Antigone asks:'should the Elgin Marbles remain in the British Museum'?

Armand D’Angour is Professor of Classics at the University of Oxford. He has written previously for Antigone on the music of Sophocles’ Ode to Man, on the Song of Seikilos inscription, on Sappho and Catulluse, and on a mysterious graffito at Abu Simbel in Egypt here.

Tista Austin grew up in Cambridge and is a teacher and poet. She studied Classics at University College London.

Both Armand and Tista wrote in Antigone, an open forum for Classics in the twenty-first century. In the 'About' section of this forum it reads: 'the contributors to Antigone are united by a love of Classics. To be sure, not every idea from Classical antiquity deserves to be defended, and we enthusiastically invite critical analysis of those that may be wrong. On the whole, however, our writers do seek to uphold and promote ideals that held sway thousands of years ago: open enquiry, robust debate and the unfettered exploration of ideas.'

And so Armand wrote about the return of the Parthenon Marbles or Sculptures, Tista wrote about retaining this peerless collection in the British Museum. Currently, the surviving pieces, and approximately half are exhibited the right way round in the Acropolis Museum with direct views to the Parthenon. The other half that was removed when Greece was under Ottoman rule, are in the British Museum's Room 18, exhibited facing inwards. Some fragments did make their way to other museums, and there have been returns from the University of Heidelberg (2006), the Fagan fragment from A. Salinas Museum in Palermo (2022), and the Vatican Museum (2023). The Acropolis Musum continues to hope for return of pieces from Copenhagen, London, Munich, Paris, Vienna and Würzburg. 

Read the debate on 'return or retain' in Antigone, and if you wish, do vote, but do take care as the question is a positive response for the Parthenon Marbles or Sulptures, to remain in UK. And 'Elgin Marbles' is a lot more than what Greece is requesting.

The poll concluded with 44.53% voting to Retain the Parthenon Marbles in the BM, 45.68% to Returnthem to Athens, and 9.79% 'I Just Don't Know'.