The return of the British Museum's Parthenon Marbles to Greece, according to Reuters' report on Sunday, may be possible 'even if the two sides cannot come to an agreement over who owns the sculptures'.

Greece's request for the return of the sculptures began shortly after independence. The more recent request was made by the then Minister of Culture, Melina Mercouri in 1983, when the Greek government formally asked the UK government to return the marbles to Greece and, in 1984, listed the dispute with UNESCO. The Greek government has always only requesed the return of the sculptures that Lord Elgin removed from the Parthenon at the start of the 19th century.

The Pope last year announced that he would donate three fragmented pieces from the Vatican Museums to Greece. The signing of the agreement took place in Rome on  Tuesday 07 March 2023.

Talks bewtween Greece and the British Museum have been going on since late 2021, and were disclosed when Prime Minister Mitsotakis came to London in November of 2022 to address the LSE.

The British Museum's Parthenon collection could be returned to Greece under a long-term cultural partnership agreement, Reuters reported on Sunday 12 March.

The plans, which have been discussed with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and British Museum's Chair George Osborne, would see a rotation of Greek masterpieces offered to the British Museum, including some that have never been seen outside Greece*.(This was offered by Greece for the first time in 2000, 23 years ago!).

Such an arrangement could avoid the requirement for a change in the law to allow the British Museum to dispose of its artefacts, the same point raised in 2000 also.  And yet,  George Osborne has played down the prospect of a permanent return of the marbles, instead suggested an arrangement where the marbles can be shared by both museums and seen in London and Athens.

This story is set to run for a little longer.

Read the aricle by Liam Kelly, Arts Correspondent for the Sunday Times, and for those that read in Greek in Ta Nea, although there are paywalls.

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.

"My favourite word: 'borborygmos' "[means-tummy-rumble]

I first learned the ancient Greek alphabet at school in 1958. I was 11 years old. From that moment on, Latin, with its ancient Roman characters, had to take second place. In the position of "beta", in the best sense attributed to Eratosthenes of Cyrene (ed.: contemporaries attributed to him the nickname "Beta", because he was the second best in the world in all areas of knowledge). After some time I stumbled upon Xenocrates, Plato's successor in the Academy, who once wondered how many syllables can be produced from the different combinations of letters of the Greek alphabet.

Whatever the answer, I have one: it depends. Upon which version of the alphabet we are looking at - local or over a wider region, since there were several, with a varying number of letters from 24 to 28. What they all had in common, however, was that the overall number of letters remained small. Compare, for example, the symbols and ideograms one needs to command in order to decipher Linear B: about 200. Without mentioning the more than 3,000 characters needed for basic literacy in Chinese.

Let's look at it differently: by adapting a version of the Phoenician alphabet, developed for a Semitic language, and adding vowels that the Semite-speakers did not use, some Greeks around 800 BC invented for their Indo-European language the first fully phonetic alphabet in the world. Something that even a child of 3 - 5 years can manage with ease.

Even an ancient Spartan could! I mention this because, in spite of some biased claims by snobbish Athenians, all or most Spartans, women and men, were literate - enough to cope with all the needs and demands of their society. I remember very well the first ancient Spartan inscriptions that I examined first-hand at the excellent Museum of Sparta, in the 1970s, thinking how different was the form of some (Doric) words differed from those of the Attic dialect I had learned in school. "Sioi" instead of "Gods", for example.

I've been moving on ever since. Unlike the Spartans, I wear a tie from time to time. One of my favourites, from the "Thalassa" collection (designed in Greece, but, oimoi, produced in Italy!), has as its motif letters of the Greek alphabet. And what is my favourite Greek word, both modern and ancient? What else than a typical example of onomatopoeia: the "booborygmos".

Paul Cartledge is Professor of Greek History at the School of Classics, University of Cambridge and Vice-Chair of BCRPM

Paul's words were published in Ta Nea.

Professor Paul Cartledge's  letter to the Times, was published on Saturday 01 December.

