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 pleasantly surprised 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 seems
incredible, 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. The _Mentor_, 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 £80,000 in 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 anything to 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.
[Illustration:
_By courtesy of the British School at Athens_
THE PICTURESQUE CAMP OF A DIGGER IN THE ISLAND OF CRETE]