CHAPTER XIV
Science,which began by doubting, finished by honouring Schliemann for his remarkable discoveries. Multitudes had gazed on the desolate Hill of Hissarlik, the Turks had long quarried it for stones for new buildings, but none except Schliemann suspected the wonders that lay concealed beneath the great mound. Even he was puzzled at first to read all the records aright, but gradually the evidence was sifted out and the story was made plainer. In all, Schliemann recovered from the site a hundred thousand relics, every one of which was photographed, drawn and catalogued with the depth at which it was found.
The peculiar thing was that Schliemann learned, as those who have worked in Egypt have also discovered, that the deeper he dug and the farther he went back, the more artistic did the pottery become; that the potter’s art decayed through the later ages until it was quite crude. Some of the wonderful golden cups he found, weighing upwards of a pound, were beaten into shape by the goldsmith, others were actually cast gold. He was pleasantlysurprised one day when, knocking down a great thick piece of what he imagined to be fused copper wire, the wire broke apart and the silver and golden bracelets of which it was composed fell on the floor, some of them melted together by the heat of a mighty fire.
He found weights made of burnt clay, with seals of similar material, and quaint objects of pottery on which were inscriptions in an unknown writing. There were Egyptian and Assyrian relics, with relics of Crete, and a fine sculpture of Apollo driving the horses of the Sun, which pointed to the remarkable uprising of art in Greece, when Greek sculptors produced the most beautiful statues the world has ever seen, works which modern sculptors acknowledge as the masterpieces of all time. The building of the Parthenon at Athens in the time of Phidias, two thousand four hundred years ago, saw Greek art at the height of its glory, with artists doing finer work than has ever been done before or since.
The glory of Greece faded, but the Parthenon still lifted its noble columns to the skies and withstood the ravages of time. Loving hands designed it, skilled fingers shaped the stones, modelled the exquisite statues that decorated it. That which man had builded so wonderfully, those who were blind to beauty wantonly destroyed. Time and weather caressed the marbles, but the hand of man sought their destruction.
About the time that the Rosetta Stone was brought to light at Fort St. Julian to reveal the mystery of hieroglyphics, Lord Elgin, the British Ambassador to Constantinople, made up his mind to try to save a few of the priceless fragments scattering the Acropolis at Athens. For years the Turks had been using the Parthenon as a quarry, carting off the stones and building them into their houses. The vandalism of the Turks was almost incredible. They ripped out the stones of the most glorious building the world has ever seen and built them into their forts; they fired their guns at the sculptures in a fury of sheer destruction. They broke off arms and legs and gave them to passing travellers. Anything and everything they could do to obliterate the glory of ancient Greece was done.
Lord Elgin, knowing how much had vanished within living memory, knew that in a few years little would be left, for the Turks delighted in destroying those things which the Christian infidels came so far to see. He treated with the Turkish authorities, he even went so far as to gain the ear of the Sultan’s mother, and in the end he was granted an order to dig and remove any stones and sculptures which he desired.
A staff of artists went to Athens on behalf of Lord Elgin to sketch the ruins on the Acropolis. Athens, however, was a long way from Constantinople,and the power of the Porte diminished as the distance from the capital increased. The local officials, reading the order in their own way, would only let the artists enter the Acropolis upon payment of £5 a day. For the greater part of a year Lord Elgin paid this exaction without demur. Money was nothing to him so long as he saved these beautiful relics of the past.
Over four hundred men were employed in collecting what was to be saved of the fragments which, shattered and smashed, were still of unique beauty. They dug among the gigantic heaps of ruins for remains of marbles. Scaffolding was erected to take down some of the matchless figures in the frieze. Stones were taken out of the forts and replaced with less valuable stones.
A rumour that some marbles had been built into a Turkish house reached Lord Elgin’s ears, and at once he sent to Constantinople for special permission to pull down the house. After much delay and a great deal of trouble, coupled with the expenditure of a considerable sum in bribes, the permission was granted. Lord Elgin set his men to work, and stone by stone the house was pulled down. No trace of marbles could be found.
Not until the house was entirely destroyed did the one-time owner calmly stroll up to the ruins and announce that all the marbles had been ground down to make mortar for his dwelling. It seemsincredible, yet it is literally true that the greatest works of art ever created by man were pulverized to make cement for a workman’s house. The incident was but one of a series of such acts of vandalism. On another occasion a Turk, getting at some of the statues, smilingly knocked the head off one of the figures and deliberately smashed it to bits because the people, whom he called Christian dogs, admired it.
The fragments of sculptures that remained were gathered up by loving hands and packed into cases. But there was much delay before they reached England. Lord Elgin, owing to our war with France, became a prisoner in Paris, and the cases containing the sculptures lay neglected in Malta and other places.
Some of the Elgin marbles which now grace the British Museum were for a period at the bottom of the sea. TheMentor, on which they were shipped, was wrecked at Cerigo in the Grecian Archipelago, and went down in 60 feet of water. For three years a fight was waged to rescue these treasures from the sea-bed, and only after considerable difficulty were all the cases eventually recovered by divers.
While the art world acclaimed Lord Elgin for having saved some of the most beautiful statues in the world, the Government looked upon him askance. He spent a fortune of about £80,000in acquiring the wonderful collection, and it was questioned whether the sculptures were really his private property. Directly he gave the State the opportunity of acquiring them on behalf of the public, the Government began to haggle about the price as though the sculptures were an everyday article of commerce such as tea or sugar. A Commission was appointed to go into the matter and many people were examined, giving the impression that Lord Elgin, in expending his private fortune to rescue the priceless sculptures of Phidias from the destroying hands of the Turks, had committed some grave crime. Famous sculptors like John Flaxman, R.A., and Joseph Nollekins, R.A., went before the Commission and spoke enthusiastically about the beauty of the ancient marbles that had once graced the Parthenon; artists like Sir Thomas Lawrence sang their praises; the President of the Royal Academy said the marbles were incomparable.
All the time the question of value kept cropping up. “How much do you think they are worth?” the artists were asked. The artists did not know. How could they say? It was impossible for them to fix a price on beautiful things they considered priceless.
But it was not impossible for the Government. The value of the Elgin Marbles was set down at £35,000. The wonderful sculptures which many American millionaires to-day would pay anythingto obtain were valued then at £35,000. The nation owes much to Lord Elgin for acquiring from the ruins of Athens these matchless relics of the time when Athens was the first city of the world and Greek art was blooming in all its beauty.
Lord Elgin rescued the glories of Greece that were still visible, but Schliemann nearly three quarters of a century later had the extraordinary insight and genius to delve into the dim past before Greece was, before Troy was a nation, back to the misty beginnings of that ancient race whose writings even now we are unable to read.
The puzzling characters inscribed on the pottery dug up by Schliemann gave him the clue where to look for the earliest traces of that race. With rare judgment, amounting to genius, he pointed to Knossos, in Crete, as the seat from which the Mediterranean civilization sprang.
By courtesy of the British School at AthensTHE PICTURESQUE CAMP OF A DIGGER IN THE ISLAND OF CRETE
By courtesy of the British School at AthensTHE PICTURESQUE CAMP OF A DIGGER IN THE ISLAND OF CRETE
By courtesy of the British School at Athens
THE PICTURESQUE CAMP OF A DIGGER IN THE ISLAND OF CRETE