Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule From the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence (33 page)

With lament for the deterioration of monuments went lament for the decline of the modern Greeks. In one view they were sunk in hopeless subjection. ‘Athens is no longer more than a big poorhouse,’ wrote Spon, ‘which contains as many wretches as there are Christians under Turkish domination,’ and in another passage, ‘Greece suffers this servitude with as much silence and timidity as she in former times displayed intrepidity and courage in maintaining her liberty.’
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Perhaps all was not lost. Wheler commented on the Athenians’ ‘natural subtilty or wit’, which he attributed to the climate, then commonly regarded as the main determinant of national character. Spon gave an account of how the Greeks got rid of a tyrannical governor by applying to Constantinople. But this was the limit of Greek freedom of action. The Greeks, said Wheler, were sensible of injuries committed by the Sultan’s ministers, and would complain of them and pursue their rights, but he concluded that there was ‘little hope of the Athenians ever gaining their liberty from the Turkish tyranny.’
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So the idea of Greek liberation was by now being tentatively expressed, but there was virtually no hope of it happening, ever.

Spon’s account of his travels was published in 1678, and Spon sent a copy to Wheler, whose own version appeared four years later. Wheler dedicated his book to Charles II, and was knighted in reward. There is much in Wheler that follows Spon, and Wheler has been accused of simply copying him, particularly by French historians championing their compatriot. The rest of Sir George Wheler’s life was comfortable. He took Holy Orders in 1685, founded a girls’ school, fathered eighteen children and lived to the age of 73. Spon was not so fortunate. His book was less successful than Wheler’s. His passion for antiquities distracted him from his medical practice, and he became poor. In 1685 the Edict of Nantes, the act almost a century old granting freedom of worship to Protestants in France, was revoked, and Spon’s Protestant family emigrated to Geneva. In the same year Spon set out to join them, but only reached Vevey, where on Christmas Day he died at the age of 38.

But there were many who, unlike Spon and Wheler, were interested in Greek antiquities not to study them but to remove them. This was
often justified by the collectors as saving the monuments from further deterioration or from being broken up for use in new buildings. In the view of others this was simply looting. The argument has continued for two centuries over Elgin’s removal to Britain of the Parthenon Marbles, which – a personal view – above all other Greek antiquities should be returned to Greece.

The English and the French, with their early diplomatic and trade links with the Ottoman Empire, competed to collect removable antiquities. For England Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador to Constantinople from 1621 to 1628, acted as collector for both the Duke of Buckingham, a favourite of Charles I, and for Thomas Howard, the Earl of Arundel. In 1624 Roe wrote to Buckingham that he had learned from the patriarch that Dhílos (Delos), ‘a small, despised, uninhabited island’, was not as yet broken up and that his agents ‘may take without trouble or prohibition, whatsoever they please’.
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Arundel’s resourceful agent William Petty, acting with the help of Sir Thomas Roe, acquired what became known as the Arundel Marbles.

The most famous of these was the Parian Marble, a large fragment of a column originally some six feet high, which recorded various very ancient political, military and religious events between about 1580 and 355
BC
. This had originally been found by an agent for a French collector, but when this agent was arrested in Smyrna and his collection confiscated William Petty acquired the Parian Marble and shipped it off to Arundel. Arundel’s grandson presented it to the Ashmolean at Oxford where it remains, and in 1897 was joined by a second fragment. Other Arundel Marbles were scandalously neglected by later generations. A drum from an antique pillar was used as a lawn roller, and a fragment from a frieze, set in the wall of a cottage, was offered – but fortunately refused – to be broken up for cemetery chippings.

