolution of independence with a live  audio-visual event. To watch this event, please visit  You Tube. Both Victorial Hislop and Professor Paul Cartledge spoke at the Embassy of Greece's on line event, as did Stephen Fry, pledging in his congratulatory message to Greece, his continued support for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles. 

Ian Jenkins (Senior Curator of Antiquities, British Museum) died suddenly last Saturday 28 November 2020.

We disagreed of course on the proper abode of the 'Elgin Marbles', but he was a very great scholar/connoisseur and good friend over many years, the last of them blighted by Parkinson's, and I am very sad that he is no longer with us.

What not many people will know is that he came from what would once have been called a 'humble', that is a working-class, background: his mother, he told me as we were visiting the Greek section of London's West Norwood cemetery together, had been 'in service'.

He wrote many excellent books and exhibition catalogues, including on the Parthenon sculptures, but my favourite remains Vases and Volcanoes: the Collection of Sir William Hamilton.

More controversially, he convened and edited the proceedings of a conference devoted to the 'cleaning' of those Parthenon Marbles confined in the B.M.

A recent, revealing interview with him was published in The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies' ARGO magazine, you can read this by folowing the link here.

Rest in peace.

Professor Paul Cartledge

A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture Emeritus

University  of Cambridge Faculty of Classics

The Times, 04 December 2021

The Parthenon Gallery in the Acropolis Musem, Athens, Greece.

 George Osborne wrote a Comment piece on page 29 of the Times on Saturday, it was entitled: "It's right to be proud of the British Museum". 

He goes on to ask: "Should we be ashamed of Britain’s past or should we celebrate it?"

He adds: " humans are capable of acts of great kindness and appalling brutality towards one another. The artefacts in the British Museum, with their depictions of love and war, reflect that truth over the course of two million years. It is why they help us understand ourselves better. That was the founding purpose when it was established as the first national public museum of the world in 1753, and it remains the purpose today. It was a product less of the British Empire (which was largely created in the following century) and more of the European Enlightenment."

And he does conceed that much has changed in the last 260 years, praising the 'magnificent Norman Foster roof over the Great Court at the Millennium', which he feels helps the British Museum to confidently call itself “the museum of the world, for the world”.

Although he insists that the British Museum is also 'just a museum', and that it cannot resolve the contractions between the Enlightenment as a western construct and universal human rights, or support those that question the very existence of the British Museum.

"Of course, there are those who demand the return of objects they believe we have no right to hold. That is not new either. Lord Byron thought the Elgin marbles should be back at the Parthenon. Our response is not to be dismissive. We are open to lending our artefacts to anywhere and to who can take good care of them and ensure their safe return — which we do every year, including to Greece."

Sadly he suggests that museums of culture ought not shrink in the face of  'culture wars' - why wars and not cultural cooperation? And that the British Museum needs to tell the story of common humanity. Surely common humanity needs to uphold respect for all countries cultural heritage! 

To read the full article, follow the link to The Times.

UK Ambassador to Greece Matthew Lodge tweeted the link to George Osborne's article in the Times and John Tasioulas, Director, Institute for Ethics in AI, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford and a member of BCRPM, quoted Ambassador Lodge's tweet:

TA NEA, Monday 06 December 2021

Yannis Andritsopulos, UK Correspondent for Ta Nea writes:

Suzman and Cartledge respond to Osborne

Reactions to the statements made by the new Chair of the British Museum on the reunification of the “Elgin Marbles” and their "loan" to Athens

The new Chair of the British Museum, George Osborne, was provocative and uncompromising on the question of the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures.

A week after the 'Ta Nea' reported that in a conversation former British Minister, Dennis McShane had with George Osborne, the new Chair of the British Museum rejected any talk of a permanent return of the Sculptures, speaking with "contempt" on the subject. Osborne "struck out once more" on Saturday: in an article in  "The Times" where he calls the Parthenon Sculptures "Elgin Marbles" and suggests that Greece discuss the possibility of borrowing them on the condition that Greece could "take good care of them and ensure their return" to London!"

It should be noted that the term "Elgin Marbles" has been officially abandoned by the British Museum for many years. The Museum now uses the name "Parthenon Sculptures", both in the signage of the hall that houses them (closed for a whole year after a water leak from the roof) and on its website.

"Surely there are those who question our right to exist. They did it in 1753, they do it again in 2021. Of course there are those who demand the return of items that they believe we have no right to possess. This is nothing new either. Lord Byron believed that the Elgin Marbles should return to the Parthenon," George  Osborne wrote in the Times.

And attempting to appear "magnanimous," he adds: "Our response will not be dismissive. We are open to lending items in our collection to anyone who can take good care of them and ensures their safe return - something we do every year, including with Greece," he says, ostentatiously ignoring the request for permanent reunification of the sculptures.

In response to Osborne, the Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Sculptures (BCRPM), Janet Suzmantells 'Ta Nea': "I will remind him that Lord Byron's reputation remains heroic, while that of Lord Elgin is ragged. He cannot present the error as correct in pretending that the return of the Sculptures is a trivial matter. Greece must take them back and place them where they belong: opposite the brightest building in the world from where they were snatched."

Speaking to 'Ta Nea', Cambridge Professor Paul Cartledge, Vice-Chair of the BCRPM noted: "An old joke says: Why is the museum called British, since very few of the 8 miilion objects held by the BM are actually British-made'. Are the exhibits actually British? Is the name, British Imperial War Museum more accurate? The time has come for the Sculptures to return permanently to their home."

This is not the first time that Britain has proposed to lend Greece the Parthenon Sculptures. In the exclusive interview with 'Ta Nea' in January 2019, the director of the British Museum, Hartwig Fischer, said that Greece could borrow the "Marbles" for a limited period of time ("there are no indefinite loans", he explained at that time), but if Greece accepts that they belong to the Britain ("we lend to those who recognize the ownershiop as belonging to the British Museum ").

Almost 15 years earlier, in April 2007, his predecessor Neil McGregor said that lending the "Marbles" "for three months, six months" would be possible if Greece recognized the British Museum as the legal owner.

Essentially, what they are asking of Greece is to give up its claim to the Sculptures, "renouncing" its long-standing position (recently reiterated by Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Lina Mendoni) that they are stolen.

The British Government is demanding the same. In August 2018, in a letter from Culture Minister Jeremy Wright to his Greek counterpart Myrsini Zorba, published by 'Ta Nea', the British minister made it clear that "the museum's commissioners will consider any request for lending and, subsequently, returning any part of the collection, provided that the institution requesting the loan recognises the British Museum as the owner".

As is well known, Greece cannot accept Britain's ownership of the Sculptures, and will not agree to a loan as long as this condition is set.

Osborne was elected Chair of the Museum in the summer and assumed the post in October. After his ministerial tenure (2010-2016) he assumed the duties of director of the newspaper "Evening Standard" and advisor to the capital management giant BlackRock and investment bank Robey Warshaw.

In his article titled "It is right to be proud of the British Museum", he writes that "we do not feel ashamed of the exhibits in our collection" (some of which were controversially acquired during the colonial period and claimed as stolen by various states), since, as he also states, "we remain one of the few places on Earth where you can admire under one roof, the great civilizations of the world."

To read the Ta Nea article online follow the link here. 

John Polyzoides was an eminent and gifted orthopaedic surgeon whose career in the West Midlands, England began in 1973. Amongst his very fine surgical achievements he pioneered the development of an original knee joint replacement, the Rotaglide Total Knee System.

With his English wife, Jean, he founded the ‘Friends of the British Committee’ and their total commitment to the return of the Parthenon Marbles would be sustained for decades.

He was also an author and rightly proud when his historical memoir of Alexandria, ’Alexandria City of Gifts and Sorrows’ was published in 2014.

In 2000 John very successfully organised a marathon swim for Christopher Stockdale between the sacred Isle of Delos and the Isle of Paros. The success of the swim raised the international profile of the Marbles and necessary funds to further help the cause.

Sadly, John passed away on the 23rd December and we are able to reflect on John’s contribution as a lifetime friend to the campaign to reunite the Parthenon Marbles  and his unique friendship with Christopher Stockdale.

‘How to sum up fifty years of friendship and express adequate condolences as we try to relate to the awful sense of loss that prevails and will endure since we heard the news of John’s passing.

I have come to the conclusion that the loss of a colleague, acquaintance or friend, though a cause for great sadness bears little comparison to the loss of someone you love.Their death diminishes us in every way and, in short, life both physical and mental takes on differing hues that will permanently alter the many colours in our lives.

My love for him and details of our wonderful friendship are permanently etched at length within the text of my homage to the Marbles ‘Swimming With Hero'.

John touched the lives of an immeasurable number of folk. He was a great and exemplary surgeon and wise physician always able to give patients hope when all seemed lost. People loved him. His knowledge of all things meant he could hold a dinner table in his grasp recounting with authority,wit and wisdom endless stories. He didn’t treat fools lightly but was never quick to judge and enjoyed the company of a huge cohort of loyal and true friends.

Sadly they all will be feeling as I do now.

Over these last few days I have wrestled with the adequacy of any words or memories that can best pay tribute to an unparalleled life. John’s full life has left a lasting sense of difference and just as rivers continually flow so does my gratitude and infinite joy for knowing him.

Our hearts and minds will remain full of love for the dearest of men’.

Christopher Stockdale

Professor Paul Cartledge, also fondly remembers John and Jean hosting an amazing Marbles reunification get-together, starring Nana Mouskouri on Paros.  "John also published an engaging and enlightening memoir of his Alexandria days, which I read for him in draft. RIP John."

 Alexandria, City of Gifts and Sorrows, From Hellenistic Civilization to Multiethnic Metropolis A.J Polyzoides, published in 2014

"I had the pleasure of meeting Dr Polyzoides in 2014. I’d been on an interrail trip after finishing my nursing degree, travelling by trains and tired busses from Munich to Athens. It was the kind of trip where you spend most of your time lost, but stumbling upon perfect experiences. My Grandad Eddie had been passionate about my trip and had recommended that I take a boat from Piraeus to visit his friend on the island of Paros.

August was sun-burnt when I was welcomed to Paros by Apostolos and his wife Jean. We ate at a restaurant on the beach and I can still remember the taste of the grilled squid I had after weeks of dinners eating out of tight pockets. Apostolos reminded me of my Grandad and it was immediately clear why they had been friends. A passionate Paros-phile, he had me travelling by bus to archaeological mines of Parian marble. I bought a small marble heart for my Mum which still sits on the mantelpiece of my Mum & Dad’s house in Liverpool.

