I

It would appear that the first extant version of the tale occurs in a letter of 1859, penned by the writer and politician Aristotelis Valaoritis (1824–79), and sent to his fellow Greek poet, Andreas Laskaratos (1811–1901). In his letter, Valaoritis discussed the story of how and why the Greek army in Athens presented bullets to the Turks they were besieging on the Acropolis:

The tale preserved in the Valaoritis letter provides much of the information referred to by Mercouri in 1982, and the Greek culture minister may well have derived some, or even all, of her information of the event from this piece of correspondence. There are, however, concerns regarding the factual accuracy of the incident described, the most obvious being that the letter was written almost four decades after the events it describes had transpired. This is, in itself, not an insurmountable problem; there were certainly many Greeks still alive in 1859 who had participated in the siege of the Acropolis in 1821–2 and would have been available to pass on their recollections of what had happened almost forty years earlier. However, the passage of time does, at the very least, appear to have caused factual inaccuracies to become embedded in the tale as it is preserved in Valaoritis's letter. Thus, when the scholar Elias Voutieridis (1874–1941) analysed the tale recounted in Valaoritis's letter he expressed serious reservations concerning the authenticity of the entire story.Footnote ⁷ Most damningly, Voutieridis noted that, despite the prominent role credited to Odysseus Androutsos, the Greek war leader was not actually present during the period of the siege of the Acropolis, only arriving in Athens two months after the hill-top had been handed over to the Greeks.Footnote ⁸ Furthermore, Voutieridis pointed to a number of reports from the siege which indicated that, while the Greeks fighters may indeed have been depressed to hear of the destruction being wrought on the Parthenon by their Ottoman enemies, nevertheless, the Hellenic army would itself bombard the Acropolis with artillery fire during the siege and had no reservations about allowing shot and shell from their cannons and mortars to pepper the ancient ruins on the hill-top.

In addition to the doubts expressed by Voutieridis, other aspects of the story presented in the Valaoritis letter of 1859 also appear unlikely. It might, for example, be questioned if the Turks defending the Acropolis would readily admit to their enemies that their supplies of ammunition were becoming so scarce that they had to resort to the destruction of ancient buildings to source lead. By answering the questions put to them by the boys sent by Odysseus Androutsos (despite the Greek commander not actually being present in Athens), the Ottoman defenders risked triggering an all-out assault as the revolutionaries realized that, in addition to overwhelming Greek numerical superiority,Footnote ⁹ the Muslims were now also low on ammunition, offering a golden opportunity to take the hill-top by storm.

Although Elias Voutieridis's study of the Valaoritis letter of 1859, and the historian's objections to the historical legitimacy of the story, had actually begun as early as 1931, they were only published two decades after the scholar's death, finally appearing in the 1961 issue of the literary magazine Nea Estia.Footnote ¹⁰ Despite Voutieridis's death and the delay in publication, by the time Melina Mercouri referenced the tale during her address to the assembly of culture ministers in 1982 the historical veracity of the fable of the Greek gift of lead ammunition to the Turks had been thrown into serious doubt in an article featured in a widely circulated magazine published more than twenty years earlier. Having presumably taken the time to research the story of the gift of ammunition made by the Greeks to the Ottomans in 1821–2 to ensure that she did not mislead her peers at the international gathering in Mexico City, then it might seem unlikely that Mercouri – or, at the least, the historical advisors from the Greek Culture Ministry who might have been expected to brief her regarding the story – should have remained ignorant of the problems relating to the historical accuracy of the tale.

Four years after the story of ammunition being offered by the Greeks to their Ottoman foes was mentioned in the Valaoritis letter of 1859, the tale was also referenced by Alexandros Rizos Rangavis (1809–92). Rangavis was one of the great scholars of nineteenth-century Greece who, following the establishment of the Hellenic Kingdom, would hold a professorship in archaeology at the University of Athens. He also played a major role in Greek politics, serving three years as minister of foreign affairs in the late 1850s, as well as taking on ambassadorial positions in the United States, the Ottoman empire, France, and Prussia.Footnote ¹¹ Given the academic and political prominence of Rangavis, his 1863 reference to the incident of the gifting of ammunition to the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis has therefore become the accepted version of events. The British essayist and outspoken advocate of the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens, Christopher Hitchens, therefore, relied heavily on Rangavis's description of the incident and, in his polemic essay, The Parthenon Marbles: the case for reunification, Hitchens would thus note: ‘We know that in 1821, when the Greeks were besieging the Acropolis, they learned that the Turkish defenders were melting down the lead clamps of the buildings to make improvised bullets.’Footnote ¹² Hitchens would go on to provide a translation of Rangavis's version of events during the siege of the Acropolis in 1821–2:

