CHAPTER XIV
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.