Jean, Apostolos and I visited the archeological museum in Paros, where we set eyes on the gorgon medusa. Surviving that experience, Apostolos talked passionately about the ‘Parian Marble’, a revelatory text discovered on the island, a segment of which, Apostolos informed me, is hidden away in a museum in Oxford!

I was captivated by Apostolos’ stories. We walked among the limewashed buildings, passing the church where he and Jean were married and it was clear to me, how happy and full of love their lives were.

I didn’t know Apostolos beyond my brief visit, but it hurt me to hear of his passing. A wonderful man whose memory will live on in the people that he touched.  I’ll never forget my trip to Paros and the love of myself and the O’Haras travels by boat, train and bus this week to Jean and Apostolos’ family.

Apostolos Polyzoides, a great friend to my Grandad: Eddie O’Hara."

With love forever,

Luke

Apostolos (John) Polyzoides, Luke O'Hara and Jean Polyzoides in Paros in 2014

Date & Time: Monday 17 Octber, 18:30 

Place: LSE Lecture Theatre

Ground Floor, Centre Builing

Houghton Street

London

WC2A 2AE

A panel discussion about the cultural repatriation of national treasures, inspired by the current status of the Parthenon Marbles.

The debate over the return of the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles has gained greater attention recently. After the Black Lives Matter protests, initiatives have been taken to return national treasures to their countries of origin. For the Marbles, the British Museum has signalled a willingness to consider new options, and the Greek Prime Minister highlighted the issue on UK television. In this panel, we consider the implications of returning the Marbles back to Athens and the issues to be confronted.
The event will be followed by a reception that will take place in the LSE Lecture Theatre foyer area, from 8.00 pm. Participants are welcome to attend the reception.

Meet the speakers and chair:

Professor Paul Cartledge is AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College Cambridge and emeritus AG Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, Cambridge University. He has written, co-written, edited or co-edited over 30 books, the most recent being Democracy: A Life (O.U.P. 2018) and Thebes: the Forgotten City of Ancient Greece (Picador 2021). He is Vice-Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM) and a Vice-President of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (IARPS). He is a Commander of the Order of Honour (Greece) and an Honorary Citizen of Sparti, Greece.

Lord Edward Vaizey of Didcot was appointed to the House of Lords 2020, and sits on the Communications and Media Committee. Lord Vaizey was the Member of Parliament for Wantage between 2005 and 2019 and served as the Culture and Digital Minister from 2010-16. He was appointed a privy councillor in 2016. Lord Vaizey currently serves as a trustee of Tate, and is a governor of St Paul’s School, London. Lord Vaizey is a visiting professor at King’s College, London and Newcastle University; an Honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects; an Honorary Fellow of the Radio Academy; and President of Didcot Town Football Club. In the private sector, Lord Vaizey is an executive-in-residence at LionTree, the leading global M&A advisory firm and is an adviser to a number of technology funds and technology start-ups.

Dr Tatiana Flessas is an Associate Professor in Cultural Heritage and Property Law at the LSE Law School. She has written on cultural heritage conflicts around the world, and has presented on the Parthenon Marbles, Museums and Repatriation, Dark Heritage, and other repatriation and restitutionary issues at conferences and panels internationally. Selected recent media on the Parthenon Marbles include ‘Comment on the Parthenon Marbles Dispute’, The Globalist, Monocle Radio 24, 17 November 2021; ‘The fight over the Parthenon Marbles’, Business Daily, BBC World Service, 20 Nov 2019. ; and ‘In Struggle Over Parthenon Marbles, Greece Gets Unexpected Ally: Xi Jinping’, The New York Times, Nov. 13, 2019. . Her recent and forthcoming work focusses on the difficulty of identifying future heritage when making decisions about present sites and monuments. Dr Flessas holds a BA from Wellesley College, a JD from Northeastern School of Law, and an LLM and PhD from the London School of Economics where she teaches Cultural Heritage Law, Art Law, and Property Law.

Professor Kevin Featherstone is Eleftherios Venizelos Professor in Contemporary Greek Studies and Professor in European Politics in the European Institute at LSE, where he is also Director of the Hellenic Observatory.

THE GUARDIAN 16 November 2021

On Tuesday, 16 November 2021 in the Guardian Peter Walker and Helena Smith wrote that it has long been the official UK position that any return is a matter for the British Museum.

The wider debate about museums returning artefacts taken from other countries during colonial times, has so far been resisted by the UK with the mantra of “retain and explain”. And that the British Museum’s consistent view is that the sculptures were acquired legally, with Elgin receiving formal consent from the Ottoman empire to remove the section of sculptures. “His actions were thoroughly investigated by a parliamentary select committee in 1816 and found to be entirely legal, prior to the sculptures entering the collection of the British Museum by act of parliament,” the museum says on its website.

BCRPM Vice-Chair Paul Cartledge was quoted in the same Guardian article saying that this amounted to “a sleight of hand”.

“It’s a nonsense,” he added. “Even if the trustees agreed to relinquish them, the final decision to rescind the act of 1816 which declared the Elgin Collection to be owned by the nation would legally have to go through the British parliament. There is no doubt that the pressure is building up for genuine, post-imperial reconciliation in the cultural sphere and Johnson is trying to evade it.”

To read thst article in full, follow the link here.

THE TIMES

  Josh Glancey of The Times tweeted on the same day about the British Museum's website statement:

And BCRPM member Benjamin Ramm replied 

Variations in the British Museum's statements, half truths on the information provided in Room 18, have left generations questioning what really happened bewtween 1801-1805 for Greece to have lost to another country half of its surviving Parthenon Marbles, with the Parthenon itself still in Athens.

A helpful video can be found on the Acropolis Museum web site.

GBNews 18 November 2021

On Friday vening BCRPM's member Professor John Tasioulas joined GBNews and took a pragmatic approach on the issue too.

Today, Saturday 20 November, Simon Jenkins wrote in the Guardian and the article headline reads: 'Give the Parthenon marbles back to Greece – tech advances mean there are no more excuses. To read the full article follow the link here. 

THE GUARDIAN 20 November 2021

Simon Jenkins pragmatic approach concludes: 'This issue, so important to the Greeks but not to the British, could be sorted out with goodwill in an instant. Precisely such a negotiation on the marbles was demanded in September by UNESCO, and rejected by Britain. If it requires a “perpetual loan” or an act of parliament, then get on with it. If money is required, raise it. Johnson is being feeble in fobbing off Athens’ request as not being under his purview. The museum is a state institution. Instead of keeping his promise and doing the right thing by the marbles, he has performed another U-turn and funked it.'

THE DAILY MAIL 20 November 2021 

Prime Minister Mitsotakis wrote in the Daily Mail and adds: "Now, given the Prime Minister has told me he would not stand in the way of Greece establishing a formal dialogue with the British Museum over the future of the marbles, I can only assume things will be different – that he will not obstruct any future agreement and, instead, the Prime Minister would seek to amend the relevant legislation to allow the sculptures’ return."

THE TELEGRAPH 20 November 2021

The Telegraph published a double page spread in the main section of Saturday's paper, witten by Gordon Raynor, with the headline questioning:'Could we be on course to lose 'our' Marbles?'

BCRPM's Chair Janet Suzman is quoted:"The British Museum is demonstrably behind the curve.Other world-class institutions have started returning items, so it's a bit smug for the British Museum to refuse to engage. It just keeps trotting out the same mantra it has clung on for the past 200 years. It's terribly impolite for them to just stay silent on this."

The British Museum's reasons for keeping the Marbles in London and divided from their surviving half in Athens is that: " there is a positive advantage and public benefit in having the sculptures divided bewtween two great museums, because in Athens they are seen against the backdrop of Athenian history and in London visitors gain insight into how ancient Greece influenced other civilisations."

Janet adds that this is just "childish, finders keepers stuff. They were forcibly removed, they were brought to Britain, they have excited the western world and classical scholarship went up. They have done their job and it's time for them to go home. It is a moral obligation.

She continues:" Anyone who goes to the museum in Athens can see, that is where they should be displayed. In the British Museum the experience is quite depressing."

To read the full article, visit the Telegraph.

More on this also in the Greek Reporter.

PARTHENON – TEMPLE AND SYMBOL

A seminar at Medelhavsmuseet (the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities) in Stockholm, on Wednesday, 13 September 2023 at 5:30 - 8:00 p.m

• The Parthenon as a symbol - from the Persian and Peloponnesian wars and into our time

Professor Paul Cartledge (University of Cambridge), historian and author of a large number of books on antiquity, also Vice-Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM)

• The poet Constantine Cavafy in 1891: "Give back the Elgin Marbles!"

Christina von Arbin, architect and Vice-Chair of the Swedish Parthenon Committee

• The question of reunification - more relevant than ever

Ingemar Lindahl, Ambassador and Chairman of the Swedish Parthenon Committee

• The activities of the British and the International Parthenon Committees

Professor Paul Cartledge, Vice-Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM)

• The Swedish Parthenon Committee 20 years

Christina von Arbin, Vice-Chair of the Swedish Parthenon Committee

• Poetry reading

Kristina Adolphson, actor

This seminar has been arranged in collaboration between the Swedish Parthenon Committee and Medelhavsmuseet, the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, Sweden.

Boris Johnson has long hailed Pericles as his political hero. How does the British Prime Minister compare to the ancient Athenian statesman?

For Professor Paul Cartledge, it’s straightforward: “Johnson and Pericles? No comparison. Johnson v Pericles? No contest,” he says.

The Cambridge classicist has spent more than 50 years studying the history and civilization of ancient Greece. An eminent Hellenist, a prolific writer (he has written, edited or co-edited more than 30 books) and a long-standing philhellene (he has been visiting Greece since 1970 and he is a staunch supporter of the Parthenon Marbles’ reunification), Cartledge will on Monday be named Commander of the Order of Honour (Ταξιάρχης τοῦ Τάγματος τῆς Τιμῆς). It is one of the highest honours that the Greek state awards. The decision to bestow the title on Cartledge for his “contribution to enhancing Greece’s stature abroad” was taken by Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou.

Cartledge has contributed to several television and radio programmes and publications on issues related to ancient Greece.

The renowned academic is author of popular history books such as The Spartans: An Epic History, Thermopylae: The Battle that Changed the World, The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others, Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past and Democracy: A Life. His latest book is Thebes: The forgotten city of Ancient Greece (Picador, 2020). In 1998 he was the joint winner of the Criticos (now London Hellenic) Prize for The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece.

Cartledge, 74, is A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture emeritus at the University of Cambridge, A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge, and Member of the European Advisory Board of Princeton University Press.

He is Vice-Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM) and elected Vice-President of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (IARPS). He is also President of The Hellenic Society, Chair of the London Hellenic Prize, member of the International Honorary Committee of the Thermopylae-Salamis 2500 Anniversary framework and Honorary Citizen of Sparta.

