Episode #235 - Was The Parthenon Robbed? (Part II)

You want your master's degree.

You know you can earn it, but life gets busy.

The packed schedule, the late nights, and then there's the unexpected.

American Public University was built for all of it.

With monthly starts and no set login times, APU's 40-plus flexible online master's programs are designed to move at the speed of life.

You bring the fire, we'll fuel the journey.

Get started today at apu.apus.edu.

I've got 20 minutes to run club meets, and it's time for a quick pre-workout snack.

Go Go Squeeze Active Fruit Blend to the Rescue.

Made with Select B vitamins to help release energy.

It's an easy, squeezable pouch made to move with me.

The taste?

So good.

And made with real fruit.

Even better, whether I'm hitting the trail or meeting my friends on the court, this is my go-to on the Go Snack.

Quick, easy, ready when I am.

When it's go time, I go with GoGo Squeeze Active.

Snack yours on your next door run.

Search for GoGo Squeeze on Amazon.

I don't know about you, but I think my favorite archaeological objects are the ones that come with a curse.

I keep finding myself drawn to tales of evil artifacts that bring doom upon anyone foolish enough to try and possess them.

On this podcast, we've dug into stories about the sarcophagus that allegedly sank the Titanic, the curse of King Tut's tomb, and the world-conquering spear of destiny.

The Parthenon marbles may not be as haunted as some of those other objects, but there have been rumors that the sculptures taken from Athens' Acropolis by Lord Elgin carry a curse.

You see, not long after Lord Elgin had his team of workmen hack the best-preserved ancient sculptures from the Parthenon, his life became roiled by a series of escalating calamities.

As the American journalist Carl Meyer once succinctly put it, Elgin's time as the ambassador to Constantinople ultimately led to him losing his, quote, fortune, his reputation, his wife, and the lower half of his nose, end quote.

For the more superstitious, Elgin's fate did not seem like a series of unfortunate coincidences.

For some, this seemed like divine justice measured out by Athena herself.

Even before Lord Elgin left to take his post in Constantinople, he had already accrued some fairly substantial debts.

Much of the borrowed money had been used to renovate his estate known as Broome Hall.

But at the time, this did not seem too worrisome, as Lord Elgin had just managed to secure the hand of Mary Nisbet in marriage.

Nisbet was an heiress from one of the wealthiest families in Scotland.

Once married, Lord and Lady Elgin seemed quite financially stable.

This was until Lord Elgin started bankrolling his expensive operation in Athens.

The original plan to sketch and make plaster casts on the Acropolis quickly ballooned into the ambitious and costly project of removing, then shipping thousands of pounds of marble.

What was worse, one of the first ships loaded with sculptures from the Parthenon sank in deep water off the coast of the island of Cytherea.

Indeed, the gods seemed to be angry.

Luckily, all of the priceless sculptures were later recovered by a Greek salvage team, but as Lord Elgin would later testify, this operation came at a great expense to his lordship.

As fortune would have it, the marbles weren't the only travelers who would have a rocky voyage to Britain.

In 1803, Lord and Lady Elgin were making their own progress back to England when the temporary peace between France and Britain was broken.

The Elgins just so happened to be in France right at the worst possible moment.

The British ambassador was taken as a high-value prisoner of war.

The French authorities took some pity on Lady Elgin, who became pregnant while the couple were in France.

She was allowed to return home to have her child while the Lord remained a prisoner.

But when Lord Elgin was eventually released in 1806, he returned to Scotland only to discover that his wife was having a very public affair with a man named Robert Ferguson, a fellow aristocrat who Elgin considered his best friend.

The ensuing high-profile divorce was breathlessly covered by the scandal-hungry 19th-century press.

On top of all that, Lord Elgin discovered that his grand project to bring the glories of the Parthenon to Britain was getting a mixed reception.

One well-known British scholar accused Elgin of lying about the sculpture's origins.

He was convinced that the art was actually Roman and had not come from the Acropolis.

This put Elgin in a position where he had to publicly prove that the sculptures were Greek and that he had indeed chopped them directly off of the Parthenon.

When this was confirmed, other critics quickly came to the fore, who argued that Elgin had ruined one of Europe's most important cultural monuments.

The most high profile of these critics was the famous romantic poet, Lord Byron.

Byron was passionate about all things Greek, and eventually he would become deeply involved in the Greek struggle for independence.

In 1811, while on a trip to Athens, Byron saw what Elgin's workmen had done to the Parthenon with his own eyes, and was so incensed that he penned a caustic poem lambasting Lord Elgin titled The Curse of Minerva, Minerva being the Latin name for Athena.

And now, if you ever wanted to know what a 19th century diss track sounded like, well, I've got one for you right here.

This was basically the not like us of Georgian England.

At one point in the poem, Byron gives voice to the goddess Athena and has her call out Britain for destroying what thousands of years and countless invaders could not.

He writes, quote, Lo,

here, despite of war and wasting fire, I saw successive tyrannies expire, escaped from the ravage of the Turk and Goth, thy country sends a spoiler worse than both, end quote.

That spoiler was, of course, Lord Elgin.

But then Byron makes it personal, writing, quote, Yet still the gods are just and crimes are crossed.

See here what Elgin won and what he lost.

Another name with his pollutes my shrine.

Behold where Diane's beams disdain to shine.

Some retribution still might Pallas claim when Venus half avenged Minerva's shame.

End quote.

That last line about Venus Venus half-avenging Minerva was a reference to the fact that by 1811, Lord Elgin had lost half his nose.

This disfigurement was widely rumored to be the result of syphilis.

According to Lord Byron, the goddess of love, Venus, had put a mark of shame on Elgin's face.

Burn.

It turns out Byron wasn't the only one using Elgin's nose to mock the acquisition of the marbles.

In 1810, an anonymous couplet floated around London that went, quote, noseless himself, he brings here noseless blocks to show what time has done and the pox, end quote.

Now, most experts now agree that Lord Elgin probably did not have syphilis.

His nose was either affected by a rare skin condition contracted while in Constantinople, or it may have deteriorated as the result of mercury supplements that he was taking to treat his asthma.

But the fact that mercury was also a common treatment for syphilis at the time did not help him squash the rumors.

There were many things that Lord Elgin could be criticized for, for, but the nose, well, that was a cheap shot.

Over time, thanks to Lord Byron's poetic barbs, the idea that Elgin was syphilitic went from being a cruel rumor to becoming a full-on historical myth.

Now, Lord Byron never intended to publish The Curse of Minerva, as he thought it might make him some powerful enemies among the British aristocracy.

But he did send some copies privately to friends.

