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Send Them Back: The Parthenon Marbles should be returned to Athens

‘Send them back’ is a debate held at Cadogan Hall in London in June 2012 on the topic of restoration of The Parthenon marbles from the British National Museum to the Athens from where the marbles belong. When Ottoman took charge of Greek, they handed over some of the marbles to the British by exchanging some paintings and pictures. There has been a lot of discussion and debates among the two countries about the possession of the marbles. In the debate, participants from both sides shared their opinion, and the question was thrown to the audience at the end to vote as the decorum of the debate. Initially, against this notion opened up the debate by refuting any idea of the restoration of the marbles and associating such tendencies with narrow nationalistic endeavors. According to him, the notion is a call for abandoning the global harmony of sharing mutual interest, culture, and shred human culture. Parthenon marbles are safe here in Britain and are open for everybody from the globe to visit and see.

The debate supporting this idea of ‘The Parthenon Marbles should be returned to Athens’ was delivered by Stephen Fry, a greek artist, and director. He supported the notion of debate and refuted the idea that the United Kingdom must keep the marbles by giving logical proofs and through the assertive way of an eloquent speech. He declared that such an act is a representation of the supremest class of Britain. He was of the opinion that Parthenon Marbles were taken from Athen without the consent and agreement of the Greek people because Greece was under the Ottoman Empire. The marbles are the representation of glorious times of greek history and have direct links with the ancient greek history, specifically the war of Marathon. It is a representation of remarkable greek history where the excelled in Astronomy, reason, algebra, geography medicine, and refusal to accept baseless theories ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"1Emw50bk","properties":{"formattedCitation":"({\\i{}Send Them Back})","plainCitation":"(Send Them Back)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":219,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5OlhLovK/items/7UZH7TP8"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5OlhLovK/items/7UZH7TP8"],"itemData":{"id":219,"type":"motion_picture","title":"Send them back: The Parthenon Marbles should be returned to Athens","source":"YouTube","dimensions":"46:38","abstract":"Want to join the debate? Check out the Intelligence Squared website to hear about future live events and podcasts: http://www.intelligencesquared.com \n__________________________\n\nThis debate took place at Cadogan Hall on 11th June 2012. \n\nEvent info:\n\nWhat's all this nonsense about sending the Parthenon Marbles back to Greece? If Lord Elgin hadn't rescued them from the Parthenon in Athens and presented them to the British Museum almost 200 years ago, these exquisite sculptures -- the finest embodiment of the classical ideal of beauty and harmony -- would have been lost to the ravages of pollution and time. So we have every right to keep them: indeed, returning them would set a dangerous precedent, setting off a clamour for every Egyptian mummy and Grecian urn to be wrenched from the world's museums and sent back to its country of origin. It is great institutions like the British Museum that have established such artefacts as items of world significance: more people see the Marbles in the BM than visit Athens every year. Why send them back to relative obscurity?\n\nBut aren't such arguments a little too imperialistic? All this talk of visitor numbers and dangerous precedents -- doesn't it just sound like an excuse for Britain to hold on to dubiously acquired treasures that were removed without the consent of the Greek people to whom they culturally and historically belong? That's what Lord Byron thought, and now Stephen Fry is taking up the cause. We should return the Marbles as a gesture of solidarity with Greece in its financial distress, says Fry, and as a mark of respect for the cradle of democracy and the birthplace of rational thought.","URL":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7DpRjDd-U&feature=youtu.be","title-short":"Send them back","accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",11,14]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Send Them Back). So it is the moral necessity for the British nation to restore the artifacts to the place where they born; otherwise, this is a representation of an untrustworthy country (where the debate gets heated a little). Some of the audience also participated in the debate, and a young man, namely Dimitris, declared the issue as more of an emotional one than logical. Young women graduate of Cambridge associated the issue with the economic condition of Greece as the crisis had a huge blow on the Greek economy. She said that this has now become a matter of pride, and this debate is more pertinent now than ever as the economy of the country is shattering ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"fyZCuro3","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Davies)","plainCitation":"(Davies)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":217,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5OlhLovK/items/6C25NKRA"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5OlhLovK/items/6C25NKRA"],"itemData":{"id":217,"type":"article-newspaper","title":"Stephen Fry steals show, and Greek hearts, in Parthenon marbles debate","container-title":"The Guardian","section":"Art and design","source":"www.theguardian.com","abstract":"A talk in London about whether the British Museum should return the sculptures was screened live to an audience in Athens","URL":"https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/greek-election-blog-2012/2012/jun/12/stephen-fry-parthenon-marbles-greece","ISSN":"0261-3077","language":"en-GB","author":[{"family":"Davies","given":"Lizzy"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2012",6,12]]},"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",11,14]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Davies).

I believe that the idea presented by Stephen Fry that the marbles must be returned to their place of origin as they are the representation of their culture and glorious past. Further, the marbles were handed over to the Britishers without the consent of the Greeks, so the British must return them over to the Greeks to place them in the historical building of Athens.

Work Cited

 YouTube. (2019). Send them back: The Parthenon Marbles should be returned to Athens. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7DpRjDd-U&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 14 Nov. 2019]. ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY BBC - Ethics - Introduction to Ethics: Virtue Ethics. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/virtue.shtml. Accessed 4 Nov. 2019.

Davies, Lizzy. “Stephen Fry Steals Show, and Greek Hearts, in Parthenon Marbles Debate.” The Guardian, 12 June 2012. www.theguardian.com, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/greek-election-blog-2012/2012/jun/12/stephen-fry-parthenon-marbles-greece.

Ethical Theories. https://pagecentertraining.psu.edu/public-relations-ethics/introduction-to-public-relations-ethics/lesson-1/ethical-theories/. Accessed 4 Nov. 2019.