Sir

It is good to know that Louis de Bernières (letter, Nov 30) is a philhellene, but his assertion that Lord Elgin took the marbles with Ottoman permission is doubly untrue. There is no verifiable documentary evidence to support the claim that what Elgin did was officially authorised nor did he merely take what he had removed and sold to the British government. Your headline 'Surrendering the Elgin Marbles to Athens' is also unfortunate: this is not a matter of war but diplomacy, and the only Marbles in question are those removed from the Parthenon, not the entirety of the Elgin collection of marble sculptures now in the BM.

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

And on Sunday with Michael Portillo, fast forward to 1:07:30 to catch the discussion on the Parthenon Marbles. Paul wore a Thalassa tie, the same creators of the tie worn by King Charles III at COP28. Paul's tie isn't woven with the motif of the Greek flag but has the letters of the Greek alphabet. 

Earlier in the week Paul also spoke on NTD, a New York-based, global television network as well as Ta Nea: "Britain is isolated on the issue of the Parthenon Marbles. Greece's request for reunification will remain on the table, as it has been for more than four decades since it was submitted to UNESCO. We will continue our campaign and urge Greece to continue to ask the trustees of the British Museum to do what is right: return the sculptures, but not as loans, to their natural environment, the Acropolis Museum."

Yannis Andritsopoulos, UK correspondent for Ta Nea has researched UK's parliamentary archives and reported on his finding in today's Ta Nea. His article is aptly entitled: 'Research into the archives of the British Parliament: Two centuries of parliamentary battles over the Sculptures.'
"Mr. Churchill, would you consider the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece?" 

Yannis begins with a question, which follows a comprehensive report that takes us back to 07 June 1816 and concludes in February 2022. 

What business do Konstantinos Karamanlis, Melina Mercouri, Kostas Simitis, Evangelos Venizelos and Kyriakos Mitsotakis have in the House of Commons and the House of Lords?
As themselves, none. Their names, however, have been mentioned more than once by members of Britain's Upper and Lower Houses.
The reason was none other than the Parthenon Sculptures, the request for the return to Greece, which is as old as their purchase by the parliament of Albion 207 years ago.
As the in-depth investigation of "Ta Nea" in the archives of the British Parliament reveals, the issue has, over the past two centuries, occupied dozens of British MPs, ministers and prime ministers.
The first time London was asked to repatriate Phidias' masterpieces was in the parliamentary debate about their acquisition. On 07 June 1816, Congressman Hugh Hammersley slammed their then-imminent purchase, speaking of a "dishonest transaction" and "looting."
He suggested that "the Marbles, so shamelessly acquired, should be bought, kept in the British Museum, and returned, without further formalities or negotiations, when requested by the present or any future government of the city of Athens."

To read the artricle in full, and in Greek, visit Ta Nea, or for an English translation, the document here.

Successive UK governments when faced with the question about the reunification of these sculptures seem determine not to look at this request as a case in its own right. Yet, no matter how often the response remains unchanged, the thirst to see the surviving sculptures reunited in the Acropolis Museum's top floor, glass-walled Parthenon Gallery is never going to go away.

Saying 'no' repeatedly to Greece is not changing the growing attitude of museum visitors. Is this about power? Probably. Is it about one nation wanting to hang onto its past at the cost of another's need to conserve a peerless collection of sculptures that was removed from a building created over 2, 500 years ago, which still crowns their capital city? Tragically, it would seem just so. Is it disrespect of one nation towards another nations cultural heritage? We hope not.

Let us not forget, that Greece is not asking for all that was removed from the Acropolis before it gained independence. And let us also remember that the British Museum is never going to be denuded of Greek artefacts, it currently has 108,184 of which 6,493 are on display. And once these specific sculptures are reunited with their other surviving half, Greece has offered the UK more artefacts, not seen outside of Greece.

Janet Suzman: "a major piece of research by Yannis! Since these Commons attitudes there has been a huge shift in the public mind-set about cultural appropriations, hence the present majority of people who think the Parthenon Marbles ought to be returned." 

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

Ta Nea, 12 March 2019 

Greece’s daily newspaper, Ta Nea, has seen, studied and photographed the controversial ‘firman’, the Ottoman document used by Lord Elgin to remove the Parthenon Sculptures and bring them to London. It is the Italian version of the ‘firman’ which was acquired by the British Museum 13 years ago and has since been kept in its Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities.

