Lost Worlds of Ancient and Modern Greece : Gilbert Bagnani: the Adventures of a Young Italo-Canadian Archaeologist in Greece, 1921-1924 [1 ed.] 9781789694536, 9781789694529

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Lost Worlds of Ancient and Modern Greece Gilbert Bagnani: The Adventures of a Young Italo-Canadian Archaeologist in Greece, 1921-1924

D. J. Ian Begg

Lost Worlds of Ancient and Modern Greece Gilbert Bagnani: The Adventures of a Young Italo-Canadian Archaeologist in Greece, 1921-1924

D. J. Ian Begg

Archaeopress Archaeological Lives

Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Summertown Pavilion 18-24 Middle Way Summertown Oxford OX2 7LG ISBN 978-1-78969-452-9

ISBN 978-1-78969-453-6 (e-Pdf)

© Archaeopress and D. J. Ian Begg 2020

Cover illustration: The burning of Smyrna as seen from a ship out in the bay, design by D. J. Ian Begg, drawn by Duncan Irvine

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com

To Prof. Thomas H. B. Symons, for his steadfast support and humanism par excellence

Contents Foreword����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������iii Preface�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������vii Acknowledgements���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ix Introduction���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xiii Timeline����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xix Maps����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxi Prologue�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxvi Odysseus vs. Achilles����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxvi 1. Vengeance ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 2. Back in Time������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 6 3. Imposing Ruins������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 19 4. Marble Sepulchres������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 29 5. The Arms Merchant and the Secret Agent�������������������������������������������� 48 6. Foreign Correspondent����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 59 7. The Oracle of Apollo and St. Paul������������������������������������������������������������ 71 8. The Renaissance at a Byzantine Outpost����������������������������������������������� 86 9. Exposed����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 106 10. In the Land of the Knights of Rhodes������������������������������������������������� 114 11. The King of Kos�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 125 12. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea�������������������������������������������������������������������� 135 13. Monasteries in the Air�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 148 14. In the Minotaur’s Labyrinth on Crete������������������������������������������������ 157 15. Inferno ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 167 16. Executions���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 181 17. The Pharaoh’s Curse����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 195 18. The Castles of the Giant Cyclopes������������������������������������������������������� 210 19. A Surviving Byzantine Republic���������������������������������������������������������� 222 20. Karpathos: The Island of Poseidon����������������������������������������������������� 232 i

21. Paradise Lost������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 241 22. Mission to the Underworld: Spying for Mussolini��������������������������� 253 23. Lost Greek Empires�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 266 24. Land of the Golden Fleece ������������������������������������������������������������������� 279 Epilogue��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 291 List of Figures����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 295 Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 296 Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 304

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Foreword

It is an honour to be invited to write a brief Foreword to this remarkable book about Lost Worlds of Ancient and Modern Greece. As the title indicates, the book deals with people, places, and events ranging over widely separated periods of time: from pre-classical and classical times to the early years of the 20th Century. Thus, while the stage, at least geographically, remains in much the same location, Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean, the focus is on two timesettings which are sometimes 3,000 years apart. The result might be seen as virtually two scholarly books within one cover – a double-decker in which the author does a superb job of linking and discussing the contrasts, relationships, and comparative relevance to one another of the people and events of these two historic eras on this shared great stage, even though there is such a vast time gap between them. The volume records and examines an extraordinary litany of historical events and historical characters in the two time periods under scrutiny. The common thread linking such an immense spread of subject matter, in both geography and time, is the very lively curiosity and scholarly activity of one man, Gilbert Forrest Bagnani. The book is appropriately subtitled, ‘The Adventures of a Young Italian Archaeologist in Greece, 1921-1924’. Adventures, indeed! It reads at times like a highly imaginative picaresque novel as it follows Gilbert through a sequence of frequently amazing encounters ranging over the Eastern Mediterranean and sometimes beyond in pursuit of knowledge about the classical world. For the sheer fascination and delight to be found in these factual tales the book will be savoured and enjoyed by many readers for years to come. But Lost Worlds of Ancient and Modern Greece is, of course, much more than a great adventure story. It is a well-organized and beautifully written work iii

of immense erudition, the product of very extensive and tireless research, and a good deal of profound thought, by the author. Its twenty-four chapters follow Gilbert’s activities, investigations, and thought as he pursued his deepening interest in and commitment to the challenge and opportunities of archaeology and the study of relevant monuments, records, artifacts, and historical personalities. In so doing, he added immensely to knowledge and understanding of the classical world of ancient Greece and, indeed, to knowledge and understanding of the no less complex situation and events in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean worlds in his own times. Fortunately, Dr Bagnani had a remarkable talent as an expositor and teacher. He shared his knowledge with many others, inspiring and expanding interest and enthusiasm for the study of ancient Greece and many other facets of the classical world. His interests, enthusiasm, knowledge and gifts of exposition were shared with his talented and much-loved wife, Stewart, a very well informed and experienced appreciator, student and critic of painting and the visual arts. It was Canada’s good fortune when, in the face of the hostility of Mussolini and the darkening of the European world, Gilbert and Stewart returned to Canada where Gilbert became in due course a professor of classical history at the University of Toronto, and Stewart established and led a program of art education and appreciation at the Art Gallery of Toronto. Both were very highly respected by their colleagues and much beloved by many students. The Bagnanis had also a long and special relationship with Trent University. I had had the good fortune to be a student of Gilbert’s in his Greek and Roman history classes as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto and subsequently served with him in a very minor way as a tutorial assistant while I pursued my studies in Canadian and Commonwealth history. It was a constant delight to observe him at work and to see the lights go on as students warmed to the subject as classes progressed under his tutelage. It was, consequently, an immense pleasure when, some years later, having been invited to found Trent University in Peterborough, I was able to invite Gilbert and Stewart to join in this venture which they did with great enthusiasm and steadfastness. The range and value of their contribution to the academic and collegiate life of Trent is remembered and honoured in a number of appropriate ways including: The Bagnani Medals presented annually at Convocation to students in the General Programme who achieve high overall standing on graduation; Bagnani Hall at Trent’s Traill College in which portraits of Gilbert and Stewart preside over a significant collection of iv

furniture and artifacts which they left to the University; the Bagnani Lectures based at Traill College of which Gilbert and Stewart were Honorary and very active Fellows; the appointment of a Bagnani Fellow, the first of whom is the distinguished author of this volume; a substantial contribution of books to the University Library; and a massive bequest to the University Archives of documents, correspondence, notes, papers, manuscripts, memos, maps, plans, prints, published works, scrapbooks, postcards, and some 1,500 photographs, glass negatives, slides, and sketches, as well as other invaluable research materials, much of which has been of assistance to Dr Begg’s scholarly research in preparing this volume and other publications. Yet, perhaps the greatest of the gifts and memories left at Trent by these two lifelong scholars is their belief that, despite the often laborious work involved, and the many dangers and difficulties they encountered, the pursuit of knowledge can be and, indeed, should be fun in the deepest meaning of that word. Gilbert’s celebrated discourse ‘Lucullus Dines: Food and Drink in the Roman World’ conveying a sense of Roman high life, amounting at times to debauchery, by describing this occasion in extraordinary detail is an example of his sometimes playful but at bottom deadly serious deployment of humour in the service of scholarly reality.1 He applied this talent also in his writing about The Satyricon and in his gossipy anonymous articles about Greek politics written for the Morning Post newspaper in London, England. Gilbert and Stewart Bagnani were renaissance figures who are remembered with great affection by countless people – students, colleagues, and friends whose lives they enriched. This volume is the first in a proposed trilogy. The next two volumes will be awaited with eager anticipation by the scholarly community and by many lay folk alike. Thomas H.B. Symons, C.C., O.Ont., FRSC, LL.D., D.U., D.Litt., D.Cn.L., FRGS., KSS., Founding President and Vanier Professor Emeritus, Trent University Trustee, The Gilbert and Stewart Bagnani Endowment 29 March 2019

Prof. Bagnani delivered variations of this lecture in the mid-1960s at universities across Canada but no typescript of it has yet been found.

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Preface Lost Worlds of Ancient and Modern Greece relates three years (1921-1924) in the life of a young Italian archaeologist in Greece, based on his letters to his mother in Rome, at first as a non-partisan observer of, and later as an active participant in some of the most tumultuous events in modern Greek history. After a brief account in Chapter 1 of the central event of the destruction of Smyrna in September 1922 and the creation of a million refugees, the story in Chapter 2 begins nine months earlier, with the arrival in December 1921 of Gilbert Bagnani in Greece, when the royalist government is vainly trying to extract itself and its armies from central Turkey. In ante-bellum Athens, only a relative few including young Gilbert could conceive of the potential catastrophe about to befall a million compatriots in Anatolia. Thus Chapter 1 is a flash forward to enable the reader better to appreciate Gilbert’s insights. When he returns to Greece for his second year in December 1922, the city is filled with thousands of refugees and ruled by a military junta. What were current events to Gilbert Bagnani a century ago, however, are forgotten histories today. So the Prologue of Odysseus vs. Achilles is intended to provide the interested reader with the relevant historical background preceding Gilbert Bagnani’s arrival in Greece, but is not necessary in order to follow the narrative of his travels in and around Greece. Gilbert himself thrived on contemporary politics, not to mention gossip about the rich and powerful, so much so that he wrote anonymous articles about Greek politics for the Morning Post newspaper in London. His sources and perspective were uniquely those of a foreign observer inside the upper echelons of Athenian society at a critical juncture in modern Greek history. His brilliant mind, near photographic memory and arrogant self-confidence belied his youth, being only twenty-one years old upon his arrival in Athens but displaying a maturity well beyond his years most of the time. vii

Prof. Thomas H. B. Symons, who kindly agreed to write the Foreward, was a student of Gilbert Bagnani’s at the University of Toronto and later invited both Gilbert Bagnani and his wife Stewart to teach at Trent University, which Prof. Symons had recently founded in Peterborough, Ontario. Since the arrival of the Bagnani papers at Trent University two decades ago, when I discovered their unique historical material, Prof. Symons has always encouraged me in the research for writing an account of the lives of Gilbert and Stewart Bagnani. Lost Worlds of Ancient and Modern Greece is the resulting volume, the first of a projected trilogy about their lives in Europe and Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s before they immigrated to Canada.

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Acknowledgements In all my research, I have been significantly helped by a few individuals without whose support the research and writing would never have progressed as expeditiously as it has, if at all. Dr Bernadine Dodge, her successor Janice Millard and their assistant Jodi Aoki, now the Archivist, patiently facilitated my many requests for photocopies at the Bata Library at Trent. Larry Pfaff at the Taylor Library in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, who knew both Gilbert and Stewart Bagnani well, has been helpful and supportive beyond words. His assistant, Amy Marshall Furness, patiently provided all the cartons and photocopies I asked for. Tracy Mallon-Jensen, the Copyright, Rights and Reproductions Coordinator at the AGO came to my rescue at a crucial moment. To all these generous souls, I remain indebted. In Athens, Dr David Rupp, the Director of the Canadian Institute in Greece, and Dr Jonathan Tomlinson, the Assistant Director, provided unfailing and bemused help at critical points. At the British School at Athens, the librarians Penelope Wilson Zarganis and Sandra Pepelasis were always ready to come to my rescue. The then Director of the American School, Jack Davis, provided significant help in the search for Anna Kozadinou Levi. The archivists Amalia Kakissis at the British School, Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan at the American School and Eleftheria Daleziou at the Gennadeion Library encouraged my enthusiasms in pursuing the research. At the Italian School, Prof. Emanuel Greco kindly gave me permission to study and publish from their Archives Gilbert Bagnani’s report on Karpathos and Alessandro della Seta’s letter of recommendation, while Stefano Garbin and Ilaria Simiakaki provided library and archival guidance. Archival discovery does not place take place in a vacuum but in a community of like-minded scholars. In addition I am indebted to Pantelis Bouboulis, Alexander Philadelpheus, Constantin M. Petridi, Angelis Papangelis, Dr Charikleia Demakopoulou, ix

Prof. Dr Alexander Papageorgiou-Venetas, Panagiotis Kousathanas, Dimitris Mavrideros and Mrs. Anna Manuelidou for reminiscences, conversations, and clarifications about their relatives and acquaintances mentioned in the letters. For detailed investigations I was helped by Eleni Stamatatou and Ioannis Georganas in Athens, John Younger in Lemnos, Eda Kacar in Izmir, Mehmet Ficici in Anatolia, and Emin Saatci in Istanbul, Chantal Courtois in Geneva, Fabio Bertolissi in Rovereto, Iuri Silvestri in Rome and Pisa, Domenico Pietropaolo in Toronto, and Matthew Eliot. In general, I have derived much benefit from academic discussions with Prof. Steven Dyson, Kostis Kourelis, Nikolas Terzis, and Archibald Dunn, who introduced me to Byzantine Mistra. For the chapter on Karpathos, based on Gilbert Bagnani’s Italian report, there are many people to thank. At the Rhodian Ephoreia, Drs Maria Michaeilidou, Eleni Papavassileiou, Angeliki Katsioti, and Anna-Maria Kasdagli have been very helpful in manifold ways both on Rhodes and Karpathos. My international colleagues Drs Michael Nelson from Queen’s College of the City University of New York, Todd Brenningmeyer from Maryville University of St Louis, and Amanda Kelly from the National University of Ireland Galway are grateful to their respective institutions for funding, as am I to them for their collaboration in the survey at Leukos. The students (Stacey Larson and Bethany Nobbe from Maryville University in 2010, Eoin O’Conor in 2010 and 2011 and Dylan Stuart in 2011, both from Ireland) have all worked cheerfully and unstintingly while learning much about surveying and life on the project. In addition, I am grateful to Dr Karen Kleinspehn of the University of Minnesota for her tectonic observations, Vassili Karambatsos for sharing his unrivalled knowledge of the Dodecanese in general and of Leukos in particular, and Prof. Constantinos Minas for his kind encouragement and Karpathian generosity. Finally, our hosts, the people of Leukos themselves, have been most warm and welcoming. In Canada, Nancy Dillow, Bill Houston, Katharine Lochnan, Bonnie MacLachlin, Paul Martel, Larry Pfaff, Ian Storey, Tom Symons, John Thorpe, and Fred and Joan Winter took time to share their personal recollections of Gilbert and Stewart Bagnani with me. In particular, Mrs. James Bacque generously made available to me for study and publication photocopies of the letters and travel dairy of her uncle Verschoyle Blake from 1923. Finally, Eleanor Currie, who is regrettably no longer with us, provided invaluable aid in copying and salvaging Bagnani archival material such as papers and films which would otherwise have been irretrievably lost in the transfer from their houses to the auction house. x

To the editors at Archaeopress, Drs David Davison and Rajka Makjanic, I am grateful for their editorial expertise, sage advice and infinite patience. Philip Blair, Adam Matuzich and Duncan Irvine provided technical support, technical suggestions and artistic images respectively. The five maps were produced for me by Chris Brackley of As the Crow Flies Cartography of Limehouse, Ontario. As with everything else in this book, all errors of commission and omission are mine. I am grateful also to several friends and colleages upon whom I imposed to read through a penultimate draught of the text: Don Cosens, Bruce Flowers, Vern Marson, Steven McLarty-Payson, Larry Pfaff, Aristomenes Polyzois, Dr Brian Shaw, Prof. Ian Storey and Dr Roger McCleary, to whom I remain immeasurably indebted. The text has also benefitted from a review kindly sent by Sir Michael Llewellyn Smith. For permission to publish letters and photographs, I am grateful to Trent University and to the Trustees of the Gilbert and Stewart Bagnani Endowment. Indeed, the Trustees under the leadership first of Prof. Thomas Symons, the Founding President of Trent and Chair of the Trustees of the Bagnani Endowment, then of Prof. Leonard Conolly, his successor both as President at Trent and Chair of the Trustees, and now of Jon Grant, have been faithful and generous mainstays of my research and travels. Kathryn Matheson, their Executive Secretary, provided significant help in resolving the issue of copyright. My gratitude to Prof. Symons for his unwavering encouragement remains profound beyond words and so it is to him that I dedicate this first volume on the life of Gilbert Bagnani.

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Introduction An only child, Gilbert Bagnani was born in Rome 26 April 1900. It is not known where, when or how his Canadian mother and Italian father met. Florence Ruby Dewar was an heiress descended from a family of lawyers and doctors in Edinburgh. An ancestor had purchased the landed estate of Vogrie at Gorebridge near Edinburgh and a cousin had built a mansion there which he called Vogrie. Her father, Dr John Forrest Dewar, born in 1834, graduated in Medicine from the University of Edinburgh, visited hospitals on the continent and practiced in Turin, Italy, before immigrating to Port Hope, Ontario in 1859.1 A well regarded surgeon and physician for Trinity College School at Port Hope, he married Anne Jane Hughes as his second wife in 1868 and died in August 1877, when Florence, their only surviving child, born 14 October 1872, was not yet five. Her widowed mother Anne, having lost her own father, brother, and two children within a few years, moved with Florence in April 1878 to Edinburgh. Her brother-in-law, Gilbert Innes Dewar, died 26 September 1879, leaving almost all of his estate to his young niece Florence. Anne raised Florence not only in Scotland but in Dresden (to study music) and Florence, Italy, as well with only occasional trips back to Port Hope, where the Rev. Charles Bethune, who was Headmaster at Trinity College School, was her godfather. Florence was very fortunate not only in being an heiress but in having such a capable and intelligent mother as Anne Hughes.  Ugo Giro Bagnani was born in 1863 in Pisa, son of Giuseppe Bagnani, a pharmacist, and of Emilia Franceschetti, who had nursed the Italian hero Garibaldi during his recovery from a bullet wound at Aspromonte in 1862. 1 https://www.accessgenealogy.com/canada/biography-of-john-f-dewar-m-d.htm According to this same article, Ann Hughes ‘was his second wife, he marrying before leaving the old country. His first wife lived only one short year after their settlement in Port Hope,’ but according to http:// www.alivingpast.ca/inquests.htm, there was an inquest into the death of Susette, an Italian servant of Dr Dewar’s after she died of ‘poor quality of blood’ July 14, 1863. So far, there is no trace of any of them in any 1861 census.

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Ugo had one older brother born in 1859, Arturo, an engineer who eventually immigrated to Descalvado, Brazil. The Bagnanis traced their ancestry back to 1201 in Tuscany and included a Jerusalem knight ennobled at the time of the Venetian-Maltese naval battles with the Turks in 1717. After Giuseppe Bagnani died in 1864, leaving the widowed Emilia with two very young sons, Ugo became a Second Lieutenant in the infantry by the age of eighteen, attending military school and entering the Bersaglieri, an elite corps of the Italian infantry, trained for speed, endurance, marksmanship and independent initiative. Ugo rose very rapidly through its ranks to become Italy’s first Military Attaché in London from 1908 to 1911, an Aide-de-Camp to King Victor Emanuel III, and finally in 1917 Italy’s representative at the British front at Cassel in northern France, where he died suddenly of pneumonia. By a coincidence then, both of Gilbert’s parents had been raised by their widowed mothers and never really knew their fathers. Also, Gilbert had ancestors on both sides practicing medicine, although he himself showed little interest in healing except with the workers on the excavations in Egypt when there was no one else to minister to the sick. Florence Ruby Dewar married Captain Ugo Bagnani on Tuesday 14 Sept 1897 at the Chapel of Trinity College School in Port Hope, with a reception at 44 Augusta St., Port Hope. Although there were undoubtedly many marriages between Italians and English, there would have been relatively few between the educated elites, then a very small proportion of the general population. Gilbert was born in Rome and his mother’s mother, Anna Jane Hughes Dewar, seems to have lived in Italy near her daughter and grandson. She died in 5 July 1905 at the residence of her son-in-law Major Bagnani in Verona and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Verona. In order to settle her estate, Ugo, Florence and Gilbert together with their maid sailed to New York and traveled by train to Toronto. They stayed for a few days with the Rev. Charles Bethune. A second cousin of the famous medical missionary in China, Norman Bethune, Charles would go on to found the Canadian Entomological Society while teaching at Guelph University. A very large red album of postcards, invitations, and other ephemera documents the years 1900 to 1907, including their trip to Canada. Gilbert would have heard Port Hope mentioned countless times in discussions with his mother but what it symbolized to him in his early years remains unknown; three decades later he would choose to leave Italy and immigrate to Port Hope, Ontario. Gilbert grew up speaking Italian to his father and their servants and English to his mother. Gilbert was attending elementary school in Peschiera near

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Verona when his father was posted to London, England, in January 1908. For the next three and a half years, Gilbert was raised in a diplomatic environment while at the same time inheriting his father’s military disdain for diplomats in general. Moreover, he and his family would have been outside observers of political and social events, detached from most of their neighbours and compatriots. Invitations to royal events at the palace indicating a dress code of ‘feathers and trains’ convey the elaborate protocol of the period, culminating with an invitation to the coronation festivities in June, 1911. In London, Gilbert attended Charles Herbert Gibbs’ Pre-Preparatory School, which was located at 37 Sloane St in the 1911 census. Re-established in 1918 at 134 Sloane St, Gibb’s School was attended in the late 1930s by the sons of American Ambassador Joseph Kennedy as after the war by Prince Edward and Viscount Linley. In the Bagnani Archives at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Gilbert’s notes on Napoleon dating from about 1911 suggest an early interest, possibly prompted as a school assignment, which continued into his adult life. At some stage in his schooling, Gilbert played the title role of Euripides’ Iphigeneia. But his mother was equally influential. Decades later Gilbert recalled that she ‘presented me on my eleventh birthday with Macauley’s essays. It was a turning point in my life. I devoured them avidly. They confirmed my interest in history, & gave me the passion for the eighteenth century’ that never deserted him. In the 1911 census, Lt. Col. Ugo Bagnani was living at 15 Onslow Square with his wife Florence, son Gilbert aged ten, visitors Amedeo, aged twelve, and Aimone di Savoia, aged eleven, and servants Italia Ballardini, parlour maid aged forty, Vittoria Ballardini, cook aged twenty-three, and Santina Venturini, housemaid aged eighteen, all single. The Duke of Aosta, 1st cousin of King Victor Emanuel and at that time heir to the Italian throne, had sent his sons Amedeo and Aimone to London at this time, and Gilbert’s father served in loco parentis. The two royal brothers may have had little to do with the commoner Gilbert, and he seldom ever referred to them later in life. After his family moved back to Italy, Gilbert attended the Nobile Collegio del Nazzarino in Rome but his father’s duties and whereabouts as General are less clear. There is a file of about thirty letters written to him from 1910 to 1913 by his commander, the Duke of Aosta, but the Duke’s handwriting was so notoriously illegible that the King was said to have placed his letters on the floor and walked around them to determine which side was up. There is also a thick file of telegrams between them. It was during this period that Italy seized Libya and the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean from Turkey.

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In the Spring of 1915, just before Italy entered the war against Austria, Gilbert wrote several letters from 4 Via S. Martino Rome to his mother who was elsewhere in Italy with his father. Gilbert would not have been at home alone in Rome since there were at least two servants in the apartment. He was not only following the current political events avidly but even taking part in violent anti-Austrian demonstrations. Gilbert’s father was serving as an Italian observer at the British front in France when he died suddenly of pneumonia in February 1917. The small funeral procession attended by his widow was observed and movingly described by a Canadian officer, General George H. Mitchell, who later became a good friend of Gilbert’s in Canada as the Dean of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto. Gilbert seems not to have attended the funeral and, in the absence of any surviving correspondence between Gilbert and his father, little is documented about their relationship, nor in what ways Ugo may have influenced his son. Gilbert began studying at the University of Rome in November 1917 but had to attend the Royal Military Academy in Turin for six months from September 1918 until March 1919 just as the First World War was ending. Becoming an officer had little appeal for him. While it was undoubtedly elite, Gilbert’s letters home leave no doubt that he could not wait to get out and back to academia. Surrounded as he was in Rome by history and historians, it is hardly surprising that Gilbert eventually concentrated his studies on ancient history and archaeology. Even before he graduated, Gilbert had given public lectures and published two articles. In 1920 he used his connections in Rome to arrange to lecture to the Hellenic Society in London on recent Italian excavations at Cyrene, and various ambassadors’ wives and a Roman princess were in attendance. When he lectured in August at Cardiff in Wales to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, he met the famous Egyptologist, Sir Flinders Petrie, and even drew satirical sketches of characters he met there. Always fearless, in June 1921 he sailed on his own via Syracuse and Malta to visit the Italian excavations in Cyrenaica in eastern Libya. Cyrene was an early Greek colony, an important city under the Romans, and highly prized by archaeologists for the sculptures discovered in its public markets and baths, but the region was potentially dangerous. It was a politically sensitive place and time because the Italians had seized Libya from the Ottoman Empire in 1911 and were still encountering resistance from the local Senussi tribesmen. At the Art Gallery of Ontario there are perhaps three hundred photos of eastern Libya from this tour, many remaining to be identified. Some photos

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show the two-storeyed tomb of Menechrat outside ancient Barka or Merdj with plans and sections. This tomb might have been the subject of a university project and the immediate reason for his trip but he never published these documents or his photos of the tomb and these did not appear in its later publication. In the relatively few letters written from Libya to his mother he described the personalities of the local Italian archaeologists, who were arguing among themselves. While he was at Cyrene, three skeletons were discovered in the ancient marketplace where they had been crushed in the earthquake of 365. This was also the same season that the famous inscribed edicts of Cyrene were discovered which clarified the imperial powers legally held by the first emperor Augustus. He also met military officials and ventured southward out into the desert with local police but was forced to turn back by some unidentified political or military incident which Gilbert did not feel comfortable making explicit in his letter while there. His photographs do portray Italians and Arabs together, including Omar al Mukhtar, who was soon to lead the revolt against the Italians. Upon his return to Rome, he published an article about the sculptures previously found at Cyrene and displayed in the British Museum, which he would have seen the previous summer (Bagnani 1921: 232-46). This subject also might have been a component of his university requirements. His interest in classical sculpture would continue in Greece. In addition, he wrote another article for the Roman Society about the discovery of an underground neoPythagorean Basilica in Rome (Bagnani 1919: 78-85). His main academic thesis was on the depiction of Greek fountains as painted on Greek vases. An English version of this paper survives at Trent. It reveals, however, that he was unaware of Greek publications during the war, an understandable though important omission. Gilbert graduated from the University of Rome in November 1921, having changed his focus from law to ancient history and archaeology. Serious and precocious, he had been given every advantage by his doting parents but he also had several very influential academic mentors who recognized his exceptional gifts and offered him guidance. Gilbert’s connections in Rome were with the archaeological and diplomatic establishments. He once said he considered himself more Roman than Italian, socializing with the old ‘black aristocracy’ whose families had been ennobled by the popes long before Rome was incorporated into modern Italy in 1870. Gilbert and his mother lived in a fairly spacious apartment in a palazzo, now the German Embassy, at 4 San

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Martino, only a five minute walk from the Terme Museum. His mentors were not only Thomas Ashby, the Director of the British School at Rome, and Mrs. Eugénie Sellers Strong, the Assistant Director, but also Federico Halbherr, the éminence grise of Italian archaeologists, and Roberto Paribeni, arguably the most politically influential Italian archaeologist of his generation: he was in charge of Italian Archaeological Missions in Asia Minor and the Levant for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is little wonder that Gilbert obtained a scholarship to attend the Italian School of Archaeology at Athens. William Miller and his wife lived at 36 Via Palestro, just around the corner from Gilbert’s mother’s apartment. Certainly after the death of Gilbert’s father, if not before as well, Miller was very influential in Gilbert’s early life. Miller was a foreign correspondent for the Morning Post newspaper in London and for him political journalism was a ‘treatment of modern history.’ (Hetherington 2009: 156) Miller became interested not just in the medieval history of Greece but particularly in the evidence for the western crusaders or ‘Latins’ in the east, so much so that his two major publications, among hundreds, were The Latins in the Levant. A History of Frankish Greece (1204-1566) and Essays on the Latin Orient, which had just appeared. At least as early as 1919, Gilbert was asking Miller for his opinion on the latest developments at the peace conference negotiations in Paris, but Miller, writing from Tuscany, feared that his letters might be opened and preferred reluctantly to ‘defer the question till we can meet on your comfortable divan.’2 Within weeks of arriving in Greece, Gilbert would reveal a thorough comprehension of Greek politics, embark upon political journalism and develop a burgeoning interest in evidence for western Latins in the East. When Gilbert first traveled to Greece in December 1921, he was uniquely prepared for more than archaeology. His family’s military, diplomatic and social background as well as his own precocious mind and keen interest in current politics assured that archaeology would not be his only occupation.

Letter to ‘my dear Bagnani’ dated August 17, probably 1919. Although Gilbert was only 19 and Miller about 55, Miller wrote to him as an adult. I am indebted to Paul Hetherington for emails regarding his research on Miller.

2

Timeline AD 1922 Destruction of Smyrna AD 1834 Greece declares Independence form Ottoman Empire AD 1522 Siege of Rhodes AD 1453 Capture of Constantinople by Ottoman Turks AD 1204 Capture of Constantinople by 4th Crusaders AD 330 Founding of Constantinople 31 BC Last Roman Civil War at Actium 479 BC Final Defeat of the Persian invasions at Salamis and Plataia 776 BC Olympic Games and advent of Greek alphabet 1200 BC End of Mycenaean and Hittite Societies 1400 BC Destruction of Knossos 1600 BC Minoan Civilization and Eruption of Santorini volcano c. 3000 BC Late Neolithic Athens

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G R EAT B R ITAI N

N ETH.

London

P O L A N D BE

English Channel

LG I

UM

Paris

Bay of

U . S . S . R .