Probably the most destructive of the early English collectors was Sir Kenelm Digby, commissioned by the Duke of Buckingham in 1627 to sail the Mediterranean as a privateer. As well as doing much damage to Venetian shipping, Digby was keen to obtain antiquities for his patron by whatever means were necessary. At Dhílos, he recorded, his sailors ‘mastered prodigious massy weights; but one stone, the greatest and fairest of all containing 4 statues, they gave over after they had been, 300 men, a whole day about it. But the next day I contrived a way with masts of ships and another ship to ride over against it, that brought it down with much ease and speed.’
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There was destruction by the French too. In the 1720s the Catholic cleric the Abbé Fourmont toured Greece
in search of inscriptions, and to get them would smash any building thought to contain them: ‘Every castle, every citadel, every old tower where I suspected there were inscriptions was overturned.’
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Fourmont has been accused of going even further, and smashing the inscriptions themselves so that his records of them, some later found to be forgeries, could not be challenged.

The French were as keen as the English to acquire antiquities to be sent home, and one of the most active was the French ambassador to Constantinople throughout the 1670s, the Marquis de Nointel. Nointel’s searches, for his own collection besides that of Louis XIV, took him to the Holy Land and Egypt as well as to the mainland and Aegean islands of Greece. He was interested not only in monuments and inscriptions but also in coins and particularly manuscripts. It was common practice to bribe monks and priests to part with ancient documents, or the bribe might be ostensibly a gift: Nointel presented the patriarch with the French version of the entire Byzantine historical corpus, not only as ‘the means of making the liberality of His Majesty radiate’ but also to help in obtaining manuscripts from Mt Athos.

Monuments, however, were Nointel’s main concern when he visited Athens in 1674. His artist produced the only pictorial records of the Parthenon before Morosini’s explosion. He regretted, over a century before Elgin, that he could not take away the Parthenon Marbles, to grace the collection of Louis XIV and to protect them from the abuses and affronts of the Turks. He was keenly appreciative of their beauty: ‘If it were possible to express now the rich confusion that such a beautiful array of different passions has left in my mind, I would undertake it with pleasure.’
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But Nointel’s passion for antiquities, like Spon’s, was his undoing. His purchases plunged him into debt and his neglect of diplomatic duties led to his recall in 1679. He never completed the account of his travels before his death in 1685.

Many of the activities of these early collectors of Greece’s antiquities are shocking to the modern view. Archaeology was then an amateur pursuit, and it was not until the later nineteenth century that it became an activity for qualified professionals excavating and recording meticulously, though still sometimes with wildly imaginative reconstructions – such as those of Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos. However, there can be no doubt that if the antiquities that were removed had been left in place many would not have survived the deterioration and the careless destruction that the collectors so often witnessed. Who can say whether the combined activities of the collectors, both scrupulous and unscrupulous, preserved more of value than they destroyed?

One of the last travellers to visit Greece before the Orlov revolt of 1770 raised the prospect of Greek liberation was Richard Chandler, who was there in 1765–6. He was primarily interested in ancient monuments, and was a worthy successor to Spon and Wheler, whose work he readily acknowledged. Chandler, as revealed in his writings, is an engaging character. As one historian puts it: ‘In its organization and execution, and in the ensuing publications, Richard Chandler’s journey through Asia Minor and Greece may be thought the classic of the age. His travels have a transparency and integrity all their own.’
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So it is worth following Chandler’s travels in some detail.

Chandler was sent out as agent of the Society of Dilettanti, founded in 1734 by a group of distinguished gentlemen. Their travels in Italy had made them ‘desirous of encouraging at home a taste for those objects which had contributed so much to their entertainment abroad’.
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But their interests were not confined to Italy, and in May 1764 the society appointed the young Chandler to lead an expedition to Asia Minor, based on Smyrna, a commission later extended to cover Greece as well. Chandler was told that his main task was to study the remains of antiquity in order to shed light on ‘the ancient state of those countries’, but ‘it is by no means intended to confine you to that province; on the contrary, it is expected that you do report to us, for the information of the Society, whatever can fall within the notice of curious and observing travellers.’
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Some three quarters of Chandler’s account of his travels relate to his principal object, antiquities, which he examined with the ancient texts of Pausanias and Strabo constantly to hand. These sections can perhaps be skimmed except by archaeologists. But fortunately he did not neglect the second part of his instructions, and it is these observations that are the main interest for the rest of us.

