Forbidden History - The Secrets of the Parthenon | Part 2

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

In Part II of our Parthenon trilogy, we follow Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin as he secures the sculptures and begins their fraught journey from Athens to Britain. Imprisonment, financial ruin, and fierce public criticism surround him as the marbles arrive in London. Almost immediately, they ignite heated debate in Parliament and among Britain’s cultural elite. Part III is released this Thursday. Cast List: Dominic Selwood: Journalist Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. We're an independent podcast, and advertisements help keep us going. Ads are automatically placed and not specifically chosen or endorsed by us, unless read by me the host. Thanks for supporting the show. In part one of this special, we traced the long and violent history of the Parthenon itself, a building that has survived religious iconoclasm, explosions, and disrepair. A monument repeatedly repurposed and damaged long before the modern world ever began arguing over who should own its remains. In the second episode, the story now shifts from ancient Athens to early modern Europe,

to a moment when fragments of the Parthenon left the acropolis and entered a new life in Western civilization. One that would ignite artistic revolutions, inspire political movements, and see, spark one of the most enduring cultural disputes in history. When the sculpture arrived in England, that wasn't the end of the story. Over the next 200 years, they would become some of the most controversial pieces of art in history. To guide us through this chapter of the story, we're joined by Dominic Selwood. Dominic is a historian, author and barrister, and has written extensively on how art moves through history, both politically and culturally.

Hi, I'm Dominic Selwood and I'm a historian and barrister, and I love looking at some of the weirder sides of history. The Parthenon's sculpture's fate now shifts from the battlefield to the bargaining table. One man enters the scene, whose actions would redefine the Parthenon's future and ignite a controversy that still has no resolution. The name of Lord Elgin is impossible to separate from the story of the Parthenon. He was a Scotsman. His name was Thomas Bruce. He was the seventh Earl of Elgin.

In fact, he was descended from Robert the Bruce, who won Scotland's independence from England. He had been to several universities. He was a Lieutenant-General in the Army. He'd lived in Dresden to learn German. He'd picked up Italian. He was married. And he was most importantly and quintessentially,

a man of the Enlightenment, and that really formed his interests in the world around him. The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that emerged in Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Built around the belief that reason was the best way to understand the world. Unlike the earlier Renaissance movement, it challenged the previously unquestioned religious doctrine. People of the Enlightenment were absolutely fascinating. fascinated by Roman and Greek culture and they saw them as the basis of Western civilization and the high point of things that we should try and recapture to bring society up to the levels that it had formerly been. But the Enlightenment was also

tied to empire. Collecting, measuring and displaying the ancient world became a way for European powers to assert cultural authority. But because of the Napoleonic Wars, it was difficult to get to Italy so Greece became very popular and fashionable. The European powers saw themselves as the intellectual inheritors of Rome and the Hellenistic world. As a professional job, Elgin was a diplomat. He served as British envoy in Vienna, Brussels and Berlin. Then in 1798, at the age of 33, he was appointed Britain's ambassador, to the sublime port of the Ottoman Empire, in other words, to the court of the Ottomans.

And when he set off on that role, he took with him all his intellectual and cultural interests. So before he set out to Constantinople, he asked the government if they would fund him to put together a team of artists. He wanted particularly painters, architectural draftsmen and castmakers to go to Greece and to go to Greece

and to go round Athens and make images of and take casts of the architecture and the sculpture so he could set that all back up in London as a school of the fine arts to help train artists from all over Europe in what he thought was the wonder of classical Greek architecture. Parliament, as Parliament always do, had a tight budget and said no. But this didn't deter Elgin, who decided to pay for it. himself. He first asked JMW Turner, the famous landscape artist, but he was too expensive. But once he'd got to Sicily, he met a group of people that he found could help him. So he employed a man called Lucieri, who was a painter, and a team of draftsmen and castmakers,

and he sent them all off to Athens to go and start work. From Sicily, Elgin went to Constantinople to start his job, but he sent his artists to Athens, and he made sure that they had what's called a furman, which is a particular Ottoman legal permission that comes from Constantinople, to allow them access onto the Acropolis into the Ottoman garrison to be able to begin their work. But when they got there, what they found was that despite this furman, the local Dizdar, who was the commander of the Ottoman garrison, wouldn't let them in without forcing them to pay huge amounts of money every day, bribes in effect. So they were struggling to actually get onto the Acropolis to begin their work.

