The Elgin Affair: The Abduction of Antiquity's Greatest Treasures and the Passions It Aroused

In Childe Harold, Byron famously wrote of Greece, ""Dull is the eye that will not weep to see/ Thy mouldering shrines removed/ By British hands."" This canto appeared in 1812, just a few years after the seventh Earl of Elgin, a British diplomat, stripped friezes, metopes and slabs from the Parthenon and other structures on the Acropolis and sent them to England. Although Elgin's collection of ancient Grecian artwork still remains in the British Museum, his efforts ruined him financially; may have played a role in his brief imprisonment in France; and certainly gained him the enmity not only of the Greeks but of others like Byron. There is certainly a very interesting book to be written on this contentious subject, but this is not it. The prose is overheated, and on at least one art historical point (the origin of Greek vases) Vrettos displays a talent for imprecise thinking. The more serious problem is the similarity between this book and Vrettos's 1974 A Shadow of Magnitude: The Acquisition of the Elgin Marbles. While in his ""Author's Note"" Vrettos claims that the new title contains at least 35% new material, the duplications, from table of contents to source notes and even much of the text, are still striking. Because the short epilogue following renewed skirmishes between the Greek and British governments over the return of the marbles ends in January 1997, it fails to note that the current Labour government announced it would not return the marbles, thus reversing assurances made by Neil Kinnock when he was Labour leader. 16 b&w illustrations not seen by PW. (Nov.)