'The Curse of Minerva', which was written at Athens, and is dated March
17, 1811, remained unpublished, as a whole, in this country, during
Byron's life-time. The arrangement which had been made with Cawthorn, to
bring out a fifth edition of 'English Bards', included the issue of a
separate volume, containing 'Hints from Horace' and 'The Curse of
Minerva;' and, as Moore intimates, it was the withdrawal of the latter,
in deference to the wishes of Lord Elgin or his connections, which led
to the suppression of the other satires.
The quarto edition of The 'Curse of Minerva', printed by T. Davison in
1812, was probably set up at the same time as Murray's quarto edition of
'Childe Harold', and reserved for private circulation. With or without
Byron's consent, the poem as a whole was published in Philadelphia by De
Silver and Co., 1815, 8vo (for variants, see p. 453, 'note'). In a letter
to Murray, March 6, 1816, he says that he "disowns" 'The Curse, etc.',
"as stolen and published in a miserable and villainous copy in the
magazine." The reference is to 'The Malediction of Minerva, or The
Athenian Marble-Market', which appeared in the 'New Monthly Magazine'
for April, 1818, vol. iii. 240. It numbers 111 lines, and is signed
"Steropes" (The Lightner, a Cyclops). The text of the magazine, with the
same additional footnotes, but under the title of 'The Curse', etc., was
republished in the eighth edition of 'Poems on His Domestic
Circumstances', W. Hone, London, 1816, 8vo, and, thenceforth, in other
piratical issues. Whatever may have been his feelings or intentions in
1812, four years later Byron was well aware that 'The Curse of Minerva'
would not increase his reputation as a poet, while the object of his
satire--the exposure and denunciation of Lord Elgin--had been
accomplished by the scathing stanzas (canto ii. 10-15), with their
accompanying note, in 'Childe Harold'. "Disown" it as he might, his
words were past recall, and both indictments stand in his name.
Byron was prejudiced against Elgin before he started on his tour. He
had, perhaps, glanced at the splendid folio, 'Specimens of Ancient
Sculpture', which was issued by the Dilettanti Society in 1809. Payne
Knight wrote the preface, in which he maintains that the friezes and
metopes of the Parthenon were not the actual work of Phidias, "but ...
architectural studies ... probably by workmen scarcely ranked among
artists." So judged the leader of the 'cognoscenti', and, in accordance
with his views, Elgin and Aberdeen are held up to ridicule in 'English
Bards' (second edition, October, 1809, 1. 1007, and 'note') as credulous
and extravagant collectors of "maimed antiques." It was, however, not
till the first visit to Athens (December, 1809-March, 1810), when he saw
with his own eyes the "ravages of barbarous and antiquarian despoilers"
(Lord Broughton's 'Travels in Albania', 1858, i. 259), that contempt
gave way to indignation, and his wrath found vent in the pages of
'Childe Harold'.
Byron cared as little for ancient buildings as he did for the
authorities, or for patriotic enterprise, but he was stirred to the
quick by the marks of fresh and, as he was led to believe, wanton injury
to "Athena's poor remains." The southern side of the half-wrecked
Parthenon had been deprived of its remaining metopes, which had suffered
far less from the weather than the other sides which are still in the
building; all that remained of the frieze had been stripped from the
three sides of the cella, and the eastern pediment had been despoiled of
its diminished and mutilated, but still splendid, group of figures; and,
though five or six years had gone by, the blank spaces between the
triglyphs must have revealed their recent exposure to the light, and the
shattered edges of the cornice, which here and there had been raised and
demolished to permit the dislodgment of the metopes, must have caught
the eye as they sparkled in the sun. Nor had the removal and deportation
of friezes and statues come to an end. The firman which Dr. Hunt, the
chaplain to the embassy, had obtained in 1801, which empowered Elgin and
his agents to take away 'qualche pezzi di pietra', still ran, and Don
Tita Lusieri, the Italian artist, who remained in Elgin's service, was
still, like the 'canes venatici' (Americané, "smell-dogs") employed by
Verres in Sicily (see 'Childe Harold', canto ii. st. 12, 'note'),
finding fresh relics, and still bewailing to sympathetic travellers the
hard fate which compelled him to despoil the temples 'malgré lui'. The
feelings of the inhabitants themselves were not much in question, but
their opinions were quoted for and against the removal of the marbles.
Elgin's secretary and prime agent, W.R. Hamilton, testifies, from
personal knowledge, that, "so far from exciting any unpleasant
sensations, the people seemed to feel it as the means of bringing
foreigners into the country, and of having money spent there" ('Memoir
on the Earl of Elgin's Pursuits in Greece', 1811). On the other hand,
the traveller, Edward Daniel Clarke, with whom Byron corresponded (see
'Childe Harold', canto ii. st. 12, 'note'), speaks of the attachment of
the Turks to the Parthenon, and their religious veneration for the
building as a mosque, and tells a pathetic story of the grief of the
Disdar when "a metope was lowered, and the adjacent masonry scattered
its white fragments with thundering noise among the ruins" ('Travels in
Various Countries', part ii, sect. ii, p. 483).
Other travellers of less authority than Clarke--Dodwell, for instance,
who visited the Parthenon before it had been dismantled, and,
afterwards, was present at the removal of metopes; and Hughes, who came
after Byron (autumn, 1813)--make use of such phrases as "shattered
desolation," "wanton devastation and avidity of plunder." Even
Michaelis, the great archaeologist, who denounces 'The Curse of Minerva'
as a "'libellous' poem," and affirms "that only blind passion could
doubt that Lord Elgin's act was an act of preservation," admits that
"the removal of several metopes and of the statue from the Erechtheion
had severely injured the surrounding architecture" ('Ancient Marbles in
Great Britain', by A. Michaelis, translated by C.A.M. Fennell, 1882, p.
135). Highly coloured and emotional as some of these phrases may be,
they explain, if they do not justify, the 'sæva indignatio' of Byron's
satire.
It is almost, if not quite, unnecessary to state the facts on the other
side. History regards Lord Elgin as a disinterested official, who at
personal loss (at least thirty-five thousand pounds on his own showing),
and in spite of opposition and disparagement, secured for his own
country and the furtherance of art the perishable fragments of Phidian
workmanship, which, but for his intervention, might have perished
altogether. If they had eluded the clutches of Turkish mason and Greek
dealer in antiquities--if, by some happy chance, they had escaped the
ravages of war, the gradual but gradually increasing assaults of rain
and frost would have already left their effacing scars on the "Elgin
marbles." As it is, the progress of decay has been arrested, and all the
world is the gainer. Byron was neither a prophet nor an archaeologist,
and time and knowledge have put him in the wrong. But in 1810 the gaps
in the entablature of the Parthenon were new, the Phidian marbles were
huddled in a "damp dirty penthouse" in Park Lane (see 'Life of Haydon',
i. 84), and the logic of events had not justified a sad necessity.