When they did finally get on, what they found was that the building was in a shocking condition. Not only from the damage from the iconoclasm in the 500s, the Ottomans turning it into a mosque and the Venetian mortar, but also because the Ottoman military were continuously damaging it in an ongoing way. They were shooting at it, shooting at the effigies on it for rifle target practice. They were sawing bits off and selling them to tourists as souvenirs. And they were grinding bits down to use in mortar. The result was that the message got back to Elgin that the building is in danger and the

sculpture of which there wasn't a huge amount left was being further destroyed. When Elgin received this news in Constantinople, he and his private secretary, the Reverend James Hunt. prepared an application to the Sublime Port for a further permission. And this was going to do two things. It was going to make sure that Elgin's artists could get onto the Acropolis without having to pay bribes every day, and it was going to allow them to rescue some of the sculpture.

Some claim that the legal authority for Lord Elgin's actions rests on uncertain foundations. They argue that the original Ottoman Furman, authorizing the removal of sculpture from the Parthenon has never been found. From this perspective, doubts have been raised around the nature and scope of the permission that was granted, leading critics to suggest that the authority Elgin relied upon was legally questionable. This Furman from July 1801 is very controversial these days, because many people say it never existed.

But it absolutely did exist and we know it existed for a number of reasons. The first one is that the Reverend Hunt's notes that he put together in applying for the Furman are still with us and they state clearly the language that we later see in the Furman's translation, talking about taking away sculpture. The second is that once Elgin had this Furman and began the work, it took the best part of 10 years and people were up on the Acropolis. It wasn't done at night time behind hoardings. This was done with teams of 200, 300 people for many years working in daylight hours to remove this sculpture.

So everybody knew it was happening. Despite this, a more commonly raised argument today is not about whether a Furman existed, but about how it should be interpreted. Some critics argue that even if permission was granted, It may have been limited to allowing Elgin's team to draw, measure, and take casts of the sculptures, and possibly to remove loose fragments from the ground. And at no stage did the Ottomans say, that's not what we gave you permission for. In fact, they gave another 10 probable furmans to Elgin, some of which survive,

including to allow him to ship the sculptures back to England at the end. So there's no real doubt the Furman existed. And for eyewitness evidence, Lord Byron's friend, John Galt, who went to Athens with Byron, and Byron, of course, became a great critic of Elgin, but John Gault records in his book that he went to the Ottoman archives, and he had the firm man produced and read to him. So we know it was there. Then finally, Hunt has an Italian translation of it. And the reason it was in Italian is because Italian was one of the working languages for Europeans.

in the Ottoman Empire. So there really is no doubt Elgin did have permission to take away the sculpture. What people also debate is whether the language was broad enough to allow him to take as much sculpture as he did. But it is. It talks about taking away stones with writing or figures on. And again, the fact the Ottomans never stopped him does suggest that that permission was entirely appropriate for what it was that he took.

The Ottoman Furman begins with a long prologue. that talks about how the Ottomans aren't very interested in the sculptures on the Parthenon. They call it the Temple of the Idols, because it's not their tradition. But that they know that Europeans are very fond of them, so they're happy to give them to Elgin because it's something that Europeans like. So by the time Elgin's men started taking sculpture, which was by now a rescue mission from the ongoing damage, the state of the Parthenon was that half the sculpture,

half the sculpture had been lost to history, had already been destroyed before they even arrived. So half was left. They took half of what was left, leaving half. So in other words, half had gone to history. London now has a quarter and Athens has a quarter. The process involved huge teams of local labourers, craftsmen and overseers working under Elgin's agents. Scaffolding was erected around the Parthenon.

and pulleys were used to detach blocks, and sections of sculpture were carefully lowered to the ground. Contemporary accounts suggest that at times, hundreds of men were involved in dismantling, lowering, packing, and transporting the stonework. Part of Elgin's collection was prepared for transit to Britain in 1803. However, difficulties were about to be encountered at every stage of the journey. We continue with the story right after the break. In 1802, Elgin's job in Constantinople finished, so he then began his return journey back to England.

And in doing that, he crossed France. And while crossing France with his wife and his family, they were all arrested. And the official story was that it was because Britain had just declared war on France. Elgin was detained in France for around three years. he was primarily held at the fortress of Lourdes and then later Poe, which Napoleon used to hold British civilian detainees.