Ioannis Andritsopoulos,Ta Nea's UK Correspondant

The original ‘firman’ allegedly written in the Ottoman language has been lost, with several experts questioning both if it ever existed and the authenticity of the document currently held in London. The so-called firman played a key role in the House of Commons’ decision to buy the Sculptures from Elgin in 1816.

To read Yannis Andritsopulos' article in Ta Nea, follow the link here.

Several historians and lawyers cast doubt on whether Elgin legitimately removed the Marbles from the Acropolis site.

“Concerning the precise wording of the two 'firmans' (legally binding official royal permits) that the Ottoman Sultanate is said to have granted to His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador to the Sublime Porte (Thomas Bruce, the 7th Lord Elgin), all or almost all is smoke and mirrors. For no literal transcripts of the original Turkish documents exist - or are known to exist - today. One thing, however, all sane commentators agree on: no firman can possibly have granted Elgin explicit permission to do what he and his agents in fact did, namely destroy rather than remove to safekeeping significant portions of the original Parthenon marbles.”, said Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture emeritus, University of Cambridge, and Vice Chairman of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.

Professor Paul Cartlege

“The so-called 'firman' was an official communication from the Grand Vizier or in his absence his deputy to the Governor and Judge of Athens. It was not, as has been claimed by staff of the British Museum 'permission given to Lord Elgin'. Plentiful contemporary historical sources confirm that the local Ottoman officials exceed the terms of the document, as the Ottoman Government itself acknowledged. It was their understanding that the pieces had been removed 'without remonstrance' that persuaded a Parliamentary Select Committee in 1816 to recommend the purchase of the Elgin collection. They had, of course, no authority to pronounce on Ottoman law, nor did their decision to waive doubts about legality, on which they did not make a recommendation, amount to asserting legal ownership. What some may take from Dr Fischer's remark is that he is claiming that an act of the British Parliament could somehow give legitimacy to a messy business of what in modern terms would be described as bribes, threats, and political pressures” commented renowned William St. Clair, senior research fellow at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

William St Clair

18 December 2021, TA NEA,  Yannis Andritsopoulos, London Correspondent for the Greek daily newspaper

Boris Johnson as student in 1986 wrote that the Parthenon Marbles were pillaged and should be returned to Greece. A position the British PM has recently rejected when Greece requests the reunification of these antiquities, and insisting they were 'legally acquired'.

Boris Johnson’s insistence as Prime Minister that the Parthenon Marbles were legally acquired by Lord Elgin and should remain in the British Museum is a complete reversal of the position he previously held, Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea can exclusively reveal.

In fact, as a university student, Johnson urged the British government to return the artefacts to Greece, arguing that they had been unlawfully removed from the ancient temple in Athens.

It is the first time evidence has emerged that the British Prime Minister advocated the reunification of the 2,500-year-old sculptures, a request he has repeatedly rejected publicly in recent years.

In an article written in April 1986 for the Oxford Union’s magazine, Johnson, then an undergraduate at Oxford University, accused Lord Elgin of ‘wholesale pillage’ of the Parthenon.

As British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Elgin removed the sculptures from the Parthenon in the early 19th century, when Greece was under Ottoman rule. He then sold them to the British government which passed them on to the British Museum in 1817.

Writing as president of the Oxford Union 35 years ago, Johnson claimed in his article that an Act of Parliament to hand the Marbles back “could be passed in an afternoon.”

The future Prime Minister went on to accuse the British government of ‘sophistry and intransigence’, saying that Whitehall’s claim that the ‘transaction had been conducted with the recognised legitimate authorities of the time’ is “invalid”.

“A letter from Elgin of 1811 reveals that the Turkish authorities denied ‘that the persons who had sold those marbles to him had any right to dispose of them’,” Johnson wrote.

He added that Elgin “secured from the Sultan a firman to remove 'qualche pezzi di pietra’ - a few pieces of stone - that happened to be lying about on the Acropolis. Elgin's interpretation of this phrase was liberal to say the least.”

This statement contradicts Johnson’s recent remarks regarding the legality of Elgin’s actions. In an exclusive interviewwith Ta Nea published in March, the British Prime Minister 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.” He stressed that this view is “the UK Government’s firm longstanding position on the sculptures”.