One of those copies was then leaked to the papers, and the poem was read widely in both Britain and the United States.

Then, not even a year later, Byron published the first part of his epic narrative poem, Child Harold's Pilgrimage, where once again he called out Lord Elgin by name and accused him of violating a sacred shrine.

By 1816, Lord Elgin had just come through a messy public divorce.

His reputation was under attack.

He had been mocked by one of Britain's favorite poets.

He had lost half his nose.

And the particulars of his release from France meant that he could no longer serve as an ambassador.

Athena's curse, indeed.

After all of that, Elgin needed the British government to buy his collection of Parthenon sculptures.

Not only would this net him some much-needed cash, it would also act as a public vindication.

If the government agreed that these objects were worthy of the British Museum, then he could credibly claim that he had made a great contribution to art and learning in Britain, after all.

After an investigation by a House committee, it was determined that Lord Elgin had the proper permission from the Ottoman officials to remove the sculptures.

In their estimation, he had not acted improperly.

Further, it was agreed that the collection was very beautiful and historically significant.

After some haggling, the government purchased the marbles for £35,000,

roughly half of Elgin's estimated expenses.

While Elgin may have smarted over being shortchanged, the purchase had the desired effect for his reputation.

Once the Parthenon sculptures became the property of the British state, defending the conduct of Lord Elgin became the patriotic responsibility of anyone who believed that the marbles should remain in the British Museum.

The man, once derided as noseless himself on the streets of London, would be made over as a national hero who saved the Parthenon sculptures from certain destruction.

When the Parthenon marbles are discussed, there's often an instinct to shrug off Lord Elgin's conduct in Greece as being simply how things were done back then.

This suggests that the controversy around the marbles is a modern phenomenon that only really picked up steam in the 1980s.

The argument goes that we should not judge 19th century people using 21st century standards.

And while there may be some logic to that, it overlooks the fact that Lord Elgin's marbles have been controversial right from the start.

Lord Byron didn't drop diss tracks about just anyone.

From the beginning, public opinion has been divided over the morality of keeping the sculptures in London.

While the controversy has flared up, then died down at different points over the last 200 years, it has never truly gone away.

But the arguments for and against the repatriation of the sculptures have evolved with the times.

So, where are we at in this ongoing struggle over the Parthenon sculptures?

Should all the surviving sculptures be reunited on the Acropolis?

Let's see what we can figure out today on our fake history.

One, two, three, five

Episode number number 235,

Was the Parthenon Robbed?

Part 2.

Hello and welcome to Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major and this is the podcast where we explore historical myths and try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story that it simply must be told.

Before we get going this week, I would like to remind everyone listening that an ad-free version of this podcast is is available through Patreon.

Just head to patreon.com slash our fake history to get access to an ad-free feed and many hours worth of patrons only extra episodes.

And as we get our heads back into the history of Greece, I want to remind everyone.

that we're going to Greece in one year, September of 2026.

So if you want to join me on an amazing tour that will take us us through the historic sites of Athens, the Bronze Age ruins of Crete, and the general loveliness of Santorini, then please check out the full itinerary at johnshorestravel.com slash upcoming trips or go to ourfakehistory.com and follow the links for the trip.

If you book, then don't forget to use the code OFH so they know that I sent you.

And man, the the more I learn about the Acropolis and the Parthenon, the more I am pumped to finally see it for myself.

So I really hope a bunch of you come and hang out with me there.

This week, we are continuing our look at the Parthenon sculptures, the controversial museum objects, also known as the Elgin Marbles.

This is part two in a two-part series, so if you've not already heard part one, then I strongly suggest you go back and give that a listen now.

In that first part, I did my best to give some important historical background on this controversy.

We spent some time tracing the 2,000-plus year history of the Parthenon, the iconic Temple of Athena at the top of Athens' Acropolis.

I did my best to give some context about the remarkable historical era that produced the Parthenon, while also letting a little little air out of classical Athens' Golden Age reputation.

I also tried to point out that the Parthenon was more than just an important Athenian temple.

Its art and design set a new standard for Greek aesthetics, and as such contributed to the growth of a pan-Hellenic or Greek identity.

Then we discussed the Parthenon's reconstitution as a church in the 5th century and then a mosque in the 15th.

In both instances, some of the ancient sculptures were damaged or defaced, but this destruction was not systematic.

The building remained remarkably well preserved until the 1680s, when it was severely damaged by Venetian artillery, while that army was laying siege to the Acropolis.

Now there's something important I should add here.

Part of the reason that explosion was so disastrous was because the Ottomans had been storing gunpowder in the Parthenon.

Now, why did I omit that detail the first time around?

Well, I had read some contradictory things.

First, I learned that in 1645 the Ottoman Turks were using another building on the Acropolis, the Propylaea, the historic entryway to the famous hilltop, as a magazine for gunpowder.

In that year, that building was struck by lightning and was severely damaged.

So I wasn't quite sure if the story of the ignited gunpowder was from 1645 or if it was from 1687.

So I just omitted it.

It turns out gunpowder was ignited on both occasions.

There was gunpowder in the Propylaea in 1645, and then there was gunpowder in the Parthenon in 1687.

So when that Venetian bomb hit the building, the explosion was much larger than it would have been otherwise.

Anyway, from there, we looked at how Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, used his position as Britain's ambassador extraordinary to the Ottoman Empire to gain special access to the Acropolis in the early 19th century.

What started as a fairly modest project that involved sketching the ruins and making plaster casts of ancient sculptures was transformed into a much larger undertaking that involved dismantling parts of the Parthenon.

This escalation was thanks to the, quote, judicious mix of threats and bribes, end quote, used by Lord Elgin's representative, the Reverend Philip Hunt, when negotiating how the Ottoman governor of Athens, or the Voivod, would interpret the official permission granted to Lord Elgin by the Ottoman court.

Hunt pushed for a very liberal interpretation of that firmon, or official order, and when he got it, removals of Parthenon art began.

We finished off by examining the claim that Lord Elgin saved the marbles from certain destruction at the hands of the Turks.

The evidence suggests that this justification was embraced by Lord Elgin well after he started dismantling the ancient monument.

This claim was supported by exaggerations of the damage being done to the marbles by the Ottoman garrison, and a questionable story about an unnamed old Turk who allegedly destroyed an ancient statue to make cement for his house.

Now, before we forge ahead, I need to address a controversial point from the last episode and make an important correction.

As you might remember, I argued that letters sent by Lord Elgin to his artist on the ground in Athens, Giovanni Lucieri, suggested that Elgin wanted to use at least some of the marbles collected on the Acropolis to decorate his home in Scotland.

I have since learned that that point is disputed.