Like Melina Mercouri ahead of him, Hitchens passed off the incident as a matter of historical record. However, as was the case with the letter penned by Aristotelis Valaoritis, there are major doubts concerning the historical veracity of the tale as recounted by Rizos Rangavis. In this version of the story, the leading actor in the drama was not Odysseus Androutsos, but rather Kyriakos Pittakis (1798–1863). Hitchens would therefore emphasize: ‘Prominent among the Greeks besiegers was Kyriakos Pittakis, who later became the first General Keeper of Antiquities of Greece.’Footnote ¹⁴ Pittakis was certainly in Athens and fighting in the Greek army during the siege of 1821–2. However, in the large body of work that the scholar published throughout his life, there appears no mention that he witnessed lead ammunition being gifted to the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis by his fellow soldiers, let alone his role in initiating such an event. Instead, the episode had seemingly lain dormant until first recorded in Valaoritis's letter of 1859, while Pittakis's role in the affair first became public knowledge when highlighted by Rangavis in 1863.

Hitchens also neglected to inform his readers of the close relationship that existed between Pittakis and Rangavis; the former was both friend and mentor to the latter, while the two men were also co-editors of the journal Ephemeris Archaeologiki.Footnote ¹⁵ Indeed, both Rangavis and Pittakis carried out major programmes of archaeological excavation and conservation on the Athenian Acropolis after the War of Independence. It has thus been noted of their work on the Parthenon: ‘The first restoration project planned by him [i.e. Pittakis] (in 1842–45, with his future opponent Alexandros Rizos-Rangavis)…consisted of the complete reconstruction with ancient materials of two columns in the north peristyle, the partial reconstruction of two more, and the rebuilding of a large part of the lateral walls of the cella.’Footnote ¹⁶ As the passage makes clear, in later years the relationship between the two scholars had soured and would become highly contentious.Footnote ¹⁷ Nonetheless, despite their estrangement, it was Rangavis who provided Pittakis's funeral eulogy in 1863; it was, indeed, as part of this eulogy that Rangavis made reference to the role played by Pittakis in presenting the gift of bullets to the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis. We should not completely disregard the possibility that, despite the forty-year silence regarding Pittakis's role in the attempt to save the classical monuments on the Acropolis, such an incident did indeed take place in 1821–2. It is, however, perhaps more likely that historical accuracy was pushed slightly to one side during the funeral eulogy as Rangavis sought to offer a rose-tinted view of Pittakis's achievements, embellishing a story that, as Valaoritis's letter of 1859 would indicate, appears to have been circulating in Athens in the middle years of the nineteenth century. By posthumously inserting Pittakis into the narrative, Rangavis may have been seeking to present his former friend and colleague as both freedom fighter during the struggle for independence, while simultaneously emphasizing Pittakis's deep concern for the preservation of Greek heritage.

Rangavis's scholarly, political, and emotional interests also lend additional weight to the possibility that reference to the tale of lead ammunition being gifted to the Ottoman defenders on the Acropolis made during Pittakis's funeral eulogy has been greatly embellished and was possibly a wholly fictional event. As a result of his education in Odessa and Munich, and subsequent service in the Bavarian army, Rangavis was heavily influenced by the European Enlightenment, as well as concepts such as Nationalism, which he was eager to bring to the fledgling Hellenic state. However, Rangavis was also a writer of dramatic and romantic fiction in which it has been recently noted that he had an ‘inclination for moral and humane principles of behavior’ that was intended ‘to inform, instruct and direct his Greek audience through a kind of paradigmatic fiction’.Footnote ¹⁸ It has thus been claimed that, through his fictional works, the scholar was endeavouring to mould the moral consciousness of the Greek people:

It may, therefore, have been the case that, for Rangavis, the account of Greeks sending ammunition to their Turkish enemies was not so much an historical event, but was rather a fable intended to emphasize a noble and heroic deed; one which could be proclaimed as ‘worthy of the highest civilization’. Indeed, in the first volume of his autobiography, Memoirs, published posthumously in 1894, Rangavis noted how, when still a young writer recently arrived in the then Greek capital of Nafplio, he was counselled by a local notable to venture among the ancient ruins in an effort to draw inspiration from which to write of the modern Greek heroes who had fought in the War of Independence.Footnote ²⁰ Rangavis would go on to claim in Memoirs that his efforts in this regard had all met with failure. However, in referencing the fable of the Greek gift of ammunition to their Ottoman foes within his eulogy to Pittakis, Rangavis finally succeeded in linking the struggle for independence with the most iconic site associated with Greek antiquity. Even if it did owe more to legend than history, the story of the Greek revolutionaries offering ammunition to their Ottoman enemies in an attempt to preserve their ancient heritage offered Rangavis the perfect canvas upon which those who had fought in the War of Independence could be depicted as modern heroes, victorious in their struggle to reclaim the land and monuments of their ancient forebears.

The tale also neatly combined Rangavis's own desire to conserve and protect Greece's ancient monuments with his aspiration to use the surviving structures of antiquity as potent symbols of national pride that had to be conserved at all costs. The story of the desire to protect the Parthenon and other monuments on the Acropolis, even in the midst of a ferocious conflict waged between Christians and Muslims, could thus be used as a morality tale through which to preach the need to bestow profound respect on the classical monuments. In addition to glorifying the recently deceased Pittakis, Rangavis may therefore have been seeking to use the tale to encourage the Greek population to reconnect with their ancient history and heritage. Indeed, despite the disagreements which came to exist between Pittakis and Rangavis, the two men nevertheless shared a similar ideological approach to the monuments and archaeology of antiquity, and it has been noted: ‘They both elevated the classical past above everything else…They both believed in the classical roots of the young state and helped in their own ways to move the nation closer to the neoclassical ideals.’Footnote ²¹ The story of lead bullets being gifted to the besieged Turks was certainly a tale that politicians like Mercouri and writers like Hitchens would also later come to realize could be readily exploited as a fable with which to emphasize the desire of Greeks to preserve their ancient cultural heritage.

It may be no coincidence that the first confirmed written account of the tale of the lead bullets date to the middle years of the nineteenth century. This was the period at which the irredentist movement had become a goal of the Greek state, with the Megali Idea – the expansionist drive northwards to reclaim all those lands traditionally regarded as Greek – the pre-eminent policy aim of the Hellenic Kingdom.Footnote ²² At the same time, Greek academics were being tasked with forging unbreakable links that would bind the modern population of the youthful Hellenic state with the Greeks of antiquity, providing an unbroken thread of ethnic and cultural continuity that would stretch back through the Ottoman, Byzantine, Roman, Hellenistic, and Classical eras all the way to the Homeric heroes of the Bronze Age.Footnote ²³ It therefore becomes a distinct possibility that the story of the Greek army gifting bullets to the Ottoman defenders on the Acropolis was a mid-nineteenth-century creation: from its first recorded appearance (and possible genesis) in the late 1850s, the story was intended to strengthen the bonds linking modern Greeks with their ancient forebears through a conspicuous display of emotional attachment towards the Parthenon, the most iconic of ancient monuments.

Even if it could be proven that, despite never incorporating the tale into any of his numerous publications during the four decades that passed between the siege of 1821–2 and his death in 1863, Pittakis had, nonetheless, made verbal mention of the story of the present of bullets to the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis (either directly to Rangavis or via his family or other associates), doubts would still remain. As a prominent campaigner in advancing the narrative of history that reinforced the links that bound the population of the newly independent country with the inhabitants of the land during Greece's ancient past, Pittakis had resorted to subterfuge in an effort to undermine the theories promoted by Jakob Fallmerayer in which the Tyrolean academic argued that massive migrations of Slavic peoples during the early medieval period had brought about the total dislocation of both the racial and cultural traits of the population of Greece.Footnote ²⁴ Pittakis went so far as to try to mislead Fallmerayer in an effort to smear the latter's reputation; recent research has highlighted ‘the attempt of the archaeologist Kyriakos Pittakis to deceive and discredit him [i.e. Fallmerayer] by showing him forged manuscripts upon one of his visits to Athens’.Footnote ²⁵ Pittakis was clearly willing to provide false information to respected academics in an attempt to preserve Greek claims that the modern population of the recently liberated country were the undisputed heirs to the ancient Hellenes, rather than the descendants of medieval Slavic invaders. Given such fabrication of historical evidence, the veracity of any claims that might have been made by Pittakis regarding the manner in which he and the other Greek insurgents besieging the Athenian Acropolis had endangered their own lives by gifting ammunition to their enemies to prevent the destruction of the monuments of their classical ancestors therefore have to be treated with a degree of scepticism.Footnote ²⁶