G E R M A N Y

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

F RAN C E Lausanne

H U NGARY

AUSTRIA

SWI TZ E R LAN D

ROMANIA

Biscay

Black

Venice

Sea

YUGO SLAVIA Florence

B U LGAR IA ITALY

Constantinople Sea

Brindisi

Aegea n

Sea

M E D I T E R R A N E A N A L G E R I A

N IA

Ty r r h e n i a n

Ad r i a t i c ALBA

Rome

S P A I N

Corfu

Ionian Sea

S E A TUNIS

Europe c. 1925

GREECE Patras

S ea

Athens

T U R K EY Smyrna

Maps

Mainland Greece

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The Aegean

Maps

The Middle East

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Maps

Athens c. 1920

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Prologue Odysseus vs. Achilles King George I of the Hellenes and his Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, paraded triumphantly together in the rain through the streets of Salonika, welcomed by throngs of cheering Greeks, newly liberated from the Ottoman Empire in November, 1912. As Commander-in-Chief of the Greek Army of Thessaly, Crown Prince Constantine had easily routed the Ottoman Army at the pass into Macedonia and was eager to continue on to defeat the main Ottoman army but was forbidden by Venizelos who instead ordered him to rush his army eastward to Salonika. By force marching his men there, Constantine occupied the city only hours before the Bulgarian army arrived outside the city. To make clear and establish the Greek presence in Macedonia, King George moved his entire court from Athens and resided in Salonika1 until he was assassinated there the following March 18, 1913, just days short of the fiftieth anniversary of his election as King of the Hellenes March 30, 1863. After the Bulgarians subsequently attacked Greece in the Second Balkan War, Constantine, now king, defeated the Bulgarians soundly. With these Greek military victories, Venizelos was easily able to negotiate Macedonia and Epirus out of the Ottoman Empire, nearly doubling the territory of modern Greece. The combination of an effectively led army and the best negotiator in Europe had brought Greece to the pinnacle of good fortune, and together Constantine and Venizelos received a tumultuous welcome back in Athens, the capital of old Greece. The Fates were against them, however, for their personalities were

1 For similar reasons, the Greeks began archaeological activity in Salonika within two weeks of their arrival. (Davis 2000: 77)

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irreconcilable. Living and serving in separate countries, they might have got along, but not confined within one nation. Venizelos was both the most fascinating Greek politician of the twentieth century and the most successful modern Greek statesman as well. A skillful bridge-player, he learned bargaining in his father’s shop in Chania Crete, then still part of the Ottoman Empire. He was ambitious, charming, crafty and opportunistic, all traits despised by King Constantine, and utterly selfconfident of his ability to argue and bluff his way out of any situation. Unlike his far more cautious political opponents, Venizelos had successfully seized upon the emotional appeal of the populist dream of reuniting all Greeks in one nation. (Mazower 1992) Venizelos’ charisma was so widespread that he was able to act as an international spokesman for Greece whether elected or not. Constantine, on the other hand, was born in Athens, the oldest son of a Danish prince and a Russian grand duchess. His father’s Danish sisters were Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII of Great Britain, and Dagmar, wife of Tsar Alexander III; so the family frequently holidayed in Denmark and Russia, with occasional visits to their English cousins. His father sent him to the elite Hellenic Military Academy, where he excelled at ballistics, and the Prussian Military Academy in Berlin. While there he met Princess Sophie, a daughter of Kaiser Frederick and his wife, the Empress Victoria, who was the eldest child of Queen Victoria. The Empress raised her daughters to be Anglophiles but endured a life-long feud with her eldest son and later Kaiser, Wilhelm. As a result of his ill-starred breech birth, deformed arm and tortured upbringing, Wilhelm grew to detest his mother and her Anglophile ways. (Röhl 2014) Sophie was said to be ‘the most English of the children and spoke English around her own children and husband.’ (Van der Kiste 2015: 73) There was no love lost between Sophie and her oldest brother Wilhelm: for a time he threatened to banish her from returning to Germany after she married Constantine and converted to Greek Orthodoxy; during the war between Turkey and Greece in 1897, Wilhelm strongly supported Turkey. He was a vain, erratic and unpredictable megalomaniac whose royal relatives treated him warily. Sophie was later often accused of being pro-German but more accurately she was anti-Venizelos because of the difficulties he had caused for the royal family before the War. (Gelardi 2005: 156-59) Sophie was a frequent visitor to England with her younger children up until 1914 (their great aunt was Queen Alexandra) but public animosity there prevented her from frequent visits after the War. Constantine and Sophie had three sons, George, Alexander and Paul.

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King Constantine was essentially a capable army leader, straightforward and guileless, disliking insincerity. He loved the life of a professional soldier and demanded the respect due his position but could be charming and magnanimous in person. As Churchill later wrote, ‘King Constantine had been trained all his life as a soldier. He had studied very closely the strategic situation of his country and conceived himself to be an authority on the subject. The road to his heart was through some sound military plan, and this he was never offered by the Allies.’ (Churchill 2005: 519) While Constantine himself could be manipulated with the right deferential approach, he regarded Venizelos as an unscrupulous manipulator, an unfortunate combination of character flaws and a potentially explosive working relationship. Constantine’s fate was to have the most brilliant statesman that modern Greece had produced as his Prime Minister, but the only attribute they shared was their Greek patriotism, not unlike the Spartans and Athenians when they were temporarily united against the Persian invasions. Unfortunately for Greece, even in her time of triumph during the Balkan Wars, King Constantine alienated France. As a guest at Potsdam during German army maneuvers, the Kaiser presented Constantine with the baton of a Prussian Field Marshall in recognition of his recent victories over Turkey and Bulgaria. In a seemingly innocuous speech, Constantine expressed his sincere gratitude for the personal training he and some of his army officers had received at the Prussian Military Academy. The French, who had been reorganizing and training the Greek army since 1911 under General Joseph-Paul Eydoux, felt snubbed and never forgot nor forgave Constantine. Two weeks later, Constantine had the opportunity to thank the French as well, but he was not effusive enough to satisfy the French republican press, which forever after linked him and his wife with the Kaiser.2 The damage was done, and the French would have their revenge. With the advent of the First World War, Constantine’s own General Staff, many trained in Prussia, favoured joining Germany believing it would win. Constantine himself, ‘under a profound impression of German military prestige and efficiency, believed throughout that Germany would win.’ (Churchill 2015: 260) Kaiser Wilhelm sent his brother-in-law Constantine a strongly worded

2 Venizelos had wanted the French as military trainers in 1911 for several reasons including the prospect of a French loan but Constantine was opposed, dismissive of the French military in general and fearing republican tendencies. See Papacosma 1977: 170-75.

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note threatening severe consequences if Greece did not join the GermanAustrian-Bulgarian-Turkish alliance. Nonetheless, despite all this, Constantine resisted joining Germany. After an early offer of support to the Allies, which was rebuffed, he was resolutely determined to remain neutral. Greece was trapped between formidable Bulgarian land armies on one side and the British navy on the other. Not only did the British navy control the Mediterranean and could easily destroy Greece’s merchant fleet, it could also prevent the assembling of a Greek army in northern Greece which could only take place by sea since there was no railway link between the south and the north of Greece until 1916. So, with the support of his mostly German trained general staff, Constantine refused to join either side, adamantly insisting on neutrality. After Turkey declared war in November 1914, Britain and France tried to persuade all the Balkan states including Greece to join their Entente. To help Venizelos persuade King Constantine to join the Entente, the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, then offered ‘most important territorial compensation for Greece on the coast of Asia Minor,’ which, of course, the Allies did not have in their possession to give. Venizelos found the prospect of an expanded Greek nation all around the Aegean irresistible. In fact even before the war Venizelos was offering Prime Minister Lloyd George to act in effect as the British Empire’s agent in the eastern Mediterranean. (Llewellyn Smith 1998: xiii) In heroic terms, Constantine’s refusal to fight might be compared with the warrior Achilles at Troy, whose refusal to join battle cost many lives until he was finally provoked and brought down himself, while Venizelos resembled the wily Odysseus, who cleverly contrived the device of the Trojan horse, which actually won the war for the Greeks. Indeed, French Premier Clemenceau would later comment approvingly that Odysseus was but a child in comparison with Venizelos. Constantine’s Acting Chief of the Greek General Staff, Gen. Ioannis Metaxas, had also been trained in Germany and was one of the most astute Greek military leaders. He also firmly opposed accepting the vague offer of undefined territory: not only did the Turks outnumber the scattered Greeks everywhere in Anatolia, even in its largest city Smyrna, but also with no natural geographical boundary there was no military way that Greek forces could occupy and hold such an extensive territory against the will of the Turkish inhabitants; they would be as overstretched as Napoleon’s army in Russia a century before. Indeed, Metaxas accurately predicted the events that later befell the Greek armies in Anatolia.

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To him, the proposal was militarily untenable, and he refused to be associated with it. Since Greece itself had not been attacked, why go to war to be used as a pawn by the imperialist Great Players of either side? In March 1915, during preliminary Allied planning to force the Dardanelles straights, Venizelos was keen to offer military aid but Constantine, although initially enticed by the prospect of entering victoriously into Constantinople, withdrew his support and Venizelos resigned. Winning re-election in June, he returned as Prime Minister again. Despite months of inducements by the Entente Allies to persuade Bulgaria to join them, in September Bulgaria mobilised against Serbia. Venizelos and the Serbian Prime Minister had negotiated a secret treaty and military convention in 1913 whereby each country would militarily support the other with troops if attacked by a third country, specifically 150,00 Serbians and 90,000 Greeks. When Serbia, anticipating a three-pronged attack by German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian armies, asked for help and explained she could not fulfill her commitments, Venizelos suggested that the Allies make up Serbia’s shortfall in troops by landing them at Salonika. Britain and France agreed and began landing troops in Salonika, a clear violation of Greek neutrality. After Venizelos won a vote of confidence in the Greek parliament, Constantine asked for his resignation once again. AntiVenizelists then claimed that the treaty, whose details had not yet been made fully public, was never intended to be invoked against the Austro-Hungarian and German Empires. It was too late to save Serbia, however, whose army was forced to retreat, eventually in early 1916 taking refuge with the exiled Serbian government on the Greek island of Corfu. Both political factions in Greece were ruthlessly exploited and abused by France and Britain, who in 1916 militarily occupied Salonika, where Venizelos set up a provisional government. The Allies then blockaded neutral Greece to starve the south into submission and bombarded Athens in order to force Greece to join their war against Turkey and Germany, and demanded that Constantine abdicate in favour of his second son Alexander. Ironically, it had been Germany’s invasion of neutral Belgium that led France to declare war against Germany. So Venizelos finally led a divided Greece into war in June 1917, the last country to join the Allies. With the sudden collapse of both the Bulgarian and Palestinian fronts in September 1918, the Ottoman Sultan’s government signed an armistice with the British on 30 October 1918 at Mudros Bay in the island of Lemnos on board the British ship Agamemnon, appropriately named after the Homeric king who had led the Mycenaean Greeks to victory over Troy.

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During the progress of the War the Allied leaders had played a duplicitous game, making identical and therefore conflicting secret offers of territories they did not possess to potential allies like Greece and Italy, who were now counting on their rewards of increased territories. While it would have been impossible in any case to honour such conflicting claims, their power to create and dispose of entire nations at a whim was dissipating as fast as their millions of troops were being demobilized, the lifeblood of their influence. Like patients after major surgery who feel ready to resume life as before without waiting to recover, they had focused intensely on survival with little thought for a necessarily new way of life afterward. The euphoria at the end of the war and the nationalist hopes raised by President Woodrow Wilson’s idealistic proposals crashed against the impossibly competing claims of so many supplicant and embryonic nations. Throughout the spring of 1919 Britain and France were rapidly demobilizing the millions of men still in service, half a million in the Ottoman Empire alone, and had neither the means nor the stomach for more fighting. Despite the map-making and grandiose re-arranging of the world at the Versailles Peace Conference after the War, in reality no one was prepared to implement any of their political decisions. In addition, the Entente Alliance itself soon disintegrated in all but name. Britain and France had been imperial rivals for centuries but allies for only fourteen years, forced together in mutual self-interest until the defeat of their common enemy, Germany, removed the unifying factor. Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, was willing to sacrifice Britain’s goals in order to preserve a united front with France, when the latter repeatedly acted unilaterally and behind his back to serve her own interests. Each of the Allies had its own divergent agendas which would partition Anatolia into Christian–administered regions: the British wanted free access to the Black Sea and the newly discovered oil fields in Mesopotamia, the French wanted Syria and coal-rich Cilicia, the Italians wanted western Anatolia, and the Greeks wanted to incorporate their nationals into Greek territory, although the great dreams of little Greece for territorial expansion were inconsequential to British imperial ambitions of global trade and naval control. Within days of the Armistice and against its letter and spirit, the British and French stationed some troops in Constantinople, and Britain seized oil-rich Mesopotamia, or Iraq, as it was soon to be known. Despite the fact there had been no local disturbances in Anatolia to provoke the landing of any Allied forces as required by the terms of the Armistice, on 6 May 1919, just three men by themselves - Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Wilson

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- decided that they wanted to prevent their Ally Italy from unilaterally occupying unassigned territory it hoped to obtain and, to keep the Italians from learning of it, they did not consult any of their own advisers. Since not one of them was willing to deploy any of his own forces, this was the opportunity Venizelos had been waiting for: to be needed by the Great Powers. What in Paris seemed merely a relatively easy political decision to three uninformed men was to the Greeks a resumption of the Greek war of liberation against the Ottoman Turks. So on 15 May 1919 Greek troops disembarked from destroyers and transports at the harbour of Smyrna to meet a jubilant welcome from the local Greeks, led by the politically active Archbishop Chrysostomos, and open hostility from the Turks. The Italian commandant of the Turkish gendarmes had released Turkish convicts who then armed themselves. After a shot was fired, the Greek forces began an all-out assault on the Turkish troops in the barracks, and several hundred Turks were killed or wounded. The Turkish press fanned the flames with their reports of a massacre of Turks resisting the Greek invasion of the Turkish homeland. This Greek landing sparked the creation of modern Turkey. The Sultan appointed General Kemal, who had successfully defended the Straits of the Dardanelles against the Allies in 1915, as Inspector General to oversee Turkish forces in Anatolia. Kemal immediately sailed across the Black Sea to Samsun, where the date of his landing was later celebrated as the start of Turkish Independence, and on his own began recruiting troops in eastern Turkey. From the Turkish point of view, the Greeks, as opposed to the English, were precisely the wrong nationality to police Smyrna. Whether or not the three Allied leaders assumed that the military occupation was to be only temporary, many Greeks believed it was to be permanent, or at least many Greeks acted as though it would never end. By the end of 1919, Turkish elections sent a majority of Nationalists to the revived Chamber of Deputies in Constantinople who then voted for the creation of an independent nation state. The Allies should not have been surprised after their cavalier treatment of the Turks. After a French defeat by a nascent Turkish army in Cilicia and a further massacre of Armenians, the British occupied Constantinople in force in March 1920, declared martial law, and dissolved the Chamber, arresting many officials and Deputies who were deported to Malta for trial. Allied military advisers warned that already they would need at least twenty-seven armed divisions to impose their will on the rebellious Turks, in reality by then a political impossibility. The rump of the Chamber of Deputies made their way to Ankara in central Anatolia, far removed from the reach of

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informants and the guns of the British navy. There under the Presidency of General Kemal they formed part of the Grand National Assembly, declaring that the Sultan was a prisoner of the Allies and his acts were therefore invalid. Kemal immediately began negotiating with the Russians, traditional enemies of the Turks. By July 1920 Kemal’s Nationalists were in open rebellion against the Sultan, defeating his forces, attacking a British battalion, and firing on Constantinople until driven back by the last British cavalry charge. Provoked into action but unwilling to commit troops of their own, the British then accepted Venizelos’ eager offer to cooperate further with the Allies by expanding Greek held territory eastwards and northwards along the south coast of the Sea of Marmara, and throughout Eastern Thrace as well. It was at this point that Britain, France, Italy and Greece agreed on the Treaty of Sèvres. The British, French and Italian Prime Ministers had met in San Remo, Italy, in April to discuss the terms of a treaty with the Ottoman Empire. Thanks to his charm and undeniable skills as a negotiator, in the Treaty of Sèvres Venizelos obtained territory for Greece that she could never have obtained by force of arms, and that was precisely the problem with the agreement on paper; it was a mirage, a dream for the Greeks but a nightmare for the Turks. By the Treaty of Sèvres of August 1920, the puppet Sultan agreed that all of Anatolia was to be partitioned into zones of influence: Constantinople and the Dardanelles were to be demilitarized and internationalized, and there would be an independent Armenia and Kurdistan. Venizelos, after some initial Greek military success in the field, obtained for Greece the Aegean islands still remaining in the Ottoman Empire, Gallipoli, and Eastern Thrace to within twelve miles of Constantinople itself. The Greeks would administer Smyrna under Ottoman sovereignty but a plebiscite in five years would determine its future. The publication of the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres motivated both sides for opposing reasons. It was a piece of paper that raised unrealistic hopes among the Greeks and Armenians but further infuriated the Turks. In its immediate aftermath, the Greek forces achieved some military successes, the consolidation of which further extended their lines and manpower. The signing of the Treaty at Sèvres was the zenith of Venizelos’ career. After having been honoured (together with Paderewski, the Prime Minister of a revived Poland) with an Oxford doctorate, he returned to Greece in triumph. In a modern Greek equivalent of ancient Roman generals returning from overseas successes in triumphant processions through the midst of the city, at a huge ceremony

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in the Olympic Stadium in Athens in September Venizelos was presented with a gold laurel wreath. Beside him stood King Alexander in his white uniform, and representatives of the Entente Powers were also in attendance including the Duke of York (second son of King George V), later King George VI. Within three months of this triumphant celebration, King Alexander would be dead and Venizelos voted out of office and living in exile in Paris.3 The Allies consistently underestimated Turkish nationalism and the abilities and ambitions of Gen. Kemal, while he knew that he had time and geography on his side. The Greeks, as Gen. Metaxas had foreseen and articulated in 1915, were overextending their manpower and resources in the highlands of Anatolia while Kemal was rapidly reinvigorating Turkish military and political power at a safe distance. What the Greek people failed to realize was just how politically isolated they were in Anatolia. The very reason the Greeks were there was because no other Ally was willing to send any troops to the region. Nor did the Greek populace appreciate the strategic impossibility of their situation. Both France and Italy wanted a way out of their formal support of Greece and the Treaty of Sevres, and the Fates were about to provide it in the form of a monkey. Young King Alexander was a tragic figure, ‘the victim of fate as well as of policy.’ He had fallen in love with a young Greek lady, Aspasia Manos, and had insisted on marrying her in November 1919 despite general disapproval because she was a commoner and Greek. He ‘would never have hesitated for a moment in a choice between his love and his throne.’ (Churchill 2015: 263) He had been kept completely isolated from his family, not allowed even phone calls to them while traveling in France. One day at Tatoi, the royal residence Cavaphis, the modern Greek poet, had evoked a comparable hollow public celebration in ancient Alexandria: The Alexandrians gathered to see the children of Cleopatra - Caesarion and his younger brothers, Alexander and Ptolemy - who for the first time were being brought out in the Gymnasium, there to be proclaimed kings amid the brilliant military parade. Alexander they called king of Armenia, Media and the Parthians. Ptolemy they called King of Cilicia, Syria and Phoenicia. Caesarion stood in front of the others, dressed in rose-coloured silk, with a bunch of hyacinths at his breast, his belt a double row of sapphires and amethysts, his sandals tied with white ribbons with pink pearls embroidered on them. To him they gave a greater title than the younger ones: him they called King of Kings. The Alexandrians understood, of course, that all this was words and make-believe. But the day was warm and poetical, with the sky a pale blue: the Gymnasium of Alexandria was a triumphant masterpiece of art: the gorgeous dress of the courtiers something wonderful; and Caesarion was all charm and beauty (son of Cleopatra, blood of the Lagidae). So the Alexandrians came crowding to the festival, and they were enthusiastic and cheered in Greek and Egyptian (and some in Hebrew), delighted with the beautiful spectacle – though of course they knew what it was all really worth, what empty words those kingdoms were (Sofroniou 1962: 175-76, 207-08).

3

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outside Athens, his pet dog Fritz was attacked by two pet monkeys of his estate manager, and when Alexander tried to break them up, one of the monkeys bit him repeatedly. Blood poisoning set in and he died in agony a few weeks later at the age of twenty-seven, with only his pregnant wife to comfort him. Venizelos was in the midst of a Greek national election. When he offered the throne to Alexander’s younger brother Paul, who refused it, the return of Constantine as King became an election issue. Venizelos was confident of winning, not only having led Greece to victory in the War but also having negotiated such an enormous increase of territory. Indeed, election posters portrayed Venizelos between ‘Before’ and ‘After’ maps of Greece in 1910 and 1920, with the latter showing western Anatolia and even the Italian-controlled Dodecanese as part of Greece. During his long absences abroad, however, some of his political colleagues had conducted a reign of terror in Greece against the supporters of Constantine, firing many from military and other public offices. In Athens itself, while Venizelos expressed his dismay at the excesses committed in his name during his long absences, he had nevertheless allowed them to continue. ‘In spite of his extraordinary merits and his brilliant parts, … he made a disastrous choice of the men to whom he entrusted the administration’ of Greece. (Gennadius 1922: 811) In the first election held in Greece since the Allies’ attack on and attempted occupation of Athens and Constantine’s enforced exile in 1917, the royalist party won the most seats, and Venizelos lost his own seat. He withdrew into self-imposed exile in France, a ‘broken man’ according to a friend of Gilbert’s, William Miller, who saw him in Rome shortly afterward. In December 1920, after obtaining a landslide majority in a plebiscite, Constantine returned as King. The Allies, who had not appreciated the depth of Greek nationalist feelings aroused by their arrogant treatment of neutral Greece during the war and unprepared for the local antipathy to Venizelos, used the results of this democratic election, i.e., the return of Constantine, as the excuse they wanted to withdraw even their nominal support of Greece in Anatolia. The French so detested Constantine for his ‘hostile’ acts as a neutral during the war that they demanded he and his family be formally ignored by all the Allied representatives, even coercing the Americans to comply. The British also acquiesced to the French insistence to withhold further financial support. Reneging on the previously negotiated loans was tantamount to a trade

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embargo on Greece, hurting mainly British interests because France and Italy had little trade with Greece. This economic interference by the Allies in the domestic affairs of Greece may have been less blatant than besieging Athens as they had done in 1917 but had more profound and long-lasting effects. France and Italy actively and now openly supported Kemal both diplomatically and militarily. Only Lloyd George and his Foreign Office under Lord Curzon remained nominally in support of Greece, which was undertaking what the Allies had wanted and yet refused to do themselves. Internally, the country was seriously split between the royalists and the Venizelists. New political purges began to reverse the purges previously undertaken by the Venizelists, both among civilians and, more ominously, the military. Perhaps 15% of the officers were either cashiered or rendered inactive, and many drifted to Constantinople where they began planning a defense league. Geographically, the royalist Government’s support was primarily in the mainland of Old Greece, while the Venizelists were scattered in the North, Constantinople, Anatolia, and abroad. Officially the royalists ‘made no pledge to demobilize or to liquidate the war. But it is indubitable that many Greeks, particularly in the army, voted against Venizelos in the hope that this would mean a rapid end to the war.’ (Llewellyn Smith 1998: 154) The new royalist cabinet was, however, persuaded by its generals to continue the so far successful offensive war. In order to encourage recruitment, the new government invited King Constantine and his brothers, Princes Nicholas and Andrew, to resume military commands, ignoring warnings from Metaxas about the resulting confusion of responsibilities. Several attempts at a knockout punch against the Turks failed, and the Greek armies were effectively stranded in hostile territory in the middle of Anatolia without adequate supplies for the duration of their occupation. To the Greeks abroad, to abandon their troops in Asia Minor and sacrifice territory held by the army that was winning battles seemed ‘monstrous.’ (Polyzoides 1923: 544) With so much national pride and dreams invested in the Anatolian enterprise after its initial apparent successes, to persuade the Greek populace to accept a return of the army now and abandon the Great Dream was more than the royalist government felt able or prepared to do. The Dream had great appeal not only to a widespread populace generally but also to elites wanting the opportunity to be part of something more than the most backward ‘least educated and poorest part’ of a greater Greece, (Kalyvas 2015: 43) asserting a claim to their broader Byzantine as opposed to Classical heritage.

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Kemal’s strategy was to make use of the sheer size and inhospitableness of Anatolia itself in order to stretch and drain the material and psychological resources of the Greeks until he was fully prepared to engage them on his own terms and overwhelm them: they were taking the bait and falling into the trap. Moreover, by March 1921 the Russian Bolsheviks had negotiated with Kemal and began supplying him with weapons. Also the French negotiated separately with Kemal, contrary to her Allied obligations, and signed an agreement effectively recognizing the legitimacy of Kemal’s Nationalist Government in Ankara. Both Italy and France exploited the Greeks’ invasion of Anatolia by seizing the opportunity to be seen helping the Nationalist Turks with money and arms. In the summer of 1921 King Constantine paid a jubilant visit to Smyrna and his generals ordered an eastward attack which was initially successful. In August, however, the Greek army beyond the Sakaria River in central Anatolia was defeated by Kemal (helped in part by bombs dropped from French planes), and retreated back to the river. They settled into a precarious situation because their supply lines were being attacked. Constantine became ill and depressed. Because of Kemal’s intelligence gathering network in western capitals, especially Rome, he was very well informed about the Allies’ potential weaknesses and internal bickering: Lord Curzon was becoming paranoid about the duplicity of his French ally. More disturbingly, the war was not restricted to the military but had spread to the civilians in the villages, where atrocities occurred after each advance and retreat of both Christians and Moslems, followed by reprisals and the creation of more refugees. Peoples that had lived together peaceably for centuries were now irretrievably becoming mortal enemies fearing for their lives. An independent British review of the Greek forces in June 1921 concluded that the Greek officers were unlikely to collaborate well among themselves, partly because they had attended separate training schools in France and Germany, and also because the ‘senior officers were all politicians.’ (Walder 1969: 196) Even outsiders could see that the political schism had infiltrated and affected the Greek military. In October 1921 Nikolaos Stratos, the leader of the National Reformist Party, one of the Greek opposition parties, demanded and was granted by Constantine a convocation of the National Assembly to deliberate the terms of a new constitution for Greece. The Assembly endorsed a visit to Paris, London and Rome by Prime Minister Dimitri Gounaris and Foreign Minister George Baltazzi to find a face-saving way out of the untenable situation. In London, the best that Foreign Minster Lord Curzon could offer them was to negotiate on their

behalf with the Turks, and Gounaris now had no choice but to accept. Greece was in a state of war with the Turks, a war she did not have the military or financial resources to win, but which no one dared politically to try to resolve. The lives of two hundred thousand Greek soldiers plus many more undefended Greek civilians in Anatolia were increasingly at risk. Faced with the combined hostility of the god-like Powers, the Greek leaders, however heroic their efforts, were not only helpless but also soon to pay the ultimate price for their helplessness. So the world that Gilbert Bagnani was to visit was torn between two political factions, the royalists and the Venizelists. The royalist government in power was politically, financially and militarily isolated from Greece’s former Allies while fighting a distant war in Turkey initiated by their Venizelist predecessors at the Allies’ request. No one dreamed that the fate of a million souls was at stake or how quickly time was running out to save them.

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1. Vengeance 13 September 1922 Smyrna has been practically destroyed by a gigantic fire which wiped out during the night all the town except the poor Turkish quarters on the hill at the back and on the extreme fringe at the north towards the Point. Without exaggeration, tonight’s conflagration is one of the biggest fires in the world’s history. The damage is incalculable, and there has been great loss of life among the native population. … What I see, as I stand on the deck of HMS Iron Duke, is an unbroken wall of fire, two miles long, in which twenty distinct volcanoes of raging flame are throwing up jagged, writhing tongues to a height of a hundred feet. Against this curtain of fire, which blocks out the sky, are silhouetted the towers of the Greek churches, the domes of the mosques, and the flat, square roofs of the houses. All Smyrna’s warehouses, business-buildings and European residences, with others behind them, are burning like furious torches. From this intensely glowing mass of yellow, orange and crimson fire pour up thick, clotted coils of oily black smoke that hide the moon at its zenith. Besides all this, from the many thousands of refugees on the narrow quay, between the advancing flames and the deep water, there comes such frantic screaming as can be heard miles away. Added to this is the frequent roar and crash of exploding ammunition stores, accompanied by the rattle of burning cartridges, which sounds like an intense infantry action. So wrote George Ward Price, eyewitness to the events and correspondent for the Daily Mail (Price 1922: 4). 1

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One of the last ships seen leaving the harbor at dusk was the USS Simpson carrying the US Consul George Horton and about three hundred other grateful passengers who had been able to claim American nationality. The destroyer sailed away directly across the Aegean Sea for Athens. By nightfall, from all the ships out in the harbour could be seen tens of thousands of the suddenly homeless trapped along the two-mile long boulevard between the water in front and the searing heat of the burning buildings behind them. They were penned in at either end by troops and mounted Turkish cavalry brandishing swords. The soldiers, brutalized by years of warfare and zealous to avenge prior massacres and humiliations, were relentless. Now that the enemy in the field had completely scattered, the victorious Turkish army continued waging war only now on the unarmed civilian populace. Being allowed to loot and rape was traditional compensation for years of deprivation. Sailors who had briefly stepped ashore to accompany their own citizens to their ships brought back tales of atrocities. About 1 a.m. the fire broke through these front houses almost simultaneously. It was a terrifying thing to see even from the distance. There was the most awful scream one could ever imagine. I believe many people were shoved into the sea, simply by the crowds nearest the houses trying to get further away from the fire. ... Many did undoubtedly jump into the sea, from sheer panic.1 The heat felt on the ships anchored far out in the bay was so intense that the ships pulled even further away. Ironically, the very same international ships out in the harbor which the Smyrniotes had believed and hoped would protect them from Turkish reprisals refused to come to their aid when most urgently needed. The captains of the British, French, Italian and American ships were steadfastly following their orders to remain neutral and not to rescue any but their own nationals. The collective consciousness of the hysterical souls along the waterfront was seared with this visible refusal to come to their rescue. As young Paymaster Arthur Duckworth wrote from the Iron Duke to his parents:

1 Quoted from the private memoirs of Bertrand Thesiger, Captain of HMS King George V, by Llewellyn Smith 1998: 309.

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Fearful crashes resound occasionally as the roofs fall in. The whole place is as dry as tinder, and in this hot weather nothing can possibly stop the whole town being gutted. It is the most terrible sight I have ever seen and passes anything you can imagine. ... I sat up the whole night watching the whole city of Smyrna burning fiercely. No one could go to bed. The wind caught the flames and huge houses were burnt in five minutes to ashes and dust. Loud explosions and crashes from falling roofs continuously. Above all the steady screams and yells of thousands of terror-stricken people. The fire reached the water’s edge on the north side of the town and the population crowded down to the water. Awful scenes. The Turks had forbidden anyone to enter, leave, embark or disembark some days ago (having put Smyrna under martial law) but about 3:00 a.m. the Admiral [Osmond de Beauvoir Brock] ordered all boats in [to shore] from the fleet. (Halpern 2011: 351-2) As soon as British Admiral Brock finally decided to disobey orders and take action, after hours of explosions and distant cries for mercy to be spared from the fires and soldiers, he was immediately followed by the other ships’ captains. As the small boats made their way to the harbor amid floating bodies, they were inundated with waves of surging humanity nearly capsizing every boat. Cautiously they go in, bow on. The dense masses of refugees are already heaving to rush them directly they come within jumping distance. Then the bow touches the quay, and a fighting, shrieking, terrified torrent of humanity pours over it. ‘Women and children only!’ roar the officers, fighting with fists and sticks to keep back the men. It is as unavailing as pushing at an avalanche. The only thing to do is to back out directly the picket-boat is full, literally to overflowing. So the night goes on, till two thousand hysterical Greeks and Armenians are huddled in the deck of the Iron Duke, which has changed in an hour from the appearance of a steam-yacht to that of a casualty ward. (Price 1957: 130) This apocalyptic vision of hell on earth was deeply etched on all eye-witnesses by the stench of piles of corpses and burning flesh as bodies were thrown into the flames. The foreign warships out in the bay, however, could accommodate only a few thousand each of the tens of thousands of refugees, no more than twenty thousand altogether, and controversial estimates of the dead and missing reach into the hundreds of thousands. From across the bay in the suburb of Cordelio,

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the flames engulfing the largest city in Anatolia outshone the moonlight and obliterated simultaneously what had been called the ‘Pearl of the East’ by the Europeans and Christians but ‘Infidel Smyrna’ by the Nationalist Turks. For another week after the fires subsided, the tens of thousands of refugees remained huddled in unspeakable growing filth along the waterfront but no one, neither Allies nor Americans, sent any ships, unwilling to risk provoking the newly victorious Turks. Finally a single American, Asa Jennings, a Methodist minister working for the YMCA, arranged to have American ships escort all available Greek ships into the harbor at Smyrna to take the refugees to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, and he had had to threaten to publicize the inaction of the traumatized Greek government in Athens in order to obtain its approval. As he led his flotilla in, Jennings later recalled: Directly in front of us, gaunt brick-and-stone skeletons of once fine buildings pushed themselves up from the charred debris that covered the ground. It was the most desolate, fearsome sight I ever saw. And at the water’s edge, stretching for miles, was what looked like a lifeless black border. Yet I knew that it was a border not of death but of living sufferers waiting, hoping, praying for ships – ships – ships! As we approached and the shore spread out before us, it seemed as if every face on that quay was turned toward us, and every arm outstretched to bring us in. Indeed I thought that the whole shore was moving out to grasp us. The air was filled with the cries of those thousands, cries of such transcendent joy that the sound pierced to the very marrow of my bones. (Dobkin 1998: 196) But the horrors were not over for the wretched souls along the waterfront. The Turkish authorities allowed the exodus only through the narrow railway dock at the north end of the open harbour, where they could screen every single individual through three successive check points. The British and American marines watching and hearing the heart-rending scenes were helpless to intervene while they heard the cries of families being torn apart forever as all military-aged males were physically separated from their parents, wives, sisters and children to be marched inland to oblivion. By the end of the first day of the rescue effort, about fifteen thousand women and children had been embarked onto the safety of the ships, and two days later another forty three thousand. Commander Halsey Powell of the USS Edsall reported:

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Two sides of the Turks’ nature were evidenced nearly every day of the evacuation: one … was the robber and more or less of a brute, the other was a soldier doing his duty with a very humane side to him. I have seen them … assist a cripple or an elderly woman. … Another report was that of one of the harbor police carrying a little child up and down the dock for quite some time until he found its mother. (Papoutsy 2008: 92) With this concrete example of a solution to all their problems, the Allied commanders and captains and Turkish Gen. Noureddin agreed to act in concert: all available ships were used to transport the refugees, and Noureddin extended the deadline for them to get out. In all, more than two hundred thousand women and children were rescued, while the numbers killed or taken as prisoners will never be known. While all the unarmed civilian males were taken captive, most of the Greek soldiers who had reached the coast were able to escape. Just days before the holocaust at Smyrna started, from the same vantage point on the ship’s deck while sailing into the Bay of Smyrna on Friday, 8 September, the Daily Mail foreign correspondent Ward Price witnessed the spectacle of the rout of the half of the Greek army which had not been captured by the Turks fleeing for their lives, not so much defeated as panic-stricken: The road running westward along the shore of the Gulf [toward the port of Chesme] was masked by a dense cloud of dust, churned up by their fleeing transport. We met a succession of Greek vessels, all bound for the Piraeus, the port of Athens. On some of them Greek soldiers clustered like swarms of bees. (Price 1957: 125) Unmolested by Turkish soldiers, the Greek army sailed away from the harbour at Chesme to the islands of Chios and Lesbos. Colonels Plastiras and Gonatas, shamed and angered by the military fiasco of their sudden collapse and rout in central Anatolia and the catastrophe to their compatriots, still had troops under their command. Had they known the imminent fate of their doomed civilian compatriots in Smyrna they might have decided otherwise but, along with Captain Phokas of the battleship Lemnos, which had rescued troops at Chesme, they mutinied and plotted to overthrow the government in Greece. Together they set out from Chios across the Aegean to Athens bound for murderous revenge.

