Pages

Saturday, August 31, 2019

Greece offers sculpture swap in bid for Parthenon marbles

Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis makes pitch for pragmatic deal to end historic battle over Elgin treasures To Greece’s delight, a bust of Pericles now graces 10 Downing Street. Within hours of assuming office as prime minister, Boris Johnson had placed a plaster likeness of the Athenian soldier-statesman, whom he has long admired, on his desk. Johnson’s knowledge of the ancient world – he studied classics at Oxford and once boasted that he could recite the first 100 lines of Homer’s _Iliad_– is regarded with awe in modern Greece. But that affinity will soon be tested in the run-up to Greece’s bicentennial independence celebrations, when Athens steps up its campaign to win back from the British Museum the Parthenon sculptures that once adorned Pericles’s masterpiece. Continue reading...


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.theguardian.com