In an interview with Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea, Professor Paul Cartledge spoke about his relationship with Greece, ancient history (including its connection and relevance to our times), democracy (ancient and modern) and the Parthenon Marbles.

Q: Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou has named you Commander of the Order of Honour in recognition of your contribution in enhancing Greece's stature abroad. What does it mean to you to receive this award?

A: It means the world to me, since it's a public and visible confirmation that somehow both my academic research (and publications) and my attempted media interventions on cultural and other issues affecting modern as well as ancient Greece have been to a satisfactory degree successful. I see myself, perhaps rather grandiosely, as a 'public intellectual', and since around 1990 I have both tried to publish work that, though academically based and scrupulously researched, is also 'accessible' to a wider public than just my specialist university colleagues and students, and to intervene on major public cultural issues, such as the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, a cause very dear to my heart. I tried to sum up these points as part of my Inaugural Lecture as the founding A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture in the University of Cambridge (delivered 2009, and published by the C.U.P., 2009): 'Forever Young: Why Cambridge has a Professorship of Greek Culture'.

Q: When did you first become interested in Greek history and culture? Why did you choose to study the Classics?

A: I can almost pinpoint the moment to a precise year: I was given for my 8th birthday (1955) a copy of a simplified, children's version of Homer's Odyssey. We all know the famous episode when Odysseus, after 20 years away, at last returns to his island-kingdom of Ithaca, only to find that his palace has been taken over and is being trashed by 108 'suitors' (of his faithful Spartan wife Penelope). Outside the palace back door, full of ticks and generally in a very bad way, lies amid the dirt and squalor a dog - Argos. Once he had been Odysseus' favourite hunting dog, but now he is abandoned and degraded. Odysseus comes upon him and, though he is in disguise as a poor beggar man, Argos recognises his master! But the effort is too much - Argos has a heart attack and dies. Odysseus secretly sheds a tear - I wept out loud for half an hour...

That's the symbolic moment of origin of my classical career. Just as crucial, obviously, was the fact that I attended private schools in which the teaching of Latin was begun at the very same age - 8, and of Greek at age 11. And the learning of Latin and Greek was privileged: if you were good at these languages, as I was, then you found yourself placed in the 'top' forms or sets. And so it went, as I progressed from Colet Court in London to the senior St Paul's School, a famous Classics school founded in 1509 by humanist John Colet, a friend of Erasmus. And from there on to New College Oxford, to read 'Mods' and 'Greats', i.e. Classics (1965-69). I graduated with a 'Double First' and, since by 1969 I'd decided I wanted as a career to teach ancient history at university, I embarked on a course of doctoral (DPhil) research into early Spartan history and archaeology under the supervision of John Boardman - then plain 'Mr Boardman', now 'Sir John'.

Q: When did you first visit Greece and what do you recall from your first visit to the country?

A: I am rather ashamed - retrospectively - that I did not visit Greece until 1970 - as part of my doctoral programme. My first serious venture on Greek soil was on Crete, to take part in (in fact oversee the pottery shed for) Hugh Sackett & Mervyn Popham's excavation for the BSA (British School at Athens) of the so-called Unexplored Mansion site at Knossos. Mainly Roman levels were what we were hitting in summer 1970 - but that's not all we British and American students were hitting, by any means. A couple of local mpouats (boîtes) engaged our interest of an evening, and at weekends we went on ekdhromes, expeditions, either solo (as I did once - and when I asked directions, a local farmer asked me very fiercely 'Germanos eisai?' 'Oxi, Anglos!', I replied. Huge smiles all round - this was only a generation after the Nazi occupation) or in a group.

Participation in that excavation gave me a series of lasting and deep friendships, some now interrupted by distance or death but others still alive and well. It was also my introduction to Greek politics - under the 'dictatorship' of 'the Colonels'. Members of the BSA were required - by the Greek state - to swear that they wouldn't get involved in any political activity. I duly signed, but did not abide by my oath, not on Crete (where I listened and learned to how the fiercely independent Cretans saw Athens, regardless of which regime held power there) so much as back in Athens.

I signed the oath at the British School under the watchful eye of the then Director, Mr PM Fraser (All Souls Oxford). That would have been in about June 1970, when I arrived in Greece for the very first time. On Crete (BSA dig at Knossos) in summer 1970 I talked a lot of politics - the Cretans I spoke with (workers on the dig) were openly contemptuous of the Colonels. (Except for the Dig Foreman, Andonis - who was a Colonels' supporter. He had gained the position because his brother, a communist, had been sacked from it...) We weren't supposed even to 'talk' politics. Back in Athens in 1971 I had friends who were part of the underground resistance. e.g. I attended with them a 'secret' talk given by Cambridge economics prof Joan Robinson and went around with them distributing resistance literature to private addresses in the city. (No mobile phones, no internet...). On one occasion I agreed to act as a courier - between the resistance and (Lady) Amalia Fleming, widow of Sir Alexander (discoverer of penicillin), who lived in London. I was given - I can't now remember by whom - a fairly large packet (no idea what it contained!) to take through customs at Athens airport and then on to London, where I mailed it to Lady Fleming through the normal post. I was very very nervous going through Athens airport security and customs - but my carry-on bag wasn't searched.

Q: In Greece we have debates from time to time about the usefulness of studying Ancient Greek. Do you think that there is value in learning this ancient language?

A: I could hardly say 'no', could I? Let me start from the fact - I believe it is one - that the Greek poetic tradition is the longest continuous poetic tradition in the world, barring only - possibly - the Chinese. From Homer to the present day. One easy way of assimilating this is through The Penguin Book of Greek Verse, expertly edited and translated in 1971 by Constantine Trypanis. There are other such compendiums, but that one has the original Greek versions as well as a serviceable English (prose) translation. Then there is the fact - of this I have no doubt - that ancient Greek is the richest member of the Indo-European language family, capable of expressing the minutest nuances of emotion and description, blessed with several voices and moods and declensions and conjugations... Then - and directly consequent upon that latter fact - it's a fact that, if you don't know Greek, you can't speak a whole slew of English: so many are the loan words or invented words taken from Greek into English - e.g. photography ('light-writing/drawing') or xenophobia ('fear of strangers/foreigners/outsiders'). But of course, the chief value of learning ancient Greek is to read ancient Greek texts in the original - Homer, the world's greatest epic poet, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, some of the world's greatest tragic dramatists, Hippocrates, father of Western medicine, Herodotus and Thucydides, founding fathers of my own discipline of History, Plato and Aristotle, twin founders of Western philosophy - need I continue??

Q: Britain has a rich tradition over many centuries in teaching and studying the Classics – from which you have benefited and to which you have contributed immensely. Why would someone study ancient history now? How is it relevant to us?

A: In my last answer I mentioned my intellectual roots in ancient Greece: the Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 484-425 BCE), the History of the Atheno-Peloponnesian war by Thucydides of Athens (c. 460-400). Most people who become professional classicists do not become as I did ancient historians; for them, the literature or the philosophy are what attract and engage them. But - like one of my own English history heroes, Edward Gibbon - I have known from the age of 8 or so that I wanted to be a historian, and, since I'm a Classicist, that means I'm an 'ancient' historian. But I insist: I am a historian who happens to specialise in ancient (Graeco-Roman, Mediterranean) history, not some peculiar species of historian. Like Herodotus what engages me above all are causality and causation - why did things happen, and happen the way they did, and in no other way? I mean really significant things such as the birth, development, spread and demise of (ancient, direct) democracy, the conquest of Greece by Republican Rome, the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and East. Like Thucydides, I'm particularly preoccupied with trying to understand and explain politics - the political process, the methods of politicians, the involvement of the masses in decision-making.

Q: Which ancient Greek figure stands out for you, and why?

A: May I choose two, please? One female, one male. My female choice is a Spartan, not just any Spartan female, I admit, but a princess of the blood (more precisely, of the Eurypontid blood). Sparta uniquely in the 5th and 4th centuries - still - had two royal houses, the senior males of which ruled as joint kings (basileis). Women in Sparta were unusually empowered, by contrast to the relatively lowly status of Greek women in others of the 1000 or so Greek cities. But even Sparta couldn't contemplate a ruling Queen. Nor - I am assuming - did wives choose the names of their daughters, so I am assuming that it was her father, King Archidamus II (r. c. 465-427), who chose the name of his daughter - my female choice - Kyniska. The name means 'little dog' or 'puppy', and it's the female equivalent of Kyniskos, a name attested elsewhere in the 5th-century Peloponnese. I infer that the name gives a nod to the fact that Spartans bred particularly excellent hunting dogs, especially females, which they used in pursuit of the greatest of all 'big game', the wild boar of the lower Taygetus mountain slopes. We don't know exactly when Kyniska was born - her full brother Agesilaus II saw the light of day in about 445, so I suppose that 440 or so would be a reasonable birthdate. In which case she was about 45 when she made the biggest possible splash in the world of sports normally restricted exclusively to Greek males: the equestrian competition at the Olympic Games. In 396 she won the top-notch 4-horse chariot race - and four years later repeated that amazing feat. And she was no shrinking violet. A statue base happens to have survived from Olympia on which Kyniska had engraved a boastful epigram, telling anyone who'd listen that she was 'the first woman in all Hellas (the Greek world) to have won this crown' - the victor's olive wreath. Of course, she hadn't actually driven the winning chariots, but she had reared and trained the horses in her own stables in Sparta, where there was a considerable number of successful (male) owners and trainers already. So just to ram the point home, she opened her epigram by stating her own aristocratic breeding pedigree and bloodline: 'kings are my father and brothers', that is, the aforementioned Archidamus II and Agesilaus II and her half-brother Agis II. By 396 both Archidamus and Agis were dead: how well did Kyniska's boast go down with her full brother, reigning co-king Agesilaus? Not well at all, I think. Agesilaus's encomiastic biographer, the Athenian Xenophon, took time out to insist that, although Kyniska had indeed won an Olympic victory, it was Agesilaus's idea in the first place that she compete at all, and anyway rearing race-horses was far less important than rearing war-horses!