2. Back in Time December 1921 Nine months earlier, before the Fire of September 1922, twenty-one year old Gilbert Bagnani was setting out for Greece in December 1921. His companion for the trip was a Greek official whom Gilbert nicknamed the Capsule, evidently returning from Rome to the Foreign Office in Athens. Arriving by train at Brindisi, they encountered the local pirates who are really the limit. When they had taken our luggage from the station to the Douane [customs house] across the town, they insisted on being paid and finding what I gave them not enough (I must say that … we had a fearsome amount of luggage) they simply went on strike and refused to carry the luggage on to the boat. Then I started to carry them myself on to the steamer and told them that if they did not want to do it themselves I would take my time and do it. So then they decided to behave and got everything on board. The steamer was called the Pelops, small and rather dirty but free from the more objectionable sort of vermin but the washing accommodation was of the scantiest and it is certainly not to be recommended to ladies. (Tuesday, 5 December 1921) Even as a boy, Gilbert never hesitated to ‘take matters into his own hands,’ as he put it, to get his way when he encountered obstacles. As Gilbert was sailing into Greece, he went backwards in time because, while it was Monday, 4 December in the West, in Greece it was Monday, 21 November according to the Julian calendar (‘Old Style’) still being used there.1 The crossing 1

After Julius Caesar ordered the adoption of the solar year as the official calendar of the Roman

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was very rough until the steamer landed at Patras before proceeding eastward into the Gulf of Corinth. By this time the sea was calm, but the weather was ‘beastly, no view.’ Gilbert was impressed as he sailed through the deep narrow canal sliced through the isthmus at the east end of the Gulf of Corinth, especially when a train crossed the canal far overhead on tracks high above the steamer. After emerging into the Saronic Gulf, the ship sailed on in the dark to Athens’ harbour of Piraeus, where it waited at anchor for small tenders or caiques to carry the passengers to the docks before conveyance by train, carriage or car inland to Athens. Reached the Piraeus about eight and are at once boarded by pirates [eager baggage handlers]. … I was sitting when I hear my name called. Look out, see a boat, and in it Anti the Padova [Padua] man, & Parlanti, of the School. They were really invaluable and I got off before anybody else, even before [the diplomat Capsule]. No difficulty about passports and customs were not more troublesome than most. They got me into a motor which took us three and all my luggage to Athens for 50 [drachmai] which is not much: I would have had to spend more in cabs and porters. Anti of course was delighted to see me as I was the first to give him all the detailed information about the Padova affair. He himself in his most rosy moments only hoped for the third place. He gave me a good dinner in a restaurant and we sat up till midnight gossiping. (Tuesday, 5 December 1921) Carlo Anti, at that time 32 years old and an Inspector at the Prehistoric Museum in Rome, had just returned from the mountains of Lycia west of Adalia, the main port in south-western Anatolia. Roberto Paribeni, in charge of Italian Archaeological Missions for Asia Minor, had sent him on a mission supposedly to explore south-western Anatolia for potential sites to excavate, but also Empire in 46 BC, eventually all Christian countries adhered to it, but it was about eleven minutes out of synchronization with the actual length of the rotation of the earth around the sun. By 1582 the spring equinoxes were occurring ten calendar days before they should. The Catholic Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar by advancing the date ten days and decreed that only century years divisible by 400 would be leap years. Protestant countries generally resisted the Gregorian calendar reform until 1700 and the British Empire until 1752, but Eastern Orthodox countries continued using the Julian Calendar until the early twentieth century, by which time the calendar in Greece was thirteen days behind the West. So it was actually possible for Gilbert to travel thirteen days back in time and he would sometimes date his letters in both the ‘Old Style’ Eastern Orthodox and ‘New Style’ western Catholic dates.

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in fact to resume the Italian expansionist policy of ‘peaceful penetration’ of Mediterranean lands, looking for economic and propaganda opportunities under the guise of ‘science.’ Anti was effectively restricted to Adalia and the mountains of south-western Anatolia, however, by the lack of horses and the presence of brigands in the region. Still, he did discover evidence for two ancient cities. While out there, Anti had won the competition in Italy for the chair of archaeology at the University of Padua, and Gilbert knew the details: thanks to his highly placed friends, Anti had been chosen over his former teacher in Athens, Luigi Pernier, and also over Ettore Galli, his subordinate at the Museum of Florence. So the two young Italian archaeologists had much to discuss in the Greek taverna. In Athens, the Italian School of Archaeology occupied the Villa Makrygianni, an elegant white town house distinguished by an oval porch at its north entrance on the corner of Syngrou and Dionysio Areopagitou avenues. (Figure 1) At the south side the School had its own garden of fragrant roses and wild orange and palm trees. Toward the west the School faced the Parthenon on the Acropolis and below it on the south slope the Theatre of Dionysos where the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and the comedies of Aristophanes were first performed. Toward the east the School overlooked Hadrian’s Arch, the gigantic Temple of Olympian Zeus and the ancient Panathenaic Stadium. (Figure 2) These structures are significant cultural symbols of Greece’s legacy both in antiquity and today. After capturing Greece, Rome was so overwhelmed by Greek art, architecture and literature that the Roman poet Horace stated that Greece, having been captured by Rome militarily, captured Rome culturally. It was the Roman Emperor Hadrian who finally completed the long-unfinished Greek Temple of Olympian Zeus and embellished the city of Athens with baths, an aqueduct and a library, commemorated in the Arch of Hadrian. The glory of ancient Olympic competitions brought about the creation of the modern Olympic Games and the marbling of the ancient Stadium for the 1st Olympics in 1896, thanks to the munificent generosity of the philanthropist George Averoff of Alexandria. Thus the Temple of Zeus and the Stadium visibly display the influence of ancient Greece respectively on ancient Rome and on the modern world two millennia later. The Italian School and Gilbert were surrounded by layers of history. Having been the first to arrive at the School, Gilbert had his choice of rooms and chose a smaller, warmer one in the south-east corner on the ground floor

2. Back in Time

1. Italian School

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2. Italian School and Acropolis from Olympieion

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to be located further away from that of the Director, Alessandro della Seta. This choice was an early manifestation of Gilbert’s distancing himself from direct interaction with his compatriots and fellow students. Although capable of taking charge, he often preferred to be a loner rather than a leader of others. The next day Anti, who had lived at the Italian School in 1913-14 studying Greek sculpture, showed Gilbert around Athens. This morning I made my first acquaintance with the Athens wind which is appalling. Anti & I walked about the new city, while in the afternoon, as it had slackened considerably, we went up to the Acropolis and measured some stones. The first impressions are excellent. I find I can rub along with the language. The food here is good, the Parlantis [who looked after the School premises] are awfully nice and the school is far better than anything I had expected. The antiquities of course pass description so I do not describe them but it is all very pleasant. (Tuesday 5, December 1921) Gilbert preferred cold objective analysis to rhetorical flights of romantic fancy and could not be bothered describing details of complex subjects that he himself understood so well. For example, despite what we think we see in the Parthenon on the Acropolis, there is not a single straight line in the structure. Instead, every horizontal line is slightly curved, as though a draft were blowing under a carpet nailed down at its corners, and similarly with every angle and vertical line. It requires considerable study to appreciate the subtle details of the refined craftsmanship of this gigantic jewel box offered by the citizens of ancient Athens to the goddess of wisdom, Athena. While such esoterica were well known to students of archaeology, Gilbert did not have the time, the patience or the inclination to be bothered with explanations; it would be another two decades before he began to teach. The city of Athens, surrounded by mountain ranges on three sides and with a view of the Aegean Sea far off to the south, was typical of so many ancient Greek cities, growing around a naturally defensible acropolis at a safe distance from an occasionally pirate-infested sea. The ancient town had declined into obscurity for many centuries until it was chosen because of its fame in antiquity as a centre of learning to be the capital of the newly independent Kingdom of Greece in 1834. The few thousand souls who inhabited the northern slope of the Acropolis known as the Plaka were soon surrounded by an expanding city laid out in grids radiating out around the Acropolis. In Gilbert’s day, a century later, the population had grown to

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about a quarter of a million, but it still lacked the amenities of the other European capitals. The streets were dusty or muddy and unpaved as motor vehicles were only beginning to replace horse-drawn cabs. On clear days, however, the air was still luminous and unpolluted, affording memorable views of sunsets lighting the Acropolis and Mount Hymettos along the east. I had a great time with Anti who was awfully nice to me. I have passed these days ‘ambientering’ myself and like the place very much. I have bought a deck chair for my room and am going to get a mat to put down over a portion of the floor. I have left nearly all my letters. (Saturday, 10 December 1921) The world of the 1920s and 1930s, especially that of Gilbert Bagnani, was in many ways noticeably smaller than today. Not only were the cities around the Mediterranean less than a tenth of their present populations, but also the world Gilbert chose for himself was one of the educated and literate elite, a very much smaller proportion of the population than today, and so people with the right connections or letters of introduction could very easily encounter their local counterparts. A few years later, whenever he would sail on large trans-Atlantic ocean liners, he would invariably meet people with whom he would have mutual acquaintances. He spent the next few days familiarizing himself with Athens while leaving cards and letters of introduction written by his influential friends and acquaintances back in Rome to their friends and relatives in Athens. The foreign lingua franca of the educated elite in Greece at the time was French but, with a facility for learning languages instilled by having been raised bilingually, Gilbert immediately applied himself to learning modern Greek. Tonight I am going to the theater to see the Clouds of Aristophanes adapted to modern Greek. I am taking an edition of the ancient text with me to compare and to try to see whether I can make anything out. (Saturday, 10 December 1921) … Last night the theater was an absolute disaster. Not only was the acting and mise en scene very poor, but they had translated Aristophanes into modern rhymed verse with a result you may well imagine. I was very disappointed but was glad to find I understood more than I expected.2 (Monday, 12 December 1921) 2

This production of the Clouds began its run November 21, 1921, at the Demotic or Municipal

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Gilbert usually met his new Athenian friends over afternoon tea, the British social equivalent of Greek ouzo. Francis Demetrios Kalopothakes, whom Gilbert in his letters nicknamed the ‘Beautiful Apothecary,’ was the Harvardeducated son of missionaries. He frequently hosted teas to which he invited foreign archaeologists.3 He introduced Gilbert to Prof. Edmund Yard Robbins, a professor of Greek and Sanskrit from Princeton staying at the American School, although Gilbert had already brought a letter of introduction to Robbins from George Whicher, an American scholar at the American Academy in Rome. ‘Everybody seems considerably surprised at finding that I have heard of Greek politics. I must say that the cakes and patisserie here are very nice and I am eating far too many of them.’ (Saturday, 10 December 1921) In response to a card he had left, Maria Kleopatra Skouzes (1880-1974) invited Gilbert to tea. Since she had married Don Guido Cenci-Bolognetti, the Prince di Vicovaro in Rome in 1915, Gilbert described her as ‘the Vicovaro,4 who is charming and delightful to look at.’ (Saturday, 10 December 1921) He met her parents, Alexander and Isabelle Skouzes, whom Gilbert dubbed the Skews. Maria’s father had served several times as the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs, and so the Skouzes family connections were international as well as royalist. Indeed, as a large and old Athenian family the Skouzes were related to most of the other royalist families through a network of inter-marriages. Maria’s older sister Mme Helene Bouboulis became Gilbert’s closest friend in Greece outside of archaeological circles. With his own father frequently away, Gilbert had been raised primarily by his mother and felt most at ease with intelligent older women such as Mrs Arthur Strong (Dyson 2004: 171) and Mme Bouboulis Theatre on Plateia Loudovikou, now Plateia Kotzia. I am grateful to Prof. Ian Storey for this reference. See Boissonnas 1920b: Pl. 31. No one there at that time could have imagined its occupants only one year later; see Arseni 2004: Figure 85. Subsequently damaged by refugees’ fires, the theatre was demolished in the 1930s. 3 He was the son of Michael Demetrios Kalopothakes and Martha Hooper Blackler, both evangelical missionaries in Greece. Kalopothakes had graduated from Harvard in 1888, attended the American School of Classical Studies in 1888-1889, and obtained his PhD from Berlin University in 1893. During the war he had been a correspondent for the pro-Greek Morning Post newspaper in London and had also served in the American Legation in Athens for seven years. After writing a pro-Venizelist propaganda book, in early 1920 he was offered by Venizelos the position of Director of the Press Department of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His duties there included not only supplying the foreign press with information about Greece but also arranging for the participation of Greece in international gatherings abroad as well as keeping Greek ministries informed of relevant foreign developments. With the defeat of the Venizelists, however, he was ‘on leave’ until their later return to power. During his enforced ‘leave of absence’ he socialized frequently with foreigners resident in Athens, particularly the archaeologists. 4 When referring to single individuals, Gilbert consistently used the definite article to indicate a woman, never a man.

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and was generally dismissive of his female contemporaries, that is until he met his future wife in 1924. I walked out to Daphni, a well-known Byzantine monastery on the road to Eleusis, 10 k off. The road, the famous Sacred Way, is even worse than those round Rome. It was just a sheet of mud some 6” deep. The monastery is wonderful but has been restored in the worst Milanese style, by the French I think. Coming back I crossed the ridge of hills that separates it from the Athens plain just as the last rays of the setting sun struck the Acropolis; a wonderful sight. … [Greek Parliamentary Deputy] Carapanos has asked me to go and see him Friday evening after dinner. Can’t as am dining with the Skews and I can’t jump from royalist to Venizelist in the same night; feed with one and take coffee with the other. To compose a French answer has taken time and trouble. No one else has yet appeared on the scene. I’ll wait & see. So far the Vicovaro is the only one who has taken notice of me. The food is quite good and the Parlantis are extremely nice & servigievoli [helpful]. Am getting quite used to the retsinato [resinated] wine. If you consider it as wine it is horrible but not bad if you take it as tonic it is excellent. Yesterday at Daphni I was feeling tired & I got a glass of wine that at first nearly made me sick but I felt better directly; in fact it picked me up no end. … This morning I saw about a mat I had bought on Saturday and that had not yet come. Went to the shop & the people said they had sent it; I [said] that I had not received it (all in Greek) so they sent a boy with me to see about it. It appeared that he had taken it to the wrong house. In this town few houses have front doors (they are all in the back gardens) and practically no houses have any numbers, so mistakes occur. Got it all right however. (Monday 12, December 1921) With his amiable connections with the Director and Assistant Director of the British School at Rome, Gilbert felt at ease contacting Alan Wace, the Director of the British School at Athens. ‘Then went up and saw Wace who was very nice and showed me all his finds at Mycenae. Fine gems and gold things. He said he had heard so much about me.’ (Monday, 12 December 1921) Wace wanted several Italian books on Cyrene and Gilbert asked his mother to arrange to have them sent to the British School. ‘Moreover do see Paribeni & get volumes 8 & 9 of Ausonia and tell him the School in Athens wants to be on their books. Wace said that the volumes could be sent through the embassy bag.’ (Monday, 12

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December 1921) In the small world of archaeologists in Rome, Gilbert’s mother also knew Roberto Paribeni, and Gilbert did not hesitate to avail himself of the diplomatic courier system. I read here the Progres d’Athènes, a French prop[aganda] paper but rather well done, and the Estia. No Corriere so far. Do send me political news. … Here the politics are quite amusing as the H. Synod has elected as Patriarch of Constant[inople], the Venizelist Bishop of Athens [Metaxakis] whom the royalist government deposed. The government and the royalist Bishops refuse to recognize the new patriarch and it appears are going to convoke another synod at Adrianople [in northern Greece] and elect another one. Just like the Middle Ages. (Monday, 12 December 1921) Even the Greek Orthodox Church was embroiled in the political schism rupturing Greece. At this stage Gilbert is an outsider as indicated by his apparently bemused detachment from internal Greek politics. This morning it was raining cats and dogs. Told Andoni [Parlanti], who wakes me at 7 1/2 with my shaving water, to let me sleep longer if it rains: passes the time quicker. This morn went & got my hair cut; not bad cons[idering] I couldn’t do anything on account of rain. In the afternoon it cleared and so wandered about the town but it was almost knee deep in mud. It is a city with no drains so you can imagine what it is like after rain. In the evening it was fairly clear with a fine moon so went up to the monument of Philopappos [Roman consul and Athenian citizen c. 116 AD] with Cattaneo [a fellow student]. The wonderful view, with the Parthenon & Propylea golden in the moonlight; the lights of the Piraeus twinkling in the distance. … Cattaneo is inclined to make the most foolish remarks of anyone I have ever heard. I bear with him patiently but it ages me considerably. I wonder if I will be able to cure him of the habit of talking twaddle at breakfast. (By the way, Siga Parlanti gives me an egg & plenty of bread and jam) If there is one thing I detest!! (Wednesday, 14 December 1921) Poor Cattaneo was thirty years old and simply not up to Gilbert’s intellectual level, and Gilbert, as well as the other student Doro Levi, soon grew impatient and showed him no mercy.

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At a dinner party at the Skouzes’ Gilbert met the Italian Ambassador, Giulio Cesare Montagna, a career diplomat whom Gilbert nicknamed in his letters the Mountain. Though without the resources of an established intelligencegathering network, Montagna claimed to have created one in Greece making use of Italian consuls and personnel already there serving on Italian missions like fisheries, gendarmerie, archaeology, etc. As a result he was better informed than most other ambassadors in Athens, and so he had not been surprised by Venizelos’ electoral defeat in 1920. A serious man, he was criticized for being nervous and high-strung. He grew to recognize Gilbert’s abilities and supported his later extensive endeavours while in the East. [Montagna] is a small man, clean shaven, with a very large head, far too big for his body. His wife is a very pretty tall woman, thin & chic, dressed in black, fair hair, very distinguished looking and at the same time full of fun. Is inclined to pull hubby’s leg a bit.5 … The Vicovaro was dressed in light gray, almost silver, with a single row of pearls. She has fine black hair which she wears in a rope wound round her head; curious effect but very becoming. Then there were the two parent Skews. Then there was the Signora Serpieri, the rich Italo-Greeks to whom Lily [Koundouriotis] wanted to give me a letter: they ought to have left some time ago for Paris but the hubby has been ill. She was a fat, homely person, very jolly. ... Then there was a small woman, rather the Stevens type, the sister of the Vicovaro, whose name I cannot spell but it sounds like Bubule. The dinner was excellent but never ending. We first had soup, then a large fish, looked like a sturgeon (by the way, the fish here is wonderful) with mayonnaise, olives, etc. Then came three courses of entrées of various sorts including a kind of Russian salad and small pieces of liver on toast, then turkey, and finally ground chestnuts and whipped cream, cheese, fruit and chocolates and sweets. Too much. ... After dinner talked a bit with the Mount. Not a bad fellow but does not impress me as having a surplus stock of brains; then went and talked to the ladies. Several other people came in, including some cousin Skews, with a very pretty, the first really pretty girl I have seen here, talks beautiful English too [very Giulio Cesare Cavaliere Montagna 1874-1954, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at Athens 10 December 1919 – 30 April 1924, m. Marie Rose Countess Logothetti 1888-1976, d. of Hugo II Count Logothetti. The Logothetti family had fled from Constantinople to the then Venetian island of Zante, whence an ancestor of the Ambassador’s wife had become an Austrian citizen in Moldavia. 5

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likely Mika Skouzes 1898-1957]. The [Vicovaro] took me aside a moment and told me where to leave cards. She said she wanted me to get to know the right people (i.e. read royalist circles). (Friday, 16 December 1921) After Montagna left, Gilbert did too at 11:00 p.m. The Skouzes lived on Regillis St behind the royal palace and the Carapanos’ town house was about four blocks away on Herodotou at Alopekis up in the Kolonaki neighbourhood on Mt. Lykabettos. A few doors down was the house of Carapanos and, as I saw a motor in front and that it was all illuminated, I simply went in, in order, as I put it, to be able to make his acquaintance. He is very nice but his wife is quite one of the ugliest women I have seen.6 The Perogle [Peroglou] (young) was there looking quite nice in a velvet dress with white inlay. She introduced me to some pretty girls and to a man who had been Venizelos’ secretary at the [Paris] conference [Nicolas Politis, nephew of Nikolaos Politis, Venizelos’ Foreign Minster, Ambassador to Paris, professor of international law]. We started talking politics, of course, and he pumped me on Italy and I him on Greece. Took my leave about 12 1/2. They told me to come in any Friday evening. (Friday, 16 December 1921) Gilbert’s forward approach to meeting important people is not too surprising. Indeed he was now making a concerted effort to meet the Italian, British and French ambassadors in Athens. Gilbert used the rich and powerful as a means to an end, such as sources of information or adventure. To that extent, he was a social climber, but he remained intellectually apart from Society: years later, he chose to be a cattle farmer in the back woods of Ontario. Gilbert’s time was so free because the Director of the Italian School had not yet arrived in Athens. Gilbert referred to Alessandro della Seta in his letters as the Worm or W because seta is the Italian word for ‘worm.’ Gilbert and his mother frequently used bilingual abbreviated puns and codes like this in their correspondence with each other, as they may well have in person too. 6 Alexander Carapanos 1873-1946, Deputy for Arta, Prefect of Corfu, Vice-Governor of Epirus 1914, Foreign Minister 1916, 1928-29, Minister Plenipotentiary to Rome 1925 & Brussels 1927, m. Marie -1967, daughter of Lazare Voulgaris & Adriana des comtes Roma from Zakynthos, of whom: Christina (1905-1942) m. Michel Melas, Ambassador of Greece; Dimitri m. Jeannine daughter of French Admiral Roussin. Lazare’s aunt Helen Voulgaris (c1805-1884) had married Nikolas Ghika (c1794-1871), perhaps a relative of the ‘Col. Ghika’ whom Gilbert met at the Carapanos’.

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The fruit is really excellent and I eat far too much. If the table and all its accessories were better, it would almost be as good as home; the material is certainly far superior. I must put a stop to gorging. ... Ask Ashby to tell you when Casson comes through, so you can send me, via him, anything you want. Levi has telegraphed that he is arriving tomorrow but still no news from the Worm. ... The objectionable part of my room is that it has no wardrobe. Mrs Parlanti says she thinks she can induce the W. to buy one: in any case have hung all my summer things in [Cattaneo]’s and use the Innovation [an elaborate trunk with drawers and hangers]. ... The Parlantis are frightfully impressed by my things, especially the Innovation. (Monday, 19 December 1921) Gilbert not only traveled in relative luxury compared to most students, but also soon after his arrival in Athens he had met the Italian Ambassador and the Director of the British School as well as several of the members of the best-connected families. He obviously impressed them favourably as more invitations were soon forthcoming. Gilbert wrote an account of the celebrations in Athens commemorating the first anniversary of the return of King Constantine from exile after Venizelos’ defeat, and mailed it to his old friend back in Rome, William Miller. ‘It is very funny to notice how nearly all the people I know are royalists and have exposed banners as large as the houses. … Crowds of people in town; a great number in national dress. I am very glad to have seen this show.’ (Monday 19, December 1921) It seems likely that most of the letters of introduction Gilbert brought from friends in Rome were addressed to royalists. It was at this point that the very wealthy Serpieris sent Gilbert an invitation delivered to the Italian School by motorcar to attend a late-evening party at their mansion celebrating the King’s anniversary. In an age when the royal stables were located nearby and automobiles were still a luxury, the arrival of an invitation sent by car created quite a stir at the School. Mme Serpieri later admitted that she should have warned Gilbert what he was getting into. The best was yet to come.

3. Imposing Ruins Gilbert enjoyed writing his account of the gala reception to which Mme Serpieri had invited him. I enclose the invitation card and ask you to consider whether, judging by what they said, I could have expected the reality. As the other night at dinner the Vicovaro told me to come in dinner jacket [tuxedo] I thought this would be similar and so went there at 10 o’clock in mine. The whole city was finely illuminated; festoons of bulbs being hung across the Stadiou road and so making it look like a kind of gallery of light. Well, [under the porte cochere] before the Serp. door [resembling the famous marble doorway in the Erechtheion] I saw a couple of Evzones of the [royal] guard but still I suspected nothing. When I got in, however, and the waiter handed me a check for my clothes and I saw the tails of a man just in front of me, I realized that it was a big show and that I had rather put my foot into it. Still I went up the [marble] stairs thinking of a polite speech of excuse for my hostess: the footman flung open the doors [into a cream-coloured two-storeyed entrance hall lined with etched glass panels] and the first person I saw, standing in the center of the room, was Tino!!!! [King Constantine 1868-1923] with a couple of stars on the lower left abdomen! (Tuesday, 20 December 1921) One of the richest families in Greece was actually Italian. Fernando Serpieri’s father, Giovanni Battista Serpieri (1832-1897), was an engineer from Rimini who had re-opened the ancient silver mines at Laurion on the coast of Attica. Their yellow Neo-Classical mansion on the corner of Panepistimiou and Edward Law Streets nearly opposite the Schliemann mansion is still standing in the heart of downtown Athens amid taller and more modern buildings, preserved because 19

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of the lavishness of its interior decoration. Its intact stained glass windows, magnificent fireplaces inlaid with coloured marbles, and allegorical wall paintings reflect the Italian tastes of 1884 when it was completed. (Christou, 2002) Despite conflicting aims in the foreign policies of the rival Greek and Italian governments, there was much social interaction at the highest levels of their respective societies. As Gilbert surveyed the crowd, he saw the adjoining ballroom with its coffered ceiling, gilded Ionic columns, and wall paintings of Cupids dancing and playing musical instruments. Despite his less than formal attire, the daughter of one of Athens’ oldest families introduced him to the local aristocracy. I nearly turned tail and fled when I saw everyone else in evening dress and covered with blobs and other things. Mrs Serpieri though did confess that she should have warned me that it was a gala occasion. The pretty Skew took me in tow fortunately (she is a really charming girl, one of the nicest I have ever met; I am quite in love with her) and introduced me to a lot of nice girls and other people. It was the most amusing function I have ever been at. My eye was at once caught by a very beautiful woman, who did not look aggressively as good as she should be. Very much painted, she was dressed in a wonderful creation of electric blue with gold embroidery. Her hair was a stage between the natural and peroxide blonde and on either side of it there stuck out this way aigretttes [plumes] of the same blue and she held an enormous, gigantic ostrich feather fan of the same color. I said to myself here is just what I want! Rather expensive but very amusing and ought not to be difficult. So off I go to find someone to tell me who she was & introduce me to her. Fortunately, I was cautious in opening the subject (i.e., who is the beautiful woman etc.) for I found out that she was the Romanian Princess,1 the wife of the Crown Prince!! I am afraid my little affair is put out of joint. By the way her Russian relation, the Grand Duke Dmitri2 Princess Elisabeth 1894-1956 was the daughter of Romanian King Ferdinand and the famous Queen Marie, who had successfully negotiated at Paris for an enormous increase in Romania’s territory. Princess Elisabeth among other affairs, before her marriage to Greek Crown Prince George in February 1921, had to abort a child by the father of English playwright Terrence Rattigan. Described as plain, self-absorbed, reckless and thoroughly unsuited to her role, she had recently suffered a miscarriage in Smyrna. Later she and King George would divorce before he returned to the throne in 1935. Gilbert’s accurate observation of her character was inferred either from her notoriously dramatic make-up or from what he had heard of her previous escapades. 2 Grand Duke Dmitri (1891-1942), whose young mother Grand Duchess Alexandra, the sister of 1

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was the only other man except myself who was in smoking [jacket]; good company, what! The other [Greek] princesses are very pretty, not as beautiful as the Romanian, but more human. The latter reminds me of certain film actresses. She was talking a great deal to Theotokis, the Minister of War, who does not seem an eagle but at the same time looks a gentlemanly sort of ass.3 It was rather a nuisance the way royalty simply littered the place. One could not go anywhere without falling into the arms of one or another. The Grand Duchess Helen4 must have been a very beautiful woman in her day and is still very pleasing to look at. The King was continually talking to a very striking woman. Old but very straight, with a wonderful mop of white curly hair (I thought it a wig but am assured it isn’t) with what in other days must have been a wonderful face. Very suitably dressed too in black and silver with a long train. To cut it short, she seemed to me a grande dame of the 17th century & most decorative where she stood with the King (she is quite as tall as I am). Later on she came into the ballroom where I was talking to the lovely Skew, everyone paying her almost as much deference as to royalty. She came up and spoke to the Skew & so I dropped discreetly into the background till she beckoned to me with her finger and introduced me to --- Lady Law!!!5 I have come to the conclusion that the two most imposing ruins of Athens are the Acropolis and Lady Law. I had an immense success as I must say I tried my best to be as attractive as possible. She took me and planted me on a sofa and talked. Even had I wanted to escape I couldn’t have; she has what one would King Constantine, had died when he was born. Many in his family had been assassinated and he himself was allegedly involved in the plot to kill Rasputin. For this crime, his cousin the Tsar had sent him into exile, which saved his life from the murderers of the Romanovs in Russia. He was given asylum in Britain and lived in Paris at this time. Gilbert was correct about their Russian relationship since Dmitri’s father, Grand Duke Paul, was a brother of Maria, Princess Elisabeth’s maternal grandmother. 3 Nikolaos Theotokis 1878-1922 was the son of a former Prime Minister of Greece and member of a very distinguished family from Corfu. Nikolaos was a former Ambassador to Berlin and his younger brother Ioannis was a courtier for Queen Sophia. 4 Grand Duchess Helen (1882-1957), the wife of Prince Nicholas and therefore Constantine’s sisterin-law. 5 Catherine Hatsopoulou (1862-1940), only daughter of Nicholas Hatsopoulo and half sister of General George Hadjianesti, and widow of Sir Edward Fitzgerald Law. An ingenious tax administrator for many countries, Law reduced taxes and war reparations from Greece after its defeat by Turkey in 1898. The street named after him in Athens runs beside the Serpieri mansion. Lady Law, sixteen years his junior, was beautiful, cultured, multi-lingual and had traveled extensively with her husband on his missions throughout Asia until his death in 1908. See Makrymichalou 1974.