II

Perhaps the strongest objection to the tale of lead ammunition being gifted to the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis in 1821–2 is that none of the foreign soldiers who travelled to Greece to aid in the fight for independence – some of whom were actively involved in the attempts to capture the Ottoman-controlled hill-top in Athens – make any mention of their Greek brothers-in-arms offering a present of lead bullets or cannonballs to the Turks. The memoirs and histories preserved by these philhellenes, or the accounts of other foreign visitors and consular officials in the country at the time, all fail to include any reference to the Greeks gifting lead ammunition to the defenders of the Acropolis.Footnote ²⁷

Damage to the Parthenon was certainly caused by the Ottoman defenders in their search for lead. In the spring of 1824, Georg Gropius, the Austrian consul in Athens, noted in a letter to the British philhellene, Edward Blaquière:

A similar description of the damage to the Parthenon was provided by George Waddington, whose travel memoir contained details of the Greek siege of the Acropolis that had taken place just a year or two before his arrival in the city:

Despite emphasizing the ‘barbarous labour’ undertaken by the Ottoman defenders in their search for lead hidden within the masonry of the Parthenon, Waddington made no mention that the damage to the ancient monument generated any widespread anger or concern among the Greek besiegers. The English traveller certainly failed to mention any members of the Greek army offering to make a gift of ammunition to their enemy in an effort to forestall the Turks from wreaking further damage on the temple. It may be the case that Waddington was never informed of the episode. Equally possible is that the Englishman deliberately chose not to include a report of the incident in his book, although it would seem likely that such an act of valour, coupled with a conspicuous display of concern and appreciation for the monuments of antiquity, would have appealed to Waddington and, as such, the gift of lead ammunition would be expected to draw at least a passing remark in his memoir. However, a resident of Athens such as Georg Gropius would surely have been aware had any such event taken place; the lack of any reference to the incident in his letter to Blaquière – with no mention that there had even been rumours that any such episode had ever played out – increases the doubts concerning the authenticity of the tale.

The absence of any mention of the Greek army sending a gift of ammunition to their Ottoman enemies in the relatively large body of philhellenic memoirs and associated literature increases the doubts regarding the incident. These philhellenic writers were, as their title emphasizes, extremely supportive of the Greek struggle for liberation and would have been entirely sympathetic to such a story. Had an ardent philhellene such as Edward Blaquière heard the merest rumour of any such incident taking place then he would surely have been eager to reference the event, regardless of its veracity, in an attempt to underscore the chivalric manner with which the Greeks were prosecuting the war. It has thus been written of Blaquière:

Yet, despite this propensity to view the Greek fighters and their cause through extremely rose-tinted spectacles, even Blaquière makes no mention in any of his books or pamphlets of the revolutionaries offering bullets to their Ottoman enemies during the siege of the Athenian Acropolis in 1821–2.

The lack of contemporary accounts containing any reference to the provision of ammunition to the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis, together with the passage of almost four decades before the tale made its first documented appearance, all raise major doubts concerning the historical validity of the incident. This is not to say that the Greeks never offered ammunition to their Turkish enemies in an effort to preserve the structural integrity of the Parthenon. As the old maxim cautions us to remember: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. However, the seeming lack of any confirmation for the episode in the large body of memoirs and histories produced by those Greeks and foreigners who had been in Athens during the siege of the Acropolis, or had spoken with eyewitnesses, provides a deafening silence. The truth of the matter is that historians cannot currently be certain as to the extent with which the offer of the Greek army to provide ammunition to the Turkish defenders of the Acropolis in 1821–2 was a tale rooted in reality, or was rather concocted to serve both political and personal goals during the middle years of the nineteenth century. However, despite the questionable veracity of the story, the powerful emotional chord struck by the tale has prevented it from being shunted to the sidelines of history. For a politician like Melina Mercouri, it was a potent fable that could be deployed to good effect in the campaign she was waging to repatriate the Elgin Marbles. The tale certainly helped bolster her claim that the Parthenon reflected ‘the soul of Greece’.Footnote ³¹ For Mercouri, the story thus underscored the great affection with which Greeks held the temple and its sculptures; so much so that, at the very birth of the modern Hellenic state, Greek fighters were willing to endanger their own lives by gifting ammunition to the enemy rather than see further damage inflicted on the Parthenon. Since 1982, a range of academics, together with lobbyists affiliated to the numerous international campaign groups seeking the return of the Elgin Marbles, have followed Mercouri's lead in referencing the tale and passing it off as corroborated historical fact.

