ELGIN MARBLES, the name given to a peerless collection of antique sculptures brought from Athens to England by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, in the early part of the 19th century. While Ambassador at Constanti nople (1799-1802) he conceived the plan of securing some portion of the ruins of ancient Athens and to that end secured permission of the Porte to take "any stones that might appear interesting to him." At his own expense (the British government having refused aid) he set a corps of artists to work who toiled for 10 years detaching various specimens from the Parthenon, consisting chiefly of the colossal statues on the tympana of the pediments, the metopes and the frieze around the cella. Among the best preserved examples which this splendid effort brought forth were the tympanum repre senting the birth of Minerva, the 15 metopes showing in high relief the combats of the Centaurs and Lapithw and the slabs from the cella frieze depicting in low relief the great Panathenaic procession. In addition to these Lord Elgin procured the colossal statue of Bacchus from the choragic monument of Thrasyllus, one of the caryatides from the tem ple of Pandrosus, a portion of the frieze from the Erechtheum and fragments of the columns of the Parthenon and Erechtheum; also nu merous inscriptions, urns, etc., found in the
neighborhood. When these treasures of an tiquity arrived on the English shores they were received with a mixture of admiration and in dignation— the latter because of supposed van dalism. It is said that Lord Byron was so outraged by the alleged depredations that when he visited the Parthenon he inscribed conspicu ously: Quod non fecerunt Gothi, hoc fecerunt Scots. However, as it afterward proved, had not Lord Elgin obtained these sculptures they would have been destroyed in the subsequent war of Greek independence and especially in the last siege of Athens in 1826-27. After much hesitation and bickering as to the price, in spite, too, of their value vouched for by ex perts, the British Parliament purchased the marbles from Lord Elgin for f35,000, easily a third less than he had expended upon them. They are now to be seen in the British Museum as priceless examples of the highest in Greek art which matured under the genius of Phidias. Many casts have been talcen of these unsur passed relics of which the city of New York possesses a set. Consult 'Ancient Marbles in the British Museum' (Vols. VI-IX, London 1830-39, 1842).