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mildly describe as an imperious manner. She introduced me to a pretty niece of hers [Maria Koromila Stratou] (she stopped her in the middle of a dance, dragging her away from her partner) and told me she was a very good actress and wanted to get up some private theatricals in her house for her. They then started to talk about them and I learned that the difficulty was that there were four people in the play of whom one was, in private life, a Venizelist & I asked her niece, finally, how long the play took. ‘About 15 minutes.’ Then she turned to me. ‘Do you think a quarter of an hour of her acting compensates tolerating a Venizelist in my house for three hours?’ I cannot say I can solve the problem; perhaps you had better ask [Miller]. She then seized me and took me [through the drawing room and the Pompeian room into the Moorish dining room] to the buffet where she stuffed me, and herself, with caviar sandwiches. Finally, about 11 1/2, she went off, notwithstanding etiquette [i.e., leaving before the King], just saying goodbye to the King, and telling me to call on her on Wednesday. Among the other people to whom the dear Skew introduced me to was an elderly round man [Michael Lorenzo Kambanis from Mykonos] who has a wonderful collection of coins and has invited me to see them, and has also invited me to stay with him at Delos in the summer. Unfortunately I can’t remember his name but will get hold of it somehow. … Then the nice Skew introduced me to her cousins, (everybody here is some relation to everybody else) Miss Grippe [Grypari] & M. File.6 The girl was very amusing although plain & asked me to come and see her on Wednesday before going to the Lovely Ruin so that she can introduce me to her people & arrange some excursions together. Also I talked a good deal to a very amusing little Russian girl, whose remarks were often funny and caustic. In complesso [‘all in all’] an amusing and successful evening. The King, though, did not leave till 2 1/2 and then of course, everyone stampeded. Mme Serpieri told me that she was nearly always at home after 7 and would I come in. In all there were not very many people there, not more than about 100, pochi ma buoni [few but quality]. (Tuesday, 20 December 1921)) This may be Philon A. Philon who later served as Ambassador to Canada and France and Greek Foreign Minister, and was the father of Alexander Philon, recently Ambassador to Turkey and to the US, among many other nations.

6

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The next morning Gilbert went down to the Piraeus to meet his fellow student, Doro Levi, who would decades later become the most famous Italian archaeologist in Greece. The boat arrived this morning at 10 with Queen Olga [the mother of King Constantine] on board & nearly all the royalty came to fetch her; so I had the spectacle of the Greek royalty twice over within a few hours. The King is certainly a very fine looking man. Levi arrived and got him home all right and then, after lunch, took him out and showed him the sites. Then changed and went to the Perogle [Peroglou]. What a change from last night. The Carapanos female was there (ye gods, what a hideous woman she is). She talked a great deal to me and said she would take me to Aigina in her yacht. Met a Col. Ghika, the Romanian military attaché, who is violently Venizelist. The whole atmosphere was charged with it. Ghika, I think, is a brother or a nephew of the London one.7 There was a very nice general who, being Venist, had been silurated [torpedoed]. Said that Theotokis had been made Minister of War so that the king might have a preponderating influence over the W[ar] O[ffice] both because he is a civilian and also because he is very intimate with the royal family. The young Perogle [daughter] was very much amused when I told her of my social life; she said though that I will have to be very careful if I want to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Certainly of the two, the royalists have the chic and the Venizelists the brains; but on the whole I prefer the chic. … The Perogle told me that there is every probability that I will find the King when I call on the Ruin [Lady Law], so will have to put on my best clothes. This explains why at the Carapanos Friday none are in smoking [jacket] even; no danger of royalty calling there! I am told that the king’s visit last night had been announced to Serpieri at very short notice. I am convinced that he [Serpieri] had invited the mountain [Italian Ambassador Montagna] and had to countermand him at the last moment. The Count de Billy is the French minister. He was at the Carapanos the other evening, but I didn’t realize it. Next time I will ask to be introduced. (Friday, 23 December 1921) Possibly Reserve Captain Prince Matila Costiescu Ghika (1881-1965), assistant to the Romanian Military Attaché in London after the war and who had married the daughter of an Irish diplomat in 1918. The Ghika family was very extensive with many branches.

7

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Gilbert was fully knowledgeable about royal lineages and clearly felt at ease with the royalists, who had closer links to his Italian acquaintances than did the Venizelists, but as an outsider he was objective enough to be able to see the Venizelist point of view as well. The French in particular detested King Constantine for not helping them during the war and persuaded Britain and Italy to forbid their diplomats from interacting directly with King Constantine; even the Americans, who had no reason not to recognize him, were swayed by the Allied threat to intervene in Latin America if the US ‘intervened’ in the Near East by recognizing him. So the King and his family were effectively isolated from diplomatic circles, and relied upon informal conversations with visiting foreigners to explain their point of view. Ironically, in a sense the Western Allies were ‘ostracizing’ the King of the Hellenes, whose ancestors had invented ostracism, for being in Greece. The next day papers and conversations were full of news of the shooting of Admiral Paul Koundouriotis, former Regent and prominent Venizelist. Some discharged soldiers, disgruntled at not receiving foreign relief funds, shot three people at the Pensions Office, including the Admiral. Gilbert immediately investigated and analyzed it clearly. A great shock. I do not think the government is behind it as all those government people I have talked to think that politically it is a very serious blow to them as he is very popular with everyone. Then went to Lady Law’s who was amusing. Met Mrs Baltaje [Baltazzi], the wife of the foreign minister, then Mme (quite pretty) Coromillas [Koromilas]. He is the nephew of the Rome man.8 He has studied almost everything and now edits a rather violent government paper. Told me at one time he had taken up reading Greek history and had studied some of the Latin islands but after seeing Miller’s book [Essays on the Latin Orient] was very much discouraged as he considered it so good and well-written that he felt one must give one’s whole life to it. Tell him so as he will be pleased. Then met the architect in charge of the Acropolis works [Nikolaos Balanos]. He wants to lift up [re-erect] all the columns on north side of Parthenon. He introduced me to the incest (N.B. Philadelpheus = lover of his brother = incest: see!) who is the Ephor of the antiquities of Attica. Talked shop of various sorts. Speaks Italian rather worse than my Lambros Koromilas, Greek royalist ambassador to Rome, whose wife was Anne Ewing, the daughter of Senator Francis M. Cockrell of Missouri.

8

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French. Told me when I wanted anything to look him up. Said he was going to give some lectures on the Italian towns. Then met M & Mme Stratos.9 He is a very evident politician; ask Miller about him. … She is quite nice and plump; rather a Lugli type & has a pretty daughter whom I met at the ball the other evening.10 Next day Thursday I went out with Levi. I like him rather better as I am so tired of Cattaneo who has rather a poor time at meals. Then went to see the Capsule at the F[oreign] O[ffice] The porter must think I am a dip[lomat] on a secret mission; he is so respectful. Met there also the File, a young man I met at the ball and whom I have been meeting ever since. No one at the F.O. could give me the address of the Minister [George Baltazzi, then traveling in France and England with Prime Minister Gounaris trying to negotiate a loan] which I wanted to know in order to leave cards. They knew the house but not the number; so like dips.11 Found it out this afternoon and left cards there and on the Streit.12 Then went to the Arch. Society to hear a lecture of the Incest on Rhodes. The King was there and a great crowd and could not understand everything said but gathered the sense all right. Some was rather tendentious and he dismissed the period of the Knights by saying that the [Knights’] hospital had been restored by the Italian propaganda and showed one slide of it, taken from an old print. After the lecture went and called on the Serpieris. Usual people there: the Skews, Grippes, Catherinepules, and a few others. I will send them flowers for [western, i.e., Gregorian] Christmas as they are Catholics. In the evening developed two photos I had taken which I will send you. This morning have been with the Grippe to see Svoronos who is very nice, but quite quite cracked.13 The [Numismatic] Museum though is lovely. After lunch at last your letter of 17th with the Cockrell letter, Nikolaos Stratos, leader of the opposition National Reformist Party, and his wife Maria Koromila Stratou. 10 Eighteen year old Dora Stratou, later founder of the eponymous dance company. 11 This comment might reflect his father’s military disdain for his fellow diplomats while he was posted as the first Italian Military Attaché in London. 12 George Streit (1868-1948), Professor of International Law and a former Greek Ambassador to Vienna and Constantinople and Foreign Minister, was a close friend and influential adviser of King Constantine. Streit accompanied Constantine in exile in Switzerland as his personal secretary. His wife was Julia Karatheodori. 13 Ioannes N. Svoronos, Director of the National Numismatic Museum of Athens. 9

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which of course is useless now.14 … Am off now to a lecture at the Ethnological Museum by a man Rados,15 a friend of Miller, then will call on Lady Law. Svoronos said that the present government naturally does not give him any money. This evening will call on Carapanos and hear about the attempt on Koundouriotis. (Friday, 23 December 1921) At the Venizelist Carapanos home were some of the generals who had been dismissed and replaced by royalist officers. One of them told Gilbert that he had talked to Sterghiades [Greek Governor General in Smyrna] about the situation, and S. had said that if the King went, it would have a disastrous effect on the morale of the army and, if he came to power, he would try to avoid it at any cost. A lot of Gens have been silurated [torpedoed] this week. (Sunday 25, December 1921) The French Ambassador, Count Robert de Billy, was departing from Athens for good. Royalists regarded the French generally as pro-Republican and therefore pro-Venizelos and anti-Constantine. The Count himself, however, blamed Venizelos for losing the elections because of tyranny and neglect inside Greece during his Premiership, and personally favored renewing relations with the King. ‘He was very in with the Venizelists, as he had been at Salonika with them and the Grippes said that he had been very provocative recently.’ (Friday, 30 December 1921) Gilbert said goodbye to the Serpieris who were leaving for France. At the Foreign Office Gilbert obtained information for his friend William Miller in an attempt to clarify the legal status of the semi-independent republic of Mt. Athos. Gilbert already understood enough international law to know that a legal protocol is a supplement or amendment to a treaty. It is not correct that Mt Athos has been completely annexed to Greece or that Veniz. did not raise the question in Paris. As you see Greece confirms all the privileges that were given Mt Athos by the Treaty of Berlin [in 1878]. This is a treaty signed 20 August 1920 and annexed to the General Treaty of Sèvres, but it is a regular treaty & not a protocol. At least the Presumably a letter of introduction from Mrs. Anne Cockrell Koromilas, wife of the Greek ambassador to Rome. 15 Constantine N. Rados, Greek naval historian and Director of the Historical and Ethnological Museum. 14

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opinions of the F.O. are divided on this point but most of the people I have talked to seem to consider it a treaty and not a protocol. As for Himara [an Albanian seaport largely inhabited by Greeks], the Albanian frontier has been completely closed and not even Carapanos [a Deputy for Arta in northwest Greece] has any news. (Friday 30, December 1921) Gilbert also met the Italian Military Attaché in Athens, Fernando Perrone di San Martino, who had known Gilbert’s father in London but not of his death at the British Front during the war.16 Despite feeling ill, the Princess di Vicovaro invited Gilbert for dinner on western New Year’s Day so that he would not be alone. Prof. George Soteriades of the University of Athens told Gilbert that the government was about to purge the University of all the Venizelists and that the Royalist and Venizelist students occasionally came to blows. Gen. George Mavromichalis had been suspected of being royalist under Venizelos but was now sacked and passed into the Venizelist camp. Gen. Panagiotis Danglis took over as leader of the Venizelist liberal party after the self-imposed exile of Venizelos and may have been threatened with assassination. The Epistrats (Reservist)17 & the Political Sillogi [Associations], on whom the government chiefly depends, and whom it has encouraged in every way, are quite out of hand. They have brought pressure to bear on Theotokis (the War Minister) (I knew he was the minister in Berlin) to have a certain number of generals recalled amongst whom Gen Manetta, a descendant of Kolokotroni. But it appears that [War Minister] Theotokis will try to bring them back through the back door, [i.e., despite the pro-royalist Reserves’ pressure].’ (Friday, 30 December 1921) What is remarkable is Gilbert’s mature interaction with high society. While he arrived in Athens with connections in hand, it was his own ability to impress and be treated as an equal that facilitated and encouraged such interaction, despite his being only twenty-one years old. The extraordinary social 16 Perrone had been equerry to the Duchess of Aosta in London when Gilbert’s father served as the first Italian Military Attaché there before the war. 17 When the Allies had forced King Constantine to demobilize the Greek army in 1916, many of the royalist soldiers joined the epistratoi, non-legal paramilitary reservists. They were organized and led though not always controlled by royalist officers, such as Gen. Metaxas, and were used to intimidate and terrorize their political opponents, not unlike Mussolini’s paramilitary Black Shirts.

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beginning to Gilbert’s sojourn in Greece also affected the way he was perceived by his fellow archaeology students. Many years later, after relations had cooled between them, Doro Levi considered Gilbert a ‘dandy’ who ‘loved to vaunt his high-placed friends,’18 but Levi had neither the access to nor the predilection for such social strata. From Gilbert’s point of view, however, having been raised in a military-diplomatic family, he was at ease in the company of international officials older than himself, and eagerly sought more intellectual stimulation than was apparent in archaeological circles around Athens. Indeed, interacting with local society was an entertaining diversion and indirectly would soon provide a small income, but within a year several of the individuals he had met would be charged with high treason and three executed as traitors to their country. Even sooner, Gilbert would learn about an archaeological conspiracy in a ‘marble sepulchre.’

18

According to a personal email to me from Prof. Vincenzo LaRosa in 2000.

4. Marble Sepulchres The Italian School of Archaeology at Athens was established in 1909 as the sixth of the ‘foreign schools’ in Athens. Italian archaeological activities overseas were financed primarily by the Italian Government. The rationale for these grants was the implementation of Italian foreign policy, which was often determined in reaction to the perceived successes of her European rivals, such as France.1 The Italian government used ‘peaceful penetration’ by supporting or encouraging schools, archaeology and investments rather than armed aggression, in order to increase Italian influence around the Mediterranean. Forewarned of the arrival of their Director, Alessandro della Seta, the students went down to Piraeus to meet him on Wednesday, 28 December. He told Gilbert that he had spoken a lot about him with Mrs Arthur Strong, the Assistant Director of the British School in Rome, the pre-eminent Roman art historian whom Gilbert had already met and impressed. Gilbert’s revelation to della Seta that by himself he had already met the Italian Ambassador and the Princess di Vicovaro did not sit well with the School’s Director. The Worm [della Seta] gave me your letter at once and treated me very decently; said he was so sorry that he had not seen you. So you see you judged him a little hardly. He had a terrible night in the boat, he told us. Next morning (Thursday) he had us up and lectured us properly. I had 1 The French School was the first established in Greece, in 1846. Its rival was the German School, which, even before it was officially established, was allotted Olympia as its main archaeological site in Greece in 1874, much to the consternation of the French, who did not obtain Delphi until 1891. During the war, the members of the French School played an active role in the Archaeological Service of the Allies’ Eastern Army at Salonika, supporting Venizelos’ pro-Allied government there. Even after the war, the School’s new Director, Charles Picard, fresh from Salonika, continued the School’s active ‘intellectual propaganda’ such as offering lectures and courses in French, using archaeology to give it legitimacy. (Valenti 2004)

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told him that I had met the Mountains [Montagnas] at the Vicovaro’s; he does not know her and I don’t think he quite liked it. Told us therefore, looking hard at me, not to waste too much time with the vita mondana [life in Society]. He then gave me to study, as well as the big works in the agora, the basis of the statue of Nemesis at Rhamnous with its reliefs. (Friday, 30 December 1921) Gilbert’s assigned project for the academic year was to prepare a public lecture about the ancient Roman marketplace in Athens, now called the Roman Agora, a topic emphasizing ancient Rome’s heritage in Greece. (Figure 3) The remains were only partly visible at that time, but it was a fairly straightforward topic to assign a student.2 The sculpted base of the cult statue of Nemesis at Rhamnous in Attica, however, was much more problematic: although a description by the ancient traveler Pausanias survives of the sculpted figures around the base, these had been so thoroughly destroyed by early Christian zealots that identification of the hundreds of fragments proved challenging, and would in fact eventually require many more decades of research. So della Seta’s choice of this added assignment would have been intended to keep Gilbert occupied and away from the ‘vita mondana.’ It didn’t. Gilbert accepted an invitation for dinner and bridge at the Carapanos,’ the Deputy from Arta. It was their last Friday as they are leaving for the country for the feste [for Greek Christmas]. A lot of people there. Talked politics. Was introduced to the French consul … Then met Soteriadis who remembered me and inquired tenderly after M[iller].3 … There is on foot a movement of the government for a radical ‘epuratio’ [purging] of the University [of Athens]: that is to say, in theory the elimination of all the old and incompetent; in practice, all the Venizelists &, of course, the Sote is expecting to be epurated at any moment. Anyhow the royalist stud. are agitating for the epuration and the Veniz. are agitating to reinstate those already epurated, so they come to blows occasionally. … On the whole though these Veniz. are not very exciting except politically, when they all start talking at once at breakneck speed. … Sorry you did not

2 3

Boissonnas 1920a: Pl.33. See Soteriadis 1918.

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meet Baltazzi [when he was in Rome], as I know his wife; (‘una delle meglio familie’ [‘one of the best families’] as the [Princess di Vicovaro] says).4 … Passing most of these perfectly lovely days taking photographs and printing and developing. I shall be quite a photographer when I get home. It is perfectly killing what I am going to tell you now so don’t be shocked. Levi has been complaining that he needed to exercise his ‘little brother’ & that the there are no ‘grues’ [hookers] here. And now he finds out that he has clap!!! [gonorrhea] His morale is in his boots as he got it in Trieste from a woman who is not a cocotte [slut] and whom he would have sworn was immune. I intend being very careful here. … Levi very down about having clap; is burying himself already with syphilis and much worse things. I rather like him for it; didn’t think he had it in him.5 Yes we have a manservant, a Greek, who fortunately does not speak Italian. He is aggressively Catholic, & [con]verts here are, as in most places, very fanatical.’ (Tuesday, 3 January 1922) Gilbert’s letters reveal that he had a remarkably frank relationship with his mother. The fact that they had always communicated in English formed an extra bond between them since they would not have been understood by most of the people around them in Rome or Athens, especially the servants. Theirs was a world apart, a cocoon from inside which they observed those around them, good training for Gilbert’s stay in Greece, especially as a journalist. Although Gilbert had countless acquaintances, he had neither brothers nor sisters nor any close friends from his school days, and so at this stage of his life his mother was his closest if not only confidante. While Greece was still on the Eastern Julian calendar, the Italians in Greece celebrated New Year’s Day in accordance with the western Gregorian calendar, George Baltazzi (1866-1922) born in Smyrna, graduated in law from the University of Athens, Foreign Minister in royalist governments, married Chariclée Mavrocordato (1866-1926), whose father served as a Greek Ambassador and whose grandfather served several times as Prime Minister. 5 Doro Levi recuperating from his affliction appended a thank you note for Gilbert’s mother, who had been compassionate: ‘My Dear Mrs Bagnani, Please accept the expression of my deepest gratitude for the kind interest that you have taken at my disease. I assure you, in my condition it was quite encouraging to know that far away there was someone sympathizing with me, when near me I found only cruel people who had the heart of laughing at my disgrace! I appreciate very much also your advice of consulting a doctor. … All the same, I shall still keep myself abstemious; experience must be paid. I send you my best regards, Yours Doro Levi’ (Thursday, 26 January 1922) 4

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and della Seta insisted the students attend a New Year’s reception at the Italian Embassy. Tailcoat etc. at 11 o’clock’ (I like the way they polished off their compatriots so that they don’t interfere with their afternoon engagements.) Awful set of people; felt so happy I didn’t know any of them, but Cat. was in his element. … The usual dreadful speeches. Everybody wishing ‘His Excellency’ a happy New Year! When the last speaker advanced, Mrs Mount [Montagna], who stood behind me, burbled ‘yet another.’ … The Worm presented us to a few Leg[ation] secretaries, but they also were rather uninteresting; in fact I was very glad that I did not know anyone at that party. Then we walked home with the Worm. It was a lovely day and a lot of people were in the gardens. I was very glad because I met at once two people I knew: General Mavromichali6 and M. & Mme Manetta.7 I hope the Worm was impressed. (Tuesday, 3 January 1922) Here Gilbert is observing his own compatriots at a distance with humour and rhetorical flourishes. In addition, for young Gilbert it was quite acceptable to be a snob. He had undoubtedly been a precocious boy and his prodigious intelligence and memory may have isolated him from fellow students who could be exclusionary, especially at the private Gibb’s School he attended in London, where he would have been not only Italian in an English environment but also an outsider, and treated like one. Moreover, since he had a youthful impatience for people of less intelligence than himself, and was not reluctant to display it, he would not have endeared himself to his fellow pupils. In later life he used to claim that he learned English at the Court of St. James, referring to his high-born classmates in London, but it might not have been a pleasant learning experience and would have bonded him more closely to his parents. Bernard Ashmole was an Oxford student whom Gilbert had befriended perhaps first in Rome where they both knew Mrs Strong, and whom Gilbert refers to as the Mole. As a married couple Bernard and his wife Dorothy had been forced to live outside the British School at Athens until violent demonstrations during the elections of late 1920 persuaded the School administrators finally to Probably Lt. Gen. Periklis Pierrakos Mavromichalis (1863-1938), an 1896 Olympic fencing champion. 7 Lt. Gen. Theodoros Manetas (1881-1947) was expelled from the army with the return of the royalists to power in November 1920. 6

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allow women and married students to live inside the School’s compound. On his brief return visit to Athens at the end of 1921, Ashmole brought Gilbert a letter from his mother. Invited to dinner at the British School, Gilbert commented that the ‘B. School is very nice and comfortable but I do not think they eat as well as we do.’ (Friday 30, January 1922) Athens was and is like a funnel for archaeologists from everywhere who go there to study their particular field of interest and who end up meeting other scholars from around the world also interested in the very same fields. Thus for archaeologists generally, modern nationalist borders lose their meaning, either bothersome or insignificant in the pursuit of knowledge, while old institutional or personal rivalries within borders could sometimes play a greater role. Indeed Classical archaeologists might be united by their love of learning and the heritage of Greece, but the old Oxford-Cambridge rivalry could destroy careers, and soon would again. The Cambridge-educated Director of the British School, Alan Wace, was a respected archaeologist interested in Greek prehistory and ethnography. As an administrator with a combative personality, however, he was at loggerheads with his own Oxford-educated Assistant Director, Stanley Casson [1889-1944]. Ashmole told Gilbert that ‘the Wace - Casson feud was very serious and that Wace now has practically a mania di persecuzione; everything that happens is Casson’s fault or Casson is behind it. Casson has a very strong body in his favor on the Committee [governing the British School] and so W can do nothing.’8 (Tuesday, 3 January 1922) In fact Wace had complained so frequently about his colleagues, especially his Assistant Directors, that the Managing Committee was indeed deciding to replace him; his paranoia was both justified and selffulfilling. Ashmole returned to Rome with a letter and cigarettes for Gilbert’s mother. On Monday [2 Jan 1922] the Worm [della Seta] began his course and was very dull. He dealt all about the classical ateliers [workshops] who deal about Athens; all this I knew before. But he may become more interesting later on. (Tuesday, 3 January 1922)

By 24 February, 1922, Wace wrote to Sir Arthur Evans to ask for help in applying for jobs back in England after his Directorship ceased, according to Momigliano, 1999: 131. So, contrary to the oftrepeated accusation that Evans engineered Wace’s removal, as in MacGillivray, 2000: 286, Wace knew that he was to be terminated long before the academic feud erupted between Wace and Evans in 1924.

8

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Gilbert wanted to meet Honorary Brig. Gen. Edward Hoare Nairne, who was the British Military Attaché in Athens (1919-1923). He and his wife Lilias invited Gilbert to join them for dinner at the Grand Bretagne Hotel to celebrate Greek Christmas. ‘He is a nice tall thin man, very English. She is very different, very much the Brit Country family type, not a bit pretty or chic or amusing.’ (Monday 9, January 1922) The dinner conversation lacked any intellectual or political stimulation for Gilbert. Later by chance, Gilbert met Hoare Nairne trying to find a taxi to Piraeus. ‘As he speaks no word of Greek, I had to help him. Told me ‘They made me milit. attaché without any qualifications for the job.’ He did not know French and had to start studying it and confessed he is now too old [52].’ (Monday 9, January 1922) In other words, Britain’s military attaché responsible for visiting and assessing the Greek forces in Turkey understood neither French, Greek nor, presumably, Turkish. Not surprisingly, his report on the state of the Greek troops in Anatolia is mostly visual or based on what he was told, reflecting his linguistic limitations. (Llewellyn Smith 1998: 372-3) Despite pouring rain and his better judgment, Gilbert was obliged to join in a hike up Mt Hymettos, the small mountain range overlooking Athens from the east, to the monasteries of Asteri at the top and Kaisariani in the foothills. His companions were the Venizelist Carapanos and his wife, Prof. Soteriades, and Marietta Peroglou. It is remarkable that young Gilbert was able to elicit and record the private views of a leading politician regarding the qualities of one of his political opponents, Nikolaos Stratos, who in fact soon would briefly become Prime Minister. I must say the views were perfectly lovely and, as it had just been raining, it was very clear. At first it was not very cold but of course that increased as one went up. Sot was at the head looking and walking like an old and hoary goat, then in the middle came the ladies, while Carap & I brought up their rear talking politics of course. He is a nice & interesting man, quite amusing in a quiet way and on the whole I think very sound. One of the curious things here is the way all the women are usually so much more violent than the men on the political squabbles. He told me he does not think that Stratos will become Pr. Min. Said that his (Str’s) wife [Maria Koromila Stratou], the niece of Lady Law and whom I met chez elle, was a great drawback and advertised him under a not too honorable light. On the other hand said he was the best debater and parliamentarian in Greece and a clever administrator. However

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these were qualities for a subordinate and not for a leader. (Monday, 9 January 1922) Gilbert wanted to catch Ashmole in the National Museum just before he left Athens for Rome. I went to the M[useum] at about 3 & asked the custodian whether he had seen him. He told me he was in the Mycenae room. I wondered rather what on earth he was doing there but went trustingly forward. But in a little room off the big room I stumbled across Wace who was lecturing to a joint Anglo-American class. … Luck would have it that he spied me directly and so of course I could not escape. I was annoyed as, of course, by the time he had finished Ashmole had left the museum. The lecture was quite interesting but I take no great stock in that sort of [prehistoric] stuff and I was most annoyed at missing the Mole. I was able however to take a good general survey of the Anglo Americans. Of Angles there is, as a matter of fact, only one & of the other two, one is a Dane & the other a Swede whose real name is Schmeedt but who of course is called plain Smith. The English man is very untidy and archaeological looking. Casson, like a true Oxford man, says that he is a typical product of Cambridge (he says that all [Sir William] Ridgeway’s pupils never brush their hair). (Friday, 13 January 1922) Despite the popular appeal of the spectacular artifacts from the recently revealed Bronze Age cultures of Mycenae and Minoan Crete, Gilbert at this early stage in his Greek sojourn expressed little interest in any prehistoric period, i.e., before writing; he preferred historical contexts more intimately understood through written documents. It is noteworthy that despite his young age Gilbert preferred to socialize not with the other students at the other foreign schools but rather with the Directors and Assistant Directors, just as he had done at the British School in Rome. Wace shared his interest in prehistoric Greece with Carl Blegen, the then Assistant Director of the American School. Wace regularly offered lectures to Blegen’s American students in the National Museum and collaborated with Blegen on their Bronze Age excavations at Mycenae, Korakou (near Corinth) and Zygouries (south of Corinth). Working together they discerned and arranged a chronological sequence for the Early, Middle, and Late Helladic pottery found on mainland Greece, roughly synchronous with Sir Arthur Evans’ arrangement

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of Early, Middle and Late Minoan pottery on Crete. (Fappas 2015) Blegen had just published an article on the stratified pottery from his excavations at Korakou and finished his first season excavating at Zygouries; both of these sites in the region of Corinth had produced so much pottery that Blegen was still studying it at Corinth. The Americans are a weedy uninteresting lot I would not be found dead with. After Wace had done, [Carl] Blegen, the American Casson, [i.e., Assistant Director] asked me if I could come up to tea with him on Tuesday as he wanted to talk to me about some Italian publications they need. I accepted but I was sorry, as when I got back I found a note from the Catherinepule [possibly Katerinopoulou] asking me also for tea on the day following (Tuesday). Anyhow I decided to do both. Blegen is a very nice fellow for an American and must be a much nicer character than Casson. How he can stand being with [American School Director] Bert Hodge Hill I cannot understand.9 … Blegen is, as I have said, a very decent sort of chap. He gave me quite a good tea and we need things for our library from the Yanks. Their school is a smaller reproduction of the Roman [Academy] one, marble staircase and piano no one can play. They are white sepulchres. (Friday, 13 January 1922) To Gilbert the American School’s building was the archaeological equivalent of the academic ivory tower, figuratively isolated from the real world and appropriately associated with the underworld as a marble sepulchre. Further, he reveals his unspoken feeling that some archaeologists were living and working in a tomb devoid of intellectual life, as exemplified by the display of a piano that no one could play. At this stage in Gilbert’s experience, he liked the few Americans he had encountered but was in general dismissive of them. This attitude might reflect an English or even general European disdain for the nouveau American upstarts.10

For a recent account of the humanitarian aid arranged by Hill for Greeks, see Daleziou 2013. After emigrating from Mussolini’s Italy in 1936 and living and teaching in Canada after World War II, Gilbert wrote during a return visit to Italy in 1951 that he did not know how he could ever have stayed working with his fellow Italians. 9 10

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I went on Monday night to hear the Kotopouli in Iphigenia, 11 but Goethe’s not Euripides! I must say she does it better than I did in my youth. When I told Mme Carapanos that I had acted that part she would not believe me; if you can find the photo I wish you’d send it out. (Friday 13, January 1922) Casson came round in the morning & brought me your letter & the papers. … They are very casual here about the distribution of the post. Parlanti tells me that all the old Veniz. postini, [postmen] who knew all the people and took an interest in them, have been turned out and sent to the front and their places taken by royalist incompetents. I am getting on very well with the Worm, whom I have quite trained to eat out of my hand. I think he finds me very useful in connection with the British and American schools. I quite like him and he likes me. Also Levi gets on well with him but he is more timid and doesn’t check him quite as aggressively as I do. On the other hand Cat. is very much out of it, especially as he has not good enough sense to hide his ignorance. The worm treats him rather as the innocuous idiot, but sometimes his answers enrage him, e.g., this morning on the Acropolis he (Worm) asked him (Cat) ‘to what epoch do you think this capital belongs?’ ‘The classic epoch.’ I am getting very tired of him and Levi even more so. (Friday, 13 January 1922) Yesterday I lunched with Casson at the [British] School. We eat much better at our place, although of course the [Italian] mise-en-scene leaves much to be desired. Our dining room has hardly any furniture in it and the Worm is not buying any as he hopes to get some from the royal palaces that were. … Casson is very amusing but I shouldn’t like to have him as my subordinate. Like all true Englishmen who profess violent labor or radical ideas, he is an awful snob. He turned up his nose frightfully at the students of the school in Rome; said they seem to have been educated at Clapham [at that time considered very ‘common’]. Went out with him after lunch and went to antiquaries’ shops where he bought what seemed to be very expensive antiques. Do try and send me either by Metaxa [the wife and daughters of General Ioannis Metaxas 11 Marika Kotopouli (1887-1954) was a famous Greek actress particularly popular with the royalists while a rival actress was favoured by the Venizelists.