“It seems that Boris Johnson was aware of concrete evidence that Lord Elgin’s actions were unlawful from as early as 1986. This begs the question: did he mislead the public when he recently claimed that the sculptures were legally acquired by Elgin?”, a Greek official told Ta Nea.

It is the first time since its publication in 1986 that this article has been made public.

The Daily Telegraph reported last month that Johnson “wrote an article for a student magazine arguing that (the Marbles) should stay here”. In actual fact, though, it is now clear that he argued the exact opposite.

Titled “Elgin goes to Athens – The President marbles at the Grandeur that was (in) Greece …,” the 978-word article was published in Debate, the official magazine of the Oxford Union Society (Vol. 1, No. 3, Trinity Term 1986, p. 22).

Ta Nea found the an unknown article in an Oxford library last week. It is not available online, nor is there any reference to it in the press or on the Internet. Two Oxford sources confirmed its authenticity.

Greece has repeatedly called for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, arguing that Lord Elgin had not secured permission to remove them from the ancient temple. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Culture Minister Lina Mendoni have said that the sculptures were 'stolen'. In his 1986 article, Mr Johnson appears to accept that view.

However, when he met with his Greek counterpart in Downing Street last month, the British leader rebuffed Mitsotakis’s request for the Marbles to be returned. He claimed that the issue was "one for the trustees of the British Museum".

This is inconsistent with the view he expressed in his 1986 article, in which he said that it is for the British Parliament to decide the Marbles’ fate.

“In 1816 (Elgin) sold them to the British government for £35,000. Therefore, it would require an Act of Parliament to hand them back. This, needless to say, seems to be a more or less insuperable brake on the process of return - yet it could be passed in an afternoon,” Johnson, who graduated from Balliol College with a BA in Classics, wrote.

The sculptures held in the British Museum make up about half of the 160-metre frieze which adorned the Parthenon, a 5th century BC architectural masterpiece. Most of the other surviving sculptures (around 50 metres) are in Athens.

Britain has repeatedly rejected Greece's request to hold talks on returning the Marbles. Earlier this year, a UNESCO committee said that Greece’s request for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures is “legitimate and rightful,” stressing that “the case has an intergovernmental character and, therefore, the obligation to return the Parthenon Sculptures lies squarely on the UK Government”. It also called on Britain “to reconsider its stand and proceed to a bona fide dialogue with Greece on the matter”.

In his magazine article, Johnson, then 21, called on the UK to return Phidias’s masterpieces to Greece so that they can be “displayed where they belong”.
“The reasons for taking the marbles were good. The reasons for handing them back are better still,” the future Prime Minister and Tory leader stressed.

“They will be housed in a new museum a few hundred yards from the Acropolis. They will be meticulously cared for. They will not, as they were in the British Museum in 1938, be severely damaged by manic washerwomen scrubbing them with copper brushes,” he wrote.

It had been claimed that as a student Johnson was "sympathetic" to the Greek request, but no evidence to support this had been presented until now. All his past public comments express the view that the Marbles should stay in the UK.

In 2014, he criticised George Clooney for suggesting Britain should return the Parthenon marbles to Greece. Johnson said at the time the actor needed his “marbles” restored, claiming Clooney was “advocating nothing less than the Hitlerian agenda for London's cultural treasures”.

In a 2012 letter shared with the Guardiannewspaper, Johnson, then mayor of London, wrote that “in an ideal world, it is of course true that the Parthenon marbles would never have been removed from the Acropolis,” but concluded that if the sculptures were removed from London, it would amount to “grievous and irremediable loss”. Therefore, he added, “I feel that on balance I must defend the interests of London.”

In March, the Prime Minister posed for Ta Nea in his parliamentary office next to a plaster cast bust of his “personal hero”, Pericles. The Athenian statesman is credited with ordering the design and construction of the Parthenon from which Elgin took the marbles.

As president of the Oxford Union, Johnson invited the then Greek Culture Minister Melina Mercouri to participate in a June 1986 debate titled: “[This House believes] that the Elgin Marbles must be returned to Athens.” She won the vote.
The Greek government says that the sculptures were illegally removed during the Ottoman occupation of Greece in the early 1800s.