My male choice is a different kettle of fish altogether: not a Spartan - nor an Athenian, nor a Syracusan, nor even a Macedonian but... a Theban. We don't know exactly when he was born, some time in the last quarter of the 5th century, nor do we know much about his family background or upbringing because - unlike that of his contemporary and sidekick Pelopidas - Epaminondas's biography by fellow-Boeotian Plutarch is lost. We assume he was high status and well educated, so his career and alleged espousal of Pythagoreanism would suggest. What we do know that, unlike Pelopidas again, who went into exile, Epameinondas remained in Thebes while it was under Spartan military occupation between 382 and 379 and did what he could to keep up Theban morale and resistance from the inside - until the daring stroke of Pelopidas and a small band of brothers effected Thebes's liberation in winter 379/8. Thereafter Epaminondas was in the frontline both physically and morally. On three fronts mainly: 1. the field of battle - he was a strategist and tactician of genius, winning for Thebes and its allies two major battles, Leuktra (371) and Mantineia (362); 2. federalism: Thebes was itself the chief city of a - moderately - democratic federal state, the Boeotians; in the 360s Epameinondas extended that principle to the Peloponnese with the foundation of Megalopolis as capital of the federal state of the Arcadians; and, not least, 3: liberation: in 369 Epameinondas was key to liberating the Helots of Messenia, Greeks who for centuries had been the unfree compulsory labour-force of the Spartans. Nor was he unconventional only in religion; so too in his private life. He never married, and he died (on the battlefield of Mantineia) and was buried side by side with his current male lover.

Q: In your recently released book Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece you write that democracy in ancient Greece "was not just a matter of institutions but also a matter of deep culture". What do you mean by that and, given recent political developments in several parts of the world, is democracy still deeply ingrained in our culture?

A: I'm almost inclined to say that the difference between any ancient form of democracy and any modern version is like the difference between chalk and cheese, or apples and pears... All ancient versions of demokratia were direct - in antiquity 'we the people' (demos) did not merely choose others to rule for/instead of them but ruled directly themselves. That in itself gave ancient Greek democratic citizens - free, legitimate adult males only, of course - a participatory stake in governance that is not available to the vast majority of citizens in representative democratic systems like our own today. That participatory stake was not felt or exercised only occasionally but almost on an everyday basis: in the 4th century BCE the Athenian Assembly met every 9 days, yes, really, the decision-making organ of the Athenian democratic state made major decisions of religious and other political policy every 9 days. The 6000 citizens who put themselves forward to be enrolled, by lot, on the annual panel of jurors might sit on average every other day - for which they were paid a small fee out of state funds. Every year the Athenians staged two religious play-festivals, for which audience members who were too poor to afford the entrance fee to the Theatre of Dionysus were given a small subsidy. Decisions as to who were the winning playwrights and impresarios - the ancient Athenian Oscars - were made by democratic majority vote. All that implies that democracy was for them not just a matter of institutions but also a matter of deep culture. That implication was made manifest in the second half of the 4th century when a new goddess was added to the official Athenian democratic pantheon, the personification of none other than Demokratia, herself.

Q: The title of a BBC Radio 4 series you recently participated in was Could an ancient Athenian Fix Britain? What is the answer to that question? And, do you think an ancient Athenian could fix modern Greece as well?

A: There is no answer to that question! I mean, no answer to 'how could or should Britain be fixed?', if by that is meant - how do we overcome the utterly disgraceful and shameful class divide between rich and poor (which in Covid-ridden Britain equates pretty much to healthy and unhealthy Britain)? or between the well and the less well educated? or between the rich and poor regions of not just England but also Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? or between those regions - in favour of the strengthening or shoring-up of our now very shaky Union? I could go on. The ancient Athenian polis and the modern British state are simply not commensurable. However, at another level, there are ways in which, it could be suggested, ancient Athenian practices - I mean democratic political practices - could and should be re-evaluated with a view to seeing whether and how they might improve our own. Take the present - unelected - House of Lords: scandalously un-democratic as such (and that's without mentioning the 80-plus 'hereditaries'!!). And what about having far more in the way of genuinely democratic input into legislation - via constitutional assemblies of bodies selected by lot to be genuinely representative of all relevant sections of society, who would then put forward measured recommendations to Parliament? What about genuinely democratic referendums or plebiscites - in which all parties to a debate have to put forward a manifesto for which, if they win, they will be held responsible and accountable, if necessary through the courts?

Q: Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, has made no secret of his classical education and love for Greece. He has also said that Pericles is his hero. Do you see any similarities between the two statesmen? What is your opinion of Mr Johnson?

A: I am an academic, not a politician, but I am also a committed citizen, and not a supporter of the Party that chose Mr Johnson as its leader and thereby - at a stroke - originally as our Prime Minister. Very undemocratic, that. The office of the UK Prime Minister has infinitely more discretionary powers than Pericles ever held. Pericles was regularly elected to the top executive Athenian office, but he was as such a member of a board of ten, and any moment almost of any day he might be impeached - as he in fact was in 429 (deposed and fined). For ancient Athenian democrats, all officials however selected had to be made constantly to realise they were accountable - to the People. Johnson and Pericles? No comparison. Johnson v Pericles? No contest.

Q: In his recent interview with Ta Nea, Johnson said that “the (Parthenon) Sculptures were legally acquired by Lord Elginand have been legally owned by the British Museum’s Trustees since their acquisition.” I know that you have been campaigning for decades for the Marbles’ reunification. What did you think when you read his comments? Why do you think that the Parthenon Marbles should return to Greece?

A: How would a French person feel if the Bayeux tapestry were cut in half, and half were to remain in Bayeux, while the other half was transported to Berlin? How would an Italian feel if the Mona Lisa were cut in half and one half was transported and permanently housed in Milan while the other half remained in Paris? How would one feel about either of those - as a cultured European, or as a citizen of the world? What the British Museum currently holds of the Parthenon Marbles were removed when Athens was part of the Ottoman Empire, a power whose local functionaries on the spot could not give a fig for what Britain's Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Lord Elgin, did to or with the Parthenon Marbles. There is no evidence yet discovered to prove that what Elgin in fact did (sheer vandalism, according to Lord Byron and many of us since) was literally authorised by the Ottoman Sultan. But, even if there were, so what? What - moral - authority could possibly legitimise the removal of artefacts from a building under alien control to the jurisdiction of a foreign power which then claims them as spoils by a supposedly legal enactment? There is in Athens on the Acropolis the very substantial remnant of a once aesthetically magnificent temple, the shadow of which extends from antiquity to modernity. There is in Athens a simply amazing modern Museum with a dedicated gallery intervisible with the Acropolis in which what the Greeks hold of the Parthenon sculptures are properly - I mean scientifically, art-historically correctly - displayed. Reunification? Q.E.D.

Q: Greece is celebrating this year the bicentennial of its War of Independence, as well as the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae and naval battle of Salamis. How do you evaluate the historic importance of the War of Independence and do you agree that Thermopylae and Salamis were of seminal importance for the course of Western Civilisation as we know it?

A: I am a historian of ancient Greece and Rome, not of early 19th-century Greece and Europe - and by extension the world. But I have of course read widely in the accessible literature and am aware that there has been a ton of new research issuing forth especially since the 150th anniversary, in 1971, and now at the bicentennial. As I understand it, that research tends to emphasise the singularity, the crucially influential singularity, of what Greeks both inside and outside the boundaries of the Ottoman empire achieved during the crucial first three decades of the 19th century (not coincidentally precisely the period of Lord Elgin's vandalism). In short, the Rising of 1821 saw the birth of modernity, political modernity, both in Greece and elsewhere.

As for the 2500th anniversary - or rather the anniversaries in 2021 of the two battles of 480 BCE and the anniversary in 2022 of the finally decisive battle of Plataea in 479 BCE - the issue hinges on a massive 'what if?' What if the invading Persians under Xerxes had won, rather than the 32 or 33 resisting Greek cities? (And what if at precisely the same moment, in 480 BCE, the Carthaginians of north Africa had defeated Greek Syracuse and taken over Greek Sicily?) There are many imponderables here, and as a historian I have to insist first that we must not talk of 'Greece' or 'Greeks' as if they were a unitary political force in the way that 'the Persians' were. Most Greeks of the Aegean area did NOT choose to resist the Persian invasion, and many of them fought for rather than against the Persians. Consider only Thebes: rather than join Sparta and Athens, the leading resisters, Thebes sided with almost all Greeks from Boeotia to the Hellespont and took the Persian side. And it would be hard to find two Greek cities more UNalike than Sparta and Athens in 480-479 BCE. No doubt all the resisters agreed equally that they were fighting for freedom FROM a potential Persian takeover; but within Sparta and Athens 'freedom' could have very different meanings for different sectors of the population - for male citizens as opposed to female; for all citizens as opposed to legally unfree Helots or chattel slaves. So, for me, the question of what difference did the loyalist Greeks' victory over the Persians make on a grand, world-historical/civilisational scale boils down to - would the Athenians' precious and still infant democracy have been allowed to survive, had the Persians won? To which my answer is: unquestionably not. And - therefore - but for the loyalist Greeks' victory, there would have been no "Persians" tragedy by Aeschylus (472 BCE), and indeed no flowering of the tragic and later comic drama that constitutes the very foundation of all Western drama. No democracy would have meant no free speech, no free exchange of scientific and philosophical and other ideas, ideas which sometimes challenged even the very basis of conventional norms not least in religion. But even so, it is not of course the ancient Greeks or Athenians themselves who directly ensured that their original creations should influence subsequent civilisations including our own today - for that, we have to thank the Romans, the Byzantine Greeks, the European Renaissance, the European and American Enlightenments... 'Legacy' or cultural inheritance is a dynamic, two-way, dialectical and constantly renegotiable process - currently being rather fiercely debated so far as 'Classics' is concerned, along the two axes of racism and sexism above all. Let a thousand flowers bloom...

This interview was written by  Ioannis Andritsopoulos, UK Correspondent for Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea and published on 17 April 2021

Professor Paul Cartledge received his Commander of the Order of Honour from H.E Ambassador Ioannis Raptakis in London on 22 April 2021, at the Ambassador's Residence . This  was organised on the occasion of Philhellenism and International Solidarity Day and Greece's 1821 Bicentennial. John Kittmer,  Kevin Featherstone, Stephen Fry and Robin Lane Fox  were awarded the Commander of the Order of Phoenix and Professor Paul Cartledge with the Commander of the Order of Honour . H. E Ambassador of Greece, Ioannis Raptakis, presented the medals on behalf of the President of the Hellenic Republic, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, recognising each distinguished philhellene for their contribution in enhancing knowledge about Greece in the UK and reinforcing the ties between the two countries.

H.E. Ambassador Raptakis with Professor Cartledge, awarded  the medal of Commander of the Order of Honour  and  second photo John Kitmer with Ambassador Raptakis and Professor Cartledge.

Stephen Fry with Ambassador Raptakis, second photo Ambassador Raptais with Kevin Featherstone and  last image is Lane Fox.

Thursday, 28 January 2021

The Hellenic Observatory (@HO_LSE) is internationally recognised as one of the premier research centres on contemporary Greece and Cyprus. It engages in a range of activities, including developing and supporting academic and policy-related research; organisation of conferences, seminars and workshops; academic exchange through visiting fellowships and internships; as well as teaching at the graduate level through LSE's European Institute.