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were still living in Florence after his return from exile there] or the Consulta [Italian Foreign Office] some of my small tins of tobacco as here it is fearfully expensive. (Friday, 13 January 1922) The Bagnanis both knew Gen. Metaxas and his family through their sojourn in Florence while in exile, and were not above imposing on their acquaintances or the Italian Foreign Ministry for help in transporting small parcels. Kalopothakis invited Gilbert over for tea: good tea but uninteresting people; all Americans. There was an American woman of a certain age there who, I think, is studying archaeology; she is stone deaf and holds up a kind of box at you into which you are supposed to speak. Of course I was scared stiff and could hardly speak a word.12 The most human person there was a divine who is the rector of the Church at Newport; evidently he takes good care of the rich summer souls and lets the poor winter ones go to hell their own way. He told me he had been here a week and had seen everything there was in his guidebook. I wonder what guidebook he used? (Friday, 20 January 1922) Gilbert’s astute observation about the rector reveals his cynical sense of humour as well as his contempt for guidebooks he regarded as below standard. Since the British School had been founded in 1886, the collection of books in its Penrose Library was substantially more useful to Gilbert than the comparatively meagre holdings of the Italian School, founded only in 1909. Indeed the Penrose Library had its own unique cataloguing system based upon its specialized collections. And just up a few steps and down the hallway was the Finlay Library, where over late afternoon tea the latest discoveries and archaeological gossip could be discussed surrounded by more walls covered with shelves of books, a rarified academic atmosphere which suited Gilbert. I occasionally have gone up to B[ritish] School to work as they have all the books and heat the library. They also allow smoking which the worm, non-smoking himself, does not allow at all. He is very much shocked 12 Alice Leslie Walker (later Cosmopoulos) (1885-1954) spent her life researching prehistoric Corinthian pottery at her own expense but, like her mentor, Bert Hodge Hill, was never able to publish. An urban legend in modern Corinth, she was a sad figure. A reaction to quinine taken for malaria worsened her hearing loss, and necessitated the ear trumpet. For an online biography of her, see See Lavezzi 2004: www.brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/bios/Walker_Alice.pdf

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at the way Levy and I always take tea in the afternoon. The other day he wanted to introduce us to some of the Chiefs of the Jesuits here in Greece who had come to call and sent us word to come to his study. We had just begun tea and we did not go until we had finished. I think my pipe also shocks him somewhat. Who cares? His lessons sometimes are interesting but I usually disagree from him. He does not believe in practically anything Anti has written. I wonder if you have seen him yet. I am going to try and get off with this post letters to Lugli, Mariani & Halbherr [the leading Italian archaeologists with whom Gilbert had working relationships]. They must be furious that I have not yet written. (Friday, 20 January 1922) Gilbert’s self-confidence was boundless, enabling him to argue with his instructors: he was probably brighter than they were and he knew it. On the other hand, he could scarcely tolerate the painfully slow-witted. Alexandros Philadelpheus (1866-1955) was a painter and archaeologist who began excavations at Nikopolis in western Greece in 1913, soon after it became Greek territory. As the Ephor of Attica, he published the Monuments of Athens, which came out in many editions. Gilbert could not resist referring to him as the ‘Incest’ because his surname literally means sibling-lover.13 At one of his teas, Casson told Gilbert that ‘the incest’s wife … is divorced from her first husband who, one day, found the incest hiding in a cupboard in his house & hauled him out saying ‘Now you can take my wife as I intend to divorce her, & so next time I will be the man in the cupboard.’ But, like most of Casson’s stories, to be taken with a grain of salt.’14 (Thursday, 26 January 1922) Gilbert met Anastasios Orlandos, ‘the man who wrote the article on fountains on Greek vases which upset my tesi di laurea [degree thesis] so frightfully.’15 (Thursday 26, January 1922) Orlandos was Professor of Architecture at the Athens Polytechnic from 1920 with such an interest in the Byzantine architecture of churches in Greece that he began to design modern Byzantine-inspired churches. A draught of Gilbert’s undergraduate thesis on Originating from Philadelphia in Asia Minor, the Nikolaides family had moved to Corfu and Athens and changed their name to commemorate their place of origin. The son of an historian, Themistocles Philadelpheus, Alexandros would be honoured years later for suggesting the use of the sun’s rays to light the Olympic torch for the Berlin Games in 1936. 14 Actually Victoria Valassis was Philadelpheus’ only wife after she was divorced from her first husband but the colourful story of the cupboard is doubted by their grandson, Alexandros Philadelpheus, who was most generous sharing information about his grandfather with the writer. 15 Orlandos 1916. 13

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Fountains, presumably submitted in 1921, is sixteen single-spaced legal-size pages in length, but his bibliography in the footnotes cited nothing published after 1910. Since even an inadequate book distribution system would not have been functioning during the war, Gilbert was evidently unaware not only of Orlandos’ 1916 article in a Greek journal but also of any subsequent citation of it. His cursory treatment of fountains portrayed on paintings in only two paragraphs stands in stark contrast to Orlandos’ article employing thirtyfour illustrations to arrange the depictions of Greek fountains into various types. Such an omission left Gilbert’s undergraduate thesis readily exposed to serious criticism by his professors. Gilbert’s oversight was obviously no fault of Orlandos, and Gilbert grew to like him. I have started to work pretty hard for my lecture as it is to come off on the 15 of Feb (new style [i.e., western]). On Wednesday went all round the Acrop. walls with the chief & colleagues. Dropped my pipe over the wall but I was fortunate enough to be able to recover it intact, save for a slight scratch. A glorious scar; not every pipe has fallen over the walls of the Acropolis. The day was lovely, not a breath of wind, which is very rare event at that height. In the afternoon went to the [Roman] agora with Parlanti to take some difficult photos. We took 23 & spent an hour over it. When I got back I found P[arlanti] looking very glum, & he told me that, as he is using light plates for traveling, he had made a mistake & had taken 3 chassis that had not been loaded!!! (Thursday, 26 January 1922) On Thursday Levi & I walked to Eleusis. We had carefully found out that on that day Cat. was engaged and so we invited him; otherwise it would seem rather tough not asking him. We also avoided going to a Greek lecture the chief wanted to oblige us to hear. So we killed several birds with one stone. The chief [della Seta] for some reason or other did his best to dissuade us from going. Said that the road was uninteresting, that it was very long, and so forth, but we paid no attention. It was a perfectly glorious day and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We started from here at about 1/4 past nine. Rather late but it is only 22 Kil and we were in no hurry. We took a lot of photos which I will not fail to send you when I have printed them all. The road is beautiful and there are many interesting monuments all along the road, including a temple of Aphrodite, of very early date and some curious lakes above the sea level

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which you can get the M[iller]s to describe to you. The monastery of Daphni is one of the finest things near here. Had lunch by the roadside, under an olive, with flowers all around us and peaches and almonds in bloom, & in shirtsleeves, for it was quite hot. Wonderful! Got to Eleusis at 2 3/4 and so had plenty of time to see the ruins which are fine and impressive. (Friday, 3 February 1922) Excavated by Konstantine Kourouniotis for the Greek Archaeological Society in Athens, the Sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis was unlike any other known in Greece: instead of a traditional temple to house the image of the deity, the primary structure was an enormous many-pillared hall designed to accommodate hundreds of devotees inside. Every year around September, a procession would set out from Athens along the Sacred Way to Eleusis, roughly the same path taken by Gilbert and Doro Levi. Upon arrival in the evening only the initiates would be allowed to see the revelatory rituals performed inside the Hall of the Mysteries. In mythology, the goddess Demeter lamented the disappearance of her daughter Persephone whom Pluto had carried off to his underworld realm. Demeter roamed the world looking in vain for her until she finally found her daughter in a cave at Eleusis. Ever after Persephone would have to spend part of each year in the Underworld before reappearing as a symbol of fertility of the crops. Since no ancient participant ever revealed the secret rites during the centuries of its use, the rituals and their significance can only be guessed at. What the barbarians did not destroy in 395, the early Christians did, and the secret knowledge of the Eleusinian Mysteries was extinguished with the abandonment of the site. Gilbert and Doro returned to Athens by train after dark. A marvelous sculpted frieze around a statue base was discovered in Athens, and Gilbert wrote an article describing it for the London Morning Post newspaper. ‘Two lines to accompany this article about a wonderful relief I have just seen today. Read it and pass it on to Miller for the M.P. Casson is sending an article about it to the Manchester Guardian. It is wonderful. The king is going to see it tomorrow. [Constantine had been president of the Greek Archaeological Society.] I will soon send an article about the restoration of the Parthenon and one about the Patriarch.’ (Tuesday, 7 February 1922) Gilbert’s article conveys a sense of the excitement in Athens caused by the discovery. Archaeologists had long been aware of the existence, in the yard of a hat manufactory, of a portion of the wall of Themistocles, which ran

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between the Piraeus and the Dipylon Gates. Many years ago several fine fragments of archaic tomb-reliefs had been found built into it, but no one had paid attention to a rectangular block of, apparently, plain marble that was walled up in the lower courses. A few days ago some workmen happened to move it and found that the other three sides were decorated with reliefs. These reliefs are of exquisite beauty and remarkable interest. The base, about three feet square and a foot and a half high, was probably part of a tomb and supported the statue of the deceased person. The clamp by which the statue was held in place is still clearly visible. On the front is depicted a wrestling match. On the left side two groups of three naked athletes stand facing one another. They are playing a game with a ball, the details of which are not easy to follow. The treatment of this scene is of the greatest beauty, and some of the figures show an amazing knowledge of foreshortening. But the scene on the right side is absolutely unique. Two men, wrapped in their mantles, are seated in chairs. The man on the right holds the leash of a cat, the one on the left that of a dog! The two animals seem to be about to fly at one another; the cat has arched its back and is prepared to stand its ground. Its owner appears almost to urge it on, while a man who stands behind him puts a hand on his shoulder as if to check him. On the other side the dog is getting ready to make a rush at his opponent, and his owner, holding him on a short leash, seems to be preparing to pull him up short. The original colouring is preserved to a very large extent. The background was painted red, while the details of the figures were picked out in blue and other dark colours. The execution is far and away superior to anything found up to the present: it is worked with almost cameo-like delicacy. Both the subjects and the treatment are unparalleled in any sculptures at present known, but it presents remarkable analogies to the style of the earliest painters of red-figure vases, such as Cachrylion. The date of the relief is about 500 BC.16 (Bagnani, 1922a) A few days later, Gilbert took the Princess di Vicovaro, her parents and other Skouzes relatives ‘to see the new bas relief. They admired it very much but The relief of the Ball Players is still much admired and studied for its ‘innovative foreshortening and complex body poses.’ (Keesling 1999, 531) Kachrylion produced vases c. 510-500 BCE for some of the finest Greek vase painters developing the then new red-figure technique.

16

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I don’t think they appreciated it. They are exceedingly nice people hardly intellectual. She had me back to tea and showed me photos of the election of the new [Pius XI] and burial of the old Pope [Benedict XV]. They are black aristocracy.’ (Saturday 18, February 1922) The black papal aristocracy were old Italian families whom the popes had ennobled while they held temporal power in pre-unified Italy. After the loss of papal territories in 1870, these conservative families clung to their titles and traditions, the epitome of an old establishment, and Gilbert socialized with a number of them in Rome. Meanwhile, Gilbert’s article so impressed N. K. Grant, the Foreign Editor of the Morning Post, that he wrote Miller: ‘My Dear Miller, Ever so many thanks for the admirable article on the Athenian discovery. I liked it so much that I would be very much obliged if you would write to Mr. Bagnani and say we shall always be glad to consider similar articles written in the same admirable, brief, delightful way.’17 Gilbert went with Mlle Katerinopoulos to a lecture at a literary society on the poetry of Alexander Soutsos, who had been inspired by Lord Byron and liberal Parisian intellectuals. He wrote in a purist form of ancient Greek, katharevousa, an artificial literary language scarcely understood by most Greeks, who spoke demotic. All intellectuals nearly are Venizelists & also the people in favor of the vulgar speech [demotiki] (you see the Liberal Rad tendency) while the Conservative royalists stick to the high falutin [katharevousa] style. So Soteriadis complained that that he had just come from the University where he been talking Katharevousa for two hours and could not get back into proper vulgar Greek.18 (Saturday, 18 February 1922)

Letter dated 22 February 1922 from N. F. Grant to Miller, now in the Bagnani archives at Trent University. 18 Katharevousa was an artificial form of modern Greek created from a ‘purified’ form of modern and ancient Greek which was used in schools and official documents. The only way to get a government job then was to learn katharevousa in school, but it was only after the recent Venizelist introduction of teaching in the vernacular Demotic language spoken by the people that students were able to understand what they were being taught. Political resistance to this innovation was fierce, just as it had been against all efforts to translate the Greek of the New Testament into a language understood by modern Greeks. So even the language of the royalists and Venizelists differed, as reflected in their respective newspapers. Gilbert could well empathize with the politics of language since in his own Italy literary Tuscan had been imposed over the regional vernacular dialects. 17

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In February 1922, Sir Arthur Evans, famous for having discovered the previously unknown Minoan civilization on Crete, came to Greece to visit Mycenae, Tiryns and Thebes. The owner as well as excavator of the Minoan palace at Knossos on Crete, he was in the process of writing his encyclopedic report on Minoan civilization. He also was in Athens to see Alan Wace to discuss transferring his Knossos property to the British School. After Wace’s recent excavations at Mycenae, a mainland site roughly contemporary with Knossos, Wace would have had much to say of interest to Evans. Gilbert left his card at the British School, and may have met Evans at that time. Among the rites of passage in training young archaeologists is the presenting of lectures on highly specific topics requiring as much research as time and the available library facilities allow. The day approached for Gilbert’s public lecture on his research. He was confident enough in his presentation to spend Sunday in a café and Monday converting the schools’ library into a lecture hall. At last the lecture is over and I have time to give you some account of it. The preparations were terrific. Nearly all the books had to be taken out of the library so you can guess what the work was like. … Maiuri, the Rhodes man, arrived here on Sunday. I had already met him in Rome at the Terme [Museum]. He is very nice. On Sunday great Carnival excitement, everyone going about in fancy dress. But the weather was dreadful so I sought refuge in Zacharatos, the Athenian Aragno [Roman café patronized by writers and painters]. … On Monday we did nothing else but furniture removing. I intend to qualify as a facchino [porter]. Afterwards went with Levi & Maiuri to the German School. Introduced Major [Maiuri] to [the Director Ernst] Buschor. Major is very nice, he feeds with the chief but has tea with us. I approve of people who like tea. On Tuesday morning, after finishing off the removals, I went and had my hair cut and then went over all my slides, 22 in number, most of them very good. Had tea and changed. Among the first to arrive was Lady Law. Presented the Chief to her. She took her seat of course in the palco delle autorita [royal box]. It is the first time she has been to any function since her accident on the Acropolis. Of course a great honor [for young Gilbert] but as she sat in the second row with an enormous hat on I wonder how the people behind liked it. Then the Pozzles came & the Caterinepule, whom I had not asked as I didn’t think she understood Italian but she saw the notice in the papers and came. I had rather a difficulty to look

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after [royalist] Lady Law and the [Venizelist] Pozzles at the same time but soon people came to amuse her Ladyship, Balanos and a royalist deputy for Athens whose name I don’t know. Little ratty man. Then the Vicov came with Pa & Ma Skews and of course took their place in the front row, embassy pew [since the Princess would be considered Italian]. Mrs Georgala was there too but I did not see either the Carapanos or Soteriadis, both of whom I had expected. Of course it does not make me anymore Venist. The [other Foreign] Schools were almost aux complet [completely represented] Wace was the only absentee of any note. All the Americans came, also the beautiful apothecary [Kalopothakis]. The [diplomats from the Italian] Leg[ation] was late as usual and arrived at 6:15. I then started off at once. I had intended to read but I found I could not read and attend to the slides at the same time and so spoke nearly all through. My time allowance was 30’ but I spoke for 40 and was afraid the chief would be annoyed but he wasn’t. Everything went off perfectly and I think I was lucid. Was naturally very much complemented but I wish you had been there. I was not altogether pleased with myself. I think the W [della Seta] would have preferred I had read, as he does so himself and I must say he does it very well. He started off at once and spoke for another 40’ [about the School’s trip through Caria including Ghiök Ciallar near Bodrum], so that it was a quarter to 8 when the show was over. It was too long of course but it was two lectures really, and he cannot expect that I can compress a very difficult argument into half an hour. I must try to learn to read my lectures as I think my compatriots like it. (Wednesday, 22 February 1922) Gilbert spoke about the Roman Agora in Athens, of which at that time only the gateways and some columns had been exposed by his friend Philadelpheus for the Greek Archaeological Society.19 Gilbert argued that the Roman Agora or Marketplace was really Hadrian’s Gymnasium (its location being otherwise unknown) next to Hadrian’s Library, as the ancient traveler Pausanias indicated, and that only its inscribed western entrance was Augustan in date; its use as a marketplace dated to some time after Hadrian.20 Gilbert did not hesitate to Philadelpheus 1910: 112-26. Gilbert’s talk was summarized in Della Seta ‘Cronaca delle Belle Arti. R. Scuola archeologia di Atene.’ Bollettino d’Arte. Series II, 1921 531-33. 19 20

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propose an unorthodox theory about the date of the Roman Agora even in front of its excavator (the Roman Agora is now generally accepted as being an Augustan marketplace). Afterward, Gilbert took Casson out to dinner to repay the latter’s hospitality to him. Will send you the cuttings in the papers about the lecture. The chief prepared a resume made that evening and if the papers have it this evening will enclose it with this letter. Then I have to prepare a summary for publication with photographs, in the Boll. d’Arte. I think it would be just as well to get abbonato [a subscription] to it. The Skews asked me to dine with them tonight while we are having tea today with the Incest [Philadelpheus]. I blew him up a lot in my lecture as I want him to excavate for me a column of the agora. … Society at my lecture was distinctly well represented but it was distinctly royalist in tendency. It was curious how I hardly knew a sole [sic] among the Italians. … Lady Law has half promised to introduce me to the king. I think I shall go and read Dante to her as Bosdari used to. … Well on the whole it has been a great success and so you can be pleased. (Wednesday, 22 February 1922) Gilbert did not record how Philadelpheus reacted to his novel interpretation of the Roman Agora. Instead, Gilbert judged the success of his first public lecture in Athens not so much by the reaction of his academic colleagues as by the social nature of his audience. Although her letters to Gilbert do not survive, it seems likely that his mother agreed with this socially snobbish criterion as a measure of success and would have been very pleased to see her son interacting with the rich and famous. Indeed, it was a very impressive gathering of Society for a young foreigner new on the scene. Moreover, it combined both his worlds of high society and archaeology, not so unusual for a small city like Athens, but Gilbert had gone out of his way to cultivate both royalists and Venizelists as well as archaeologists, everyone that is except his fellow Italians. It is hardly surprising then that he was soon being referred to as ‘l’archéologue diplomate,’ the diplomat archaeologist,’ but he was about to enter the world of spies and arms dealers.

5. The Arms Merchant and the Secret Agent After writing the announcement of the discovery of the sculpted friezes for the Morning Post, Gilbert wrote a much longer but cynical article about the political schism which was dividing the Greek church itself, entitled: ‘The Question of the Patriarchate,’ which he sent for William Miller in Rome to pass along to the Post. Meletios Metaxakis, an ardent supporter of Venizelos and fellow Cretan, had been deposed as Metropolitan (archbishop) of Athens in November 1920 by the Royalist Government and subsequently traveled to the USA on a speaking tour. In December 1921, however, he was elected as the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church by the Greek Phanariot1 community in Constantinople, where he became a leader of the Venizelist National Defence.2 The royalist Synodical Court in Athens refused to recognize him as spiritual head of the Greek Church, condemned him in absentia to be deprived of his ecclesiastical rank and interned in the Monastery of Zante, and attempted to elect its own patriarch using seven bishops. As Gilbert wrote, ‘‘We are seven’ is hardly a good motto for an Ecumenical Synod, more especially a schismatic one. God is distinctly on the side of the big battalions, even in ecclesiastical warfare.’ (Bagnani 1922b) In legend modern Greece began in 1821 when the Bishop of Patras raised the flag of an independent Greece at the Agia Lavra Monastery near Kalavryta in the Peloponnese. The hierarchy of the Orthodox church in Old Greece was 1 Phanari was the district in Constantinople where the Ecumenical Patriarch lived and held court. Phanariotes were leading Greek families who lived there and formed part of the educated establishment in the Ottoman Empire. 2 On his return from the US via England, Metaxakis met with British Prime Minster Lloyd George and subsequently let it be known that the Prime Minister said that as long as Constantine was in power there was no support for the Greeks to remain in Anatolia and that Lloyd George’s cabinet were all against him concerning support for Greece. Whatever Lloyd George may have said, for Metaxakis to have made this public cannot have helped the morale of the Greek troops in central Anatolia.

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politically under the control of the Greek state, but the churches in the newly incorporated northern territories were in a jurisdictional limbo ecclesiastically under either the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople or the Greek state. This division also reflected the schism between the royalist South and the Venizelist North.3 The political schism affected not only the Greek Orthodox Church but also the Greek Diaspora around the world. Both Metaxakis and Venizelos himself toured the United States giving public speeches in an effort to gain support for their political causes. The Diaspora generally supported Venizelos and the Great Dream of an enlarged Greece though in the larger Greek communities overseas, rival newspapers fanned the flames that politicized the church and language issues. At the beginning of 1922 King Constantine’s brother, Prince Andrew, reported to royalist Gen. Metaxas on conditions at the Greek armies’ eastern front near Ankara. Exactly as Metaxas had predicted years earlier and continued to insist, the over-stretched length of the Greek front in central Anatolia made it impossible to hold and, after their failed attack to capture Ankara, they would probably be forced to retreat either of their own volition or by the enemy, but there was not even a plan for a retreat or a second line. The army was exhausted and in no condition to face serious enemy action. Something had to be done soon to remove the Greeks from the nightmare of Asia Minor. The troops were so demoralized that they had shouted at Crown Prince George to be demobilized and sent home. As realistic as this report was about the rapidly deteriorating Greek situation, its author was unaware of the growing forces gathering against them in Ankara from the East. In western Europe Greek Prime Minister Dimitrios Gounaris and Foreign Minister George Baltazzi had been trying since October to negotiate an urgently needed loan to maintain the Greek armies in the field but British banks would not lend without British Government backing. On their way back from Rome they met again with Lloyd George and Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon in Cannes. Lloyd George told them they would have to agree to withdraw from Smyrna, and that since there was nothing more he could do they would have to await negotiations by Curzon. Upon advice from his Commander in Chief, Gounaris wrote to Curzon that Greece had exhausted her resources and threatened to evacuate unilaterally if Britain did not provide financial support. The British It was the royalist Reservists who prevailed upon the local Church hierarchy to excommunicate and anathematize Venizelos after the Allied attacks on Athens in December 1916.

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Ambassador in Athens, Sir Francis Lindley, advised that he believed Gounaris was probably bluffing about a unilateral withdrawal because his government would never abandon the Christian populations to their fate at the hands of the Turks. The British did not fully appreciate that the aggressive Greek forces were in fact inciting Kemal’s Turks into destroying Britain’s foreign policy in the region. Moreover, although both France and Italy were actively supporting the Nationalist Turks, Curzon was willing to make concessions to the French to keep them as supposed allies in the Entente, and refused to approve a loan to the Greeks. After Lloyd George refused them a final meeting, Gounaris and Baltazzi left for Athens empty-handed, warning their colleagues to prepare for failure and evacuation if militarily necessary. The British were hoping for an orderly negotiated evacuation but the time for protracted negotiations was running out. At a tea at Philadelpheus’, Gilbert’s knowledge of current events in the war between Greece and the Nationalist army of Kemal enabled him to hold his own in a debate with a Greek naval officer in the air service. Greece had exercised its right as a belligerent nation at war to search ships of neutral countries like France and Italy for contraband, and caught both the French and the Italians red-handed providing aid to Turkish forces. He told me that he was now flying one of the Italian aeroplanes that had been captured on the [Italian] boat that was taking them to Kemal. (Incidentally the most amusing thing about that incident was the fact that two of the Turkish officers on board had passports from the Italian High Commissioner in Con/ple [Count Carlo Sforza].) I countered [this veiled attack on Italy] by asking whether the affair of the Espoir had been settled. The Espoir is a French boat that has been seized [12 February] carrying coal to Kemal. That started him properly. He complained that of course Greece was the weakest and would have to yield in the end, and he could understand that everyone would try to smuggle once the profits were so great, but that if you were caught you should own up, like we [Italians] did, and not ‘fare la voce grossa’ [‘squawk’] as the French are doing now.4 (Sunday. 26 February 1922)

The French government protested that the coal was intended for Anatolian railroads and was demanding the return of both the ship and its cargo.

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The headlines before the Greek public could not have been clearer: both France and Italy, their former allies, or at least Venizelos’ allies, were actively aiding the Nationalist Turks against the Greek forces stranded far away in central Anatolia. At dinner at the Princess di Vicovaro’s (she ‘has an excellent cook’), Gilbert met Averoff, the nephew of the man who rebuilt the Panathenaic Stadium. He lives in Paris and is on his way to Alexandria. I think he is director of several Greek banks in Paris. Funny little man.5 Spoke a lot about Zaharoff. Everyone very much surprised that I should have heard of him. Beyond practically owning the Vickers [arms manufacturer] and several other works he appears also to own the casino at Monte Carlo and it is he who governs the principality of Monaco. He did all the revictualling of the allied troops at Archangel and he financed the Polish government at the time of the Bolshy offensive. (Saturday, 25 February 1922) Sir Basil Zaharoff, celebrated as the ‘mystery man of Europe,’ had risen from poverty by adroitly selling Maxim machine guns, submarines, and other arms to countries potentially in conflict with one another, which he tried to incite through his newspapers. ‘More than any other figure he stands behind the Arms Magnate of popular imagination, the ‘Merchant of Death,’ the original of Shaw’s Undershaft, playing off one country against another in an arms race in which there could only be one winner [himself].’ (Scott 1962: 80) He earned a commission on the sales of Vickers arms to countries overseas. Able to travel freely around Europe during the First World War, he brought back information considered so valuable to the British and French governments that they showered him with honours. Reputedly he persuaded French Prime Minster Clemenceau to recognize Monaco’s rights in the Treaty of Versailles, and thereby facilitated his acquisition of the controlling interest in the famed Monte Carlo Casino.

Among the many first cousins of the Princess, two females were married to Averoffs. Emilia Pahis, the sister of the Princess’s father, Alexander Skouzes, had three children including Lavria Serpieri and Eleni Averoff, who was possibly the Helene Averoff who sold a large landed estate in Egypt. The French banker might have been related to the George Averoff who in 1974 was a retired Ambassador, cousin to the Minister of Defense Evangelos Tositsa Averoff (great nephew of the Alexandrian philanthropist) and long-time wealthy expatriate in Paris.

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In Greece he was a friend of former royalist Prime Minster Skouloudis as well as of Venizelos, straddling both sides as befitted an arms merchant. In 1919 Zaharoff, who controlled some banks in Paris, had hosted the Allied leaders at his Paris mansion, and it was later alleged in the British Parliament that Zaharoff had been influencing Lloyd George and his foreign policy by financially supporting the Greek forces in Smyrna. Biographies of Zaharoff suffer from lack of any documentation, and his influence on Venizelos, especially in 1919, has never been investigated. As the military stalemate in Anatolia persisted through the winter of 1922, more questions about Zaharoff ’s influence on politicians were raised, and the press soon picked up the scent. In early 1922, however, Zaharoff ’s life had not yet been so sensationalized in the press and literature as the archetype of the amoral arms merchant. His name was known more to politicians and bankers like Averoff, and thus their surprise at Gilbert’s familiarity with his name. Since Gilbert and his mother loved gossip about highly-placed people, it would actually be surprising if he had not heard of Zaharoff. Gilbert attended a lecture at the Archaeological Society on the medieval monuments of Salonika given by Georgios A. Soteriou, the Ephor of Medieval and Christian Antiquities. Gilbert felt that he had to go as ‘he had come to mine but was quite interesting. The slides unfortunately were not good. I really must go to Con/ple via Salonika.’ (Saturday, 25 February 1922) For centuries one of the largest cities in the Ottoman Empire, Salonika had been captured by the Greeks only in 1912 and so was still relatively unexplored territory to Greek archaeologists. A widespread fire inadvertently started by French troops had devastated most of the city in 1917, including the ancient Basilica of St. Demetrius, the most venerated church in the city and the largest in Greece. Soteriou’s slides undoubtedly illustrated its beautiful fifth century mosaics, which had been uncovered from Turkish whitewash only a decade earlier before being destroyed in the fire.6 On the other hand, the resulting subsidence of the floor under the altar revealed a buried crypt once frequented by early Christian pilgrims seeking the healing waters from the spring near Saint Demetrius’ burial site. Soteriou’s excavations under the ruined church discovered that the crypt had been fashioned out of a former Roman bath near the ancient stadium, and filled in after the conversion of the church into a mosque in 1493. Gilbert’s initiative and energy around the Italian school were directed as much at inter-cultural socializing as at archaeology. He took Maiuri up to the 6

For a discussion of surviving records of the mosaics of S. Demetrios, see Cormack 1969.

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British School and introduced him to Casson and Wace. Then, as a pipe-smoker himself, he experimented with the Turkish hubbly bubbly or narghileh. ‘I bought a mouthpiece in the town & had the thing itself sent over from the café near by. It is rather nice & not half as hard as it would seem. Of course one must inhale the smoke & therefore one misses the sight of the clouds rising from the mouth. It is certainly very pleasant & soothing & makes one a bit drowsy. All the school turned out to see me smoke it & we all discussed at length the principles on which it works.’ (Saturday, 25 February 1922) Again it was Gilbert who interacted most with modern Greeks and their culture. He had neither patience nor sympathy for his fellow student Antonio Cattaneo. I confess I treat him badly but never as vilely as the W. The W played with him as a cat with a mouse; would give him a little rope & then pulled him up sharp. I have never seen a man make such a complete fool of another. Cat is too much of a fool to understand it but all the same it was very amusing. (Saturday, 25 February 1922) Gilbert did not share his mother’s compassion for lesser mortals. On a Sunday Gilbert climbed the Hymettos with Casson. We were searching for a Geometric site which has just been discovered by Blegen but, although he had drawn a map of the site, and we tramped all over the mountain, we could not find it.7 (Thursday, 9 March 1922) Gilbert’s article on the restoration projects around the Parthenon appeared in the Morning Post. Prof. Philadelpheus, Ephor of Antiquities of Attica, and Nikolaos Balanos, an engineer in charge of the Acropolis, both wanted to restore the fallen columns along the north side of the Parthenon. Many were opposed, preferring the aesthetic ruined state of the fallen column drums but Gilbert, though considering it a rational proposal, wrote that the money required

Blegen had observed Geometric potsherds in a small grassy sheltered hollow near the summit. Subsequent excavation in May 1923 of burnt sherds in an ashy layer suggested to Blegen that it might have been the sanctuary mentioned by Pausanias dedicated to Zeus the Rain God on Mt Hymettos, where clouds were a portent of rain. The site was not published until 1976 by Merle Langdon as Hesperia Supplement XVI.