III

The seeming lack of contemporary support for the tale of the Greeks gifting ammunition to their Ottoman enemies in an effort to halt the destruction of the ancient buildings on the Acropolis has not prevented the legend from being accepted and further disseminated by several respected scholars over the years. Manolis Andronikos (1919–92), professor of archaeology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, who attained international fame following his discovery of the tomb of Philip II at Vergina in 1977, uncritically accepted Rangavis's account of the incident, writing in his History and poetry:

The Byzantanist, Robert Browning (1914–97), professor at Birkbeck College, London, also appears to have no reservations concerning the historical authenticity of the tale of the Greek offer to provision their enemies on the Acropolis with ammunition, and clearly stated: ‘[T]he Turkish garrison of the Acropolis began to break the surviving walls of the cella to get at the lead shielding of the clamps and melt it down for bullets. The Greek besiegers sent a message offering to give them bullets if they would leave the Parthenon undamaged.’Footnote ³³ Both Andronikos and Browning therefore seem to have taken the story at face value without attempting to determine the historical veracity of the tale. Instead, we would probably be better served by following the lead of the Greek scholar, Kyriakos Simopoulos, who, in his book, The looting and destruction of Greek antiquities, referred to the tale of the Greek army gifting ammunition to the Ottomans defending the Acropolis: ‘The Greeks did not fire on them [the Turks], but instead gave them bullets and so paid for the marbles with their own precious blood (there is thus the well-known phrase: “Here are bullets, do not touch the columns”).’ However, rather than simply accepting the story, Simopoulos would note that ‘the reality appears to be rather different’. He would therefore go on to write: ‘But it is, of course, a myth that the Turks were supplied with 4000 lead bullets so that they would not topple and smash the columns [of the Parthenon]. Yet this falsehood is frequently referred to on the national soapbox and in textbooks.’Footnote ³⁴ More recently, Mary Beard has also referred to the tale as a ‘powerful myth’, the Cambridge professor speculating that the story was ‘elaborated, if not invented, years after’.Footnote ³⁵

It is also worth noting that Professor Browning was a founding member and first chairman of the repatriation campaign group, the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), established in 1983.Footnote ³⁶ The formation of this lobby group was, indeed, a direct consequence of Mercouri's address in Mexico City the previous year, in which the Greek culture minister's emotional appeal for the return of the Elgin Marbles – which, as we have seen, included prominent mention of the historically dubious incident involving the Greek gift of lead ammunition to the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis – had swayed the other delegates attending the conference to support the Greek request for the restitution of the sculptures removed from the Parthenon. The website of the BCRPM thus notes the importance of Mercouri's speech to its own formation, candidly stating that the British Committee was established ‘[t]o secure the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece in accordance with the resolution of the UNESCO Conference of Ministers of Culture held in Mexico on 4 August 1982’.Footnote ³⁷ Mercouri's address in Mexico City, together with numerous other speeches and articles penned throughout the 1980s, would spread far beyond Greece and Britain, inspiring an international movement with over a dozen campaign groups dotted around the globe all devoted to bringing about the repatriation of the Elgin Marbles.Footnote ³⁸

Mercouri's address to the culture ministers assembled at Mexico City was just the opening salvo in her campaign to repatriate the Elgin Marbles. In October 1983, the Greek government made an official request for the return of the sculptures; on a visit to the British Museum that same year, Mercouri famously wept in front of the cameras of the press when she came before the Elgin Marbles.Footnote ³⁹ Mercouri's emotionally charged approach to the repatriation of cultural heritage has been highlighted by John Henry Merryman when referring to the manner in which ‘[t]he dramatic actress Melina Mercouri was…conducting an emotionally compelling international campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens’.Footnote ⁴⁰ The heroic tale of the Greek army during the War of Independence, and the offer of ammunition to their Ottoman enemy during the siege of the Acropolis, certainly dovetails with the emotional tenor adopted by Mercouri throughout her crusade to repatriate the Elgin Marbles.