In fact, the idea that Elgin wanted the Parthenon sculptures for his home might even qualify as a historical myth.

Allow me to explain.

In part one, I quoted a letter sent by Lord Elgin to Lucieri in 1801, where he told his artist to use plans of his house in Scotland to aid in the collection of marble.

In this letter, Lord Elgin speaks at length about marble columns that he would like to install in his estate known as Broom Hall.

I then quoted the passage where he says,

I should wish to collect as much marble as possible.

I have other places in my house which need it, end quote.

Now, this makes it fairly clear that Elgin wanted Lucieri to get him marble for his home,

but he was perhaps not so bold as to think that any of the sculptures could be in his home.

This is an important distinction that I failed to make in the last show.

Later in the same letter, Elgin goes on to say, quote,

these reflections only apply to unworked marble, end quote.

I am annoyed that I missed that important caveat.

It kind of changes the way we interpret the whole letter.

Unworked marble would have referred to chunks of marble, presumably from ancient buildings and other structures, that is not decorated with a sculpture.

This type of marble littered the Acropolis and could be found in many places in the Mediterranean at the time.

In fact, in the letter that I quoted, Elgin talks about getting this type of marble from a number of different places, including Sicily, in order to install the desired marble columns in his home.

So, while he wanted ancient marble to be collected, there is no evidence that he ever intended the historic Phidias sculptures that decorated the Parthenon to be displayed in Broome Hall.

None of the famous sculptures that we think of as the Parthenon marbles were ever sent to Scotland, nor is there evidence that there was ever ever a plan to send those very specific sculptures to Scotland.

The Phidias sculptures were always intended for a private museum in London, and that is exactly where they went before they were eventually sold to the British government.

Now, I will say that I'm not the first person interested in this case that has jumped to the conclusion that when Lord Elgin said he wanted Lucieri to collect marble, he meant the marbles.

I'll also point out that it can be confusing when the words marbles and sculpture are used interchangeably.

But that is no excuse.

I should have been more careful on that point.

As I said at the outset of this series, this issue is riddled with historical myths, and despite my best efforts, I still dipped my toe in one.

Now, with all that said, today I want to explore how the debate around the Parthenon sculptures has evolved over the past two centuries.

One thing I find particularly fascinating about this case is that because it has been the source of public debate for so long, you can trace the rise and fall of certain ideologies and attitudes by looking at how the arguments around the marbles have evolved.

a 200-year debate is going to have 200 years worth of nuance.

So let's pick it apart a little bit.

How have the arguments changed over the years?

And which ones are the most persuasive?

Well, let's see what we can find out.

Today's episode of Our Fake History is being brought to you by Rula.

Telehealth has made mental health care more convenient and accessible for millions of people.

However, critical challenges like finding a suitable therapist, scheduling appointments, and the expensive out-of-pocket cost still keep many from getting the care they need.

Rula is on a mission to make high-quality mental health care from a licensed professional easy and affordable for everyone.

Rula's got you covered.

They take most major insurance plans, and the average copay is only $15 per session.

You can now get the quality care you need when you need it at a price you can afford.

Thousands have already trusted Rula to support them on their journey toward improved mental health and overall well-being.

Head on over to rula.com slash fake history to get started today.

After you sign up, they ask you where you heard about them.

Please support our show and tell them our show sent you.

Go to rula.com slash fakehistory and take the first step towards better mental health today.

You deserve quality care from someone who cares.

In debates about the Parthenon sculptures, it's sometimes suggested that the Greeks only really learned to love the Parthenon after the success of their independence movement in the early 1830s.

Now some evidence suggests that the decades before Greek independence were a particularly hard time for antiquities in the region.

As I mentioned in the last episode, in the late 18th century a bustling black market in small marble pieces had led to the vandalism of ancient statues and monuments across the Mediterranean.

So,

did this mean that the Greeks did not care about their ancient heritage in this period?

Well, believe it or not, people make that argument.

As recently as 2024, the retired British Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption claimed in a public debate about the Parthenon sculptures that in the early 19th century, quote, neither the Turks nor the Greeks seemed to care a fig about the Parthenon sculptures, end quote.

And as much as I disagree with what what that man had to say, I do love the way he said it.

They don't care a fig.

I got a soft spot for Britishisms.

Now, one of the big pieces of evidence that's used to support this kind of assertion is the fact that Lord Elgin hired a huge team of around 100 workers from Athens to do the work of removing the sculptures.

The participation of these Greek workers is sometimes held up as evidence that the Greeks were not overly sentimental about the Parthenon in 1801.

The question is, did these workers hungry for a paycheck reflect the wider sentiments of the Greek people?

That is a hard question to answer.

Now, there's no doubt that the rise in Greek nationalism and the revived Greek cultural identity that went hand in in hand with the independence movement affected how people perceived the ancient monuments near their homes.

You could certainly argue that the symbolic importance of ancient Greek monuments increased along with the push for independence.

Before independence, the Greek people had little say over what happened to the antiquities in their country.

This was especially true of the Acropolis, which, as I pointed out in the last episode, was an Ottoman fortress that could only be accessed with permission from the military commander, or Dizdar.

Before independence, Greek voices were largely kept out of the discussion around the country's antiquities, so it's hard to know what they were feeling.

But what is clear is that as soon as the Greeks had a say in the matter, they made it very clear that their antiquities were incredibly important to them.

Even before the war for independence was over, in the 1820s, the Greek revolutionary government was issuing decrees concerning the preservation of antiquities and prohibiting their sale.

Once the Greek state was founded in 1832, it became very clear that the preservation of ancient monuments was a real priority for the newly empowered government.

In 1837, the first meeting of the Greek Archaeological Society was held on the Acropolis.

There, the Society's President gave a speech in front of the Parthenon, where he dramatically declared that, quote, These stones are more precious than rubies or agates.

It is to these stones we owe our rebirth as a nation.

End quote.

By the 1830s, the Greeks most certainly gave a fig.

This sentiment would have come as no surprise to anyone who had been paying attention to the rise in Greek nationalism for the preceding three decades.

One of the few people to raise objections about Lord Elgin's plan to denude the Parthenon was Spyridon Logothetis, a Greek who worked as a British consular official.

In 1816, there were also some British parliamentarians who seemed to understand that if the Greek independence struggle was successful, there may be a call to return the sculptures to Athens.

During the hearings that accompanied the British government's purchase of the sculptures from Lord Elgin, one MP named John Morat, who had traveled to Greece a few years earlier and had many contacts in the country, testified that the Greek people were, quote, decidedly and strongly desirous that the sculptures not be removed, end quote.