This event is part of the 21 in 21 activities, celebrating the 2021 bicentenary of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 21 Greek-British encounters. The 21 in 21 events are sponsored by the A.G. Leventis Foundation. 

Power and Impunity: what Donald Trump and Boris didn't learn from the ancient Greeks.

Are we living in a world marked by a new impunity of power? Political leaders discard established norms and taboos that have guided the behaviour of their predecessors and, in doing so, they win popular support from new areas of society, including the disengaged and excluded. How did we get here? Our notions of the good society, of the responsibility that comes with power, and, of course, democracy and its discourse, stem from ancient and classical Greece. Aristotle, Pericles, Plato, and Socrates etc. have shaped our political thinking, processes and systems. Our deepest sense of Western values, embedded in education curricula across our societies, emanates from classical Athens. Is it no longer of use or value? Are we now judging utility and cost differently? A panel brought together a set of experts to address these issues from different vantage points.

Professor Kevin Featherstone deliver introductory remarks, which included the introduction by Professor Paul Cartledge, who was unable to attend. 

I do apologise, but for unavoidable personal reasons I am unable to be with you in the flesh this evening. So I am even more grateful to  Professor Kevin Featherstone than I would anyway have been, for so kindly agreeing to be my spokesperson.

I have set out my brief contribution as a Q & A: answering half-a-dozen possible questions (of course there could have been many, many more). The keynote to be struck throughout is difference: both differences within ancient conceptions and constructions of democracy, and between all ancient (direct) versions and all modern (representative) ones.

There’s a case for arguing that modern democracies should be more direct, but there’s also a case (mismanaged referendums) that they should be less so. Unarguably, the lesson to be learned from ancient democracy is the absolute necessity of ensuring the responsibility, the accountability of all officials, but above all of the chief executives.

1. What is democracy?

There is no (one) such thing as 'democracy'. To use an ancient Greek analogy, it is hydra-headed. The original Greek word demokratia was a compound of 'demos' and 'kratos'. Kratos meant unambiguously might, power, strength, force - which could be used for good or ill. ‘Demos’, however, was ambiguous and so ambivalent. It meant People - but (as today) 'People' is an ambiguous and ambivalent term: it could mean either ALL the people (in ancient Greek terms, that meant all the empowered adult male free CITIZEN people) or a section of them. If the latter, in ancient Greece demos could be used in a sectarian/class sort of way to mean the majority of the empowered People, specifically the poor majority of them, the dictatorship of the proletariat as it were.

Thus if one was an opponent of demokratia, such as Plato was, one saw it as the dictatorship of the poor masses of the citizenry over the elite few rich citizens (such as Plato), a form of ochlocracy or mob-rule. But if one was an ideological democrat (such as Pericles) demokratia was government of the people, for the people, AND by the people. Directly by the people: all ancient versions of democracy were direct, transparent, face-to-face. Whereas all modern versions are the opposite - indirect, parliamentary, and representative governance: we the people do not actually rule ourselves but we choose others, usually by voting in elections, to rule for us (instead of us). That is the absolutely key and fundamental difference and opposition between ancient and modern Democracy.

2. How do we know about ancient democracy?

First, let's repeat that democracy was not just one thing - even in ancient Greece. The democracy of (e.g.) ancient Syracuse differed from that of ancient Athens. Athens between about 500 and 325 BCE had three different forms of democracy in succession. Athens, which invented democracy, is also by far the best documented of the ancient cities that had democracy (perhaps 250 in all out of about 1000?). I shall concentrate on Athens here.

There are three main types of source: Documentary, Literary, and Archaeological. The evidence that survives is not good enough or sufficient in quantity for us to write a continuous narrative history of democracy at Athens between 500 and 325, but it is good enough for us to see what were the major issues and turning points. What we lack, oddly, is a thorough, conceptually reasoned presentation of pro-democratic ideology and theory by a convinced ancient Greek democrat. This is partly because almost every writer on ancient democracy that we know of was more or less hostile to it.

3. What was the new democratic order?

Again, I shall confine myself mainly to Athens here. The word demokratia is first attested in works published in the 420s BCE, but most of us scholars believe that the earliest form of democracy was introduced at Athens by reforms attributed to an aristocrat called Cleisthenes in 508/7 BCE. From then on, the demos meeting in assembly (ekklesia) voted by majority (after the counting or assessing of raised hands) on all laws and on all major domestic and foreign policy issues. There was no property qualification either for attendance at the assembly or for membership of the Council of 500 that prepared the Assembly’s agenda. But there were property qualifications for holding the top executive offices - Treasurers, Generals- who were elected. About 460 BCE the old aristocratic privileges were mostly swept away. Juror-judges in the new People's courts were all selected by lot and paid from public moneys.

4. What were the governing bodies?

The grease in the machine was provided by the Council of 500: 50 citizens chosen by lot from each of the 10 electoral districts into which the Athenian citizen population was divided. By lot, because on democratic principle elections were not in themselves democratic. Such was the distribution of the 500 seats that well over 30 percent of the citizen population would have had to serve at least once in their lifetime. The Council was both proactive - it prepared the agenda for the monthly, later almost weekly Assembly meetings; and reactive - it saw to the execution of the wishes of the Assembly. It also exercised an oversight (accountability) over all elected or allotted officials. Even Pericles might be brought to account on a criminal charge and deposed and fined. The Assembly, advised by the Council members and by top officials and by other, unofficial 'speakers', made all the key policy and pragmatic decisions by majority vote. Those decisions could be reviewed and revised and indeed rejected by legal means, specifically through the People's jury courts.

But the Athenian democracy was not just a matter of democratic political institutions of decision-making governance. Democracy was also a matter of education and culture. Religious festivals including for example the theatre festivals in honour of Dionysus were completely democratised. And democracy was local as well as national. Democracy happened within the 139 or 140 local villages as much as in the political capital of the city of Athens.

5. What were the merits of this democracy? What were its problems?

From the surviving - mostly elite - ancient sources we hear much more about the defects and failures of democracy as a system than we do about its merits. The two key features of democratic ideology were freedom and equality. Anti-democrats complained that democracy gave too much of the wrong kind of freedom (license) to the wrong sort of (poor) citizen people, making the cardinal error of treating unequals as if they were equals.

Democrats countered those attacks in various ways, stressing above all that, if and when 'the Athenians' made a decision, it was ALL Athenians who were empowered to make that decision, not just a small subset of them. Democracy treated all Athenians equally AS Athenians. (Men only, male citizens only, of course.) They invoked the notion of what today we call 'the wisdom of the crowd'. Even Aristotle, who was not a democrat, saw merit in this democratic argument.

Pragmatically, the Athenian democracy made terrible - and fatal – mistakes, especially in foreign rather than domestic policy. On the other hand, democracy in various forms flourished for most of almost two centuries. And it was under the democracy and because it was a democracy that Athens scaled cultural heights achieved by no other ancient Greek city - nor by hardly any other city or country since.

6. Heritage – how does Athenian democracy compare to ours? What have we changed?

Whereas all modern democracies are fundamentally representative, all ancient ones were fundamentally direct democracies. Combining representative democracy with direct democracy by using referendums is a potential recipe for disaster. Another factor bedeviling modern democracy is the mystifying rhetoric that is often applied to politics today. The expression 'the people' is not self-explanatory and is regularly abused to support variously populist agendas. Today we could, because of the availability of our new digital technology, reintroduce if we wish direct democratic decision-making on ALL issues - not just the occasional referendum. But in order to make that work, we would need a great deal more of what the ancient Greeks called paideia, education and culture, and we would need to introduce many more of the sort of checks and safeguards that the Athenians introduced when faced with their own disastrous mistakes. In this regard at least the US constitution – itself subject to bitterly confrontational interpretation – is, despite being far too Presidential, clearly superior to the UK’s mixed parliamentary system.

Let us prove Hegel wrong – who said that what we learn from history is that we do NOT learn from history! We can learn from the experience of the ancient Greeks and apply it to improve our own democratic politics.

 The speakers: 

Professor Michael Cox lectured to universities world-wide as well as to several government bodies,  is currently visiting professor at the Catholic University in Milan. He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 30 books, including most recently a collection of his essays The Post-Cold War World, as well as new editions of J M Keynes’s, The Economic Consequences of the Peace and E H Carr’s Nationalism and After. He is now working on a new history of LSE entitled, The “School”: LSE and the Shaping of the Modern World.

Professor Simon Goldhill is Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and Foreign Secretary of the British Academy. He has written extensively about Greek society and the culture of ancient democracy. His books have been translated into ten languages and won three international prizes. He has lectured, and broadcast on television and radio, all over the world, from Canada to China.

Johanna Hanink (@johannahan) is Associate Professor of Classics at Brown University and co-editor of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies. Her work focuses on classical Athens and the modern reception of Greek antiquity. She is author of Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy and The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity. She is also a translator of Ancient and Modern Greek, and her new volume Andreas Karkavitsas: The Archeologist and Selected Sea Stories (translation with introduction and notes) is due out in autumn with Penguin Classics.

The Chair 

Paul Kelly (@PjThinker) is Professor of Political Theory at the LSE, where he has taught for over 25 years. He is author and editor of fifteen books on political philosophy and the history of political ideas. His publications include Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice (Clarendon 1990), Liberalism (Polity 2005) and edited Political Thinkers with David Boucher (Oxford 2017). He has also been co-editor of Political Studies and editor of Utilitas: A Journal of Utilitarian Studies. He was recently Pro-Director Education at LSE and has recently returned to regular academic life. He is completing a book entitled Conflict, War and Revolution. 

You can watch the event in full via this link https://www.facebook.com/lseps/videos/542777373347200

20 January 2020, Athens

Professor Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture emeritus University of Cambridge and Vice-Chair of BCRPM, spoke at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre for a conference:Thermopylae & Salamis, Evaluating their Importance to the Modern World. His speech was entitled: Greece's Finest Hour? Salamis 2500 in Democratic Perspective. 

'Democratic Implications': a lecture to reconsider the Battle of Salamis (September 480 BCE) and its wider implications from a specifically democratic point of view, i.e., in what way(s) was the Battle and (loyalist) Greek victory a victory of and for democracy?

Ancient Greek demokratia was not our (modern, liberal, representative) 'democracy': the ancient Athenians invented demokratia - people-power - and enjoyed it in various forms for almost 200 years (c. 507-322/1 BCE). In the 330s the Athenians felt that their demokratia was under threat from - monarchical, autocratic - Macedon. Hence the passage of this law against tyranny, proposed by Eukrates. Not all Athenians could read but most had eyes to see, and what is shown here in the crowning relief above the text of the Law is Demokratia in action - the goddess Demokratia crowning an imaginary ideal representation of the Athenian Demos ('People').