It seems Greece has found an unlikely ally in its quest to reunite the Marbles in the form of the 21-year-old Johnson, who thought that “the Elgin Marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture” and be displayed “where they belong: in a country of bright sunlight and the landscape of Achilles, 'the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea'.”

Boris Johnson’s article in full:

Elgin goes to Athens

The President marbles at the Grandeur that was (in) Greece …

On Thursday 12 June Melina Mercouri, the Greek Minister of Culture, is coming to the Oxford Union. Her subject, thanks to dynamic lobbying has a ring of familiarity all around the world: the return of the Elgin Marbles. Powerful forces will cause her to fly to Britain. They are on the one hand the passionate national feeling of the Greek people, and on the other the sophistry and intransigence of the British Government. And caught between these forces is, not a sack of old balls, but the supreme artistic treasure of the ancient world. The debate on 12 June will mark the climax of a renewed campaign by the Greek government to restore to Greece the sculptural embodiment of the spirit of the nation. The vote in Oxford - the centre of British Classical scholarship - will without question affect the decision in Whitehall. To put it crudely, your choice will count.

The background
In 450 BC Pericles, the ruler who steered Athens to her greatness, launched an ambitious programme of monumental public works. The Acropolis, the ancient citadel of Athens, was to become the glory and envy of the world. Puritan spirits objected, claiming that he was wrongfully using tribute from Athenian dependencies to ‘tart up the city like a whore'. But posterity has faulted their judgement. The craftsmen Phidias, Ictinus and Callicrates, with the personal encouragement of Pericles, created buildings and sculpture which are wholly emblematic of the pride and intellectual vigour of Athens. It is on the Panathenaic frieze, which ran along the wall behind the Parthenon's columns, that we see classical art at its most sublime. The technical control is minute, the features calm and passionless. The detachment and self-control of the figures are in harmony with the Periclean vision: of the city and citizens of the virgin goddess independent, self-reliant, and superior to the common calls of the flesh. The Panathenaic Frieze consisted of 111 panels. 97 survive. 56 of them are in the British Museum.

The Parthenon, the temple of Athena the Virgin, has suffered two major catastrophes in its history. The first was in 1678, when a cunning Turkish general, under siege from the Venetians, decided to use it as a munitions dump - like hiding a tank in a Red Cross tent. But the Venetian general Morosini reached for his gun, like Goering, at the mention of culture, shelled it, and blew up most of the central portion. The second major catastrophe was the wholesale pillage of the ancient shrine by Lord Elgin from 1801 to 1811.

Greece was at this time a tumbledown outpost of the Ottoman Empire. The national identity which Pericles glimpsed, and which has returned so conspicuously in the 20th century, had shimmered and vanished. Lord Elgin was Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, and had left behind him in England a young and skittish wife, with a pampered girl's insatiable desire for presents. It was in the Acropolis that he realised he had found a few things that might amuse here. Manipulating Turkish dependence in Britain for military support, he secured from the Sultan a firman to remove 'qualche pezzi di pietra’ - a few pieces of stone - that happened to be lying about on the Acropolis. Elgin's interpretation of this phrase was liberal to say the least. For ten years a team of labourers, under the direction of a rapacious Italian called Lusieri, sawed and hacked at the sculptures of Phidias. Huge ox-wagons daily lumbered down to the Piraeus laden with their pathetic cargo: Hermes’ Knee is still in Athens. The rest of him is in the British Museum.

It was the near-anarchy of the Ottoman Empire that allowed Elgin to get away with it. ‘Do you mind if I borrow these bits of stone for a while?’ was how he might have put it to the local sergeant, and the man would have shrugged and returned to his harem in the Erechtheum. And yet it was on precisely this point that the Whiteheall mandarins rejected, in 1983, the formal request of the Greek government for the return of the marbles: that ‘transaction had been conducted with the recognised legitimate authorities of the time.’ As it turns out, even this paltry defence is invalid: a letter from Elgin of 1811 reveals that the Turkish authorities denied ‘that the persons who had sold those marbles to him had any right to dispose of them.’

