Why We’re Still Fighting Over Elgin’s Marbles
This is performative politics again.
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Current Issue
Books & the Arts
/ February 5, 2026
Why We’re Still Fighting Over Elgin’s Marbles
In A.E. Stallings’s Frieze Frame, the poet retells the many conflicts, political and cultural, the ransacked portion of the Parthenon has inspired.
Nicolas Liney
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Sir William Gell (British, 1774–1836), The Removal of the Sculptures from the Pediments of the Parthenon by Lord Elgin, 1801, watercolor and pencil on paper, 20 x 31 cm (7.9 x 12.2 in), Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece.
(VCG Wilson / Corbis via Getty Images)
Arguably the world’s most famous Greek temple, the Parthenon was constructed in a flurry of building activity on the Acropolis of Athens, under the direction of the indefatigable statesman Pericles in the middle of the fifth century BC. It was a monument to recent tragedy in Athens as much as a celebration of the city’s glory: The Acropolis had been leveled by Persian invaders in 480 BC, and its temples had been left in ruins for 30 years, a colossal absence reminding citizens how close they had come to annihilation.
Books in review
Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters, and Their Friends Framed the Debate Around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon
by A.E. Stallings
Buy this book
This changed along with Athens’s emergence as a Mediterranean superpower. As head of a defensive alliance of Greek states known to us as the Delian League, Athens siphoned off its funds to rebuild and beautify the city. The Parthenon was the centerpiece of this rebirth—the largest temple on mainland Greece, built entirely of local Pentelic marble and decorated with an extravagant sculptural program broadcasting the foundational mythology of Athens, as well as a continuous frieze around the inner chamber depicting a mysterious procession. The mastermind behind this project was allegedly the esteemed sculptor Phidias, a close friend of Pericles.
Today, the Parthenon is perhaps more famous for what is missing from it. When visitors clamber up the steep incline of the Acropolis to admire the temple, there is very little left of its sculptural program to see. This is largely thanks to Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin and British ambassador to the Ottoman court, who in the early 19th century removed roughly half of the Parthenon’s surviving pediment statues, metopes, and frieze—along with other elements from the Acropolis, including a caryatid from the nearby Erechtheion—and had them shipped to England.
The legality of this act was fabulously murky and has been much debated. Elgin’s claim rested on a permit—a firman—that he said had been issued by the Ottoman Sublime Court. When asked by a House of Commons Select Committee …
This is performative politics again.
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Current Issue
Books & the Arts
/ February 5, 2026
Why We’re Still Fighting Over Elgin’s Marbles
In A.E. Stallings’s Frieze Frame, the poet retells the many conflicts, political and cultural, the ransacked portion of the Parthenon has inspired.
Nicolas Liney
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
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Sir William Gell (British, 1774–1836), The Removal of the Sculptures from the Pediments of the Parthenon by Lord Elgin, 1801, watercolor and pencil on paper, 20 x 31 cm (7.9 x 12.2 in), Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece.
(VCG Wilson / Corbis via Getty Images)
Arguably the world’s most famous Greek temple, the Parthenon was constructed in a flurry of building activity on the Acropolis of Athens, under the direction of the indefatigable statesman Pericles in the middle of the fifth century BC. It was a monument to recent tragedy in Athens as much as a celebration of the city’s glory: The Acropolis had been leveled by Persian invaders in 480 BC, and its temples had been left in ruins for 30 years, a colossal absence reminding citizens how close they had come to annihilation.
Books in review
Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters, and Their Friends Framed the Debate Around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon
by A.E. Stallings
Buy this book
This changed along with Athens’s emergence as a Mediterranean superpower. As head of a defensive alliance of Greek states known to us as the Delian League, Athens siphoned off its funds to rebuild and beautify the city. The Parthenon was the centerpiece of this rebirth—the largest temple on mainland Greece, built entirely of local Pentelic marble and decorated with an extravagant sculptural program broadcasting the foundational mythology of Athens, as well as a continuous frieze around the inner chamber depicting a mysterious procession. The mastermind behind this project was allegedly the esteemed sculptor Phidias, a close friend of Pericles.
Today, the Parthenon is perhaps more famous for what is missing from it. When visitors clamber up the steep incline of the Acropolis to admire the temple, there is very little left of its sculptural program to see. This is largely thanks to Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin and British ambassador to the Ottoman court, who in the early 19th century removed roughly half of the Parthenon’s surviving pediment statues, metopes, and frieze—along with other elements from the Acropolis, including a caryatid from the nearby Erechtheion—and had them shipped to England.
The legality of this act was fabulously murky and has been much debated. Elgin’s claim rested on a permit—a firman—that he said had been issued by the Ottoman Sublime Court. When asked by a House of Commons Select Committee …
Why We’re Still Fighting Over Elgin’s Marbles
This is performative politics again.
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Why We’re Still Fighting Over Elgin’s Marbles
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Current Issue
Books & the Arts
/ February 5, 2026
Why We’re Still Fighting Over Elgin’s Marbles
In A.E. Stallings’s Frieze Frame, the poet retells the many conflicts, political and cultural, the ransacked portion of the Parthenon has inspired.
Nicolas Liney
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
Sir William Gell (British, 1774–1836), The Removal of the Sculptures from the Pediments of the Parthenon by Lord Elgin, 1801, watercolor and pencil on paper, 20 x 31 cm (7.9 x 12.2 in), Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece.
(VCG Wilson / Corbis via Getty Images)
Arguably the world’s most famous Greek temple, the Parthenon was constructed in a flurry of building activity on the Acropolis of Athens, under the direction of the indefatigable statesman Pericles in the middle of the fifth century BC. It was a monument to recent tragedy in Athens as much as a celebration of the city’s glory: The Acropolis had been leveled by Persian invaders in 480 BC, and its temples had been left in ruins for 30 years, a colossal absence reminding citizens how close they had come to annihilation.
Books in review
Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters, and Their Friends Framed the Debate Around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon
by A.E. Stallings
Buy this book
This changed along with Athens’s emergence as a Mediterranean superpower. As head of a defensive alliance of Greek states known to us as the Delian League, Athens siphoned off its funds to rebuild and beautify the city. The Parthenon was the centerpiece of this rebirth—the largest temple on mainland Greece, built entirely of local Pentelic marble and decorated with an extravagant sculptural program broadcasting the foundational mythology of Athens, as well as a continuous frieze around the inner chamber depicting a mysterious procession. The mastermind behind this project was allegedly the esteemed sculptor Phidias, a close friend of Pericles.
Today, the Parthenon is perhaps more famous for what is missing from it. When visitors clamber up the steep incline of the Acropolis to admire the temple, there is very little left of its sculptural program to see. This is largely thanks to Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin and British ambassador to the Ottoman court, who in the early 19th century removed roughly half of the Parthenon’s surviving pediment statues, metopes, and frieze—along with other elements from the Acropolis, including a caryatid from the nearby Erechtheion—and had them shipped to England.
The legality of this act was fabulously murky and has been much debated. Elgin’s claim rested on a permit—a firman—that he said had been issued by the Ottoman Sublime Court. When asked by a House of Commons Select Committee …
