"carriers of the holy things"; for a certain time they live with the
goddess, but when her festival comes they act in the following way, by
night: Putting upon their heads what the priestess of Athene gives them
to carry (neither she nor they know what these things are), these
maidens descend, by a natural underground passage, from an inclosure in
the city sacred to Aphrodite of the Gardens. In the sanctuary below they
deposit what they carry, and bring back something else closely wrapt up.
And these maidens they henceforth dismiss, and other two they elect
instead of them for the Acropolis.

THE ELGIN MARBLES[45]

BY J. P. MAHAFFY

Morosini[46] wished to take down the sculptures of Phidias from the
eastern pediment, but his workmen attempted it so clumsily that the
figures fell from their place and were dashed to pieces on the ground.

An observing traveler[47] was present when a far more determined and
systematic attack was made upon the remaining ruins of the Parthenon.
While he was traveling in the interior, Lord Elgin had obtained his
famous firman from the Sultan, to take down and remove any antiquities
or sculptured stones he might require, and the infuriated Dodwell saw a
set of ignorant workmen, under equally ignorant overseers, let loose
upon the splendid ruins of the age of Pericles. He speaks with much good
sense and feeling of this proceeding. He is fully aware that the world
would derive inestimable benefit from the transplanting of these
splendid fragments to a more accessible place, but he can not find
language strong enough to express his disgust at the way in which the
thing was done.

Incredible as it may appear, Lord Elgin himself seems not to have
superintended the work, but to have left it to paid contractors, who
undertook the job for a fixt sum. Little as either Turks or Greeks cared
for the ruins, he says that a pang of grief was felt through all Athens
at the desecration, and that the contractors were obliged to bribe
workmen with additional wages to undertake the ungrateful task. Dodwell
will not even mention Lord Elgin by name, but speaks of him with disgust
as "the person" who defaced the Parthenon. He believes that had this
person been at Athens himself, his underlings could hardly have behaved
in the reckless way they did, pulling down more than they wanted, and
taking no care to prop up and save the work from which they had taken
the support.

He especially notices their sc