In a debate at the Oxford Union in June 1986, Mercouri would return to the story of the Greek army during the War of Independence besieging the Athenian Acropolis and providing ammunition to the Turks. Once again, the Greek culture minister would use the tale to emphasize the emotional attachment felt by Greeks towards their ancient heritage, and to generate additional support for the arguments in favour of repatriating the Marbles held in the British Museum. Unlike her address at Mexico City four years earlier, in her speech to the assembled students of Oxford University Mercouri would reduce the size of the shot presented by the Greeks to the Turks from cannonballs to bullets. Aside from this small alteration, however, the Greek culture minister's story was virtually unchanged from that of 1982, and Mercouri continued to highlight the efforts made by the Greek revolutionaries in attempting to prevent the Ottoman defenders on the Acropolis from quarrying the Parthenon and other ancient monuments in their search for lead:

As in Mexico City, when Mercouri had referred to the tale as a ‘historic’ event (see above, p. 1), in Oxford the Greek culture minister would continue to underscore the factual foundations upon which rested her speech. In the introduction of her address she would thus inform the university students that it was her intention ‘to bring the truth to the English people’.Footnote ⁴² Despite these lofty objectives, Mercouri was either ignorant of the fact, or was deliberately suppressing the information, that the tale involving the Greek gift of lead ammunition owed more to legend than history.

The support for the fable of the gift of bullets offered to the Turks by the Greek army in 1821–2, as emphasized by Mercouri and the Greek Culture Ministry, and provided with a degree of academic support by scholars such as Andronikos and Browning, has also allowed popular websites to present the story as undisputed historical fact. Thus, in Wikipedia's entry for Kyriakos Pittakis, the encyclopaedic website uncritically credits the nineteenth-century scholar with making the offer of ammunition to his Turkish enemies in order to halt the destruction of the ancient monuments on the hill-top site:

Information provided on popular websites such as Wikipedia is not always rigorously fact-checked and, as such, should be approached with a degree of care. Such sites have, nonetheless, become the first port-of-call for many researchers – including students and even established academics, as well as the wider public – seeking preliminary background information. By reproducing the story of the Greeks presenting the besieged Ottoman forces with ammunition in an effort to preserve the monuments on the Acropolis, and passing off the tale as historical fact, popular websites such as Wikipedia have provided an additional veneer of legitimacy that might readily deceive unwary researchers investigating the story.

Despite the lack of contemporary evidence in support of the tale of Greeks gifting bullets to the Ottomans on the Acropolis in 1821–2, international campaigners in support of the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens have been content to follow Mercouri's lead in referencing the story. It has already been noted that influential restitutionists such as Christopher Hitchens have been eager to draw public attention to the tale, accepting its historical accuracy without any criticism (see above, pp. 6–7).Footnote ⁴⁴ However, the most impassioned recounting of the siege and the Greek gift of lead ammunition to the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis belongs to Emanuel J. Comino, founder and chairman of the Australian Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles. In June 2012, during his address at a conference that brought together many of the leading international repatriation campaigners at the Hellenic Centre in central London, Comino would provide the following historical snapshot:

Comino's emotional address is, unfortunately, shot through with historical inaccuracies. Even overlooking the unverifiable historicity of the gift of bullets made by the Greeks to their Ottoman foes, Comino's assertion that the events took place in 1826 is clearly erroneous; throughout all of that year the Acropolis was in the hands of the Greek revolutionaries. Indeed, the rocky outcropping in central Athens had been under the control of the Greek insurgents for much of the previous four years, ever since the Muslim defenders had been induced to surrender in the summer of 1822. The Acropolis would continue to be held by the Greeks after it was invested by an Ottoman army commanded by Reshid Mehmed Pasha in August 1826 until, in May of the following year, the Greeks, together with a force of French philhellenes, finally surrendered the hill-top to the Turks.

In retelling the story of the gift of lead bullets made by the Greeks to their Ottoman enemies, Comino proved willing to forgo verifiable historical accuracy and instead emulated the emotional tenor that characterized Mercouri's attempts to repatriate the Marbles in the 1980s. Not only did the Australian campaigner uncritically accept the historically dubious story, but he further embellished the fable with flourishes that appear to have been added with the sole intention of enhancing the dramatic effect offered by the tale; embellishments which lent greater weight to his moralizing regarding the heroic nature of the Greek army as well as the importance that the Hellenic fighters of the early nineteenth century attached to the monuments of antiquity. It is through speeches delivered by campaigners such as Comino that the story of the gift of ammunition made by the Greeks to the Turks continues to function as a potent tale; a story that effectively underscores the profound emotional attachment that is felt by Greeks for the Parthenon and its decorative sculptures.