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would be better employed in cleaning and safeguarding [from vandalism] existing monuments elsewhere in Athens. Gilbert described a tea at Kalopathakis as Dullest & Venizelist. Heard that there may be a military government under [royalist General Victor] Dousmanis or Metaxas, but these Venizelists are very melancholy as [Thomas] Ashby says. Malos the Deputy, whom I had seen at the lecture I went to with the Catherinepule, has been arrested with 6 other people for lèse majesté. (Saturday, 4 March 1922) In general Gilbert’s sources among the royalists were the politicians’ wives and families, while among the Venizelists his sources were the out-of-office officers and politicians themselves, like the Deputy Carapanos. Nonetheless, his observation of the willful avoidance of thoughts of impending doom among the royalists and the gloom of the Venizelists respectively may accurately reflect the feelings of those then in and out of power in Athens. The students and Maiuri hiked to see what was left of the Fountain of Theagenes at Megara (not much) and then proceeded on to the Temple of Zeus Aphesios on the Skyronian Rocks, only to find its remaining marble blocks cut up for the lime kiln nearby. On hearing that there was a stele inscribed with a dedication to Asklepios, the students wanted to photograph the stele but the woman in whose house it was demanded 100 drachmas and they refused to pay. ‘Had to go to a lecture by Orlandos; as he came to mine I have to go to his. Quite gutless. All about Eleusis and nearly all the slides went wrong.’ (Saturday, 4 March 1922) Since he had walked to the site with Doro Levi, he was already familiar with it. Another base has been found in the Wall of Them, but is much inferior to the first. Am sending [an article] direct to Grant [the Foreign editor of the Morning Post] & am going to ask him whether he wants any political news too. I don’t think M would approve of my views or like to send them on. (Saturday, 4 March 1922) Gilbert’s friend William Miller was pro-Venizelos while his own political stance at this stage was non-partisan though inclined to be sympathetic to the royalists. So after having facilitated Gilbert’s original contact with the Foreign Editor, Miller was becoming more of a gatekeeper as far as Gilbert was concerned because of his political leanings. Miller’s political journalism was a

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role model for Gilbert and submitting newspaper articles was an easy diversion with a small financial compensation. I am glad the MP published my Parthenon article. In its way I do not think that it is as bad as the patronizing tone adopted by Percy Gardner in the Observer. But anyhow I do not think they will find out who it is as they would not think that an Italian writes for the English papers. I am now sending my things through direct to [Foreign Editor] Grant as firstly they go quicker and then they don’t pass through M’s hands. I have asked him whether he wants political articles as well. After all what I said of the Greeks is nothing to what the [Millers] said about us [Italians] and if we kept the monuments in the condition that they keep them in here wouldn’t they yell. A second relief has been discovered with a game of hockey on it. I sent it to the MP direct but have kept duplicate copies of it. 8 (Thursday, 9 March 1922) Gilbert was less successful with the British Legation. Sir Francis Lindley was the British Ambassador to Greece, whom Gilbert wanted to meet. One possible means of introduction was Shirley Clifford Atchley (1871-1936), First Secretary of the British Legation in Athens. He had married a Greek woman and spent most of his life in Greece studying the flowers; his book on the Wild Flowers of Attica was published posthumously. Gilbert admitted that gardening was one of the few topics on which he was not able even to make small talk, but Atchley was interested in more than just Greek flora. A few months later, on a train from Agrinion to Aetoliko in western Greece, Gilbert started chatting with a Greek Deputy who told him ‘that Scratchley had been in this region a short while back, collecting political information.’ (Sunday, 14 May 1922) Lindley has not even returned my card. I met Scratchley on Monday on the street with Casson and walked home part of the way with him. He asked me to go and see him! His wife is at home on Mondays!! I’ll see myself d___ [sic] first. He is a little dried up man with quite [Miller]’s outlook on the world, and just as Venizelist [as Miller] but not quite so keen on the Greeks. He said that you must always remember that there 8 Philadelpheus found this statue base depicting ‘Hockey Players’ along with the first one and a painted base inscribed with the name Neilonides while excavating part of the Wall of Themistokles south of the Piraeus Gate in Athens. (Philadelpheus 1922; Keesling 1999)

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is a strong oriental strain in their nature and that one should not judge them by European standards. (Thursday, 9 March 122) On Thursday 23 February at a school dinner with della Seta for Maiuri, later came in a certain Fago. Queer type of meridionale [southern Italian]; very deaf. He started as librarian of the Vitt. Em. [Central National Library] in Rome, he then went to Cairo as librarian at the [Egyptian] University started [in 1908] by Fuad Pascia [Prince until he became Sultan in 1917] and has now passed into the diplomatic service and was for some time now our political agent at Angara [Ankara] with Kemal and is now our resident at Mersina in Cilicia [in south-eastern Anatolia] and he came in on his way to Rome to confer with the government. Of course, like all experts he has all idées fixes [set ideas] but was very interesting. He wants us to explore not only our piece of Cilicia but also the French zone and he says he will manage it. I hae me doots. But it will certainly be interesting. (Saturday, 25 February 1922) Dr Vincenzo Fago (1875-1940) was more than an Orientalist and internationally recognized librarian. Between the Greek occupation of Anatolia in May 1919 and the French abandonment of Cilicia in 1921, the Italians actively pursued and enjoyed their role as the only Ally supporting the Nationalist Turks. The Turks had a press bureau in Rome and the British knew that the Turks were using the Italian Institute for Colonial Studies in Rome to convey reports to Ankara from Turkish agents all over Europe. The Italians not only gave and sold enough arms, ammunition, oil and vehicles to supply several armies, but they also provided ships for smuggling past the Greek naval blockade as well as air courier service and radio transmitters between Rome and Ankara. According to British intelligence, these arrangements had been negotiated by Lt Col Vincenzo Fago. Ambassador Lindley wrote to Curzon ‘I have the honour to report that the Italian Minister informed me yesterday that the Italian Agent in Cilicia had just passed through Athens on his way to Rome. … the Agent, who had good sources of information at Smyrna, stated that the Kemalists were in want of almost everything and that their attitude towards the Powers was nothing but a gigantic piece of bluff. They could not possibly undertake a serious military operation.’9 In hindsight, Fago’s sources were obviously wrong, allowing him 9

Medlicott, W., Dakin, D., and Lambert, M. (eds) 1970. 637-38.

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to underestimate Kemal’s forces grossly. In contrast to Fago’s hopes based on his sources and his own experience, while Gilbert may not have been privy to the details of ongoing negotiations, he was sufficiently au curant to intuit correctly that the Italians would never have access to the former French zone of Cilicia: after the French had been so embarrassingly defeated by the Turks and forced to withdraw, they signed an Accord with the Turkish Nationalists in 1921, and thereby deprived the Italians of their leverage with the Nationalists. Gilbert’s meeting with Fago, Italy’s representative to the Kemalist Government in Ankara, is remarkable in itself as well as for Gilbert’s astute political acuity at the age of twenty-one. [Fago] went to the Cyrenaica just before [Governor] De Martino died and so we had much to talk about in common.10 I have an idea (this is merely what I have guessed by my own knowledge of the questions together with some hints that escaped him) that we mean to force the Senussians on to the Arabs of the Tripolitania just as we have done on to those of Cirenaica. … This idea would explain the [Italian] occupation of Misurata. See if M can find out anything about it but don’t mention how I got the information or Fago’s name.11 (Sunday, 25 February 1922) Even if he was not fully aware of Fago’s role as an Italian agent, he wanted his conversation with Fago to remain confidential. Gilbert’s judgment of the political sensitivity of his conversation was accurate. As Italy’s secret representative with the Kemalist Government in Ankara, Fago would have had much to discuss in Athens with Ambassador Montagna and the military attaché Perrone. Many Italians such as Paribeni considered the Italian School Senator Chev. Giacomo de Martino was the Italian Governor of Cyrenaica from 5 Aug 1919 until 23 Nov 1921. Gilbert had spent three weeks in Cyrenaica in eastern Libya in June 1921. Italy had seized Libya from Ottoman Turkey in 1911 but controlled only the seaports along the coast. The Senussi brotherhood provided the most organized resistance based in scattered oases controlling trade routes across the desert. Their religious leader was Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif, who transferred political control to his cousin Idris before he fled to Turkey in 1918. Unlike his cousin, Idris was willing to negotiate with the Italians and became Emir of Cyrenaica while recognizing Italian sovereignty. Giuseppe Volpi was a self-made millionaire appointed as the Italian Governor of Tripolitania. Alarmed at how little inland territory Italy actually controlled and at reports that Idris was contacting various Senussi factions in his province, Volpi requested and was allowed to undertake the re-occupation of Misurata and its port. Even this small incursion required reinforcements to be sent from Italy and took seventeen days in February. On the contrary, the Italian invasion had the unintended effect of uniting rather than dividing the opposition. In trying to understand why Italy would forcefully re-occupy Misurata, Gilbert was not aware of Idris’ involvement and imputed too much Machiavellian strategy to the Italians at this stage. 10 11

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a legitimate instrument with which to pursue Italy’s foreign policy, and della Seta’s projected excavations in south-western Anatolia could have been considered part of that plan. So Fago had a purpose in going to see della Seta at the School that evening. Whether or not Montagna or Perrone or Paribeni had suggested he meet Gilbert, Fago did meet him and would have left the School impressed by his thorough competence, intellectual brilliance and intuitive political acuity, not to mention his multi-lingual fluency and ready access to the highest levels of Athenian society. Fago might then have been sizing Gilbert up as a potential agent. After all, who would expect such a young Italian student, the ‘diplomat archaeologist,’ to be serving his government as a secret agent, or acting independently as a covert foreign correspondent for an English newspaper, but Gilbert was about to do just that. His father would have been proud.

6. Foreign Correspondent Gilbert had started his political writing by sending information about contemporary Greek politics to William Miller, either directly or through letters to his mother. Miller was an established correspondent for the Morning Post who lived in Rome. After a mere seven weeks in Athens, Gilbert typed a remarkably clear, perceptive and non-partisan analysis of the local political situation intended for Miller entitled ‘The situation in Greece:’ It is little more than a year since King Constantine returned to Greece amidst the rejoicings of a large portion of the people & the Eastern question is still unsettled. The dissatisfaction of the people is in consequence very great. The King was recalled in hope that he would proceed to a rapid demobilization & put a stop to the war. On the contrary the offensive which, it was hoped, would retrieve the reverse suffered at the beginning of the campaign, has ended in a stale-mate equivalent, in the present conditions, to a defeat. Mindful of the sophism ‘Post hoc, ergo propter hoc’ [‘After this, therefore because of this’] most people are inclined to blame the change of Government not only for the internal, but also for the foreign situation. This is not exactly correct. The nonrecognition of the King [by the Allies] has produced undoubtedly an unfavorable moral impression & the effect of the financial blockade [by the Allies] may be seen in the constant rise of the exchange, but as far as the Eastern question is concerned the King has had to take over the burden of a situation already irreparably compromised. It is true that, had M. Venizelos been in power, the treaty of Sevres would certainly have been ratified [by the Allies], but would it, or could it, have been enforced? The San Remo conference [in April 1920 at which the Allies decided upon the terms of the Treaty of Sevres] was a great 59

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diplomatic triumph for the Cretan statesman [Venizelos], but it should be remembered that even then all the military experts considered that it was unworkable & imposed far too heavy burdens on the Greek army.1 Since then the new factor in the situation has been, not the fall of M. Venizelos, but the military efficiency of the Kemalist army. Had the King been able to crush the Kemalists, he could have snapped his fingers at the non-ratification of the Treaty of Sevres as the Allies would have never employed force in order to oblige him to abandon his conquests. Had M. Venizelos been unable to secure a great military success, the support of the Allies would have been useless. Unless, indeed, he could have induced them to send large bodies of troops to cooperate with the Greek army, a contingency which, considering the sentiments of the various Parliaments, including the British, is not worth taking into consideration.2 Could the Venizelos government have secured this great military victory? I very much doubt it. Even the most ardent Venizelists consider the King a very able military leader & recognize that his previous military record had surrounded him with an aureole [a radiance around a sacred figure] of glory of which the best proofs are the epithets constantly seen on his portraits of ‘Bulgar-Slayer’ & ‘Triumphator’. The General Staff is substantially the same as that which would have been at the disposal of the past Government & it should be remembered that the higher army circles have always been anti-Venizelist. One of the reasons given for the recent unsuccessful offensive is that the Government did not dare, in view of the pronounced feeling of the people, proceed to a general mobilization. Would M. Venizelos have had the courage or the power to take this necessary but unpopular step? I doubt if it would have been possible. The real reason of the present impasse is that Greek nationalism has bitten off far more than it can chew. The Treaty of Sevres is unworkable because the country is unwilling & unable to support the sacrifice it entails. At the same time any talk of revising the treaty is an offence to the national pride & any Government that proposed withdrawing 1 Gilbert was completely accurate about this because it was the military advisers who had most strongly opposed the Treaty’s terms as unworkable, in contrast to the policy advisers in the British Foreign Office. 2 Gilbert is more realistic than the Allied leaders themselves in his assessment of their own unwillingness to deploy troops overseas.

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from Smyrna would fall at once. The Greeks want to have their cake & eat it. Only the other day there was a large meeting of natives of the Dodecanese to express their determination to free themselves from the Italian yoke & to be united to their mother country. These very same people, when of military age, constantly appeal individually to the Italian authorities in order to escape, as Italian subjects, from service in the Greek army. A withdrawal from Asia Minor & peace are an absolute necessity but the Allies should think twice about it before they stir the hornet’s nest. Above all they should be ready to enforce their decision as every success, whether real or diplomatic, renders each of the belligerents more intransigent. The agreement with France is said to have rendered Kemal extremely intractable & his position internally has been strengthened by the collapse of Enver’s party & the treaty with Moscow.3 On the other hand the news of the British loan, or rather permission to negotiate a loan, fantastically connected with the fortuitous coincidence of the contemporaneous arrival in Athens of the new British minister, has produced in ultra-Royalist & ultra-Nationalist circles the impression that Great Britain was about to recognize the King & to send immediate military help, perhaps that British warships were about to bombard Ankara [in central Anatolia hundreds of miles from any sea]. Another point that should be kept in mind is that, if Smyrna is internationalized, it will have to be garrisoned by Allied troops. Were the provinces now occupied by the Greek army handed back at once to the Turks, we shall see at once a repetition of the scenes in Cilicia. But will the various nations concerned be willing to spend millions in order to police Smyrna & its hinterland?4 By the agreement of October 1921 with the revolutionary government in Ankara, France abandoned her claims to coal-rich Cilicia in south-eastern Turkey, which she had occupied until forced out by local Turkish opposition, but received Kemal’s recognition of her sovereignty over Syria. The party of Enver Pasha, the Ottoman War Minister, disintegrated with the arrest or flights of most of its leaders after the war. By a treaty of friendship of March 1921 between Lenin’s Bolshevist Russia and Kemal’s Grand National Assembly, the two neighbours and age-old enemies settled border disputes and united against the west; Russia supplied Kemal with weapons and ammunition. 4 After the British had demobilized from south-eastern Anatolia by November 1919, the French tried to establish control of Cilicia using unruly Armenian soldiers in their legions. Tens of thousands of Armenians were streaming into Cilicia hoping to establish an independent Armenian state. The countryside was lawless with mountain tribal bands living off ambushes. After 3

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This is as fair a statement of the present situation as I have been able to piece together after hearing both sides. Will send others on the internal situation & on the question of the Patriarchate. Show them to M. if you like. [Ambassador] Lindley is very ill so cannot use him & have still to meet the Scratch-Boy [Atchley]. Gilbert perceived the international realpolitik so accurately that he was able shortly after his arrival in Greece to predict the explosion of violence that occurred seven months later in September. He did not have access to the discussions at the prime ministerial level in far-off western capitals, but only to the thoughts of the informed and responsible leaders of Greek society in Athens, both royalist and Venizelist, to which he gives voice. Gen. Papoulas, the Greek Commander-in-Chief, had warned Prime Minister Gounaris that evacuation was necessary without more men, money and materiel, but repeated efforts to persuade Lloyd George and Lord Curzon failed to convince them of the urgency of the situation. After months vainly wandering abroad between Paris, London and Rome, Prime Minster Gounaris and Foreign Minister Baltazzi finally returned to Athens empty-handed on Monday 6 March 1922. Once an idealist, Gounaris after early political setbacks had become cautious and fatalistic. (Mazower 1992: 893-95) Like men on a ship trapped in the eye of a hurricane, the Greek royalist politicians were surrounded by forces whose only certainty was their deadly inevitability. Since British Ambassador Lindley advised Curzon that the Greeks would never unilaterally abandon the Christians without guarantees for their safety, Curzon replied to Gounaris, expressing the hope that the Greek military situation was not as immediately critical as presented by Gounaris and the desire that he wait successfully quelling a spontaneous outburst of urban warfare in Marash in February 1920, the French abruptly abandoned the city, and guerrilla warfare by Moslem Turks against the French and Armenians erupted throughout south-eastern Anatolia. The French lacked not only the ships, men and materiel to subdue the warring factions, but also the determination both back in France and in Constantinople. Indeed in the City, the French military and agents actively pursued relations with the Nationalists because the British supported the Sultan as well as the Greeks. After a year of ethnic warfare between the Armenian-supported French and the Turks, the French betrayed their Ally Britain and secretly agreed to a peace accord with Kemal. After the French-Turkish Accord of 1921, the French abandoned their arms and even radio transmitters to the Turks, and facilitated the sale of rifles, bullets, canon balls, and clothing to the Nationalist military. Moreover, although the French had publicly promised to protect the Armenians in Cilicia, Kemal adamantly refused to include any guarantees for their safety in the Accord on the ground that it would constitute foreign interference in Turkey’s internal affairs. Despite assurances of their safety, about 150,000 panicstricken Armenian refugees fled on every available ship to French-controlled Syria (the British would not allow them into their territories of Cyprus, Egypt, etc.).

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upon future negotiations. But unlike the rarified atmosphere in the diplomatic circles of far-off western Europe, Athens was politically charged. Andreas Kavaphakes, the editor of the Venizelist Eleutheros Typos [Free Press], after publishing a ‘Democratic Manifesto’ calling for the removal of the King, published excerpts from a conversation between Lloyd George and the newly elected Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios Metaxachis, in which Lloyd George was quoted as saying that, if the Greeks really wanted help, they would have to replace the King. That same evening around 10 p.m. on his way home, as Kavaphakes stepped down from his horse-drawn taxi to open the door to his home, he was shot and killed. At a luncheon at the Peroglous, Everyone very full of the assassination of Andreas Kavaphakes the director of the Eleutheros Typos one of the prominent Venist. papers here. A very bad business indeed. I expect they’re going to begin a reign of terror here which is not amusing. Tomorrow the Boule [Parliament] meets. I am going with the 1st secretary of our Legation. I expect that there will be rows and I should not be a bit surprised if someone were murdered; these [royalist reservist] epistrat clubs are the devil. I quite expect every day to hear that Carapanos has been done in. ... I afterwards went to the funeral of Kavaphakes. Hundreds of people with plain flat faces, obviously Venist. Went home and wrote a paragraph to the MP about it. (Thursday, 9 March 1922) In another article, Gilbert noted the revival of Venizelist support. The other day in the café of a small town in Attica, the proprietor told me quite proudly and before a numerous gathering of the inhabitants that he was a Venizelist. Six months ago he would not have dared to say that, as prove the large portraits of Constantine and Sophia which I noticed hanging in the most conspicuous part of the shop. (Bagnani 1922e) Diplomatic pressure forced the Greeks to release the French ship carrying coal and the Italian ship carrying planes to Kemal. ‘This Italo-Greek incident is most unfortunate just as we were getting fairly liked. Violent articles in many papers.’ (Sunday, 19 March 1922)

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After Gounaris’ coalition government lost a vote of non-confidence and resigned, Nikolaos Stratos tried but failed to form a government around his Reform Party. Stratos had never forgiven Venizelos for forcing him to resign as Minister amid allegations of corruption. ‘The tragedy of Stratos was that in his heart he believed in the policy of [Venizelos], but that out of personal hatred he had sold his soul to thwart it by every unscrupulous device he could contrive.’ (Mackenzie 1931: 320-1) Talked politics a great deal with Carapanos; no one seems to see how any stable government can be formed. When M[iller] counts up the parties at Montecitorio [the Italian Chamber of Deputies] tell him to think of Greece where, except for the Venisti, there are no parties at all, just individuals. I don’t see how any gov. can last unless they made so many ministers as to ensure a majority. Tell M. that the Venist party under certain circumstances might support Stratos. Anyway I see that he has not managed to form a cabinet, for this time at any rate. If he becomes premier, ask M if he thinks I could interview him for the MP. I could manage it easily through Lady Law. (Tuesday, 13 March 1922) Gounaris was then able to form another coalition government, but many members both of Stratos’ party and the governing party itself abstained from a vote of confidence. Gounaris’ hold on power in Parliament was shaky at best, not only because of the inflamed political situation but also because of the not yet developed party system. At a tea Gilbert met a naval officer who was ‘in command of the destroyer who brought Gounaris & Baltazzi back from Bari, Italy. [Mme Chariclee] Baltazzi is enormous and slept in her husband’s bunk so that when she gave a tea the other day in the cabin and sat herself on the bunk she simply disappeared from view as the springs had been broken.’ (Sunday, 26 March 1922) This unfortunate lady would later become profoundly indebted to Gilbert. As you see yesterday [Thursday 23] I went to the Chamber in the dip. box & was simply suffocated. Pass this on to [Miller] for the MP. I believe Kavaphakis was their correspondent here in Athens. I met young [A.W.] Lawrence yesterday morning, nice child.5 Went this afternoon to the Since Arnold Walter Lawrence was only six days younger than Gilbert, Gilbert’s relative maturity, not to mention his condescension, is evident. Arnold Lawrence was the youngest of five illegitimate sons of an Irish baronet, his oldest brother being the famous T. E. Lawrence ‘of Arabia.’ Both T.E.

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Carapanos where talked politics (you can see the traces in the article) & played bridge winning 8 dr. It is beginning to get hot & I have a bad cold. (Friday, 24 March 1922) While Gounaris was desperate for ‘peace at any price,’ as Gilbert wrote, at the same time he avoided any public discussion of a very unpopular but inevitable decision by having the National Assembly debate details of constitutional reform, a ‘smokescreen’ to divert public attention from the inevitable military evacuation. The recent incidents with the French and Italian governments over the right of search, and the rapid and ignominious surrender of the Greek Government, have clearly proved that the country cannot even enforce a blockade against the wishes of the Allies, and that in these circumstances a continuance of the hostilities is useless. (Bagnani 1922f) Gilbert began bypassing Miller and sending his articles directly to the Post’s Foreign Editor, Neil Forbes Grant. Grant had been awarded a CBE for his work during the war as Editor of Cables and Wireless at the Ministry of Information, which transmitted propaganda overseas, and later on he began writing plays.6 On March 15 Grant wrote to ‘Gilbert Bagnani, Esq.:’ I am very grateful to you for sending me the two articles which reached here yesterday. I should be very glad indeed if you would be good enough to send me such contributions, both on your own subject of archaeology, on politics, and on other general subjects, keeping your articles as short as possible. We managed to get in some of your political stuff yesterday, though unfortunately, as you will have guessed, it was out of date with the fall of Gounaris’ cabinet. We have not now got a correspondent in and Arnold excavated in the Middle East with the famous British archaeologist Sir Leonard Wooley. In addition to being his brother’s literary executor and preserver of his memory, Arnold would later become an eminent classicist, writing about Greek architecture and fortifications. In his early career, however, he was more interested in Greek and Roman sculpture, even posing as the model for a statue of Youth sculpted by the widow of the Antarctic explorer, Robert Scott. Having just arrived from the British School at Rome, both he and Gilbert knew the Assistant Director Mrs Arthur Strong and both men shared an interest in sculpture. 6 Although the owner, the Countess Bathurst, and Editor, H. A. Gwynne, of the Post were resolutely conservative in British affairs (Wilson 1990: 3), Grant seems to have accepted Greek material from Venizelists (Miller and Kavaphakes) as well as royalists (Gilbert’s successors Lord Apsley and Drummond-Wolff).

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Athens owing to the lamented murder of M. Kavaphakis, so perhaps you will be good enough to cover Athens for us. I shall let you know later about telegraphing [articles] when I hear from you. Gilbert replied to Grant, rejecting his offer for the time being. I have sent [Grant] several articles and I have sent him some by this post but I have refused his offer since I am leaving Athens in a few weeks’ time and so could not keep in touch with the situation. On the other hand I have told him that if I am over in Asia Minor I am quite willing to send him all the stuff he wants and will try to get to Smyrna and the vilayet [district] both for archaeology and politics and the same in regard to Con/ple. I will certainly be there in an interesting time. I have also added that at the end of this year I might be at a loose end & then I might reconsider his offer if he has not yet got a regular correspondent in Greece or the Levant. I did not quite put it this way but this was what I meant. I know you’ll be annoyed but I don’t think it will do me much harm and it is an amusing experience. Please send me all the cuttings of the MP on the Levant because they may be occasionally written by me. I expect you’ll recognize the style. If the one on the [Italian] school meeting appears please send it in duplicate to me as Casson would like a copy. It is certainly very flattering. (Sunday, 26 March 1922) After months of delay and procrastination, the Allied Foreign Ministers finally met in Paris and on 26 March formally proposed a three months armistice during which they would negotiate the withdrawal of the Greek armies from Anatolia. Kemal agreed to accept an armistice only if the Greek army evacuated Smyrna immediately, and Asia Minor within four months. Unable to send any Allied replacements for the Greeks, both Lloyd George and Curzon objected to this demand, realizing that they would have no cards left to play in any subsequent negotiations with the Turks in full control of Anatolia and facing the Allied forces in Constantinople. Now if ever, the significance to Britain of the presence of Greek forces in Anatolia would have been clear to Lloyd George and Curzon and might finally have elicited support for the Greeks but it was evidently trumped by Britain’s desire to maintain the ‘alliance’ with France. In a newspaper article, ‘Greece Relieved – Satisfaction over Adrianople,’ Gilbert wrote that the Greeks were resigned for much less favorable terms than in the original Treaty of Sevres, and so were relieved that they would not be

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asked to surrender Adrianople, a Greek city on the border between Eastern and Western Thrace. Gilbert also believed that Gounaris would attempt to make his acceptance of the new terms conditional on the recognition of King Constantine by the Allies. The Government Press pretended Gounaris’ acceptance was only a basis for negotiation, but the Venizelist and independent royalist Press screamed betrayal at the prospect of unilateral Greek evacuation. (Bagnani 1922h) Gounaris’ real objections to an immediate withdrawal of Greek forces (concerns, however, unknown to Gilbert) were twofold: the safety of the remaining Christian civilians and the fear of anarchy or revolution in Greece provoked by an influx of refugees. (Llewellyn Smith 1998: 256) Venizelos traveling through Mexico wrote that it was ‘certain that a return of Turkish administration to the Smyrna area would mean the complete destruction and uprooting of the Greek and Armenian populations at least.’ (Llewellyn Smith 1998: 258) Gounaris and Baltazzi told the British Ambassador that a ‘panic [among the Christian inhabitants] would ensue as soon as proposals were known. Every Greek who had means would leave. They would be followed by general exodus of frenzied inhabitants who would achieve destruction of Greece.’ (Llewellyn Smith, 1998: 255) Since the Greek administration had mobilized Greek civilians, these latter would be considered as traitors by the Turks and ‘massacred as rebels.’ The publication of the terms of the armistice as proposed by the Allies did not (need to) include Kemal’s demand for immediate evacuation, and so everyone’s attention was focused on the formal proposals. On Wednesday [29] had tea with the Catherinepule; the Condur. was there & the Serpieri girl (a cousin of the Serpieri) & a Mlle Lambros who works in the hospital with the Pozzle and who is despite her name a Venist. But no news or anything. Talked politics to the Cond. It is really curious how calmly on the whole people have taken the Allied decisions. I don’t think there is any doubt about them accepting but I certainly do think that the Greeks have been treated badly. Whatever did we go and give them Smyrna anyhow? We’ll see what Kemal will say. Of course he may play into these people’s hands and refuse, which is what Venists are hoping. It’s a rotten business anyhow and I don’t think it is creditable to anybody concerned. (Sunday, 2 April 1922) Then went tea at the Carapanos. [Saturday, 1 April] Everybody very down. It was the day when the Gov. was asking for a vote of confidence. I

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prophesied against the opinion of everybody there almost, that he would get it and he did. The Venists, you will have seen, withdrew from the Assembly and are not going back to it. It may certainly simplify matters by giving the government a two-thirds majority over the other parties. … I enclose two extracts from the Eleutheron Bema of today which you can get [Miller] to translate. One is the announcement of my lecture, the other must be the quotation of a more than usually violent article of mine I sent Grant. This is the worst of journalism: being quoted by Venist Papers. … Everyone very down about the peace terms. We [the Allies] have treated them abominably. (Thursday, 6 April 1922) That morning [Tuesday 4] Protopapadakis had announced the forced loan, about which you may have seen something. I ought to write to the MP about it but I have not the slightest idea what to say. Nobody ci capisce niente [understands anything]. Wace said it would not pass. I said I thought it would and, so far, it seems I am right. Certainly had any such measure been adopted in any other civilized country, especially after their diplomatic and military disasters, there would have been a revolution. Here a weak government is able to apply a law of this kind with a majority of 3 votes! What a country! What a nation! (Thursday, 6 April 1922) Petros Protopapadakis, professor of engineering and Finance Minister, in early April passed legislation requiring that all paper currency be turned in to the government to be cut in half, with the ‘cross’ side being returned but the ‘crown’ side surrendered to the government in exchange for a 6% bond, thus a ‘forced loan’ from the people. Since the Allies refused to lend any money to Greece under King Constantine, this bold and ingenious scheme was necessary to pay for the military costs which were beyond the government’s taxation powers. The Greek citizens accepted the measure stoically, as Gilbert observed. While he was not sure what to make of its economic novelty, he was politically astute enough to predict accurately the vote in the Assembly. His sources were reliable. In the afternoon Lady Law told Gilbert that ‘she had just come from a reception at the [British] legation ‘my legation, you know.’ At that I pricked up my ears and said that I had heard that M. Lindley [the new British Ambassador] was not like Lord Granville [the previous British Ambassador] and she said ‘Oh no, he is much more tactful.’ So you see that it is quite right and he is a royalist, but it was amusing the way it was said.’ (Thursday, 6 April 1922)

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Afterwards went to leave a few ppc [picture post cards] cards and had tea with old Skouzes. We talked loan of course: nobody is talking anything else, even he had no idea how it was going to work. Nessuno ci capisce niente. [No one understands anything] This morning the Eleutheron Bema said that no foreigners would be exempt; this evening the Eleutheros Topos said that they will be: and if they are I do not see how this law will work. The pound went [up] to 150 [drachmae] today but of course nobody was selling. The Gov said at first that it was not going to touch the 1 and 2 dr notes and the result of course was they disappeared from the market yesterday. Today they said that they will cut them and consequently they have reappeared. Of course Gounaris is managing very cleverly. If they throw out the bill there will be a [financial] crisis and Greece will not be represented at Genoa. (Thursday, 6 April 1922) An international economic conference at Genoa would decide to return to a gold standard in an effort to help the economies of central Europe, ironically just one year before the historic hyperinflation in Germany. Gilbert is implying that Gounaris was using the threatened possibility of being left out of the international negotiations in Genoa if the Greek Assembly did not pass his Forced Loan Bill. Despite his youth, Gilbert’s background in diplomatic circles well suited him to write critical yet non-partisan analyses of the unsustainable military situation in Turkey which the politicians seemed helpless to resolve. The royalist government, frequently changing leaders, was reluctantly accepting a political compromise with the Turks to withdraw the Greek troops, but the opposition parties and press argued vehemently against it: the Venizelists based in northern Greece and overseas believed strongly in the national dream of expanding Greece to include the Greeks of the west coast of Asia Minor as well as Constantinople. Gilbert was so well connected and so personally well informed about Greek politics that he was able to predict accurately the results of votes in the National Assembly. It was typical of his political articles that he was mature and adept enough to adopt the neutral stance of a disinterested and informed outsider, while being diplomatic enough to maintain social connections with the elite of both factions. His sources were the educated Greek establishment as well as the diplomatic corps at the British and Italian legations. It is little wonder that the Morning Post’s Foreign Editor would want to hire such a keen, articulate and non-partisan journalist on a permanent basis without even suspecting

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how young he was. The paper normally covered foreign affairs conservatively, the activities of the rich and powerful, and cultural events such as plays and operas, a perfect fit for Gilbert’s interests. Many men, if they had the ability and connections to be a foreign correspondent, would have boasted of their good fortune, but Gilbert instinctively knew he could be a more effective journalist by not disclosing it. To Gilbert it simply brought in a little additional spending money and some intellectual diversion but no status. Gilbert was about to set out on his long-intended archaeological travels, visiting the spiritual centres of pagan and Christian Greece, respectively the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi and the Corinth of St. Paul.