Chandler was only 26 when he was appointed but was already an academic success. Educated at Winchester on a scholarship and at Queen’s College, Oxford, he continued his studies at neighbouring Magdalen and became a fellow of that college at the age of 22. By the time of his commission from the Dilettanti he had already published two well-received books on antiquities. For his expedition he had two companions: Richard Revett to cover architecture and William Pars to produce watercolour pictures of ruins, leaving Chandler to deal with their history.

Chandler’s party sailed from Gravesend in June 1764 and in September reached Smyrna. Until August of the following year this was their base for exploring Asia Minor, though Smyrna was much troubled by plague. This part of Chandler’s travels gave only occasional opportunities to
meet the Greeks. On the way to Smyrna the party stopped at Chíos, where Chandler enjoyed a Turkish bath and the accompanying vigorous massage, and noted that Orthodox and Catholics were still at odds: ‘The old religious parties still subsist with unextinguished animosity, each sect cherishing insuperable hatred, and intriguing to ruin its adversary.’
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He was also as susceptible as others had been to the beauty and elegance of the girls of Chíos, with their snow-white linen turbans, short petticoats and ornamental yellow slippers: ‘The beautiful Greek girls are the most striking ornaments of Scio. Many of these were sitting at the doors and windows, twisting cotton or silk, or employed in spinning and needlework, and accosted us with familiarity, bidding us welcome, as we passed, their whole appearance so fantastic and lively as to afford us much entertainment.’
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Later at Ephesus Chandler found that the only inhabitants were ‘a few Greek peasants, living in extreme wretchedness, dependence, and insensibility’,
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though he does not say how these Greeks came to be there. Despite being destitute they were a lively lot. Chandler employed some to shift stones, and when he moved off to another site ‘the whole tribe, ten or twelve, followed; one playing all the way before them on a rude lyre. After gratifying their curiosity, they returned back as they came, with their musician in front.’
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In August 1765 Chandler and his party sailed from Smyrna with some relief: ‘We had reason to rejoice that our long stay on this continent was so near a conclusion.’
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The crew was Greek, and Chandler was struck by the Greek sailors’ joie de vivre. At the port of Soúnion (Sunium), he says, ‘our sailors stripped to their drawers to bathe, all of them swimming and diving remarkably well; and some running about on the sharp rocks with naked feet, as if devoid of feeling; and some examining the bottom of the clear water for the echinus or sea-chestnut, a species of shellfish.’
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At sea later, despite the ship’s roll, they held an impromptu dance. ‘One of the crew played on the violin, and one on the lyre. The captain, though a bulky man, excelled, with two of his boys, in dancing. They exerted an extraordinary degree of activity, and preserved their footing, for which a very small space on the deck sufficed, with wonderful dexterity, with feats, some ludicrous, and, to our apprehension, indecent.’
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Chandler was also impressed by the sailors’ piety. In the poop was a niche holding a picture of the Virgin Mary, the Panayía, flanked by the image of another saint and of the crucifixion. When the ship was moored on Sunday to a rock on which was a ruined chapel of the Panayía, the sailors carried up to it incense and burning coals and performed, says Chandler, their customary devotions.

The party made a brief stop at Éyina and then sailed on to Athens, where they introduced themselves to the leading Turks – Ahmed Aga, described as the chief Turk of Athens, the governor (somebody different), the Akropolis commander and the mufti. They also met the leading Greeks – the Orthodox archbishop and the members of the town’s representative committee. ‘We were pleased with the civil behaviour of the people in general,’ wrote Chandler, ‘and enjoyed a tranquillity to which we had long been strangers.’
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The town of Athens had changed little since the visitors of a century earlier had recorded their impressions. The houses were mean and straggling, the lanes lined by high whitewashed walls, the streets irregular. Corsairs were less of a threat, but there were still nightly Turkish patrols in case they attacked. There were now more Turks in Athens, some 300 families, but they were still a minority of the population. The number of public schools had grown from one to two, but one of these was starved of funds. Though most food was plentiful and cheap, grain was not because the ban on exporting it was continually eluded, so that ‘public distress bordering on famine ensues almost yearly.’
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