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The story begins with a deal that Elgin struck in 1801. The Scottish Earl of Elgin, a passionate amateur collector of antiquities, had proposed himself for the post of British ambassador to Turkey's Ottoman Empire because of his health. He had syphilis, a disease which was to leave him as distressingly noseless as many of the chipped statues he collected, and the doctors recommended a warm climate.

Europe was in the grip of the Romantic revival, and he was obsessively keen to record and, if possible, obtain as many of the ancient Greek treasures now in the uncaring care of Turkey. His purpose, he wrote, was to improve the modern art of Great Britain by permitting its artists to see firsthand the greatest examples of sculpture ever made.

Ruling a wide swath of the ancient world, the potentates of Constantinople were pleased to accept bribes, gifts, money and munitions from the warring countries of England and France. In return, they gave permission to record, then sketch, then dismantle, and finally, transport the monuments and sculptures by earlier inhabitants of the empire they now ruled. They regarded the newfound passion of the European aristocracy and artists for ancient Greek artifacts as faintly ludicrous. But if the English and the French wanted to compete in carting those long-neglected relics halfway round the world, let them.

So it was that Elgin (called "Eggy" by his vivacious young bride) was able to wheedle and buy permission to collect any chunks of the Parthenon crowning Athens' Acropolis that had crashed to the ground, and, he airily assumed, any more that might possibly fall down in the future.

Built between 447 and 432 B.C., the Parthenon was a vast building masterminded by the Athenian statesman Pericles. Over the years, the Acropolis had many times been a battleground. In 1687 a Turkish powder magazine in the temple exploded after a direct hit by besieging Venetians, destroying a large part of it. The rubble was used as building material and rifled by souvenir hunters. All that was left intact of the three-dimensional art that had filled the building was part of the frieze and metopes (sculpted pictures) and some pediment sculptures.

Elgin set about dismantling 274 feet of the original 524-foot frieze, 15 of the metopes and 17 figures from the pediments. They ultimately filled over 100 large packing cases. That some of the best examples of Phidias' art broke into fragments while being lowered to the ground was unfortunate, but that did not stop Elgin from squirreling up the bits.

The treasures' subsequent adventures included sinking in shipwrecks, heavy-handed salvaging, being possessed by and rescued from Napoleon's fleet, and then lying, dispersed and neglected -- for many years awaiting transportation to London.

Elgin himself suffered imprisonment in France, the infidelity and divorce of his countess, worsening health and near-bankruptcy caused by the enormous cost of dismantling, transporting and storing 120 tons of marbles, which were finally piled up in the back garden of a house at the corner of Piccadilly and Park Lane.

Most distressing for Elgin was finding that his reputation had become that of a despoiler of an ancient civilization. His detractors were led by the mad, bad Lord Byron, whose hand probably carved on the Acropolis the lines, "Quod Non Fecerunt Gothi, Fecerunt Scoti" -- "What the Goths spared, the Scots have destroyed." In the bestselling narrative poem, "Childe Harold," Byron wrote:

The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he?
Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could be!
... Cold as the crags upon his native coast,
His mind as barren and his heart as hard,
Is he whose head conceiv'd, whose hand prepar'd
Aught to displace Athena's poor remains ...
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defac'd, thy mouldering shrines removed,
By British hands ..."

But Napoleon met his Waterloo, and the loot that he had collected for the Louvre was sent back: The four horses from St. Mark's to Venice, Rubens' "Descent from the Cross" to Antwerp, the Medici Venus to Florence. And so, at last, victorious England was able to consider buying the Parthenon Marbles from Lord Elgin.

Elgin claimed that he personally had spent 62,440 pounds on bribes, workmen, transportation and storage -- roughly $10 million at today's prices -- but the best offer a government committee could come up with was 35,000 pounds. Reluctantly, he took it, and returned to Scotland to father eight children with a new countess, adding to the four already born to the first Lady Elgin.

Next page | If noses, arms and genitalia had been chipped off, new ones were often stuck on