Another parliamentarian, Hugh Hammersley, proposed an official amendment to the bill that stated that, quote, Great Britain holds these marbles only in trust till they are demanded by the present or any future possessors of the city of Athens, end quote.

Now that amendment did not pass, but it reflected the feeling feeling of at least some in parliament that a request for restitution was inevitable.

A few years later, the British politician John Cam Hobhouse also noted Greek feelings about the sculptures.

He would write that one Greek scholar approached him and said, quote, you English are carrying off the works of the Greeks, our forefathers.

Preserve them well.

Greeks will come and re-demand them, end End quote.

So, what does this all mean?

To be honest, it's hard to get a read on popular Greek sentiment concerning antiquities before independence.

In 1801, some Greeks took jobs removing the Parthenon marbles.

But other Greeks clearly were not happy that it was happening.

What is clear is that as soon as there was a self-consciously Greek government in the country, protection of antiquities became a real priority.

Personally, I think it's safe to assume that these feelings of pride in Greek heritage had existed for a very long time before the 1830s.

There would not have been an independence movement if the Greeks did not care about Greece.

In 1844, the Greek Archaeological Society made the first request to Britain to return just a few pieces that had been taken by Elgin from the Acropolis forty years earlier.

After deliberating on the matter for two years, the British ambassador to Greece presented the Archaeological Society with a plaster cast of the frieze sculptures as a quote-unquote gift from Queen Victoria.

This was obviously not what the Greeks had hoped for, but at that moment it was all they were going to get.

After the 1844 request, the controversy around the marbles seems to have gone dormant for a number of years.

It would flare up again in Britain some 46 years later.

In 1890, the British jurist, historian, and philosopher Frederick Harrison wrote a widely read and much commented on piece in the magazine The 19th Century.

It was titled simply, Give Back the Elgin Marbles.

Now, this was an interesting turning point in the debate around the Parthenon sculptures.

Obviously, a number of high-profile Britons, like Lord Byron, had always opposed their removal from Athens.

Harrison's article helped reframe the debate.

For Harrison, the question was less, should they have been taken, and more, should they be returned?

In the article, he argued, quote,

the Elgin marbles stand upon a footing entirely different from all other statues.

They are not statues.

They are architectural parts of a unique building, the most famous in the world, a building still standing, though in a ruined state, which is the national symbol and palladium of a gallant people, and which is a place of pilgrimage to civilized mankind.

When civilized man makes his pilgrimage to the Acropolis and passes through the Propylaea, he notes the exquisite shrine of Nike Apteros, with part of its frieze intact and the rest of the frieze filled up in plaster, because the original is in London.

He goes on to the the Erechtheon, and there he sees that one of the lovely karyatids who support the cornice is a composition cast, because the original is in London.

He goes on to the Parthenon, and there he marks the pediments which Lord Elgin wrecked.

End quote.

Harrison's arguments were both aesthetic and moral.

The aesthetic argument was that it made no artistic sense sense for the Parthenon marbles to be split in two.

The art was designed to be viewed on the Acropolis as a singular piece, having some sculptures in Athens and some in London diminished their effect.

In Harrison's estimation, it made more sense for the whole collection to be in Athens.

After all, that was the sculpture's place of origin.

They were architectural features of a world-famous building that was still standing.

Now, in the article, he points out that the Parthenon is a national symbol for the Greeks, who he compliments as a quote-unquote gallant people.

But he doesn't dwell on this.

Instead, he argues that the Parthenon is a site of pilgrimage for all quote-unquote civilized people.

Now, we could unpack the very loaded concept of what it means to be a civilized person, but let's save that for another day.

Harrison's point is that the Acropolis is beloved by people from all around the world.

The whole world benefits when that site is enriched.

As he put it, quote,

By what right except that of possession do we continue to withhold from the students and pilgrims who flock to the Acropolis from all parts of the civilized world substantive portions of the unique building which they have come to study, those decorations of it which lose half their artistic interest and their historic meaning when separated from it by 4,000 miles of sea.

For Harrison, the sculptures belonged in Athens because that was where they were meant to be seen.

He acknowledged the connection of the sculptures to Greek national identity, but argued that the deeper historical significance of the Parthenon to all of humanity necessitated that the sculptures be in Athens.

Now, of course, the debate did not end there.

A few months later, in the pages of the same magazine, the editor, one Mr.

James Knowles, published a rejoinder to Harrison's much-discussed piece.

His response was titled, The Joke About the Elgin Marbles.

The premise of the article was the sarcastic suggestion that Frederick Harrison must have been joking about returning the Elgin Marbles to Greece.

As the famous and controversial author and debater Christopher Hitchens commented in his summary of Knowles' article, quote, To his sarcasm, Knowles added condescension, a typically lethal English cocktail, end quote.

I just couldn't resist that quote, a typically lethal English cocktail.

Now, I have to agree that Knowles was condescending, especially when it came to the Greek people.

In his article, Knowles teasingly summarized Harrison's thesis, writing, quote,

mister Harrison satirically exhorts the English public to hand over this possession gratuitously and unasked to the mixed little population which now lives upon the ruins of ancient Greece.

⁇

Yikes!

You really get your racial prejudices uncut when you head back to the 19th century.

The phrase mixed little population not only has the effect of infantilizing the Greek people, but the insinuation is that modern Greeks cannot claim ancient Greek heritage because they are, according to Knowles, ethnically mixed.

The idea that only a person whose genealogy has remained quote-unquote unmixed for over 2,000 years could claim a connection to their country's ancient past is as preposterous as it is racist.

Good luck finding these unmixed people in any country, anywhere.

But this little jab, nasty as it might be, does not reflect the meat of Knoll's argument.

In the 1890s, many of the surviving sculptures on the Acropolis were still outdoors in their original positions.

The argument followed that those marbles safely inside the British Museum were simply being kept in better condition than those in Athens.

But Knowles' most forceful argument was his assertion that returning the Parthenon sculptures would set a dangerous precedent for the British Empire.

He writes, quote, But hold, tis not alone the flags of conquered nations which we have rent and torn and sliced away from their old and rightful owners.

It is the actual countries themselves.

What cannot the platform Pharisee say of Gibraltar, Malta, India, Burma, Hong Kong, the Cape, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland?

And Knowles capitalizes every letter in Ireland.

He continues, quote, will not every imaginable motive cry aloud in his pecksniffian bosom to purge himself of all this perilous stuff till England, denuded of every possession which God and her forefathers gave her, shall stand up naked.

This is the logic of giving back the Elgin marbles.

End quote.

And by the way, being pecksniffian means being self-righteous and hypocritical.

I had to look that one up.