Statue-group of the so-called 'Tyrannicides' (turannoktonoi in Greek), Harmodios and Aristogeiton. This is a very much later, Roman copy in marble of a bronze original of the 470s which itself was a replacement for the c. 506 original. Actually - as historian Thucydides caustically observed - Harmodios and Aristogeiton did not kill the tyrant Hippias (but his younger brother), but the Athenian democracy, which was founded a half-dozen years later, treated the assassination retrospectively as the democracy's founding mythical charter - demokratia thus being seen as essentially anti-tyranny.

The Athenians' 'Treasury' at Delphi 480s BCE: in 490 the Athenians together with their allies from Plataea defeated a much larger Persian army on the battlefield of Marathon in eastern Attica - the Treasury the Athenians then had built at Delphi, symbolic religious centre of all Hellas, alongside the Sacred Way, marked that victory for all other Greek and non-Greek worshippers to see. Herodotus, historian of the Graeco-Persian Wars and indeed the world's first historian properly so called, made the connection explicitly between the introduction of demokratia (in the form of equalityof political speech) at Athens and the Athenians' new prowess on the battlefield (5.78).

Ostracism (ostrakophoria) at Athens in the 480s:

Aristeides

Themistocles

Marathon was a great victory - but the Persians could not let it go at that: they would be back, and in huge force, by both land and sea, to conquer and occupy. The burning question for the Athenians of the 480s therefore was - what attitude should we adopt towards the Persians?
Appeasement (note the deliberate reminiscence of Britain in the 1930s vis-a-vis Nazi Germany)? Or Resistance? If the latter, how best to resist?

Beginning in the early 480s a series of ostracisms were held by the Athenians to try to decide the issue in a specifically democratic way: first, the Assembly was asked - do you wish to hold an ostracism? if a majority voted yes, then this procedure was held a couple of months later.

Ostracism was in effect a reverse election - the 'candidate', ie the leading politician, who received the most (negative) votes of the 6000 plus cast (on named potsherds, ostraka) was ostracised, that is, exiled for 10 years... One of the several ostracised was Aristides (though in 480 he was recalled in the dire emergency situation).

The candidate who survived every ostracism procedure of the 480s and emerged triumphant at the end of the decade was Themistokles son of Neokles of the deme Phrearrhoi. It was he who advocated a predominantly naval policy (despite Marathon having been won by the heavy infantry), he who masterminded the Greeks' naval victory at Salamis in September 480 (though the Admiral of the Fleet was formally a Spartan), and he who therefore differentially empowered the poorer Athenian citizens who rowed the trireme warships (Athens supplied up to 200). In short, after Kleisthenes, Themistokles was the Second Founder of demokratia for the Athenians.

The Parthenon - 'Parthenon' is of course a modern name - in antiquity that was the name only of the cella, the central hall in which was erected the cult-statue of Athena Parthenos 'Virgin'. The Parthenon was indeed a religious building, a temple, but it was a very peculiar one; Athena Parthenos did not have her own dedicated altar. It had therefore important secular as well as religious functions - it celebrated civilisation over barbarism, Hellenism over foreignness, and, above all, Athenian democracy over all other forms of political organisation Greek or non-Greek. Not least, it housed the Athenians' treasury - or war-chest. The Parthenon was voted, erected, supervised and managed by and largely for the Athenian Demos.

19th-century lithograph showing Salamis as visible from the Acropolis. Actually the key ancient view was from the Propylaea, started a decade after the Parthenon, and never finished: it was so designed as to frame Salamis as one exited the Acropolis - after, for example, taking part in the Panathenaea festival (depicted ideally in the Parthenon frieze). The Battle of Salamis therefore and thereby was added to the Battle of Marathon as the twin founding victories not only of Athens and of Greece but of demokratia.

Professor Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture emeritus University of Cambridge and Vice-Chair of BCRPM.

The news in Greece exploded last night as a result of the Times leading article 'Uniting Greece's Heritage'. The article called the case for reuniting the sculptures from the Parthenon, a compelling one. The top evening news bulletin in Athens on Wednesday 12 January 2022 was made by SkaiTV with Michael Binyon speaking for The Times and Professor Paul Cartledge for BCRPM.

To view this news bulletin, follow the link here.

Thanasis Gavos, the UK Correspondent for SkaiTV Greece, has sent us the Q & A  he reported on with Professor Cartledge:

Q: What is the significance of such an article in such a newspaper, which for many represented the views of the British establishment?

PC: To me it’s quite a surprise. The paper is one of our very oldest. It was founded in the 1780s, it has a circulation of about 400,000 per day and about 15 million per month. It is, as you says, a paper whose view are, shall we say, centre-right and they represent what one might call ‘the establishment’. So well-educated, university educated professional people typically who read it. And conventionally, my impression is, a lot of people with that background who read The Times actually favour the retention of the Marbles in the British Museum, for various reasons, partly legal, partly cultural. They don’t think they should go back. But, this second leader in The Times suggests to me that it is reflecting a groundswell of opinion, a real change, we might even say a sea change, in opinions.

And I think what started it really was the French claiming that they must now deal with the damage done by colonialism, by restoring the various French African territories’ artefacts. That of course brought into question the Benin Bronzes in Nigeria, which the British stole, no question about that. The Elgin question, the Marbles of the Parthenon, is a much more complicated issue, both legally and historically. Which is why the shift in opinion of The Times to me is both a surprise and a very welcome surprise.

Q: We can also read they accept the main moral argument, who many might say is THE main argument, that the Parthenon Sculptures are part of an artistic whole, therefore a unique case. Could we say now that this argument has been really well-establish in the British public opinion?

PC: I sincerely hope so. You  put your finger on the most important point from our - that is the British Committee and the international Associations - point of view, which is that the Parthenon is a unique structure. The Greek government is not even asking for the return of the very famous Caryatid column from the Erechtheion. It’s a mistake to think that the Greek government want everything that Elgin took to be returned to Athens. The campaign is specifically for the Parthenon Marbles  because as you say, of it’s unique status: still remaining on the Acropolis, of course in a ruined state, in visible sight of the New Acropolis Museum with its dedicated gallery aligned with the Parthenon and properly, we think, historically, scientifically properly displayed.

So we were very very happy that this leader, though wrongly used the phrase ‘Elgin marbles’ which is too broad, nevertheless put its finger on that key unique point - which of course therefore means that this particular case has no necessary implications for any other artefacts in the British Museum.

Q: Pressure is building, but how hopeful are you that at some point we will see the restitution of the Sculptures?

PC: I am hopeful but only in the longer term, for two reasons. One, we have not yet identified anyone in the current parliament or government who would be willing to stand up and campaign and propose the reunification. Secondly, the British government, like in Cyprus, like in Greece, has other more immediately pressing issues to face. When you make a parliamentary campaign to propose a measure, it takes an awful lot of time, and time is money. Therefore, you have to prioritise, and at the moment the Covid situation is so bad in this country that we still have no doubt a long way to go before the government can turn its mind to anything other than that, such as the Parthenon Marbles issue.

Thanasis Gavos, UK correspondent for SkaiTV Greece, with his story following on from The Times lead leader article published that morning, supportng the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.  

SkaiTV Greece, speaking with Michael Binyon of The Times

Ta Nea, 01 August 2020

UK correspondent for Ta Nea, Yannis Andritsopoulos wrote on Saturday 01 August 2020:

A new chapter in the campaign for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures will start next week, aimed at raising awareness of the public opinion and mobilizing politicians, organizations and public figures in the UK.

The main slogan of the campaign, run by the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, is "Tell the real story", with the BCRPM inviting the British Museum to reveal to its visitors the truth about how the sculptures, displayed in London since 1817, were acquired.

“We urge the British Museum to tell the full story as Greece is preparing to celebrate 200 years of independence. The Parthenon Marbles were removed by Lord Elgin when Greece could not speak out. Reuniting the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon would be a friendly and just act by a nation looking to take the lead in responding to global challenges,” Dame Janet Suzman, Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, told Ta Nea newspaper.

The BCRPM is made up of respected British scholars, academics and artists, such as Emeritus Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies Judith Herrin, fellow of the British Academy Professor Oliver Taplin and archaeologist Anthony Snodgrass.

“The Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum (since 1817) are a, perhaps the classic illustration of the colonialist-imperialist complex that so disfigures that august collection today. The large fortune acquired by the Museum’s founding collector and benefactor, Dr Hans Sloane, was itself deeply mired in the slave trade, and Lord Elgin, ambassador to the Sublime Porte, was able to loot the Parthenon marbles only thanks to Britain’s being an enemy of the Ottoman Sultan’s enemy, Napoleonic France, at a time when Greece was a possession of the Ottoman Empire. Next March 25, 2021, will mark the bicentenary of the Greeks’ declaration of independence from the Ottoman yoke after a subjection of nearly 37 decades. Is it too much to hope that it will also mark a significant moment in the decolonisation of the British Museum” said Professor Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture emeritus, University of Cambridge, Vice-Chair of the BCRPM.

The BCRPM has produced a leaflet aimed at deconstructing the British Museum's arguments which are included in a leaflet distributed to visitors of Room 18 - also known as the Duveen Gallery - which houses the Sculptures. It says that this leaflet contains "inaccuracies and untruths" (the Museum goes so far as to claim that the Greek authorities completed Elgin's work because they transferred the Sculptures to the Acropolis Museum!).

Therefore, the BCRPM produced its own leaflet which contains the "true story" of the Parthenon Sculptures. It will soon send it to the British government, political parties and MPs, trustees of the British Museum and the British media. In addition, on specific dates in the fall, activists will distribute the booklet to British Museum visitors.

The campaign, which will unfold in the coming months, accompanied by the hashtags #TellTheStory, #TimeIsNow and #BMJustDoIt, is dedicated to the inspirers of the campaign in Britain, Eleni and James Cubitt, who had been urged to launch it by Melina Mercouri.

"Lusieri, the artist hired by Lord Elgin, literally demolished the temple so that he could extract the Sculptures," Robert Browning, a professor of Classics at the University of London and first Chair of the BCRPM, said on April 16, 1983, interviewed by Hara Kiosse for Ta Nea.

"That is why, when I hear that Elgin took the marbles so that they do not end up becoming quicklime in the hands of the Greeks, or that the British Museum keeps them because they are in danger due to air pollution of Athens, I feel that what they say is sacrilege."