Although not imprisoned in a cell, he was kept under constant supervision, moved between locations, and unable to leave the country. But the real reason became apparent when Napoleon personally offered to Elgin his freedom in return for giving France all of the sculptures that Elgin had removed. And Elgin refused to do this. So he was kept a prisoner of Napoleon for three years. And he was only released when he gave his word, his personal bond, that if ever he was called back to Paris, he would return.

That meant that he could no longer be a diplomat for Britain because he was now partly committed to the French. So it wrecked his diplomatic career. It wrecked his career entirely. And he never worked again. Elgin, in fact, did later return to France, but it was once he was bankrupt and had no reason to stay in England, and he retired to France, and that's where he lived out the rest of his life.

Although he continued to hold his title and lived intermittently between Britain and the continent, he never returned to public life in any meaningful way. He took no major political roles, produced no further cultural projects on the scale of the Parthenon Enterprise, and remained largely defined by that single controversial episode. The project he believed would secure his place as a patron of art, instead overshadowed everything that followed, leaving him remembered less for the life he lived, and more for the debate he ended up creating.

When the sculpture arrived in England, that wasn't the end of the story. Over the next 200 years, they would become some of the most controversial pieces of art in history. Once Elgin had removed the sculptures from the Parthenon, They were packed into crates and sent across hostile seas to London. But as the sculptures arrived, Elgin put them on display at his home and his friends' home later in London. And they caused an absolute sensation.

Everybody from artists to poets visited and were absolutely awe-struck by what they saw. They had never come across sculpture of this quality. It far surpassed everything they'd ever seen from the ancient. Roman world. Keats, for example, wrote his ode to a Greek urn on one of the panels of the frieze. Other famous artists of the day like Flaxmen went and absolutely rhapsodised about the quality of this art. But a broader thing happened as well. At the time, Paris was modelling itself as the new Rome. Napoleon saw himself as a Roman emperor. Buildings like the Arcte Triumph in Paris were all about Roman military might.

But the Parthenon sculptures set Britain ablaze with this Greek mania. Britain, not only in fighting Napoleon, but also in embracing this Greek tradition of democracy, saw themselves as the inheritors of ancient Greece. Where Rome represented empire, Greece could be framed as the birthplace of democracy, civic virtue, and free citizenship. By aligning itself with Athens rather than Rome, Britain could present its struggle against Napoleon as a moral defence of liberty against tyranny. And so London was completely swept with Greek mania.

Buildings went up like the church on the Houston Road, like around the Athenean club, the frieze of the Parthenon. London became a little mini-Athens. And in that process, many people who went to go and see the Elginne, marbles became inflamed with a love of Greece. Greek classicism allowed Britain to argue that it wasn't conquering Europe. It was protecting the political values Europe was supposed to stand for. Parliament, democracy, and the rule of law could all be rhetorically traced back to Athens, rather than to Caesar. Greece became a way for Britain to explain itself to itself.

And within several decades, the Greeks began a war of independence and actually conquered Athens and took it off the Ottomans and established for the first time the state of Greece. In 1821, Greek revolutionaries launched a coordinated uprising against the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled Greece for nearly four centuries. What began as scattered local revolts quickly escalated into a brutal war. But many young Europeans, having seen the Parthenon's sculptures, went and fought in that battle as Phil Helene's Lovers of Greece to help create a new Greek country in Athens where the Parthenon and those buildings were.

Writers, artists and political figures, many already inspired by classical Greece, pressured their governments to intervene. Britain, France and Russia eventually did, destroying the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1820. By 1830, Greece was formally recognized as an independent state, with Athens reclaimed as its capital. So it's very difficult to overstate the cultural importance of the sculptures in London. But the Parthenon Marbles did not arrive in Britain easily, nor intact. In the next episode, we dig deeper into the journey of the sculptures from Athens to London. How exactly did these immense and fragile works of stone travel thousands of miles? What happened to them along the way?

And where have these antiquities controversially lived for the past two centuries? We continue the story of one of the most persistent cultural disputes in history, in part three of this Forbidden History miniseries, available now on all podcast platforms. Out tomorrow, wherever you get your podcasts. Tune into Part 3 to hear how the story evolves. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more.

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