To be fair, Elgin did humanity a service by bagging the sculptures before they could be quarried for the construction of Turkish hovels. He lost a fortune on the enterprise, and his wife, who probably found them too cold and immodest, was not happy with them either. In 1816 he sold them to the British government for £35,000. Therefore it would require an Act of Parliament to hand them back. This, needless to say, seems to be a more or less insuperable brake on the process of return - yet it could be passed in an afternoon. The reasons for taking the marbles were good. The reasons for handing them back are better still.

The Elgin Marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunlight and the landscape of Achilles, 'the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea'. They will be housed in a new museum a few hundred yards from the Acropolis. They will be meticulously cared for. They will not, as they were in the British Museum in 1938, be severely damaged by manic washerwomen scrubbing them with copper brushes. Legend tells that the statues of the gods shrieked as they were torn from the Parthenon. It is now almost two centuries since Lord Elgin's deed, and the gods are not mocked.

Boris Johnson
Balliol

1986

 Guardian 18 December 2021

Helena Smith writes: 'The extent of Boris Johnson’s U-turn on the Parthenon marbles has been laid bare in a 1986 article unearthed in an Oxford library in which the then classics student argued passionately for their return to Athens.

Deploying language that would make campaigners proud, Johnson not only believed the fifth century BC antiquities should be displayed “where they belong”, but deplored how they had been “sawed and hacked” from the magisterial edifice they once adorned.

“The Elgin marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunshine and the landscape of Achilles, ‘the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea,’” he wrote in the article, republished by the Greek daily, Ta Nea, on Saturday.'

To read the article in full, follow the link here

Telegraph 18 December 2021

Steve Bird also took up the story: 'Thirty-five years ago, Johnson wrote how the UK’s claim to the artefacts relied on the “invalid” suggestion that Elgin had received the approval to remove them from “the legitimate authorities of the time”.

Johnson wrote: “As it turns out, even this paltry defence is invalid: a letter from Elgin of 1811 reveals that the Turkish authorities denied ‘that the persons who had sold those marbles to him had any right to dispose of them.’”

Greece has repeatedly insisted that because the Ottomans were an occupying force in Greece they had no right to sanction the removal of the frieze to anyone.

To read the Telgraph article, follow the link here(there is a paywall). 

Victoria Hislop, novelist and activist, was granted honorary Greek citizenship in July 2020 for promoting modern Greek history and culture.
This was a richly deserved reward for above all a trilogy of novels with Greek themes that bring out the trials, tribulations and sometimes triumphs of modern Greek communities ranging from Crete to Thessaloniki to (Greek) Cyprus. The Island (2005) was her breakout account of the use of the islet of Spinalonga (Venetian name) off north-eastern Crete as a receptacle for leprosy victims. The Thread (2011) traced the Asia Minor catastrophe of the 1920s through to its further consequential disaster - the destruction of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki by the Nazis. Finally, The Sunrise (name of a hotel in Famagusta/Turkish Varosha) explored the disaster of the 1974 Turkish occupation of 'northern' Cyprus via the fictionalised but fact-based stories of some conflicted and displaced Greek families. Overtones of ancient Greek tragedy were clearly discernible. Others of her works have Greek, especially Cretan, settings or associations. For many years she had been made uncomfortable by the British Museum's intransigent attitude to 'their' Marbles: the recent interview of the Prime Minister by Yannis Andritsopoulos (Ta Nea) pushed her finally over the edge and, happily, into the embracing arms of the Reunification camp.

20 March 2021, in Ta Nea, an exclusive interview by Yannis Andritsopoulosn exclusive interview by Yannis Andritsopoulos: 

When Victoria Hislop read Boris Johnson’s interview with Greek newspaper Ta Nea a few days ago, she was furious.

The award-winning British author says it prompted her to grab her phone, send an email and join the campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.

It was a move she had been contemplating for years but her mind was made up in an instant by the British Prime Minister’s words.

“I've been thinking really deeply about the whole issue. It seems like decades somehow, because it always comes into conversation with Greeks,” the acclaimed writer told Ta Nea.

“But the actual tipping point was reading this interview with Boris Johnson in Ta Nea last Friday,” she added.

Lord Elgin, ambassador of Great Britain to the Sublime Porte, removed the 2,500-year-old sculptures from the Parthenon temple in Athens in the early 19th century, when Greece was under Ottoman rule.