Now, I found that passage remarkable.

This is a classic example of the old slippery slope fallacy.

Knowles' point, however hyperbolic, was that Britain cannot start entertaining giving things back that were taken from other countries because it threatens the premise of colonialism itself.

If you give back the Parthenon marbles, then what's next?

An independent India?

An independent Ireland?

Oh man, and the way he capitalizes every letter in Ireland, I think, speaks volumes.

What if the people of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand got it in their minds to repatriate their constitutions?

Now, the fact that all of those things have come to pass and the marbles remain in London is

kind of astounding.

For Knowles and those Britons whose views he represented, the marbles had come to symbolize not Greek achievement, but British achievement, the achievement of empire, the achievement of conquest.

Having the marbles in Britain was emblematic of Britain's place in the world.

To give them back was to suggest that Britain's empire was not morally justified.

Now, I've lingered on the Harrison-Knowles exchange here because I believe it really set the terms of the debate that we're still having today.

In many ways, their articles deeply reflect the attitudes and ideologies of the late 19th century.

Harrison's romantic ideal of the quote-unquote civilized pilgrims to Athens is very of its time.

As is Knowles' full-throated cheering of Britain taking the, quote, actual countries themselves from their, quote, old and rightful owners.

As this debate evolved over the next century, the rhetoric would be toned down and would evolve.

However, the substance of many of the arguments would remain remarkably consistent.

Interestingly, some of the arguments managed to migrate from one side of the aisle to the other.

What am I talking about?

Well, let's let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll break it down.

You want your master's degree.

You know you can earn it, but life gets busy.

The packed schedule, the late nights, and then there's the unexpected.

American Public University was built for all of it.

With monthly starts and no set login times, APU's 40-plus flexible online master's programs are designed to move at the speed of life.

Start your master's journey today at apu.apus.edu.

You want it?

Come get it at APU.

It's time your hard-earned money works harder for you.

With the Wealthfront cash account, your uninvested cash earns a 3.75% APY, which is higher than the average savings rate.

No account fees, no minimums, and free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts anytime.

Join over a million people who trust Wealthfront to build wealth at wealthfront.com.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA SIPC, and it's not a bank.

APY on deposits as of September 26, 2025 is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum.

Funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable APY.

The 1890s saw a heated public debate about the Parthenon sculptures play out in the press, but this did not seem to affect any type of official policy concerning the marbles.

The next time that Greek officials would inquire about the return of the marbles was in 1927.

In that year, the Greek ambassador to London requested just two pieces from the British Museum, a capital and a column drum, which could have been helpful in the ongoing restoration efforts to the Parthenon in Athens.

But in this instance, the trustees of the museum politely declined, citing a statute that required the collection to be kept together.

To divide the marbles would require an act of parliament.

The Greek ambassador dropped the issue, but the question of British statutes as they relate to the Parthenon sculptures would only become more complicated as the years went on.

The closest the Parthenon sculptures ever came to returning to Greece in the 20th century was arguably in 1941, right in the heart of the Second World War.

At the time, Britain and Greece were allied in their fight against the fascists.

In January of 1941, the Greeks were one of the few European allies that Britain still had on the continent.

These were truly the darkest days of the Second World War, when the Axis powers were on the ascendant.

In that moment, Greek resistance was not taken for granted.

So it was in that month that the MP, Mrs.

Thelma Cazalet, formally asked asked the Prime Minister in Parliament if, quote, he will introduce legislation to enable the Elgin marbles to be restored to Greece at the end of hostilities as some recognition of the Greeks' magnificent stand for civilization.

End quote.

Now, before this question was officially answered, opinions on the matter were gathered from the British Foreign Office, the British Museum, and other various experts.

While the British Museum did not believe there was a compelling historical or legal case for returning the marbles, a subsection of the memorandum on the morality of a return interestingly noted that, quote, the Greeks regard it as a spoilation of their national heritage under Turkish tyranny.

The point is that the Acropolis of Athens is the greatest national monument of Greece, and the buildings to which the marbles belonged are still standing or have been rebuilt.

End quote.

This was a recognition, however small, that there was a moral case for the sculptures to be in Athens.

During this opinion-gathering process, the British Foreign Ministry came very close to recommending the marbles' return.

A memorandum on the issue by one James Bawker, the deputy head of the Southeastern European Department, stated that, quote, everything points to a decision in principle to return the Elgin marbles to Greece on certain conditions, end quote.

What were those conditions?

Well, first, it was important that the marbles were returned entirely as a quote-unquote gesture of friendship.

They were to be a gift in recognition of the fight against the fascists.

This was to avoid the slippery slope.

The British government was not admitting that they had taken anything improperly, nor that they had a duty to return anything else in the British Museum.

This was to be a gift between allies.

Next, obviously, the marbles should not be returned until after the war.

And, most significantly, before they are returned, quote, adequate arrangements should be made for their housing, exhibition, and preservation, end quote.

The UK government would also have a say in all future preservation efforts.

It was those last few caveats that would prove to be the sticking points.

It was not believed that Greece would be able to properly house, exhibit, and store the collection, even after the Nazis were defeated.

So, Parliament did not bring the requested legislation forward.

The internal communications I just quoted were sealed and only again became public in the 1970s.

For those who hoped to see the sculptures return to Athens, 1941 represented a historic missed opportunity.

The question of restitution became even more difficult after the passage of the controversial British Museum Act of 1963.

Now, this piece of legislation has come up on this podcast before.

This Act of Parliament made it illegal for the trustees of the British Museum to dispose of anything in their collection except in a small number of special circumstances.

In the early 60s, just as decolonization was really picking up steam and many former British colonies were becoming independent, the British government at the time essentially insulated the British Museum from any requests for restitution.

Even if the trustees of the museum wanted to return something, they legally could not.

Only an act of parliament could change that.

The debate quieted down for another few decades before it came roaring back in the early 1980s.

The context for this was was the dissolution of the so-called rule of the colonels in Greece.

This was a right-wing military junta who controlled the country from 1967 to 1974.

The return of democracy to Greece with the Third Hellenic Republic also saw a fresh revival of Greek arts and culture.

With this came a renewed interest in the return of the Parthenon sculptures.

In 1981, the former former Greek actress, singer, and pro-democracy activist Melina Makuri became the Greek Minister of Culture.

Now, aside from being a lifelong activist and a tireless opponent of the regime of the Colonels, Makuri was a celebrity who brought no shortage of glamour and media attention to her new role.

As I mentioned in part one, Makuri brought the case for the repatriation of the Parthenon sculptures directly to the United Nations, or more specifically, UNESCO.