Other members of the Greek Diaspora have also been eager to reference the tale of the gift of bullets made by the Greeks to the Turks during the siege of the Acropolis in 1821–2. The Greek-born South African human rights advocate, George Bizos, famous as the lawyer of Nelson Mandela, who has lectured on the subject of the Elgin Marbles in South Africa and abroad, has also drawn attention to the story.Footnote ⁴⁶ It was, indeed, in his address at the inaugural meeting of the South African Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles – a lobby group that he established – which was staged before pupils at the South African Hellenic Educational and Technical Institute (SAHETI) in Johannesburg in November 2009 that Bizos included mention of the tale of the Greek army besieging the Acropolis and the gift of ammunition made to their Ottoman foes. Like Rangavis, Mercouri, and Hitchens before him, Bizos was also keen to highlight the respect that the Greek revolutionaries felt for their ancient heritage: ‘Even during the war of independence the Greeks offered the Turkish garrison encircled in the Parthenon, who were short of bullets, offered them theirs to stop them from melting down the metal joints in the columns.’Footnote ⁴⁷ The story of the Greeks presenting ammunition to the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis was, therefore, once again passed off as accepted historical fact by a well-respected member of the Greek Diaspora; the tale was woven into the fabric of the repatriationist cause and offered to schoolchildren in an effort to bolster the claims of the Greek government seeking the return of Elgin Marbles to Athens.Footnote ⁴⁸

IV

Repatriationists intent on bringing about the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens have been eager to highlight the gallantry and self-sacrifice which is reflected in the willingness of the Greek soldiers to gift ammunition to the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis in exchange for the preservation of the ancient monuments on the hill-top. Prominent campaigners such as Mercouri, Hitchens, Comino, and Bizos have, however, consistently failed to acknowledge that it was these selfsame soldiers who were also eager to sacrifice Turks and Albanians on the altar of Greek independence. Thus, when the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis finally capitulated on 21 June 1822, between 1,100 and 1,200 Muslim men, women, and children were taken prisoner and removed from the hill-top.Footnote ⁴⁹ Although the captains of the Greek army, together with other leaders of the revolutionary cause in Athens, guaranteed the security of the Ottoman captives,Footnote ⁵⁰ just days after their removal from the Acropolis many of the Muslim prisoners were killed in cold blood. An account of the slaughter was provided by the American philhellene, Samuel Howe, in An historical sketch of the Greek revolution, published just six years after the event:

The massacre was also reported in blood-soaked detail by British philhellenes George Finlay and Thomas Gordon, both of whom emphasized the infamy of the slaughter that took place in Athens in the summer of 1822:

About 500 of the Turks who had been taken as prisoners following the surrender of the Acropolis to the Greek army survived the massacre by seeking sanctuary in the compounds of the Austrian, French, and Dutch consuls who resided in Athens. However, the protection afforded by these foreign officials was soon threatened by the Greek soldiers who, together with the Athenian mob, appeared intent on exterminating the last of the Muslims that remained in the city:

In addition to the sanctuary provided to the Muslims by the consuls, the officers and crew of the two French warships ensured that they placed themselves between the Greek soldiers and the remnants of the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis, protecting the surviving Turks from further attacks. Gordon thus noted how one of the French naval commanders, Captain Hargous, along with ‘two of his officers and seven seamen…escorted sword in hand to his vessel fifteen of the principal Turks, as well as their families’. The officer commanding the other warship, Captain Reverseaux, is also described as ‘repairing with a small detachment to Athens, where he rescued and bore off a number of Mussulmans, in defiance of the clamour of 2000 irregulars, who hung around his party, but did not dare to fire’.Footnote ⁵⁵ In all, the intervention of the French sailors saved 325 Muslims from almost certain death, while the rest of the Turkish survivors of the slaughter remained in the compounds of the three foreign consuls until they too were transported across the Aegean to Smyrna (modern Izmir).Footnote ⁵⁶

