File:Stories of persons and places in Europe (1887) (14781495624).jpg

Identifier: storiesofpersons00bene (find matches)
Title: Stories of persons and places in Europe
Year: 1887 (1880s)
Authors: Benedict, E. L. (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, London, G. Routledge and sons
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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thens in the days of its greatest splendor, and left a veryvaluable record of what he saw. The Elgin Marbles.—The rich carvings and sculptures of the Par-thenon remained in good condition for over a thousand years after the god-dess Minerva was no longer worshipped. It was used as a Christian churchfor a long time, and then when the Turks captured Athens, as a Mohamme-dan Mosque. But in 1687 the people of Venice came to make war on theTurks, and one of their shells lodged in the Parthenon, where the Turks hadstored their power. The explosion blew out a large part of the interior andthrew down many of the columns. Having conquered the city, the Venetians took several of the finestpieces of sculpture from the Parthenon, ruining many more in getting them.More damage was done in the wars that followed, and neither the Greeksnor the Turks, who finally held possession, showed any regard for the decay-ing treasures of art. In 1799 Lord Elgin, British ambassador to Turkey, seeing the damage
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416 Persons and Places in Europe. that was being constantly done, thought it would be doing a service to thecivilized world to rescue these rare old works before they were entirely de-stroyed, and place them where they would be taken care of. He obtainedpermission from the Porte to take from Athens any stones that might ap-pear interesting to him; and at his own expense, aided by a company ofItalian artists, he took from the Acropolis, chiefly the Parthenon, a largenumber of valuable statues and sculptures. These are now in the BritishMuseum, where they are known as the Elgin Marbles. Many unkind thingswere said of Lord Elgin for taking down these pieces and carrying themso far away from the place where they rightly belonged, but later eventshave shown that, had he left them, they would probably have -been de-stroyed in the wars between the Greeks and Turks, during which the templeswere badly shattered, and much more of the rare old workmanship de-stroyed. Life in Old Athens.—In the

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