In 1982, the Greek government made a formal request for the Parthenon sculptures to be returned from Britain.

Makuri also gave a well-publicized speech at that year's UNESCO conference in Mexico City, where she made a passionate case for the return of the sculptures to Greece.

This speech helped secure an official request from UNESCO, which the British government politely declined.

But Melina McCourry kept returning to Britain and pressing her case, and by all accounts, she did quite a lot to move public opinion.

McCourry's style was passionate and peppered with emotional appeals.

In one speech from 1986 to the Oxford Union, she did her best to express just how much the fate of the Parthenon sculptures affected Greek people.

She told the gathered crowd,

You must understand what the Parthenon marbles mean to us.

They are our pride.

They are our sacrifices.

They are our noblest symbol of excellence.

They are a tribute to the democratic philosophy.

They are our aspirations and our name.

They are the essence of Greekness, end quote.

Makuri argued that not only were the marbles improperly taken, but their deep cultural meaning for contemporary Greeks should be respected, especially by a friendly allied nation.

Macuri was ultimately not successful in her quest to have the marbles returned to Athens, but her high-profile advocacy for the issue made the question of the Parthenon sculptures a perennial topic of public debate in Britain.

Since the 1980s, the question of the marbles has never fully disappeared from public discourse.

McCurry also started the process that would culminate in the building of a new Acropolis Museum, specifically designed to hold antiquities that originated on that historic hilltop.

After years of wrangling and millions of dollars of investment, the Acropolis Museum was finally completed in 2009.

So, where does this debate stand now?

Well, first, let's double back on one of the conditions the British Foreign Office placed on the return of the marbles way back in 1941.

That internal document suggested that the return of the Parthenon sculptures would be out of the question unless adequate arrangements could be made for their housing, exhibition, and preservation.

For much of the 20th century, including during McCurry's big repatriation push in the 1980s, one of the arguments in favor of keeping the sculptures in London was that they were safer and better cared for in the British Museum than they would be in Athens.

For decades, part of the issue was the air quality in the Greek capital.

The rapid increase in the city's population, automobile traffic, and industrial output mid-century meant that by the 1970s, Athens had some of the worst air quality among major European cities.

Acid rain and oxidation ended up taking a toll on many of the works of art and architecture on the Acropolis.

It was in this period that many of the remaining original sculptures still in place were removed by by the Greek government and brought to indoor spaces.

The argument went that since there was no way for the Parthenon sculptures to actually be re-affixed to the Parthenon, given the air quality in Athens, the aesthetic arguments for their return to Greece no longer held water.

It was also often pointed out that the British Museum was and remains one of the most sophisticated museums in the world and as such, could offer a level of care for these sculptures that simply could not be equaled in any institution in Athens.

Back in the 1980s, Melina Mokuri liked to point out that citing Athens' air quality as a reason to keep the sculptures away was hypocritical, given the fact that for most of the 19th century, London had some of the worst air quality in the world.

Now, since the 1970s, environmental legislation in Greece has vastly improved the air quality in the capital.

But even more significant was the completion of the Acropolis Museum in 2009.

The $175 million institution was designed with the care and display of the Parthenon marbles specifically in mind.

Now, experts still debate over whether or not the Acropolis Museum is the equal of the British Museum.

But in my humble opinion, it seems hard to argue after the completion of this institution that the Parthenon sculptures would not be well cared for in Athens.

Those who argue that the marbles belong in Athens have also pointed out that the Parthenon sculptures have not always been perfectly safe while they've been in British care.

This begins with Lord Elgin himself.

His team of workers did serious damage to both the Parthenon and many of the sculptures when they were removed.

Elgin's man on the scene, Giovanni Lucieri, spoke in multiple letters about the quote-unquote barbarisms that he had to inflict on the building.

Then, of course, there was the wreck of the Mentor that sent a load of marbles to the bottom of the Aegean Sea.

Thankfully, all were salvaged, but I think it's safe to say that on their journey from Greece to Britain, the Parthenon sculptures were not always safe.

But of course, all of those things happened before the sculptures were in the care of the British Museum.

Since then, surely they have had world-class care.

Well, not so fast.

In 1998, the well-known Parthenon sculpture expert William St.

Clair discovered while researching the marbles that between 1937 and 1938, many pieces in the collection were damaged when they were cleaned using improper methods.

In the 1930s, the millionaire art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen donated a huge amount of money to the British Museum for a new display area for the Parthenon sculptures.

But Duveen had his own ideas about how the marbles marbles should look.

At that point, some of the sculptures still had traces of the original paint that had once made them a colorful addition to the Parthenon.

They also had a distinctive creamy patina that had developed over centuries outdoors.

Influenced by racially loaded historical misconceptions popular at the time, Sir Duveen believed that the sculptures should be whiter.

So the museum allowed a team of workers hired by Duveen to have more or less unsupervised access to the collection so they could, quote-unquote, improve their look.

This work was allowed to go on for around a year.

In September of 1938, museum director John Forsdyke just happened to walk through the gallery and noticed that the workers were scraping at the sculptures with coarse copper tools.

He had the work stopped, and an internal report later said,

through unauthorized and improper efforts to improve the colors of the Parthenon sculptures for Lord Duvine's new gallery, some important pieces have been greatly damaged, end quote.

But perhaps even more scandalously, this cleaning debacle was then covered up by the museum.

The British Museum chose not to make a public statement.

Those who worked for the institution most implicated in the debacle were not formally disciplined, but were instead encouraged to quietly resign.

When rumors of potential damage to the sculptures leaked to the press in 1939, the museum responded with a half-truth that, quote, unauthorized cleaning methods were introduced in some instances, end quote.

Then, contradicting their own own internal investigation, they softpeddled the issue to the media, saying, quote, the effects of the methods used were imperceptible to anyone but an expert, end quote.

At the time, the controversy passed.

It wasn't until William St.

Clair's research that the full extent of both the damage and the cover-up became clear.

Predictably, the debate around the marbles came roaring back.

Now, it can be a hard calculus to try and determine what would have happened to these sculptures had they stayed in Athens.

Would they have been worse off than in the British Museum?

Potentially.

But all we can say for sure is what happened to them after they were removed by Lord Elgin.

They were damaged.

and the people working at the British Museum knew it was embarrassing, so they hushed it up.

When it comes to the care of the Parthenon sculptures, the British Museum does not have a spotless record.

We do not know what might have happened to the sculptures in Athens.

We do know what happened to them in London.

So let's take one more break, and when we come back, we'll try and make sense of where this debate stands in 2025.

You want your master's degree.

You know you can earn it, but life gets busy.