While it was claimed by Rangavis that the deeds of the Greek army besieging the Acropolis were ‘worthy of the highest civilization’ (see above, p. 6), and Comino, like Mercouri, was eager to emphasize the self-sacrifice of the soldiers' actions (see pp. 2, 17–18), many of the fighters who comprised the Greek army in Athens during the summer of 1822 would, by modern legal and moral standards, be regarded as war criminals. It would seem that large numbers of the Greek soldiers played an active role in the mass murder of the 400–600 Muslims; others in the army simply stood aside and allowed the killings to take place. Gordon would therefore refer to ‘the cowardly brutality of the Greek troops’ who killed the Muslims of Athens following the surrender of the Acropolis, while the Scottish philhellene would go on to describe his Greek allies as displaying ‘meanness, ferocity, and treachery’ in addition to exhibiting ‘the ungovernable fury of a lawless soldiery, and of depraved and barbarous captains’.Footnote ⁵⁷ Such descriptions are clearly at odds with the vision of those same Greek insurgents conjured by many campaigners seeking the return of the Elgin Marbles. Indeed, it is highly likely that Kyriakos Pittakis was also still in Athens during the summer of 1822, and would have been a witness to, or even a participant in, the massacre of the Muslim captives. Rather than continue to follow Rangavis or Hitchens in eulogizing Pittakis for taking the heroic (though probably fictional) step of offering lead bullets to the Ottoman defenders on the Acropolis prior to the capitulation of the Turks, we may be better served in regarding the Greek freedom fighter and archaeologist as a potential war criminal who was complicit in the (well-documented) mass murder of many hundreds of those same Turks.

Whether by design or by accident, the focus that restitutionists have placed on the heroic qualities of the Hellenic soldiery that is woven into the fable of the gift of ammunition to the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis has allowed attention to be drawn away from the cold-blooded mass murder of the defenceless prisoners by those self-same Greek soldiers. It is a measure of the great importance which many Greeks place on the recovery of the sculptures that once adorned the Parthenon that while even an internationally renown human rights advocate such as George Bizos has referenced the tale of the gift of ammunition, the Greek-born lawyer has nevertheless maintained a stony silence regarding the ethnic cleansing of the Turkish community of Athens that followed hard on the heels of the Greek capture of the hill-top site at the conclusion of the siege.

V

Further research into the siege of the Acropolis by the Greeks in 1821–2 may one day uncover a previously overlooked journal or memoir penned by a Greek, philhellene, Turk, or Albanian, which will indeed confirm that ammunition was gifted to the Ottoman defenders in an attempt to prevent them quarrying the Parthenon in their desperate search for lead. Nonetheless, when Melina Mercouri presented the tale to the conference in Mexico City, and later to the students at Oxford University, she was passing off an uncorroborated legend as historical fact. In so doing, the Greek minister of culture gave both legitimacy to the tale and set a trend that would see the story become uncritically adopted by international campaigners inspired by her crusade to repatriate the Elgin Marbles to Athens. The result is that the tale of the gift of lead ammunition has frequently been used to emphasize the profound respect with which the Greek revolutionary fighters – and indeed the entire Hellenic population of the following two centuries – regarded their ancient monuments, foremost among them being the Parthenon. The tale does, however, only appear to have taken shape several decades after the events were supposed to have taken place, and may owe its genesis to nationalistic myth-making generated by the Greek irredentist movement of the mid-nineteenth century. Since the beginning of Melina Mercouri's tenure at the Greek Culture Ministry, politicians, academics, and repatriation campaigners have all passed off the fable as a confirmed historical event, embracing the story as a vehicle with which to deliver impassioned nationalistic rhetoric that references the fight for liberation, chivalric deeds, and appreciation for the monuments of the classical Greek past. This potent cocktail has proven extremely effective in whipping up international support in favour of the repatriation of the Marbles removed from the Parthenon, and in demonizing not only the actions of Lord Elgin, but also the perceived obstructive role that has been played by the British government and the British Museum in retaining their hold over the disputed sculptures and preventing their return to Athens.

This paper opened with a line from the John Ford film The man who shot Liberty Valance (1962) and, with no secure historical support for the tale that the Greeks offered their Turkish enemies ammunition in an effort to spare the Parthenon from damage, it would seem that Mercouri, as well as many of those who have followed in her wake, have been content to print the legend rather than the far more complicated historical truth. Whether intentionally or otherwise, Mercouri mislead the culture officials gathered at Mexico City in 1982. In their enthusiasm to promote the case for the return of the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum, international restitution campaigners have continued to mislead the wider international public by peddling an unproven, and very possibly fictionalized, version of history in an effort to bolster their repatriationist agenda. More care is required when dealing with such dubious historical sources, especially those referenced in furtherance of the aims of politicians and lobbyists.