Thirty-seven years on, the Museum still houses Pheidias's masterpieces, with its spokesperson telling Ta Nea that "the possibility of their permanent return is not being considered" and Marlen Godwin, the BCRPM's International Relations Officer, responding: "We will not give up. We will continue to call for the reunification of the Sculptures. Until then, we call on the Museum to reveal the truth to those who visit it to see the Marbles. That's the least it can do. "

Main points of the leaflet here.

Ta Nea, 01 August 2020

Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis (1940-2022)

On 14 September 2022, the Acropolis Museum lost a loved one: Dimitrios Pandermalis, Emeritus Professor of Classical Archeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His greatest contribution was the creation of the Acropolis Museum, serving as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the New Acropolis Museum Construction Organization from 2000 to 2019 and as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Acropolis Museum from 2009 to 2022.

The Acropolis Museum contains not only the beauty of the ancient Greek world but also the soul of its creator and we will always remember him with love and gratitude. The Museum held a 40-day memorial service at the Holy Church of Agios Georgios and Agioi Anargyros Makrygianni and on the same day an olive tree was planted in memory of its late President, which welcomes visitors at the entrance of the Museum on Mitsaion Street.

The Museum's Board of Directors named the Amphitheater after its late President and instituted the "Dimitrios Pandermalis" Classical Archaeology Scholarship Programme. For the anniversary of the Acropolis Museum, on Tuesday, June 20, 2023, the Youth Orchestra of Dion will offer visitors a free musical tribute to Greek poetry set to music, respectively dedicated to the memory of Prof. Dimitrios Pandermalis.

Artistic events and collaborations

Over the last two years, the Museum has offered its visitors a multitude of artistic events and experiences:

• Dance performances in the exhibition spaces in collaboration with the National Opera (MicroDances Athens, 9-10 October 2021).

• A musical evening for International Women's Day in the Parthenon Hall with the theme "The strange goddesses of the Parthenon" and a presentation of the work of poets of antiquity, with music by Lena Platonos and interpretation by Maria Faradouri, a collaboration with the Marianna V. Vardinogianni Foundation (08 March 2022).

• Musical events in the forecourt of the Museum with the participation of well-known performers, such as Natasa Bofiliou, in the context of the 1st Worship Music Festival, a collaboration with the Ministry of Culture & Sports and the National Opera (18-20 April 2022).

• Rachmaninoff Tribute in the Parthenon Hall, as part of the "Chamber Music in Museums" programme, in collaboration with the Athens State Orchestra (31 March 2023).

The Museum started a new collaboration with the Development and Tourism Promotion Company of the Municipality of Athens with its participation in the Athens City Festival, where it organized two tasting evenings in the restaurant combined with a guided tour of the exhibits related to ancient nutrition (12 May 2022 and 4 May 2023) and two jazz concerts on the restaurant terrace (16 May 2022 and 22 May 2023).

On the August Full Moon, the Museum offered its visitors an evening of Greek songs about the moon and film music by the Air Force Band (12 August 2022). During the festive season of Christmas, the Museum presented carols by the Children's Choir of the National Opera (22 December 2022) and the Women's Vocal Ensemble CHORES (28 December 2022), two events were held in collaboration with the National Opera. It also hosted the famous Wind Orchestra of the Music School of Ilium (19 December 2021) and, for traditional dances, the Rethymno Coat Dressers' Club of Crete (23 December 2021) and the Episcopal Club of Naoussa, Imathia Prefecture (30 December 2022).

Original thematic presentations

The Museum continues to offer free weekly themed presentations by its archaeologists, giving visitors the opportunity to discover interesting, often unknown, aspects of the ancient world. On the occasion of the action "Periodic or unexpected visitors" with works from Canada and the USA, the presentations "A celebration for Athena. The procession and games of the Great Panathenaians" (24 June 2022 - 21 April 2023) and "The world of work in ancient Athens" (05 February 2023 - 30 July 2023). In the presentation "Hidden Histories of Dispersion" (22 May 2022 - 29 January 2023), visitors discovered the adventures of smaller fragments of the Parthenon's sculptural decoration, beyond the sculptures found in the British Museum, but also of other Acropolis antiquities that are now scattered in other European museums.

At the same time, the themed "Saturday at the Museum with 20+1 masterpieces" continues until today, a special walk through the exhibition spaces that introduces visitors to ancient Greek art through myths and legends, beliefs and traditions, historical landmarks and human stories. During the summer months, the presentation "Walking in the ancient neighborhood of the Acropolis Museum", a fascinating journey through time, history and the daily life of the people who lived in the shadow of the Acropolis rock for more than 4,500 years, is offered. Visitors had the opportunity to attend this theme on 27-28 May 2023, in two extraordinary presentations as part of the pan-Hellenic anniversary event "Green Cultural Routes" organized by the Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Programmes for special audience groups

Responding to its role as a cultural organization at the service of society as a whole, the Museum implements actions and programs aimed at special groups of visitors, contributing to their social inclusion and reintegration. The Museum included in its activities regular programmes aimed at refugees and immigrants, encouraging their acquaintance and familiarization with the history and culture of the country that hosts them. At the same time, expanded cooperation with the Detention Centers of the country, offering online tours to groups of students of the second chance schools of the prisons, while carrying out programmes for special schools, structures for the treatment of the mentally ill and rehabilitation centers for people with addiction. In addition, collaboration with the Special Secretariat for the Protection of Unaccompanied Minors and the trainers of the Hospitality Structures for the planning and implementation of the inclusive action for unaccompanied minor refugees on the theme "Arts, craftsmen and professions in ancient Athens", which began in May 2023.

Schools

During the period June 2021 - June 2023, the Museum was visited by 139,740 schoolchildren from Greece and 92,802 schoolchildren from abroad. Many of them attended one of the 6 educational programmes offered by the Department of Educational Programmes. These programs are aimed at all levels of education, include attractive itineraries and are designed with modern museum-pedagogical concepts and an experiential approach. In addition, the Department offered another activity entitled "The 6th Grader at the Acropolis Museum" in collaboration with AMKE Aegea. For better communication between the Museum and schools, 2 seminars were organized for teachers of all levels of education entitled "Planning the visit to the Acropolis Museum" (25 November2022 and 09 December2022). For schools that are unable to visit the Museum, the Department of Educational Programmes recently created the "Museum in the School" programme, where schools can choose from 5 online programmes presented live by the Museum's archaeologists.

Particularly successful was the educational activity "Ironing at the Acropolis Museum", a collaboration with the neighboring 70th Primary School of Athens. On 25 November  2022, the students of the 4th grade gathered in the gardens of the Museum where the archaeologists spoke to them about the importance of the olive and its oil in ancient Athens. the agronomist gave the students important information about harvesting, and the children enthusiastically picked the olives from the olive trees of the Museum. Then, with the help of the educational materials provided by the Department of Educational Programmes, they prepared in the classroom, and took on the role of tour guides to presented to their parents those exhibits of the Museum that tell stories about the olive and the oil in ancient Athens (12 March and 02 April 2023).

Families

The Museum offered families with children a series of imaginative programmes. On the occasion of the theme "The Power of Museums" during International Museum Day 2022 (18 May 2022), digital applications for children and adults were presented in the Museum premises. On the occasion of the theme "Sustainable Heritage" during the European Days of Cultural Heritage, visitors watched the programme "In the houses of the ancients... without television and internet" (24-25 September 2022) at the Museum's archaeological excavation. During the festive season of Christmas, families participated in the programmes "Audio-narratives of strange divine births" (29 December 2021 - 30 December 2021) and "Goblin... confusions" (28 December 2022 - 05 January 2023), which continues with success until today with the "Strange Creatures at the Museum" programme. The above celebratory activities are carried out in collaboration with the Information and Education Department of the YSMA, which in addition carries out 3 school programmes at the Museum,  including 2 seminars for teachers, and participated in the activity "The 6th Grade at the Acropolis Museum" in collaboration with AMKE Aegean.

Periodic reports

From 20 December 2022 until 02 April 2023, the Museum presented in the Hall of Periodical Exhibitions the exhibition entitled "Clothes of the Soul", with 70 emblematic works of the photographer Vangelis Kyris and the exponent of the art of embroidery Anatoly Georgiev. The exhibition, held under the auspices of A.E. of the President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou, was held with the kind support of the Marianna V. Vardinogianni Foundation and the cooperation of the National History Museum.

From 24 May 2023 through 04 June 2023, the Museum hosted the exhibition "A More Perfect Union: American Artists and the Currents of Our Time" organized by the US Embassy. in Athens in collaboration with the Art in Embassies programme of the U.S. State Department, under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Sports. The exhibition focused on issues of equality and freedom, with artworks by the most well-known contemporary American artists, including Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Christine Sun Kim, Edward Ruscha and Carrie Mae Weems.

Unexpected visitors to the Museum

As part of the series of exhibition activities "Periodic or unexpected visitors", the Museum presented to the public works from other museums together with or independently of its exhibits. From 20 June 2022 to 23 April 2023, it hosted two fine art vases from the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada. These are two Panathenaic amphorae, the vessels that were filled with oil, and used to award prizes to the winners of the games of the Great Panathenaic festival. Their exhibition in the Parthenon hall gave them the opportunity to "converse" with the masterful frieze of the great temple, in which Phidias and his collaborators masterfully carved the Panathenaic procession of this Athenian celebration. As part of this exhibition, the Museum presented on 29 June 2022 a lecture by the Director of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Mr. Josh Basseches, on the theme of transforming the museum experience at the ROM in the 21st century.

On 05 February, 2023, it welcomed three Attic pottery vessels from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA, with performances by artisans and professionals, which were placed in the new exhibition section "Officials and Professionals", in the Hall of the Ancient Acropolis, offering visitors a more complete picture of the of working people in ancient Athens. For "International Women's Day", he presented a work - a hymn to female beauty, "Venus in the Golden Bikini", a small statue depicting the goddess in stunning jewelry and a golden garment reminiscent of a "bikini". The work traveled from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and was presented on the ground floor of the Museum from 08 March to 28 May 2023.

Documentation of archaeological collections

The Department of Archaeological Collections continues the documentation of the collections with research, new entries, explanations of terms (glossary), bibliographic references, photographs, and drawings of the 1,112 objects that are to be presented in the on-site exhibition of the Archaeological Excavation as well as for works of the Acropolis that are kept in archaeological warehouses. The documentation and posting on the website of the 63 copies of the sculptural decorations of the Parthenon that are in the British Museum, as well as other Museums, is complete, and currently preparation is underway to post the excavation objects as well. The purpose of posting on the website, in which 2,245 projects are currently registered, is to provide the general public with free access to the information on these artefacts. At the same time, the Museum published on its website the upgraded version of the online application www.parthenonfrieze.gr, with photos and descriptions of all the surviving stones of the frieze located in the Acropolis Museum and abroad. The upgrade of the application was carried out thanks to the excellent cooperation of the Museum with the Acropolis Monuments Maintenance Service, alongside the National Center for Documentation and Electronic Content-EKT.

