A small fragment of the Parthenon Frieze, one of a number of pieces dotted around Europe, looks likely to return to Athens on loan. The bulk of the sculptures are of course split between Greece & the British Museum – the other smaller fragments only make up about one percent of the total that survive.

From:
CNN

Italy to loan Greece ‘lost’ antiquity
Friday, October 4, 2002 Posted: 11:01 AM EDT (1501 GMT

ROME, Italy — Italy says it will return a fragment of the 5th century B.C. Parthenon Marbles to Greece.

The return of part of the statue of Peitho, goddess of persuasion and seduction, could take place within weeks, officials say.
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The planned loan by Italy to Greece of a small fragment of the Parthenon Frieze looks set to raise the profile of the campaign for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, Proving that it is perfectly possible for such artefacts to be returned on loan if the political will exists to do so.

From:
The Times

October 01, 2002
Fragment of Greek history to reignite row over Marbles
From Richard Owen in Rome

A FRAGMENT of the Parthenon frieze kept by an 18th-century British diplomat in Sicily is to be returned to Greece. It is a gesture that is certain to revive the dispute over Britain’s retention of the Elgin Marbles.

President Ciampi of Italy plans to hand over part of a statue of the goddess Peitho during a state visit to Greece next month in a move described by officials as a “gesture of friendship”.
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Mark Steel writes about the Parthenon Marbles in his own inimitable way – with his tongue planted very firmly in his cheek. As always though, there is a lot of truth in what he says.

From:
Independent

24 January 2002 00:45 GMT
Mark Steel: Lord Elgin was only trying to help the Greeks
‘They should retaliate by running off with the dome of St Paul’s and placing it upside down in Athens’
17 January 2002

Whenever the British reject a plea from the Greeks for the return of the Elgin Marbles, we sound like a small-town petty criminal making an excuse for being caught with a van full of stolen bacon. They will “never” be returned to Greece, it was announced this week, because we can look after them better than the Greeks. The full original statement probably went: “We haven’t nicked them or nothing, we’re just looking after them, ‘cos if they were left in Greece, they’d melt with all that sun. And olive oil brings statues out in blotches, apparently.”

This is similar to Lord Elgin’s original argument, that he was swiping the sculptures to protect them from the Ottoman Empire. Since then, we’ve given them nothing but loving care, if you exclude incidents such as the time in 1938 when someone decided they weren’t white enough, and scraped the top from almost the entire collection with wire wool. I suppose the Greeks are lucky that, in the 1970s, no one decided to paint red hats on the statues, stick fishing rods in their arms and stick them in a garden next to a pond. Or cover the whole collection in formica, pebble-dash them and hang window-boxes full of pansies from the water carriers. Or, in the 1980s, try to strip them back to the original wood.
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