[44] The Gardiki massacre took place about 1799. In Ali's youth, his tower had been stormed by the people of Gardiki and his mother and sister outraged—at least, so he said. He nursed his revenge for forty years, and then gratified it by massacring the whole population of the village.
[45] Author of a valuable account of Greece at this time.
CHAPTER XVIII
ATHENS—TO ZANTE FOR SALE OF PHIGALEIAN MARBLES—RETURNS TO ATHENS—FEVER—SPENCER STANHOPE—TRIP TO MARATHON, ETC.—RAMAZAN—LIVING OUT IN THE COUNTRY—A PICNIC AT SALAMIS—PRESENTED WITH A BLOCK OF PANATHENAIC FRIEZE—TRIP TO ÆGINA—LEAVES ATHENS FOR ITALY.
My father seems to have got back to Athens to his old quarters at Madame Masson's with Haller and Stackelberg, and there remained. He kept a diary only under the excitement of travel or novelty, and as the sights and society of Athens were too familiar to stir him, there is no precise record of how he passed his time; but he says in a letter that he intends to spend his winter in completing the Ægina and Phigaleian drawings. After all, it was only two or three months he had to be there. The Phigaleian Marbles were to be sold in Zante in May, and this time he meant to be present. The fiasco of the Ægina Marbles in his absence was a warning of what might happen again if the sale were not properly looked after; and as Gropius after his failure had been dismissed from his functions as agent (although still part proprietor) the necessary work had to be done by the others—each one probably communicating with his own Government. He had taken care that his (the British) should be kept properly posted up. In consequence, everything went off without a hitch. In May he went to Zante. The marbles were sold to General Campbell,[46] commandant of the Ionian Islands, acting on behalf of H.R.H. the Prince Regent, and were already packed up for transport on the 12th of July.
During his stay in Zante my father made many elaborate drawings of the Phigaleian bas-reliefs, with a view to determining their relative positions for the book, and he now returned to Athens to go on with it. He arrived on the 11th of July. But his health was no longer able to bear an Athenian summer. In August he writes:
"A most tiresome fever has been worrying me for the past month, sometimes leaving me for a few days, at others rendering me incapable of doing anything. Few people, even natives, escape it, either in this or any other summer. Such is the fine climate of Greece, which poets would persuade you is a paradise, whereas really hyperborean England, with all her fogs, has still the best in the world....
I am summing up a few observations, wonderfully savant and deep, on the temples we are preparing for publication, and the Grecian architecture in general. Between you and me, I verily flatter myself, we understand it practically better than anybody—as indeed we ought to. I arrived from Zante on the 11th July. While I was there I received a very fresh (!) letter from home of twenty-nine days.