In his first interview with a European newspaper since becoming the UK’s prime minister, Mr Johnson dashed Greece’s hopes of getting the Marbles back, saying that they 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.”

“It was the same, tired statement, now made by Boris. I suppose I have extremely deep and personal anger towards Boris on many issues. Somehow, him coming out against the return of the Marbles was like 'this is it',” says Hislop, whose 2005 bestseller The Island has sold more than 6 million copies around the world and it has been published in 40 languages altogether.

I ask her what her first thought was when she read Johnson’s comments.

“I was like: ‘Oh God, that is absolutely wrong’. I think the history books will show that Boris was on the wrong side of history,” she says.

“This is the 200th anniversary of such a significant moment in Greek history,” she adds, referring to the bicentennial of the Greek War of Independence that Greece is celebrating next week. “I felt like that answer to you is a slap in the face. It felt like that.”

When she finished reading the interview, Hislop, 61, decided it’s high time she joined the campaign for the return of the sculptures.

“It's been very much on my mind now for a long time to join up, but somehow Boris just tipped me right over on Friday. What he said made me angry. This interview with Ta Nea was the last straw,” Hislop recalls.

She subsequently contacted the renowned academic Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, who is also vice-chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM) and the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (IARPS).

“When I read it, I emailed Paul immediately. I was in my kitchen and my laptop was in my study, which is two floors up from the kitchen. I only had my phone in the kitchen. It's really irritating to send emails on your phone; but I didn't even bother to come back up to my laptop. I just wanted to do it literally there and then.”

Hislop sent Cartledge the link to the interview on Ta Nea’s website and wrote: “Typical of Johnson to cite the usual cliché about the Marbles. (…) I think this is my final push to join up.”

Her request to join the committee was approved almost instantly.

Hislop is now a member of the BCRPM, a historic lobby group founded in 1983 by the distinguished British architect James Cubitt and his wife Eleni, a filmmaker, following a discussion the couple had with the then Greek Culture minister Melina Mercouri (one of the most emblematic figures of contemporary Greece) and her husband Jules Dassin, a renowned film director and producer.

“I should have done it before, I know,” she says. “But, you know… It’s that sense - and I don’t want this to sound defeatist - of what can one really do in the face of this very old-fashioned stubbornness. That's what I regard the British Museum slightly being. It’s a great institution, but this stubbornness that they have…”.

Hislop says that Johnson’s claim that the Parthenon Marbles were legally acquired by Lord Elgin is not accurate. “Where is that firman? (the Ottoman document used by Elgin as the basis of proving the supposed legality of the Marbles’ removal) Does it exist?” she asks.

“But… it's to do with recognising that what you did in the past isn't always the right thing for the present. You can't justify something now with what took place 200 years ago,” she adds.

“There was a fashion at the time for putting bits of Greek statues; it was fashionable to have things from the grand tour in your garden. There was an idea that Britain was this civilised place and you could just essentially steal, just take home a souvenir and put it in your luggage more or less. Greece wasn't the country then to have measures to prevent that happening. But it doesn't mean that it was right.”

I ask her what she would say to Boris Johnson if she met him. “I'd say ‘don't just cite the clichés. You're preventing the completion of one of the finest works of art on the planet. You're keeping something in a dark and dreary gallery of the British Museum as opposed to allowing it to see the light’,” says Hislop.

“The Acropolis Museum in Athens is so full of light,” she adds.

“It's like we've got this huge section of a jigsaw and we're just holding it because it's ours. This is something I find naive about still holding that view in 2021.”

Tide turning

Does she think that the Parthenon Sculptures will, eventually, return to their birthplace? Very much so, Hislop assures me.

“I think that the Marbles will return to Greece. It's a question of time. There's a zeitgeist that will sweep these precious things back to Athens.”

“I genuinely do think that the tide will turn with another generation. It might be another 10 or 20 years. This British colonialist attitude is going to seem very, very out of date and very politically incorrect,” she says.

She adds: “Forty years ago there was this sense of those wonderful sculptures that they're somehow better off here in London, that we're looking after them. That excuse is very dated now. The museum which is waiting for them is a way better place in so many ways. There is absolutely no remaining excuse for them not to go back.”

“It's almost like keeping a child from its mother. We're keeping the child. We adopted it, we brought it up but we're not giving it back.”