Maintenance of exhibits

The Conservation and Casting Department completed the conservation or re-conservation work of 322 objects (sculptures, ceramics, metal and bone), with the main one being the conservation and change of the display method of the Kouros Akr statue. 596. Also, the cleaning programme with laser technology was completed, 3D scanning of exhibits was carried out and cleaning and maintenance work carried out in the excavation (floors, mosaics, frescoes and mortars). At the same time, the Department proceeded with the production of approximately 4,204 faithful replicas of Museum exhibits and scale replicas, and the application of high-precision patina with painted details to some of them. This production is made with the aim of making the copies available exclusively at the Museum's sales offices.

Renewal of the permanent exhibition

The continuous enrichment, and renewal of the permanent exhibition is for the Acropolis Museum is an important part of the museum's practice. For this reason, a series of corrective actions, mainly in the Hall of the Archaic Acropolis, are carried out in order to divide the exhibits into their thematic sections in a rational fashion. At the entrance of the renovated hall, the visitor is greeted by the two sphinxes of the Acropolis and immediately after the Musketeer. The concentration of the archaic architectural sculptures, the Maidens and the male statues in distinct sections - allows a better intake of the museum narrative and enhances the visitor's experience.

The new exhibition section "Officials and Professionals" was also created, enabling the visitor to see with a different eye, not only the aesthetic beauty of the statues, but also the works of art, the people and the societies that produced them. At the same time, the exhibition was enriched with new works. In the Hall of the Archaic Acropolis, Kouros Akr was repositioned. 596, after the re-conservation and alignment of the trunk with the base, and the base of the laundromat of Plyntria Smikynthes (Akr. 607), the column of Simon the Gnapheus (Akr. 429) and the column with the statue of the Maiden ( Acc. 6503). The head of Homer (EAM 626), the head attributed to the orator Dexippus (EAM 581) and the architectural member with the relief symbols of Athena (Akr. 2444) were added to the north wing of the first floor. In addition, the Museum proceeded to change the lighting in the exhibition spaces of the first and third floors, creating better viewing conditions and highlighting charming details of the exhibits.

the base of the laundromat of Plyntria Smikynthes (Akr. 607),

the column with the statue of the Maiden ( Acc. 6503)

the orator Dexippus (EAM 581)

The head of Homer (EAM 626)

Reunification of the Parthenon's architectural sculptures

On 29 September 2021, a UNESCO Decision was made for the first time after 38 years of recommendations, recognizing the intergovernmental nature of the Greek request for the reunification of the Parthenon architectural sculptures. On 03 January 2022, the National Archaeological Museum returned to the Acropolis Museum ten fragments of the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon. On 10 January 2022, the "Fagan fragment" was returned from the A. Salinas Museum in Palermo. On 02 May 2022, UNESCO unanimously ratified the September 2021 Decision. On 29 May 2022, a nulla osta was issued by the Italian Ministry of Culture for the "Fagan Fragment" to leave Italy forever, as it had already been accepted by the Sicilian Authorities. On 04 June 2022, the definitive reunification of the "Fagan fragment" took place on the east frieze of the Parthenon at the Acropolis Museum.

This action paved the way for the final return of three fragments of the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon from the Vatican Museums, thanks to the decision of Pope Francis on 16 December 2022 to donate them to the Archbishop of Athens. On 07 March 2023, in the halls of the Musei Vaticani, the text of the agreement was signed between the representative of the Pope, Cardinal Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, the representative of the Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, Father Emmanuel Papamikroulis and the Minister of Culture and Sports Dr Lina Mendoni. On the same day, the Protocol of Delivery and Receipt of the three fragments was signed by Archbishop Hieronymos II and the General Director of the Acropolis Museum, Prof. Nikolaos Chr. Stampolidis. The fragments arrived in Athens on 10 March 2023 and were reunited with the Museum's exhibit on 24 March 24 2023.

Finally, on the occasion of the General Assembly of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures held at the Acropolis Museum on 15 September 2022, the Museum in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, organised the international conference on "Parthenon and Democracy". Distinguished representatives of the international Committees for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures participated.

Professor Paul Cartledge as Vice-Chair of IARPS and BCRPM, delivered at this Conference on 16 September 2022, in the Pandremalis Auditorium of the Acropolis Museum, his presentatioon, which was aptly entitled: ‘Just how democratic (in what ways, to what extent) was the (original) Parthenon?’

Museum attendance

This two-year period was extremely important, as the operation of the Museum proceeded without interruption, taking into account the limitations created by the relevant health protocols. The total number of visitors to the Museum were as follows: 2nd Semester of 2021 there were 483,445 visitors, 1st Semester 2022 there were 567,951 visitors, 2nd Semester 2022  there were 884,583 visitors, 1st Semester 2023 there were 831,987 visitors.

"There remains the burning ethical issue: by what moral right do the UK Government and the Trustees of the BM cling on to objects obtained under immeasurably different, neo-colonial and neo-imperial conditions, and – arguably – under false, pseudo-legal pretences?

It is this issue among others that distinguished American poet and Athens-resident Alicia Stallings addresses so skilfully and movingly in a remarkable and timely essay published in the 75th anniversary issue of The Hudson Review. Some essay! Over 120 pages long with a suitably hefty title: ‘Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters (and Actors and Architects) Framed The Ongoing Debate Around Elgin and the Marbles Of The Athenian Acropolis’. ‘What better way’, she writes, ‘for a post-Brexit Britain to display large-mindedness, its good faith, generosity, its participation in the brotherhood of nations’ than to make the ‘magnificent gesture’ of reunification?

Hear, hear. Lord Byron, author of ‘The Curse of Minerva’, would undoubtedly approve."

Professor Paul Cartledge, BCRPM's Vice Chair writing in Neo Kosmos, Monday 12 June 2023

THE PARTHENON MARBLES DISPUTE: Heritage, Law, Politics
Alexander Herman

The Parthenon Marbles are hot. Not in the sense that they are to be lusted after, as was Praxiteles’s also marble sculpture, the Aphrodite of Knidos, but because the question of whether the extant members should—ever—be reunified in Athens is a hot-button political issue, hot enough to set the Prime Ministers of Greece and the U.K. at each other’s throats. Into the fray intrepidly steps Alexander Herman, Director of the Institute of Art and Law, UK.

His otherwise estimable work suffers in one regard, however, the timing of its publication. It unfortunately finds itself up against that of Professor Catharine Titi, The Parthenon Marbles and International Law (Springer Verlag, 2023). Titi is an international human rights lawyer-academic of Greek origin based in Paris. Her magisterial work is truly groundbreaking and superior to the first four chapters of Herman’s (pp. 1-65). Those cover the original acquisition—or theft—of what ‘our man in Constantinople’, the Seventh Lord Elgin, UK ambassador to the Ottoman Sublime Porte, had removed by force and fraud from the ruined temple on the Athenian Acropolis to—eventually—London in the first decades of the 19th century. As Titi demonstrates beyond a peradventure, Elgin had no good legal title to what he claimed to own and sold to the British government in 1816 for £35,000. A fortiori, the British government had none either: it is only in UK domestic law that we the British people ‘own’ Parthenon sculptures.

H.’s book is, however, a useful and usable complement to Professor Titi’s. Like her, he rightly raises the crucially moral—as well as cultural, political, aesthetic etc.—issue at stake in the original Elgin (ad)venture—see ‘Law and Morality’ (pp. 51-3, concluding Chapter 3, ‘A Firman by Any Other Name’). He then proceeds in his remaining six chapters to give, as claimed, a thorough and no less importantly a balanced and critical account of the Elgin ‘dispute’, almost blow-by-blow.

Between 1816 and 2024 there have been several notable crunch-points: among them the newfangled Greek state’s original request for return of the BM’s marbles in the 1830s, and the passage in 1963—again, as in 1816, by a Tory government—of an Act of Parliament forbidding with only a couple of exceptions the BM ever to de-acquisition any of its now about 8 million (minus of course the 2000 or so recently liberated by a rogue curator) holdings. Look to the end, as Herodotus has one of his characters (Solon) presciently say …

Herman’s book is provided with a truly wonderful index, which has no fewer than ten ‘Parthenon’ entries, extending over almost 4 double-column pages. These start with: Parthenon centrality of, and proceed by way of … construction of (447-438) (Periclean Project); … Marbles (after arrival in Britain); … Marbles (history of the claim: British arguments against return/counter-arguments); … Marbles (history of the claim: legal action (IARPM)); … Marbles (history of the claim) (in date order); … Marbles (resolving the dispute); ‘Parthenon Partnership’; and Parthenon Project; to, finally, Parthenon sculptures.

Another special feature of H.’s book besides its index is its incorporation of the views of—among other interviewees—curators, museum directors, lawyers, archaeologists, and politicians in both London and Athens. Yet another are its suggestions for new ways of resolving all such cultural-heritage disputes going forward. If only….

Readers will no doubt wish to be selective in what claims and arguments they choose to focus upon. The very construction of the original Parthenon (not the whole temple’s name) was controversial, and the temple’s function or rather functions, and the interpretation of some or all of its many and polyvalent adornments, remain controversial to this day. H. gives a helpful dateline of the history of the ultimately Greek claim to reunification and the mainly British government/Museum’s counter-claims.

But what of his own views? There is a clue in the fact that he is not in favour of modifying, let alone rescinding, the 1963 Museums Act, and on p. 155 there is perhaps a sketch in miniature of his own, studiously neutral, formally apolitical position: ‘Perhaps it may be better … to leave the ultimate question of resolution to the museums themselves’. That will not be music to those of us who firmly believe the rightful permanent home for those Parthenon sculptures that the British Museum currently holds in trust for the British nation is the (specially dedicated, opened in 2009) Acropolis Museum in their native Athens.

Paul Cartledge

Vice-Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), a non-profit campaign group established in 1983, and an elected Vice-President of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (IARPS).

This review was published in Classic for All.

From the Times'  Leading articles on page 27,  12 January 2022

To read the article on line, please visit the link here.

Tweet by Sarah Baxter, former deputy editor of the Sunday Times, who spoke alongside Janet Suzman and Paul Cartledge in Athens for the conference held at the Acropolis Museum on the 15th of April 2019: 

To the comment piece by Richard Morrison, chief culture writer for The Times on 11 January, 2022 and subsequent letter from BCRPM's Professor Paul Cartledge and Janet Suzman, on page 26, the Letters Page,12 January 2022.