The packed schedule, the late nights, and then there's the unexpected.

American Public University was built for all of it.

With monthly starts and no set login times, APU's 40-plus flexible online master's programs are designed to move at the speed of life.

Start your master's journey today at apu.apus.edu.

You want it?

Come get it at APU.

As of this recording, you can still find many commentators who argue that there's no legal or moral reason why the Parthenon marbles should reside anywhere other than the British Museum.

First, let's address the question of legality.

You will often hear Lord Elgin's conduct in Greece described as criminal.

Many have accused him of stealing the Parthenon sculptures.

I titled this series, Was the Parthenon Robbed After All?

So, is it fair to say that he stole the marbles?

Based on the reading I have done, it seems clear that Lord Elgin's position as ambassador contributed to him getting the very permissive furman, or official permission that he did from the Ottoman officials.

I think it's been demonstrated that the parameters of the original firman were pushed beyond what was originally intended.

But thanks to the quote judicious mixture of threats and bribes end quote used by Reverend Hunt, the governor of Athens signed off on what happened at the Parthenon.

This, in the most strict sense of the word, made what Lord Elgin did legal.

All the relevant authorities gave him the nod.

After most of Elgin's work was done on the building, he was able to get other firmans and permissions to transport the marbles from Greece to England.

Reverend Hunt clearly helped get a liberal interpretation of the first firm.

But that was not the last time that the Ottoman officials signed off on the project.

Lord Elgin did what he did in full view of the relevant authorities and with their consent.

If the bank manager opens the vault and gives you written permission to take the money out, is that really a robbery?

But the relevant authorities at the time were not Greek.

The Ottomans were an occupying colonial regime.

So you could argue, and many have, that while the permissions granted to Elgin were technically legal, they did not reflect the will of the Greek people.

As soon as a Greek state was established, laws were passed that specifically forbade this exact kind of thing from happening again.

Many Greeks argue that they were robbed by the Ottoman officials who allowed Elgin's team such unrestricted access to the Parthenon.

In other words, the bank manager was in on the heist.

From this perspective, the Ottomans essentially outsourced their looting to a Scottish earl.

But in the strict sense, Lord Elgin did not act illegally.

He made sure he had the right permits, and Reverend Hunt greased the wheels so they were interpreted favorably.

Now, that does not mean that what happened was right or good.

And in my opinion, it's outrageous to suggest that Lord Elgin saved the sculptures.

He may not have been a thief, but to suggest that he was some sort of hero for rescuing the sculptures is simply too much.

As we discussed in the last episode, the idea that he was saving the sculptures was a justification that he came to once the project was well underway.

It's also fairly clear that Lord Elgin's crew did more damage to the Parthenon than anyone since the Venetians ignited the stores of Turkish gunpowder in 1687.

Then he nearly lost a shipload of priceless marbles at sea.

This was no rescue mission.

But I think it needs to be conceded that there isn't a clean legal case for the marbles to be returned to Greece.

There are other controversial museum objects in the British Museum, like the Benin Bronzes, for instance, that were unambiguously looted as part of a military operation.

The Parthenon sculptures have a more complicated provenance, which puts them in a slightly different category.

But I do believe that there is a strong moral and aesthetic case for the Parthenon sculptures to be in Athens.

Now, I've been trying to be as even-handed as I can up to this point.

I know that my opinions have been seeping through.

So, you know, at this point, I think I should just declare my position on this so you can properly calibrate how you take in the rest of this podcast.

I have been convinced that the sculptures should be in Athens.

I don't think that you can deny that these sculptures are an ancient and profound expression of Greek cultural identity.

As I mentioned in part one, scholars of ancient Greek art have pointed out that the completion of the Parthenon in the 1430s BC led to a new pan-Hellenic style of art.

The art of the Parthenon literally helped forge a common Greek identity in ancient times.

Now,

like all ethnic identities, the Greek identity shifted, changed, expanded, and retracted over more than two thousand years.

But it never entirely went away.

The Greek language persisted, along with an evolving Greek culture.

In fact, you could argue that Greek identity has been one of the sturdiest ethnic identities in European history.

You know, you don't meet too many people who identify as Visigoths anymore.

Apologies to the Visigothic community if you're out there listening, but I haven't met too many Visigoths.

Now, I think it's fair to recognize that the emergence of Greek nationalism in the early 19th century led to a renewed interest and pride in the ancient past in that country.

But to say that it was not their past to revive,

that rings hollow to me.

Next, the objects originated on the Acropolis.

And now there is an institution on the Acropolis that can properly house, display, and preserve them.

I am moved by the aesthetic argument that all of the surviving Parthenon sculptures should be viewed together as one collection.

It seems only right that that collection should be displayed as close to its place of origin as possible.

If these sculptures cannot be seen on the Parthenon, then the next best place, in my humble opinion, would be in a museum that looks on to the Parthenon.

I think Frederick Harrison had a point in 1890 when he spoke of the disservice being done not just to Greek people, but to all visitors to Athens when they come to learn about the Acropolis, only to discover that half the Parthenon sculptures are in England.

But if we're going to be considering the experience of world travelers looking to learn, should we then also consider their experience when they visit the British Museum in London?

As I hinted at earlier, the British Museum's position on the marbles has evolved considerably over the past few decades.

The bellicose arguments made by James Knowles in 1891 that returning the marbles would undermine Britain's claim to their entire colonial empire have been out of fashion for quite some time.

If you were being uncharitable, you might say that Knowles was kind of saying the quiet part loud back in 1891.

Now the argument is that by returning the marbles and other contested items, the British Museum would be undermining its unique role as a so-called universal museum.

This is the idea that the British Museum and other institutions like it, like the the Met in New York or the Louvre in Paris, are unique in their ability to tell an international human story.

Their collections, however they may have been obtained, can show how people and societies from all over the planet have contributed to the human story.

Here is how the British Museum explains it on their website.

Quote,

The museum takes its commitment to be a world museum seriously.

The collection is a unique resource to explore the richness, diversity, and complexity of all human history, our shared humanity.

The strength of the collection is its breadth and depth, which allows millions of visitors an understanding of the cultures of the world and how they interconnect, whether through trade, migration, conquest, conflict, or peaceful exchange.

The Parthenon sculptures are an integral part of that story and a vital element in this interconnected world collection, particularly in the way that they convey influences between Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and Roman cultures.

End quote.

Now, I have to say that I find that argument fascinating.

As I mentioned earlier, I think this could be understood as one of Frederick Harrison's arguments figuratively crossing the aisle.

Harrison argued that the Parthenon sculptures should be in Athens so that they could better be appreciated by quote-unquote pilgrims looking to learn and be edified by human achievement.