7. The Oracle of Apollo and St. Paul Thanks to older rich acquaintances, in March 1922 Gilbert was able to see many of the most famous archaeological sites of Greece in relative luxury and avoid the rigours as well as the companionship of the Italian School’s trips. The Murray Youngs are arriving tomorrow evening. I hope to convince them to take me to Sounion and Marathon in motorcar. But they are nice people, so different from the hundreds of awful tourists that are about here. The weather is lovely but a bit hot. Do get the Courvoisiers to buck up and come out. (Thursday, 9 March 1922) Andrew Murray Young was a New York banker who married his childhood sweetheart in 1910 after the death of her first husband.1 They were socially prominent in New York, where he was a member of several clubs. By 1920 and in their sixties they already knew Gilbert when they ran into him by chance in Oxford where he had gone to give a lecture, but how they had originally met Gilbert remains unknown. They were both injured in a car accident near Paris in November 1921 but had made a good recovery after wintering in Egypt. The M. Youngs arrived on Saturday. The day before I had met Cassietti, their Italian courier, in the street: he had been sent for from Italy. I left a large bunch of violets for them at the hotel, bread upon the waters. I got an invitation to dinner for Sunday. Found them looking very well indeed. They had gone to Egypt from France where they had had a terrible motor accident in the battlefields; a military camion ran into Andrew Murray Young (1861-1924) of 29 Park Avenue was the son of Edmund Murray Young and Josepha M. McDonald Young. He married Marie Hunt Story, who was the daughter of Furman Hunt of Brooklyn and widow of Marion Story. Young died in Paris late May 1924 and had no children.

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their car. Their guide was so badly hurt that he died a few hours after reaching the hospital, she broke two ribs and he got badly cut up, all beside the shock. She was still in plaster when they went off to Egypt, and they are now looking as fit as fighting cocks; I think it perfectly wonderful. Very pleased to see me. Bottle of champagne and excellent dinner. They know the Newboldts quite well of course. They are going on to Venice & will be in Florence at the end of April beginning of May. Funny if you meet them there. [Gilbert’s mother would often spend springtime in Florence.] It is not often that very rich people who can take you about in their motors are nice enough to travel with as well but the MYs are. They have a fearsome plan of excursions and tomorrow morning we are all leaving in a motor for Delphi, will be away three days. It is very nice their taking me as when the school goes we go by sea and so now I will see the land route. Then they have promised to take me to Marathon and Sounion and so forth. Very very nice. Yesterday took them up Acrop. in afternoon. (Tuesday, 14 March 1922) I have been having a splendid time with the Youngs. We left on Thursday morning at about 9 with a chauffeur who knew no language except Greek and so I had to act as interpreter & general factotum ... It was certainly very good for me. (Sunday, 19 March 1922) Delphi, one of the most spectacularly located sites in all Greece, lies half way up the south slope of snow-capped Mt Parnassos overlooking a sea of shimmering olive orchards far below and the port of Itea on the Gulf of Corinth off in the distance; on overcast days it even overlooks small wispy clouds passing by. Even after two thousand years of abandonment, a mystical aura pervades the atmosphere around Delphi. It had a mythological claim to being the centre of the world, as illustrated by an egg-shaped stone ‘navel,’ the Omphalos, now on display in the local museum. Here ancient pilgrims came to consult the famed Oracle of Apollo. In a subterranean crypt under the temple a female medium seated on a tripod would inhale intoxicating fumes emanating from fissures below and possibly up through the perforated Omphalos itself, the centre of the world. She would then utter inspired responses for the prophets to convey back to the inquirers, often in poetic lines which could be interpreted ambiguously. When King Croesus of Lydia inquired if he should send an army against the Persians, the Oracle replied that he would destroy a great empire; he chose to believe, wrongly, that it was the Persian Empire that would be destroyed, and

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not his own. The fame of the oracle was so wide-spread that cities would consult the oracle about the foundations of colonies, and kings about upcoming battles. Grateful cities built small temple-like treasuries to display their offerings at this very international site. Every four years contests in music (singing, flute, and cithara) and athletics were held in honour of Pythian Apollo, with a crown of bay leaves as the ultimate trophy. In Gilbert’s day, gold and ivory statues still lay buried beneath the sanctuary, remnants of the luxurious offerings to Apollo. After 1891, the French excavators moved the inhabitants of the town of Kastro off the ancient site of Delphi in order to have access to excavate it. They discovered an ancient paved Sacred Way zigzaging up past a complex of monuments and treasuries dedicated by grateful city-states. A giant bronze tripod of three coiled serpents inscribed with the names of 31 states that had defeated the Persians at Plataea in 479 BC once stood in front of the Temple of Apollo, but it had been taken centuries later as a trophy to adorn the Hippodrome in Constantinople. Above the sanctuary a hill-side theatre overlooked the Temple of Apollo and the valley far below. Just east of the sanctuary lay a gymnasium and another sanctuary, which had been more recently occupied by a convent of the Panayia. Here French excavators uncovered temples and treasuries and a round building called a tholos in the Sanctuary of Athena Pronoia, where enormous boulders that had fallen in earthquakes from 480 BC until 1905 CE still lay on the walls. (Figure 4) Under the older temple of Athena here, the French had just discovered a Mycenaean open-air sanctuary with terracotta figurines perforated to be suspended, similar in date to layers of ashes, bones, sherds and terracottas under the temple of Apollo itself. In fact, ritualized worship at Delphi went back a millennium or more to a time before the Dorian Greeks introduced the worship of Apollo to the site. French archaeologists found evidence that supported ancient legends that the original deity worshiped at Delphi was a chthonic earth mother, Ge or Gaia. Even though it was Gilbert’s first visit to Delphi, he was easily able to impress his companions while guiding them around the site, but he himself was impressed by the grandeur of the site and its unexpected stadium cut unto the side of Mt Parnassos. Next morning Thursday we visited the ruins. They are of course perfectly wonderful and in the grandest situation imaginable. It is hard work sightseeing there, however, as one has to do a terrible lot of climbing. But Mrs Y was very game and would not miss anything on

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4. Delphi Marmaria tholos and treasuries

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any account and climbed [beyond the Temple of Apollo] right up to the stadium, to my mind one of the most impressive things there as you do not expect to find a 600 ft. [long] stadium high up on the slope of the mountain. The day again was very cloudy and hot, a regular Sirocco day and it was certainly unfortunate seeing Delphi under these conditions. In the afternoon we went to the Museum, which has been built so badly that it will collapse shortly. The sculptures here again are marvelous, especially the archaic ones; no casts or photographs do them justice. But it really was amusing to see behind the [bronze statue of a] Charioteer, on either side of his head, two large colored oleographs of [the King and Queen] Tino & Sophia of unspeakable hideousness, and with the names inscribed in Greek and French. The Ephor, a sort of what in Italy we would call Ispettore onorario, spoke imposs. French and English and I got on a bit better with him in Greek. As he was reading the papers, and I asked him if there was any news and he took me aside in great haste and whispered that all the old custodians had been taken away and royalists sent but that he considered Veniz a great man and ‘what has Gounaris done?’ I afterwards learned that he had nearly lost his post after the elections. The day before, while running along in the car, I asked the chauffeur if he thought that at Delphi we would be able to get a paper with the new cabinet. He said he did not think we would but during dinner he came up to me & brought a telegram from Athens which gave the list of names. After the museum went to visit the other ruins of the town [in the sanctuary of Athena Pronoia, where Gilbert took photographs] and came back to tea at the hotel. … At the hotel was an American student at work on the Athenian Treasury metopes [blocks between the triglyphs with relief sculptures]. He was quite nice and we got talking after dinner; of course shop.2 (Sunday, 19 March 1922) The Youngs were so pleased with their trip that they wrote on a postcard of Gilbert’s to his mother: ‘Dear Mrs Bagnani, We consider ourselves in great In 1923 Walter R. Agard published an article on ‘The Date of the Metopes of the Athenian Treasury at Delphi’ in the American Journal of Archaeology. According to the ancient traveler Pausanias, the Athenians built their treasury from the spoils captured from the Persians at Marathon in 490 BCE but art historians have debated the date of the sculpted metopes on it for decades. Modern Athens paid for the ancient Athenian treasury’s reconstruction by French archaeologists in 1906.

2

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luck seeing your son in Athens. We all motored up here yesterday & find Delphi absorbingly interesting made doubly so by your son’s enlightening explanations. It is a beautiful spot perched up on the side of high mountains, & wish you were here to enjoy it with us! Hoping our paths may cross later. Sincerely yours, Marie & Murray Young.’ (Wednesday, 15 March 1922) I am sorry to have remained all this week without writing but as this is going by the [Murray Youngs]. I hope you’ll have it in extra quick time. I have had a glorious week. On Monday [20] motored to Marathon with them, saw the site & all through the Skew property, perfectly lovely & the best cultivated area I’ve seen in Greece. … We then went on to Sounion and had lunch on the steps of the temple [of Poseidon] on the cape with a perfectly wonderful view over the sea.3 Mrs MY said that it reminded her a little of Capri but she added that whenever Greece resembled Italy she always noticed how much more beautiful Italy was. However it was most enjoyable and the day was wonderful for it. I do not care for the temple itself much as the marble is so white as to be dazzling but the position is incomparable. I think Mrs MY’s sneers at Greek scenery to be rather excessive. We passed through Laurion where are the mines [famous in antiquity for producing silver] owned by Serpieri. It seems quite the deserted village and there seems to be very little work going on.4 (Sunday, 26 March 1922) At the same time, della Seta initiated a small excavation on the south slope of the Acropolis, west of the Theatre of Dionysus, where the Italians discovered the first evidence for the earliest occupation of Athens, in the Neolithic period. Gilbert had to take his turn superintending this dig but, at this early stage in his archaeological career until then dedicated to Greek and Roman sculpture, he found it uninspiring and utterly lacking in interest for him. (Figure 5) Quite a good day on Tuesday. I was on the dig the whole time. … We have now found what W says is a Neolithic habitation because he has Located at the south-easternmost tip of Attica, the temple of Poseidon at Sounion was an appropriate place for sailors to leave dedications to the god of the sea, but its dramatic setting contrasting dazzlingly white ruins above the blue sea below appealed to romantics like Byron and painters like Turner, not to mention modern tourists seeking spectacular sunsets. Gilbert himself, no romantic, defended its aesthetic appeal even compared to Italy, his homeland. Years later, in 1936 he chose the temple at Sounion as the framing background for a stunning portrait of his wife painted by Edward Halliday, a former member of the British School at Rome. 4 The Serpieris had neglected to exploit their mines while demand was high during the war. 3

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5. Gilbert Bagnani overseeing dig on South Slope

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found a square with traces of a layer of charcoal all over it and in this layer obsidian knives and hideous little bits of pots and bits of an axe and bones, the remains of their picnics. I feel sorry for him as he is so keen and excited about it but I cannot get up any enthusiasm and in consequence he is slightly annoyed with me. When I got back on Friday he told me quite excitedly that he had found this fireplace and yesterday he took me to see it. When I saw that it was only a little bit of black earth at which he poked his finger to show me that it was charcoal, I am afraid I did not manage to conceal my disappointment. Anyhow I discovered a little terracotta spindle whorl which he says is one of the most important things found so far, and two teeth of an ox. (Sunday, 26 March 1922) On Wednesday started off for the Argolid with the [Murray Youngs]. I am awfully glad they asked me to go on this trip with them as therefore I won’t go out with the school which I would not like as [della Seta] has invited his sister & the Pard girl to accompany us and, what is still worse, Pa Pard who is arriving on Tuesday. Rather rude on my part but I really cannot help it. The day was not very fine; a bit overcast but very pleasant for motoring, rather too much wind however. The road to Corinth is perfectly lovely, all along the coast and the cliffs. It seems extraordinary the way the roads are done in this country: all the bridges collapse. Between Athens and Corinth there is only one bridge intact; at the others one simply has to go round and descend into the very pebbly bed of the stream. These are nearly all perfectly dry but I suppose that some times they have quite a lot of water and I should like to know what happens then. We crossed the Corinth Canal (very amusing to see it from above) and then went to old Corinth. (Sunday, 26 March 1922) ‘Old Corinth’ was not the ancient famously rich Greek city, which had been sacked, destroyed and depopulated by the Romans in 146 BC, but a new Roman colony founded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC, settled with Roman freedmen and veterans. The amount of continuity of populace or religion, if any, from Greek city to Roman colony is debated. Located at the crossroads of east-west maritime trade across the narrow isthmus joining the Peloponnese with the rest of mainland Greece to the north, the colony rapidly grew rich once again from commerce, attracting traders and craftsmen to emigrate from around the empire. By the middle of the first century CE, because Corinth was the capital

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and largest city in the Roman province of Achaea, the apostle Paul stayed there over a year preaching to Gentiles. The local Jews, however, brought Paul before the judgment seat of Gallio, the proconsul of Achaea, and accused him of ‘persuading men to worship God contrary to the Law’ (Acts 18: 13) but the governor dismissed the charges. The base of the speaker’s platform is still standing in the middle of the Roman marketplace at Corinth, and fragmentary inscriptions affirm the existence of Gallio and of Erastus, a Corinthian city official mentioned by the apostle. Early Christian Corinth is described in the Books of Acts and Corinthians and the non-canonical Epistle of Clement, which Gilbert discussed in a book he wrote years later, Rome and the Papacy. Corinth eventually became the seat of bishops and later of the archbishop of Greece, i.e., the religious as well as the political capital of early Christian Greece. Indicative of the religious revolution that occurred in ancient Greece was the contrast between the reaction to Apollo’s oracles and to St. Paul’s teachings. A petitioner to Delphi like King Croesus receiving an ambiguous oracular response from the Oracle of Apollo was more or less free to ‘make of it what you will’ whereas the apostle Paul enjoined the recent Christian converts in effect to make of the new religion what they were told. It is little wonder that ancient Athens with its Greek philosophical schools instilling the questioning of everything resisted such strictures against freedom of thought. Although thoroughly conversant with the medieval history of western Europe, Gilbert did not expect to find so much physical evidence of it still visible in Greece, where it was called ‘Frankish.’ While many ancient Greek buildings had been demolished down to their foundations for their marble blocks, medieval structures built of bricks and stones remained standing. Again Gilbert was impressed by the dramatic topography of the ancient sites. Saw the museum there with quite an interesting collection of Roman sculptures and so on to the temple near by where we had lunch. The temple [of Apollo] is beautifully situated (what a Baedeckarian phrase) at the foot of the Acrocorinth which is certainly one of the most impressive [mountains] I have ever seen, something like Gib[raltar] with a Frank[ish] Castle on top. What a lot of remains the Francs [western Europeans] have left in Greece, almost more than the Greeks. We visited the ruins which are very interesting especially to me as three fountains of various dates have been found there.5 5

While at the University of Rome, Gilbert had studied Greek fountains. Abundant sources of water

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We did not go up to the Acrocor which was certainly a bit of a disappointment but I can do it later since I’ve got to go there again and anyhow the view would not have been very good. Motored on to Mycenae & saw the ruins that afternoon. I really was thrilled & it certainly is the most imposing spot I think in all Greece, even better to my mind than Delphi. … We passed the night at the hotel at Mycenae. Primitive beyond all description but clean and on the whole very comfortable. The people, who of course only spoke Greek and so I had still to do the interpreting, were so anxious to please that it was really touching. The place is more or less run by the daughter of the house, a very pretty girl of about 16, and she simply commanded everything and everybody! The food was excellent and the bed comfortable, but the noise made by donkeys, dogs and poultry was simply dreadful. As usual the country is the noisiest place on earth.6 Next morning (Thursday) we motored on to Argos, then to Tiryns, which I found disappointing after Mycenae, one should really see it first, and so on to Nauplia for lunch. The hotel at Nauplia is quite pretentious but furnished in the style of the mid Victorian III Class boarding house in England. The rooms were nice but the food and the beds were really better at Mycenae. In the afternoon motored to Epidaurus. The theater is one of the most impressive things in Greece and the museum is very well arranged, as they have rebuilt parts of the architectural details of the building found in the excavations and it gives a very good sort of idea before you see the ruins themselves.7 The [Murray Youngs] liked it immensely and I was very glad as they had been disappointed over Tiryns and they had been complaining of the dullness of the scenery. At the hotel in the evening I saw a lot of Swedish archs, who have come out to excavate a site near Nauplia [Asine]. The Swedish Crown Prince8 has stumped up the oof. Dull looking crowd. We from Acrocorinth always sprang up in springs around the lower city, most famously in the Fountain of Peirene, but at the time of Gilbert’s visit, the water was unsafe to drink, carrying typhoid bacteria. 6 This is the urban Gilbert, never imagining that years later he would become a cattle farmer in Canada after deciding to emigrate from Mussolini’s Italy. 7 The discovery of many of the sculpted blocks from the temple of Asklepios and the circular tholos in the sanctuary at Epidauros had enabled the reconstruction of parts of these buildings in the local museum. Overlooking the sanctuary, the well preserved theatre, one of the largest in Greece, could accommodate about 14,000 spectators and was known for its acoustics. 8 Later King Gustaf VI Adolf, who had a lifelong personal interest in archaeology. Years later,

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left the next morning (Friday) [24] and, having had lunch at Corinth, we got to Athens about 5, a most successful excursion. It was curious to see how Nauplio like Corfu still retains so much of the Italian and Venetian character. (Sunday, 26 March 1922) For the first few years after the Greek War of Independence Nauplio was the capital of Greece until King Otto chose to move to the then town of Athens in 1834. According to American Ambassador Morgenthau, however, ‘no modern Greek ever dreamed of reconstituting Athens as the permanent capital of the Greek world. On the contrary, every Greek in the world shared a passionate devotion to the ideal of re-erecting the ancient Byzantine Empire in its prime … with Byzantium (Constantinople) as its capital.’ (Morgenthau 1929:11) Constantinople at that time still had the largest number of Greeks of any city in the world even though they were outnumbered even in it by the Turks. Went to lunch with the [Murray Youngs]. Not a very good lunch as lunches go but quite nice. They seem quite fond of me. They said they would speak about me to their great friend the principal of Columbia University for me to go out there as Prof. If there were nothing better doing I think I would accept.9 … (Sunday, 26 March 1922) The Italian School’s Director della Seta had his sister and friends staying at the School for several days. Gilbert noted that the presence of the two young female visitors at the School was disruptive, both for the housekeeper and cook Signora Parlanti and for the internal dynamics of the personalities. The Sig[no]ra Parlanti in a very bad temper with all the women in the house. Levi is simply extraordinary; you are perfectly right as to his having sexual attraction and he has it pretty hard. Both these women are madly in love with him, especially [della Seta]’s sister who ought to know better. The Pard girl is too silly to realize that she is but she is in love with him just the same. What can they see in him? I’m not jealous because somehow I’ve got quite to like Levi but I should like to know the

Gilbert would guide him around Lake Nemi in Italy and receive an autographed photograph from him as a wedding present 9 Nicholas Murray Butler was the longest serving President of Columbia, from 1902 to 1945 and, as the Republican candidate for the Vice-Presidency with Taft in 1912, was known to many people.

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reason why. Anyway it makes things very uncomfortable here. (Sunday, 26 March 1922) Gilbert attended two lectures at the British School. He had little tolerance for pretentious or deferential amateurs, and did not hesitate to disagree with his established peers. The first discourse was by [Edwin] Freshfield, a Bank of England solicitor who is very much occupied with Byzantine things, and spoke on the column of Arcadius at Con/ple, and Casson on his finds in Macedonia. You’ll see them in the MP. The slides were completely dull & Fresh. lecture was most irritating: very long and very much in the matter of the after dinner speaker. This sort of thing ‘If this bores you I hope you will say so at once’ ‘I hope Mr Casson will allow me to continue to ---‘ ‘I asked the pundits what they thought about it & they were completely stumped.’ Casson’s instead was short & to the point but I did not agree with him a bit. In all an hour & 1/2 just like ours & not half such good slides. (Sunday, 26 March 1922) In his article summarizing the March 26 lectures, which did not appear in the Morning Post until April 4, Gilbert reported that the sculpted reliefs of the column of Arcadius, which was greatly damaged through fire and earthquake, had been copied by several artists before it was destroyed by the Turks in 1719. [Freshfield] exhibited slides of a complete set of drawings [owned by Freshfield himself] made about 1560 by an unknown artist, which, he claimed, were substantially accurate in representing the figures and the events, if not the actual technique of the reliefs.10 The speaker concluded by appealing that the opportunity which has now presented itself of excavating in Constantinople, at least on the site of the Forum, should not be missed. The fires that in the past few years have ravaged the city have uncovered great tracts of land, where excavation might be most profitably conducted.11 (Bagnani 1922g) 10 They portrayed a military campaign on the Danube and the interior of the Hippodrome in Constantinople. (Freshfield 1923) 11 Most of the Turkish houses in Constantinople were built of wood, especially the upper storeys, and were frequently ravaged by fires which would destroy entire quarters of the city. Fires in 1912 and 1913 had cleared much of the neighbourhoods between the ancient Hippodrome and the Sea of Marmara, the location of the oldest palaces of the Byzantine emperors. Now that the city was

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Casson reported on his finds at Chauchitsa in Macedonia. After serving with the British forces at the Salonika front during the war, he returned to a battlefield north of Salonika still strewn with shells and recent skeletons where he had noticed ancient weapons. He discovered graves of ‘warriors’ from the Early Iron Age and he could not refrain from commenting on the evident lack of human progress over the centuries. (Casson 1935: 275) His workmen for the two seasons were Greek refugees from the Caucasus, some of whom spoke only Turkish or Georgian. Gilbert seized the opportunity to escort another family around Greece, the Courvoisiers. On Friday the Courvoisiers arrived. … I went down to get them and brought them to the hotel which they like very much. I was afraid of the noise but it is not bad they tell me. I took them to tea after to Dorée. Certainly ma & pa are heavy in hand but the girl [Léonie] is very nice and pleasant to look at.12 (Sunday, 2 April 1922) Again student responsibilities intervened. ‘Yesterday [Saturday 1] all the school went off to Eleusis and I had to stop and superintend the dig [on the South Slope]. Wace & Blegen & Droop (the man who has taken Bosanquet’s place at Liverpool) & Hill came again and looked over it and came to the same conclusions as we do.’ (Sunday, 2 April 1922) Gilbert still managed to guide the Courvoisiers to the Acropolis the same morning and they asked him to dine with them that evening. On Sunday afternoon the Courvoisiers wanted to go up to the Brit. School to present the letter Mrs [Strong] had given them for Wace so I went up too with them. He was at home and gave us tea. Léonie got him soon onto Greek embroideries, which are his specialty, and he brought out piles and piles of embroidered nighties and ladies shirts etc: not at all nice to my mind for a Director of the School. I asked him what he did with them, whether he dressed up in them his harem in London. (Thursday, 6 April 1922) militarily occupied by French, British and Italian forces, some western archaeologists thought they would be able to conduct excavations unhindered by the Sultan’s government. 12 Léonie Florence Ada Courvoisier (1896-1990) daughter of Edouard Leon and Florence Annie (died 28 March 1939 in Alexandria) Courvoisier married in 1924 Anthony Francis Charles de Cosson des Conges (1883-1940), a writer in Alexandria. (http://www.genealogie33.org/pduc/dat364.htm#1) Gilbert would maintain the friendship while staying in Egypt in the 1930s.

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Alan Wace and R. M. Dawkins had both been encouraged to collect embroideries as anthropological evidence for a rapidly disappearing craft in the various regions and islands of Greece. As societal needs changed, textiles were being unsewn and resewn for new functions, e.g. bed tents into curtains. Both Wace and Dawkins kept methodical records of the sources of their ethnographic collections, including also shadow puppets and amulets, which ended up in various, mostly British, museums. (French 2009) Gilbert did not yet see contemporary Greek textiles as possible evidence for Byzantine weaving styles and techniques. He was very nice to the Cour. but of course he wants a [financial] subscription to the School. I have told the C’s that. There came in too a Captain Churchill who, I believe, collects antiques without knowing anything about them. The conversation turned on to Italy and he asked me whether I knew Italy at all!! I suppose I ought to consider it a compliment [that an Englishman mistook him for another Englishman]. We then after tea went down to the Zappeion and saw the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen: a bank of copper red clouds right over the Parthenon. I dined with the C. that evening; not a bad dinner, and played bridge with them afterwards. She certainly is a stupid woman but he can make exceedingly amusing remarks at times. Léonie says that my conversation is so much like yours; is that a compliment for me or for you? … Tuesday went with the C. & Wace to the Industrial Museum of Arts and Crafts (in the old mosque) of which Wace is a big gun and he showed us a lot of embroideries etc. quite interesting. … I went to the theater with the C’s to see a Russian dancer; quite good she was too. The real reason the C’s went was because it had been announced that the royal family were going. What snobs they are, to be sure. … Took the C’s in the morn to the Theseion [now the Temple of Hephaistos] and the street of tombs. (Thursday, 6 April 1922) Today I gave my lecture on Cyrene [whose Italian excavations Gilbert had visited in June 1921]. Went off quite well but not very many people. The D[ante] Al[ighieri Society] does manage things badly. They only sent me the tickets late yesterday morning so I had hardly any time to invite anyone. The Courvoisiers were there, the Pozzle and the Condouriotis. I may meet the Courv. later at Olympia. The [School] tribe seems to

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have enjoyed its trip pretty well, but have already begun to find bugs. (Sunday, 9 April 1922) Gilbert was about to join Levi and Cattaneo on a lengthy spring excursion around the Peloponnese, where the visible archaeological remains of medieval Greece, though then unfashionable among classical archaeologists, would unexpectedly captivate Gilbert.

8. The Renaissance at a Byzantine Outpost After giving their public lectures at the end of winter term, the students were expected to travel throughout Greece in the spring, and not always accompanied by their somewhat parsimonious Director, della Seta. Their means of conveyance ran the gamut from donkey, carriage, rowboat, train, automobile (very rarely), and most of all on foot; taking an entire day to walk to a site barely warrants a comment in the letters. The students were reimbursed for their travel expenses, and Gilbert kept detailed itineraries with expenses; he subsequently quartered these pages in order to use their backs for notes. Besides heavy clothing like riding breeches, trench boots, and a motor coat, Gilbert also packed cumbersome photographic equipment. Many of the monuments he photographed then are no longer in the same condition.

On April 10, Gilbert took a train out of Athens to catch up with Doro Levi and Antonio Cattaneo at Argos on their way to Tripolis. They rode in a sousta or two-wheeled cart to visit the temple of Athena at Tegea. The amusing part of going to Tegea in a sousta is that we remembered later that the chief, when recommending economy to us, especially asked us not to take a sousta to Tegea & go on foot. The drive anyhow was very nice; a pretty hollow without many trees or vegetation. Got to Tegea and saw the museum. Quite nice for a place of that size and with quite nice things in it. Of course [Cattaneo] with his usual clumsiness barged up against a window and smashed a blind. Then we went on to a fine Byzantine church which stands in the ruins of the theater of Tegea but first we saw the remains of the temple of Athena Alea whose pediments were by Scopas and fragments of which are in the museum. The ruin, as most of the classical ones here in Greece is disappointing; only a few stones and the few there are were covered with all the local washing. (Friday, 21 April 1922) 86

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They reached Sparta in three hours in a large touring car. Disappointed generally by the ruinous state of the temples and other Classical remains at Tegea and Sparta, Gilbert was enthralled by what remained standing on top of the steep hill at Mistra near Sparta. Here was an entire deserted Byzantine city with its streets still traceable among the standing buildings, mostly churches but a few stone houses and the governor’s palace as well. Moreover, perhaps he was also coming to the realization that Christian churches appealed to him more than did pagan temples. Exploring in Greece can often result in a discovery of the self. With its extensive ruins and stunning views, Mistra emerged from the medieval mists to become a multi-faceted symbol in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to both East and West. After Catholics from western Europe captured Constantinople in 1204, they divided regions of mainland Greece and the Aegean islands among themselves. In the southern Peloponnese, then called the Morea, the inhabitants around ancient Sparta had fled to the safety of a hilltop at nearby Mistra. Here the Frankish ruler William of Villehardoin built a fortified castle at the very top dominating the plain and its Greek inhabitants below. After William himself was captured, Mistra was returned to the Byzantine Greeks and gradually enlarged its increasingly prosperous territory to include most of the Peloponnese, called the Despotate of the Morea. The governor’s palace was built in the upper city and many churches and monasteries were built on the steep hillside with wonderful views of the plain in the distance below. Surrounded by a precipitous gorge around the west, the city spread down the east side of the hill and was encircled with fortification walls. Cobbled streets wound their way back and forth even through and beneath the houses, so restricted was the available space on the hillside. As a provincial capital it became an outpost of Byzantine culture at the then western edge of the empire, but it also interacted with the mercantile Venetian fortified coastal ports around its borders. The later Byzantine emperors appointed their brothers or sons as its rulers, some of whom married Italian princesses for political reasons, and so Mistra was increasingly frequented by traders from the West. Unlike its churches, which would have been older, ‘the secular architecture of Mistra is almost more Western than Byzantine. The greater houses, and the Palace itself, are closer in conception to the smaller old palaces in Italy than to the halls of the Great Palace in Constantinople.’ (Runciman 1980: 105) The latest wing of the Palace of the Despots has pointed arches and round windows typical of Italian Renaissance villas, and the last church to be built at Mistra, the Pantanassa dedicated in 1428, also exhibited

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pointed arches and an Italian-style campanile or belfry. Gilbert explored the church and enjoyed the view of the plain below from the belfry. (Figure 6) Unlike the distant capital of Constantinople, which was dominated by growing religious conservatism and mysticism, Mistra flourished as a centre for liberal cosmopolitan ideas. Among a community of free-thinkers, Mistra’s most famous and influential scholar Pletho was the eastern equivalent of the Renaissance Man, whose heretical beliefs included a mixture of Zoroastrianism and the ancient pagan gods. He has been called both the last (pagan) Hellene and the first (modern) Greek. When the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaiologos traveled with the Ecumenical Patriarch and seven hundred other prelates to the Council of Ferrara/Florence in 1438-39 in an attempt to heal the religious schism between the eastern Orthodox and western Catholic churches,1 Pletho was included in the retinue. In Florence he explained to Italian humanists the differences between the much-studied Aristotle and Plato, who was then little known in the West. Plato’s concept of the anti-democratic ‘philosopher king’ appealed to Florence’s ruler, Cosimo de Medici, who was so enthused by Pletho’s lectures that he later established a Platonic Academy of his own in Florence. In response to Italian scholars’ growing fascination with the Greek literature, philosophy and geography that underlay ancient Roman writings (there were few Greek texts in Italy at this time), Pletho returned to Mistra where he wrote a summary of his lectures for the Italians entitled On the Differences of Aristotle from Plato. Of arguably even greater historical significance, while in Florence Pletho introduced the Italians to the humanist geographer Strabo, discussing him with the mathematician astronomer Paolo Toscanelli and subsequently writing a geographical treatise on Strabo. In a copy of a letter sent years later to Christopher Columbus,2 Toscanelli noted that the shortest route to India lay westward straight across the Ocean rather than around Africa, relying on Strabo’s use of Poseidonius’ incorrect measurements which underestimated the earth’s circumference. (Woodhouse 1986: 183-84; Strabo Geography II.3.6) Columbus also had a copy of the Geography of Ptolemy, whose use of latitude and longitude inspired later cartographers. The Age of Discovery of the New The Emperor desperately needed Western military support against the anticipated attack on Constantinople by the Ottomans. His delegation agreed to a reconciliation of the centuries old schism between the Roman and Orthodox churches which, however, was later resoundingly rejected by their more conservative ecclesiastical compatriots back in Constantinople itself. 2 It has been claimed for several reasons that Columbus and his family of sailors were actually Greek from the Aegean island of Chios, then part of the Republic of Genoa (http://www.freerepublic. com/focus/chat/1185900/posts), although other nationalities have claimed him as well. 1

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6. Mistra Pantanassa monastery

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World by Mediterranean sea-farers can be directly linked to the geographical writings of Ptolemy and Strabo, which only reached Italy during the twilight of the Byzantine Empire, and Pletho, it can be argued, was in part responsible. (Anastos 1952) Pletho was so highly regarded in Italy that soon after his death in Mistra in 1452 his bones were re-interred in Rimini, Italy. The last Emperor, Constantine XI, was actually confirmed in Mistra in 1449 before he set out with foreboding for his capital. When Constantinople was captured in 1453, it was tantamount to the beheading of an organism, whose remaining parts were still barely alive but doomed, and Mistra too fell to Mehmet the Conqueror in 1460. Mistra was not destroyed at one moment in time but gradually abandoned over the succeeding centuries and, apart from a few monks, was virtually empty by the time it was put to the torch in 1824 during a brutal repression of the Greek revolution. In essence it remained a uniquely preserved example of a provincial capital of the Byzantine Empire. While it was the glory of ancient classical Greek democracy which encouraged western European philhellenes to support the creation of a Kingdom of Greece independent from the Ottoman Empire, it was the new awareness half a century later of the significance of Byzantium which captured the attention of Greek intellectuals in the 1880s. The Western Roman Empire may have fallen to the barbarian invasions but the Eastern Roman Empire had flourished and survived for another thousand years, ruled by Greek-speaking emperors and bureaucrats whose descendants still lived in Greece, Anatolia and especially Constantinople. Moreover, while Greece had never been unified during its classical heyday until conquered by Philip of Macedon, its territory as the Byzantine Empire once covered North Africa as well as Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The proponents of speaking and writing demotic Greek argued for the historical continuity of the language from Byzantium through to contemporary Greece and began examining Greek folklore. Thus by the time of World War I, Byzantium and its imperial history had been appropriated for a new Greek national identity not as a resuscitated antiquarian ideal but as a living survivor of ancient Greece and Rome.3 Gilbert experienced Mistra in 1922 just before his friend, Anastasios Orlandos, undertook an examination and restoration of the remains. Mistra had become increasingly symbolic in competing nationalist agendas in both western and modern Greek literature. For the French, Mistra with its French writers were the first to pick up the demoticists’ anti-establishment (pro-republican) cause, fully discussed in Kourelis forthcoming.