Hislop went on to explain why, in her view, the Parthenon Marbles could be part of the growing debate over contested heritage and Britain’s colonial past.

“I think that many people in this country, many younger people, people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, are really questioning our colonial past. They don't accept it at all; they are ashamed of it. That's what the British Museum was set up to do; to display things from our empire. When I was a child, we didn't question that. But fifty or sixty years on, we are deeply questioning what such a museum represents and the so-called ownership of many of the things inside.”

Hislop is keen to refute the so-called “floodgates” argument, according to which the return of the Parthenon Marbles could lead to a barrage of other nations' repatriation demands risking emptying the British Museum.

“We all know that the basement of the British Museum is packed. They have got so much stuff that would fill the galleries,” she says, adding that “it is also possible to create absolutely authentic, accurate copies. If the British Museum really wants to keep that as an educational gallery, make absolutely faithful copies but give the original back.”

Boris ban

Hislop reveals that for the last 1.5 years, her own family has banned her “from mentioning Boris in the house because he makes me really angry. I mean, really angry.”

Why is that? I ask her. “He led us over the cliff with Brexit which for me is a catastrophe for Britain. It turns us into this sort of parochial inward-looking country that I feel much less connected with than I did five or ten years ago when we were all European.”

“I wept when that Brexit vote happened,” she says. “I really think it was such a black day when the vote came.”

Hislop says that she “personally blames Boris” for Brexit. “If he had backed Remain, then the UK would still be part of Europe. I genuinely believe that the only reason he took the side that he did in the campaign was that he saw it as a route to becoming prime minister. The depth of his ambition... have no doubt about it. He sees himself as a kind of another Churchill.”

“For me, Boris is wrong on absolutely everything. Whatever he says, I can't agree with in any way whatsoever. Since he became prime minister, I don't think he's made really one good decision. I feel dismayed by him. He always gets away with things,” she adds.

Hislop also thinks that the British prime minister has handled the Covid-19 crisis appallingly. “Boris is very well-known for saying one thing and doing another. He tells lies. He's handled the last year of the pandemic pretty catastrophically. We've lost tens of thousands of people in lockdown. I have a lot of animosity.”

She’s speaking from personal experience, she tells me. “I was once asked to partner him in a tennis match and he turned up without a racket. It's a humorous anecdote, but it says everything about Boris Johnson; that he's all bluster, he's all talk. He is never prepared; I think he is very superficial.”

“He obviously goes to Greece to his father's house every year for holiday and he'll say he's a classicist, he knows Ancient Greek and all of this, but he doesn't actually seem to me to add up to anything.”

Last week, Johnson posed exclusively for Ta Nea next to a bust of Pericles in his parliamentary office in Westminster. “I saw the photograph next to his hero, Pericles; all of that is incredibly skin-deep,” Hislop says.

“We have 60 million people in this country who I feel have all been individually very badly led astray by him. I’m sorry I'm sort of ranting about Boris but it's partly to demonstrate how frustrated and heart-broken I am.”

Being Greek

Hislop was awarded honorary Greek citizenship in September. What does it feel like to be a six-month old Greek, I ask her.

“This is like my firman,” she says, showing me her citizenship certificate (over Zoom). “I keep it in my study.”

During the first lockdown, Hislop wrote her new book One August Night, the sequel to her 2005 bestseller The Island. Over the past few months, including during the UK’s third national lockdown, she has been working from her Chelsea home on the television adaptation of her novels Cartes Postales from Greece and The Last Dance to be released in October by the Greek state broadcaster ERT.

“Most of the time I’m kind of working in Greece although I'm sitting on my desk in London. It’s a strange thing. My body is here but my brain is somewhere else,” she says.

“The filming starts next Monday (in Crete) and I'm hoping to go out at the end of the month. That would be the first time I'm using my Greek passport. And I should be using it with huge pride.”

“We're not really allowed to travel, unless it's for work. I'm slightly hoping that they’ll challenge me at Heathrow and say ‘where are you going, madam?’ And I'll just say ‘I'm Greek, I'm on my way’!”

To  read the article in Ta Nea, kindly follow the link here or to read the original article in Greek, access this pdf.