The British Museum is saying that it has become a place of pilgrimage.

More than that, it is one of the few places where the story of all of humanity can be told.

It's no longer argued that it's a slippery slope from returning the marbles to returning Ireland, all caps.

Now the slippery slope argument goes that returning the marbles will lead to the loss of the vast majority of the British Museum collection.

And with that collection will go dream of the universal museum.

The argument goes that no one will be able to tell the story of humanity if we let nationalistic concerns guide where museum objects are displayed.

I'll tell you, this argument really gave me pause.

Personally, I like the idea of a universal museum.

I also appreciate the mission of trying to demonstrate that humanity has been enriched by thousands of diverse societies from around the world.

I like the idea that a universal museum could demonstrate that no one group of people has had a monopoly on civilization.

But,

friends,

might I suggest that like so many things in this world, the secret ingredient for a universal museum is consent.

If the people whose heritage is on display are not consenting, then it makes the potentially noble goal of celebrating diverse cultures feel disingenuous.

A universal museum should reflect cooperation and sharing across cultures and national borders.

I want a world where a true universal museum can exist, but it can't be built on a foundation of resentment.

A universal museum should be about the world coming together, not one nation guarding objects acquired during the heyday of empire.

As of this recording, talks between the British Museum and the Acropolis Museum are ongoing.

These talks concern a loan agreement whereby the marbles could be displayed in Athens for an extended period.

Now given the specifics of the 1963 Museum Act, it would need to be a loan and not an official repatriation.

The political will to repeal or change the Museum Act still seems to be lacking among all the major British political parties.

Still, there has been some movement on this issue, and perhaps we will see a compromise in the next few years.

But while I have personally been convinced that the Parthenon sculptures belong on the Acropolis, it has been remarkable to see just how many historical myths have clouded this debate.

These myths have been employed by advocates on both sides of the issue.

They have a way of framing this debate as a contest between heroes and villains.

Lord Elgin has been cast as both a hero and a villain, and I'm not sure he was either.

He was certainly not a great preservationist who saved the marbles from destruction.

But we should also resist the temptation to follow Lord Byron's lead and cast him as a cursed syphilitic who stole the sculptures to decorate his home.

I've come to understand that he was a man of enormous privilege who used that privilege to get what he wanted.

He was the kind of person who could get extra special permission to saw into the Parthenon in 1801, and he got it.

It seems that he was sincere in his mission to enrich the arts in Britain, but he was willing to hugely diminish the arts in Greece to achieve that goal.

On the other side of the coin, some of Elgin's defenders have cast the Ottoman Turks and sometimes the Greeks themselves as villains in this story.

As we've discussed, Ottoman mistreatment of Greek antiquities has been exaggerated.

So too has Greek indifference.

It's almost absurd that over the course of this centuries-long debate, there have been moments when the Greeks have felt compelled to prove that they are Greek.

This encouraged advocates like Melina Makuri to embrace their own set of historical myths, including tales about Greek revolutionaries delivering bullets to the Turks to save the Parthenon.

In this version of events, the Greeks are recast as unambiguous heroes, giving their blood for their antiquities.

And this is the thing about historical myths.

They are attractive, especially when they reinforce a pre-existing belief that we might have.

Hell, even I found myself tempted by historical myths over the course of this series.

But in the case of the Parthenon sculptures, we do not need to rely on historical myths to come to an understanding of where they belong today.

If we want a world where a true true universal museum can exist, then acts of generosity, goodwill, and restitution are a good place to start.

It seems to me that the Parthenon sculptures have an obvious home, the Parthenon.

Okay,

join us again in just one week's time when we will be doing another special bonus episode.

On that bonus episode, I will be answering your questions about this most recent series on the Parthenon sculptures.

Do you have opinions about where these sculptures should be?

Send me an email at ourfakehistory at gmail.com.

Or if you're a patron, go to the Patreon page and chime in on the chat.

I will be reading your comments and answering your questions on that bonus episode.

And if this series made you curious curious about what it actually looks like on the Acropolis, how about you come to Greece with me?

How's that for a plug?

We're going to Greece next year.

If you want to be part of that trip, the easiest way to find out about it is to go to ourfakehistory.com and follow the links to the full itinerary.

I hope you come with me.

If you end up booking, don't forget to use the promo code OFH.

Before we go this week, as always, I need to give some very special shout outs.

Big ups to Don Bayard, to Keeks,

to Rich Burkhart,

to Charlie,

to Josh Furler,

to Avid Reader, and to Mark.

All of these folks have decided to pledge at $5

or more every month on Patreon.

So you know what that means.

They are beautiful human beings.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your support.

The Patreon support is the lifeblood of this show.

I know I say it all the time, but it's the absolute truth.

If you are a supporter, I don't know how else to tell you how much it means to me.

Thank you so much for caring about this podcast.

The time has come for us to start talking about the next patrons only episode.

I will have some more news about that in the coming weeks.

But for those that don't know, I let the patrons suggest topics and then vote on what they want the next patrons-only show to be.

So keep your ears glued to the podcast for more information about that in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, if you want to get in touch with me, send me an email at ourfakehistory at gmail.com.

Find me on Facebook, facebook.com/slash our fake history.

Find me on Instagram at Ourfake History.

Find me on Blue Sky at Ourfake History.

Find me on TikTok at OurFake History.

And find me on YouTube.

Also at, you guessed it, OurFake History.

I've got more little video shorts coming out than ever.

So if you want to see my beautiful face, look for it on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube.

You know how it works.

As always, the theme music for the show comes to us from Dirty Church.

Check out more from Dirty Church at dirtychurch.bandcamp.com.

All the other music you heard on the show today was written and recorded by me.

My name is Sebastian Major, and remember, just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't real.

One, two,

Just when you thought summer couldn't get any hotter, Pluto TV is turning up the heat with thousands of free movies.

Presenting Summer of Cinema.

Stream your favorite blockbuster films like Gladiator.

I will have my venues.

Good burger.

This is what I call fast fig!

Beverly Hills Cop, the girl with a dragon tattoo, and Julian Julia.

All for free on your favorite devices.

Pluto TV.

Stream now.

Pay never.

When the right team comes together at the right time, the potential is unlimited.

In the world of biotech, that time is right now.

At Unicisive Therapeutics, we've assembled an industry-leading biotech team to tackle the biggest unmet needs in kidney care.

Our lead investigational therapy is on pace to deliver a potential best-in-class profile for treating hyperphosphatemia in chronic kidney disease patients on dialysis.

What's next in kidney care is almost here.

Join us as we work to cross the finish line at unecisive.com.