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Frankish castle built by Villehardouin proved the presence of medieval French crusaders in the East as recounted in the Chronicle of the Morea, first published by the French in 1825. The Greeks, however, reclaimed Mistra for themselves emphasizing its two centuries under the rule of the Palaiologoi dynasty, its cultural renaissance, and its contributions toward the Italian renaissance. Orlandos, who as chief restorer of monuments would be more responsible than any other single person for the look of Greek archaeological sites, believed that the houses at Mistra were the direct ancestors of contemporary vernacular houses in modern Greece. This perceived direct link between the Byzantine houses and churches at Mistra and their modern Greek counterparts helped to counter the accusation that waves of Slavic, Bulgarian, Turkish and Italian immigrants had diluted the pure ‘Greekness’ of modern Greece. Conveniently overlooking four centuries of Ottoman occupation, Orlandos would later go on to restore the site to what he imagined it ought to have looked like, at the same time that he was designing and building churches all over Greece in a neoByzantine style. Symbolizing so much to so many, Mistra was elevated to the status of a national shrine attracting both Greek and international tourists.4 [We] went to see the ruined city. The ruins of Mistra are amongst the most interesting things I have ever seen. We first went to the Metropolis [cathedral] where we found a delightful papas [Orthodox priest] who showed us round, then went up to the main church, the Pantanassa, where live with the nuns who have the keys. We found a lot of Greeks up there who had motored over that day so we looked over the church & then went into the refectory where a very garrulous nun gave us coffee & cognac. Taking a boy as a guide we went up to the Castle of Villehardouin, coming down by a most precipitous route where we were several times within an ace of breaking our necks, but our guide quietly negotiated with bare feet. … I can quite understand people coming to Greece and taking up medieval antiquities. (Friday, 21 April 1922) So Mistra was a well-preserved medieval city, Gilbert’s favorite period, in the middle of Greece but with historical and visible links to Florence, Gilbert’s second home in Italy. The streets and open palace courtyard where Pletho taught were still traversable. No wonder Gilbert was captivated and scrambled For a full discussion and critique of the historical, literary and architectural context of Orlandos’ extensive restorations at Mistra, see Kourelis 2011-2012.

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7. Mistra Ayia Sophia before restoration

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about taking photographs of churches from near the top (Hagia Sophia; Figure 7) to the bottom (Peribleptos) as well as photos of the views of the plain below from the belfry of the Pantanassa. In the 1920s, it was not archaeologists but avant-garde authors who first ‘took up medieval antiquities.’ (Kourelis 2007: 393) A near contemporary of Gilbert’s, Robert Byron (1905-1941), fell under the spell of Greece and, when he first visited in 1926, ‘I experienced the kind of revelation that only comes to people once or twice in their lives. I simply said to myself: now I understand what it’s all about; this Greece, this thing, I’ve been learning about all these years, isn’t dead; it’s here; I’m in it.’ (Byron 2010: xiii) For him as well as for Orlandos, the Byzantine era was the bridge between antiquity and the modern world, a living link. (Byron 2010: 117) From Mistra the students hired mules to take them across the Taygetos mountain range into Messenia. After spending the night at the mountain village of Tripi, they continued for about eleven hours through the fragrant pine forests of the Langada gorge down to Kalamata. On their way to Messene, they went first by train and then on horseback accompanied by two children as guides who turned out not to know the way. They climbed the steep side of Mt Ithome up to the half-ruined monastery of Vourkano on top. Although it looked deserted, a mad monk took them into the small church, prayed for them though making mistakes in his prayers, and served them wine, but he then started raving at a violent pace and threatened to kill them with a knife if they departed. (Figure 8) They managed to escape and descended to the ancient site of Messene. They then had to gallop through pouring rain to catch the train back to Kalamata. The postal coach to Andritsaina was an old horse-drawn landau, and the students used a towel to keep the rain out from the broken window. From there, riding on horseback ‘we had the most wonderful views all over the valley of the Alpheios. This part of Greece strikes me as far and away the most beautiful. Lots of streams and torrents with pine clad hills and great groves of cypresses and olives: just what one expects Greece to be and isn’t. I don’t think there is any part of Greece that I like better, not even Delphi.’ (Friday, 21 April 1922) The journey took thirteen hours including crossing the Alpheios River. At Olympia, they stayed at the best hotel which cost fifty drachmai per day with full pension. The students were not above exploiting the vagaries of Greek communications and transportation for their own benefit. Since they were enjoying their stay at Olympia, both the site and the hotel, they chose to ignore a telegram from della Seta which arrived too late for them to act upon his instructions.

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8. Mt Ithome Monastery of Vourkano left to right: Gilbert Bagnani, monk, Doro Levi

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We enjoyed our days at Olympia a great deal & we were quite anxious not to leave, so we were very pleased when, on Sat 22, we received in the morning a telegram from W., sent off from Athens on the 20th, in which he asked us to be at Patras on Sat. We found out that telegrams at Olympia come by the train & therefore take as much time as an ordinary letter. So we decided with much satisfaction to do the only possible thing & leave the day following. (Sunday, 30 April 1922) The students thus contrived to spend three full days at Olympia. The archaeological site of the ancient Games is fairly extensive. The limestone Temple of Zeus, one of the largest in Greece, sheltered the gold and ivory statue of Zeus, one of the wonders of the ancient world; the on-site workshop of the sculptor, Phidias, was not then known to the students. The nearby Temple of Hera (Figure 9) is particularly interesting because its column capitals appear to vary in style and date, possibly because they gradually replaced wooden columns and capitals over the centuries. It was in this temple that German archaeologists discovered the remarkable marble statue of Hermes holding the infant Dionysos, arguably an original sculpture by Praxiteles, on display in the local museum. No one in the hotel woke the students up in the morning for the 5:00 a.m. train, and so the manager had to hold it up until they boarded and he then stayed on board since in their rush they hadn’t yet paid their bill. At Patras when they read a letter from della Seta saying that he had left to sail over to the island of Zakinthos until Monday evening, Gilbert took over as their leader and persuaded the students to continue on the same train eastward to Diakophto to catch the narrow-gauge rack and pinion train up the gorge to the largest monastery in Greece, Megaspeleion. Its name means a large cave and it is in fact built in a cavern. When I first caught sight of it I was a bit disappointed as one only sees a sheer wall of rock with in the middle what appears to be a collection of ramshackle Swiss chalets in all stages of repair and chiefly colored light blue. One does not see the cave a bit as it has all been completely blocked up by the buildings. We got up at last and found that the building was really very picturesque with all the monks looking out at us. One of them, wearing a heavy kind of fur cloak because it really was quite cold, took us to a big square building near the monastery which is the hotel and is the property of the monks. We left our things there & went & had a look over

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9. Olympia Temple of Hera

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the monastery itself. The church was very interesting. It is all covered with Byzantine paintings and has some interesting reliquaries & things in it. First thing I saw on entering was the dried up hand & arm of some saint set in silver & lying about on the offering plate like a withered orchid root. The tips of the fingers were covered with a kind of silver nail guards. The pavement is beautiful and the kind of cosmatesque mosaic and there is a fine iconostasis of wood carved & gilded which shows evident influence of the Italian baroque. We were then shown over the library which is picturesque but does not contain anything of great interest as far as I could see. We then saw the rest of the mon[astery] with the great cellars in which are the biggest vats I have ever seen. We then went out and had a walk round & saw the perfectly lovely view in beautiful woods & then had a perfectly excellent dinner at the hotel, the first decent soup that I have had in Greece. (Sunday, 30 April 1922) Della Seta finally met them in Patras and handed Gilbert two letters. One came from N.F. Grant, the Foreign Editor of the Morning Post, offering to hire Gilbert permanently as his Foreign Correspondent for Greece. The other was a letter from the [Murray Youngs], which I will send you later, in which they enclosed a check for $200 asking me to use it for any excavation I wanted. I of course offered it to the chief who declined to take it himself & wants me to do a dig all on my own, merely under the auspices of the School and thus I would be able to mention the MYs’ donation. He suggests the island of Lemnos as a promising site. (Sunday, 30 April 1922) They sailed and hiked to Naupaktos, the Venetian Lepanto, a small harbor overlooked by a Venetian castle on the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth. (Figure 10) In 1571 a combined fleet of Venetian and Spanish ships destroyed the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto, halting the seemingly invincible westward advance of the Ottomans through the western Mediterranean. From Patras the students sailed to the port of Sami on the island of Kephallonia and crossed over to its west coast. The carriage was a ramshackle old landau about 200 years old. Its lines were characteristically Louis 15th & it was largely held together by string. We took over 5 hours to get to Argostoli since one had to cross

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10. Naupaktos harbour

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all the hills that form the backbone of the island and there was no view as the weather was bad. The W [della Seta] spent all his time pulling [Cattaneo’s] leg & Levi & I spent ours pulling W’s. We two certainly do not treat him with great respect; L told him he spoke Greek with un accento romanesco; he was quite annoyed about it. (Tuesday, 2 May 1922) Sailing from Sami for Preveza, they caught the boat early the next morning. The tarif of the boatman is 2.50 a head but while we were in the boat he asked us 30 dr for all. We did not say anything at the time but the moment we reached the ship we got our things on board and then handed him 10 dr. He was furious but everyone roared at the way he had been had. The journey to Preveza was dull except that I saw a new way of landing wine. The barrels were simply thrown overboard and allowed to drift in. (Tuesday, 2 May 1922) North-western Greece from the Adriatic Sea all the way over to Eastern Thrace had only a decade earlier been captured from the Ottoman Empire, thanks in part to the cooperative efforts of King Constantine and Venizelos. With the outbreak of WWI immediately afterward, Greece was mobilized for a decade, with little attention paid to any but military needs. So Gilbert found western Greece north of Preveza and Nikopolis on the Ambracian Gulf, roughly corresponding to ancient Epirus, just as the Ottoman Turks had left it. There were no rail lines anywhere and the frontier had been a no man’s land. Nikopolis was founded by the first Roman Emperor Augustus to commemorate his victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the naval Battle of Actium in 31 BC. Gilbert’s friend Alexander Philadelpheus (‘the Incest’) had begun excavating basilicas there immediately after Greece acquired the territory from the Ottoman Empire.5 The city stands with the sea on either side, on one side is the open sea and the other side the lagoon. Here W [della Seta] fell victim to his passion for bathing and went off to the lagoon with L & C. I refuse to 5 After Pharsalos and Philippi, Actium was the last of the Roman civil wars all fought in Greece during the last century BC. The location of Nikopolis at the entrance to the Ambracian Gulf was well chosen by the victorious Augustus and the city prospered. By the early Christian period it had several basilicas. After discovering Basilica A with its extensive mosaic floors, in 1921 Philadelpheus started clearing Basilica B, possibly the cathedral of Nikopolis, and set up the first local museum in the basement of the then Town Hall of Preveza.

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follow and stayed to talk politics with the driver. He like all the people here was a Venist & praised Carapanos very much. I asked him why there was the portrait of Gounaris in the hotel & he told me that it was on account of all the [royalist] officers who were quartered there. These people have no moral courage. The W went and sank in the bog and got very wet. I was distinctly pleased. (Tuesday, 2 May 1922) According to Gilbert, Ioannina was a ‘stronghold of Ven[izel]ism and therefore Prince Andreas [Andrew] was coming to command the Army Corps for prop[aganda]. Therefore the orders were that all the houses should be beflagged and they were. ... The Venist shopkeepers hang up the portrait of Tino [King Constantine] all right but it is usually a small one while in the place of honour they keep the portrait of King Alexander.’ (Saturday, 13 May 1922) In one shop he saw the whole collection of portraits, the past, present and future kings of Greece as well as the Sultan! Gilbert was surprised to find an Italian consul general, vice-consul, and secretary interpreter in a town with so few Italians, and guessed that their presence was political: Italy and its Ambassador Montagna maintained a consulate there to serve as an observer in this outpost near the frontier with Albania, which Italy had long coveted. The secretary guided them around the mosques which were still in use until 1924, but the Turkish cemeteries had already been destroyed and the tombstones reused for building purposes; one of the custodians wept as he described the ‘crimes.’ In the nearby lake on an island with its small monasteries they saw ‘the house in which Ali Pasha was killed as he slept in an upstairs room by soldiers who fired [up from below] through the [wooden] floor. They showed us the bullet holes.’6 (Saturday, 13 May 1922) After a carriage ride to the oracular site of Dodona, the Italians still had to walk for three hours to get to the site, where Gilbert said the scenery was worth the walk. The ancient Greeks believed that the oracle of Zeus at Dodona was the oldest in Greece. It could conceivably predate the entry of the Greeks into Greece since the pagan worship of an oak tree sacred to a sky god is well known from northern Europe. At Dodona, inquirers inscribed their queries on small lead sheets and received their responses from the oak tree. Through the local interpreters who had to sleep on the ground and never wash their feet, it ‘spoke’ either by means of the rustling of its leaves, the flights of doves, or Ali Pasha was a notoriously cruel semi-independent Albanian ruler of the western part of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. Lord Byron visited and recorded the court of Ali Pasha at Ioannina. Finally the Turkish sultan re-established his authority by having Ali assassinated.

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the reverberating sounds of a ring of tripod caldrons than encircled it. The usual Christian solution to preventing the pagan worship of trees was to cut them down. By the time of Gilbert’s visit, the walled open-air sanctuary of the oracular tree was not securely identified and the students struggled to make use of the plan drawn by the excavator Konstantinos Carapanos,7 but published by Diehl who did not try to describe anything on the site. The students’ departure from Ioannina was delayed because the official visit of Prince Andrew to garner royalist support required all the available automobiles. So Gilbert chatted with the Italian consul, Barone Modica, who told him ‘that Stergiadis [the Cretan appointed by Venizelos to be the Greek Governor of Smyrna] had been governor here before and had left the reputation of being one of the most violent people on earth, but admittedly very able but too autoritaire.’ (Saturday, 13 May 1922) Gilbert was very annoyed when the Consul General said to him ‘I suppose you are at the Legation? Do I really look such a fool as all that, that people should take me for a diplomatist?’ (Wednesday, 28 July 1926 to Stewart Bagnani) The interesting things at Arta are the Byzantine churches which beat anything I have seen so far. One has some very nice Majolica plaques in relief [Ayios Vasilios]. Another, Ayia Theodora, a beautiful tomb of the saint with perfectly wonderful Byzantine capitals8 & above all the great main church which is quite the finest to my mind in all Greece [Panayia Paragoritissa with six domes and seemingly supported internally by cantilevered columns]. (Sunday, 14 May 1922) ‘It is curious the way [della Seta’s Italian] nationalism comes out in his contempt for Byzantine art & he is always very annoyed with Levi and me because we maintain that the only things worth seeing in Greece are the medieval antiquities. I really don’t quite think that but it is always sure to make him rise.’ (Saturday, 13 May 1922) For much of the twentieth century, it was in fact normal for western archaeologists as well as art historians to denigrate the post-Classical remains in Greece, even to the point of archaeologists removing stratified layers as fast as possible to get down to the Classical levels. Della Seta Eminent politician from Arta and father of Alexander Carapanos, whom Gilbert knew. Gilbert’s photo of the church of Ayia Theodora illustrates its bell tower which the Greek archaeologist Orlandos later removed to purge the church of non-Greek, i.e., Italian accretions. (Figure 11) Gilbert neglected to mention that they also stopped at the monastery of Kato Panayia outside Arta, where he photographed his compatriots in the courtyard. 7

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11. Arta Ayia Theodora with bell tower

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himself was hoping to find evidence of ancestors of the Romans, especially the Etruscans, a world apart from the Byzantines. It is to their credit that both Doro Levi and Gilbert Bagnani resisted the peer pressure of following what was popular and thought for themselves. It takes a certain amount of selfconfidence, perhaps occasionally even arrogance, to do so, but poor della Seta must have found his two independent-minded students very trying at times. They sailed across the Ambracian Gulf toward the town of Agrinion. ‘Levi & I secured a great triumph by getting W to play with us 3 handed bridge. He hardly plays at all & does not like cards but we did it merely to secure the moral victory.’ (Sunday, 14 May 1922) When they stopped at a khan, a Turkish roadside inn, Gilbert ‘noticed a lot of very evil faced peasants. We found out later that the road is not considered very safe, that people have frequently been held up & that the Khani is the meeting place of the local brigands.’ (Sunday, 14 May 1922) In fact, a bank in Agrinion was being robbed while they were touring ancient sites like Stratos and Thermon in the region. They stayed at Mesolonghi, a town famous for its resistance to repeated Ottoman sieges and for the inspiring death there of Lord Byron during the Greek War of Independence. Ancient Greece helped to free modern Greece from the Ottoman Empire: modern patriots used the classical heritage to appeal to the West’s notion of classical West vs. oriental East. Once liberated from the (eastern) Ottoman Empire, Greece very much wanted to be part of the West, as ironically so would Ataturk’s Turkey a century later. From Gilbert’s Italian point of view, however, Greece was still in the East. Two days later, on a steamer from Krioneri back over to Patras, We were rather anxious about the plague and if we were held up in quarantine but there was nothing for it but to risk it. We did not as a matter-of-fact have any difficulty on that account but instead they at first would not allow us to land [at Patras] & the police came on board & wanted our passports & opened our luggage. It appeared that the day before yesterday [Friday] there had been a big robbery of a bank at Agrinion & the police were hoping to catch the thief as he left the district. The W [della Seta] whose train for Athens stood puffing on the quay got simply hopping mad but at last we got off & he got his train all right. (Tuesday, 16 May 1922) The students sailed from Patras across the Gulf of Corinth to Itea, the harbour for Delphi, and then crossed the plain to Krisso to begin the ascent up

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Mt Parnassos to the modern town of Delphi. Gilbert took photographs of the recently excavated Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia. The students spent three days studying the remains in and around Delphi, including a hike up and around Mt Parnassos to the Korykian Cave, sacred to Pan and the Nymphs. They rode on mules to reach the monastery of Hosios Loukas, where the frescoes and golden mosaics inside the two adjoining monastic churches and the crypt are the best preserved in Greece. Gilbert photographed the arched windows along the front of the main church. Left at 4 next morning with a fine moon and went up the slopes of Helicon. It was really very beautiful with lovely pine woods one of the prettiest parts of Greece I have seen so far. Got to Levadhia at about 9 1/2. It is the ancient Lebadeia where there was a very famous oracle of Trophonios [an underground snake god]. It is a very pretty town with a wonderful gorge and medieval castle. There we took a carriage and drove to Skripou to see the ruins of Orchomenos. The most interesting thing there is the Church of the falling asleep [Dormition] of the Virgin, one of the oldest churches in Greece and which is half ruined by earthquakes. (Tuesday, 16 May 1922) This Bulgarian inspired church was built in 874, its walls incorporating column drums re-used from an ancient Greek temple and courses of inscribed stones. When Gilbert photographed it in 1922, however, the church had been badly damaged in a recent earthquake and had lost its roof. (Figure 12) We then saw the Treasury of Minyas, a tomb very much like those at Mycenae and then we had a very long and hot climb up to the acropolis which from a distance looks rather like a medieval castle. On the whole though the ruins are very disappointing. We then descended into our carriage to the station [at Levadhia]. Levi & [Cattaneo] got out at Thebes as they had decided to visit the city and return the following day. As I had already seen the place I did not think it worth while stopping over and so came straight home & arrived at the School at 10 1/4 p.m. (Tuesday, 16 May 1922) Even before he returned to Athens, Gilbert learned that his secret identity as an anonymous foreign correspondent had been exposed.

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12. Orchomenos Skripou church

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9. Exposed While Gilbert was away from Athens at Olympia, his clandestine activities as an anonymous foreign correspondent for the Morning Post had been exposed, ironically enough, by his being offered the position permanently. Although Gilbert had informed a few of his closest colleagues of his journalistic role, including della Seta, he had not warned Grant, the Foreign Editor, that he was working undercover, as it were. It is not clear whether Grant knew that Gilbert was half Canadian and/ or only twenty-one years old, as Gilbert had initiated the connection through their mutual friend, William Miller, another Post correspondent. Unfortunately for Gilbert, however, when Lord Apsley, the young son of the newspaper’s owner, Lady Bathurst, went first to the British School looking for Gilbert, he inadvertently exposed Gilbert’s secret avocation to his archaeological colleagues there and hence to everyone else, nearly putting an end to Gilbert’s budding journalistic career. The revelation in Athens that Gilbert had been the author of political as well as archaeological articles in an English newspaper was a distinct ‘nuisance’ for him, as his social acquaintances and friends would be less likely to speak as freely. As a result, his sources would have become much more circumspect in their conversations around him. He declined Lord Apsley’s offer because he had to leave Greece soon for school explorations in the (Italian-controlled) Dodecanese islands and coastal Turkey. In addition, the exposure also meant that his unnamed replacement’s much more partisan (pro-royalist) articles would be generally attributed to Gilbert. W [della Seta] knows all about my writing for the MP. I told him about it from the very first. Lord Apsley came to the School when he was here and when they told him that I was often away asked to see W & said that he had come to offer me the MP & did he know whether I would like the job. W said that as Director of the School he had to ignorare these 106

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outbreaks of his pupils, but that he did not think that I would accept it. Said Apsley spoke very good French. Wace must have got it from him [Apsley] as have only told Casson.1 Am rather annoyed about the things Aps[ley] sent from here as they may be put down to me and it is quite bad enough being responsible for what one does write oneself. (Saturday, 13 May 1922) … I am very much annoyed at people knowing that Apsley offered me the MP as I am afraid that some people may put down these [pro-] Tinoist articles to me, so I have told the [Koundouriotis] that I most emphatically have no connection with it. Of course the articles of this new man have been extensively quoted in all the government press here and people have been much surprised at the MP’s volto face. To think of a man saying that Aps[ley] is secure under this [royalist] regime when his [Venist] predecessor [Kavaphakes] has just been murdered is ridiculous I think. I am not a Venist but I am not a royalist either; that is why I would not be a success here as a correspondent. On board ship I’ll write a few articles for the MP but not political. (Thursday, 25 May 1922) Gilbert eventually did send a report to the Morning Post on the excavations of the ‘Neolithic Remains in Athens,’ in which he himself had somewhat reluctantly participated. On the South slopes of the Acropolis it is somewhat surprising to notice a considerable space, enclosed on three sides by the Theatre of Herodes, the Asklepieion and the Stoa of Eumenes, which is almost entirely devoid of ancient buildings. The only traces of human occupation were a few fragments of the Pelasgic wall. The site had been excavated many years ago and, when no classical remains were found, it was usually supposed to be in consequence of a law which enjoined that ‘the Pelargikon should remain deserted.’ But a trial excavation conducted here this year by the Italian School under the direction of Professor Della Seta has given surprising results. In not confiding in Alan Wace, Gilbert may not have been aware of Wace’s recent war experience as a clandestine operative gathering secret intelligence for Britain’s MI-6. See Allen 2011, 20 and Mackenzie 1960, 38-39.

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It has proved that in this spot not only the excavations of the last century, but also the extensive classical building works, have left the prehistoric strata undisturbed. About a couple of yards north of the back wall of the Stoa of Eumenes, and only a few feet below the surface of the ground, important traces of a very early settlement were discovered. The remains of a square hut were found, which had a floor of beaten clay, supported by a foundation of rubble kept in place on the south side by a kind of buttress wall of clay. In the centre of the hut the round hearth, which was covered to a considerable height with the carbonized remains of animals and many fragments of pottery. Above the floor a layer of charcoal was probably due to the destruction of the walls and roof of the hut, which must have been of wattle. All the stratification was absolutely undisturbed, save only on the south side where the builders of the Stoa of Eumenes damaged in a few spots the clay supporting wall. The objects found are of the greatest importance for the early history of Athens: fragments of painted and unpainted pottery, spindle whorls, large quantities of worked obsidian, including some fine knives and arrowheads, and other stone implements. They prove that the settlement is of the late Neolithic period, and presents many analogies with similar sites of the same age which have been found in Thessaly and near Corinth. But the importance of the discovery is due to the fact that it is the first Neolithic site to be found in Attica. It should be noted that Thucydides says that the first settlement in Athens was on the south slopes of the Acropolis, and that primitive man would certainly choose a place well warmed by the sun, while the Acropolis would protect him from cold north winds. At the same time the village had close at hand the spring which afterwards became sacred to Aesculapius. Only later was the Acropolis summit itself occupied by men of the Bronze (or Helladic) Age, and traces of their settlement were found last year near the Erechtheum by the American School. (Bagnani 1922j) The obsidian blades and arrowheads, the painted sherds and the spindle whorl from the hearth and foundations of this Neolithic hut are still the oldest stratified evidence for men and women living in Athens, hunting for their food, eating around their firepit and sewing their clothes. In a separate article on the ‘Recent Excavations in Macedonia’ Gilbert wrote:

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Mr. S. Casson Assistant Director of the British School, has continued his important excavations near Karesouli, on the Greco-Serbian frontier. The history of the site can now be traced from the Bronze Age to the Fourth Century A.D. The town appears to have been an outlying post on the great route that led down the Vardar from the North to the Aegean, and to have been an important commercial centre, since extensive granaries, both of the Bronze Age and of later periods, were found, and the position of the site would enable it to keep in touch with traffic from east to west as well as from north to south. Before the Iron Age the site seems to have enjoyed a long period of quiet prosperity. With the appearance of the Iron Age culture, which is radically different from any preceding culture on the site, the old occupants seem to have disappeared. The new people stayed for only a short time and soon moved elsewhere, but they left behind them an extensive cemetery, many of the graves in which were opened this year. After their departure the site remained deserted till the Fourth Century B.C., but from then was occupied continuously till the Fourth Century A.D. Objects of every period of occupation were found. Of the pre-Iron Age much pottery was found of types hitherto unknown in Greece. On the Acropolis a fine granary was discovered with rows of large jars, mostly intact. The cemetery yielded many interesting objects of the Iron Age: bronze ornaments of new and curious types, simple gold ornaments, iron knives and blades, and much pottery. Of later times there were ample traces. Coins and Hellenistic pottery established the dating; Roman coins and pottery testified to the last period of occupation. As an illustration of the life in antiquity of a town situated at all periods of its history upon the very fringe of barbarism the excavations have helped to lay the foundations for further investigations. (Bagnani 1922k) So Gilbert did generate enough enthusiasm to write about prehistoric archaeological discoveries which initially held little interest for him. By the time years later that he was excavating an abandoned city in the Egyptian desert, he had matured to appreciate every scrap of evidence for the lives of its inhabitants. As a young man, he usually marched to the beat of a different drummer, preferring the more marginalized fields of study such as the Byzantine churches and Crusader castles in Greece and the mosques and Coptic churches in Egypt over the more popular Greek and Egyptian temples.

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His interests may have been encouraged partly by the novelty of the new areas of study which he had not been formally taught in school or university but first encountered through the researches and publications of his friend, the modern Greek historian William Miller, and then on his own during his travels. He frequently expressed his eagerness to visit Constantinople, then still not part of academic curricula. On the other hand Della Seta was not interested in even the Late Antique period, not to mention Byzantium, and assigned traditionally Classical projects to the students. Was as you may imagine very happy to get back and find the Lily [since giglio means ‘lily,’ this would be della Seta’s friend Giulio Quirino Giglioli, Director of the Villa Giulia in Rome, who was then visiting the Italian School in Athens for a few months] who gave me your very interesting letters. They were most amusing. Thank you very much for the magnificent birthday present but you cannot pretend that I ought to have thanked you before as I only knew you had given it to me in these last few days. I had intended sending you a telegram on my birthday but, apart from the expense, I feared you might get a shock at receiving a telegram and think that something was wrong with me, so I just sent you that p.c. On Olympia you will find a German book by Boetticher, just about the same size as Poulsen, bound in red cloth; I think it is in the second book case to the right from the window. [Since Gilbert’s mother had once lived in Dresden as a girl, she would have been able to read German.] As for money, I have finished, or will have finished most of my loose cash by the time we leave for Rhodes. I may have to change a fiver here but won’t if I can help it. I will change my 1000 assegno circolare [bank draft] in Rhodes where I have to spend Italian money & it might be just as well if you sent me out another 1000 so that I need not change any English money. The school’s share of my trip comes to about 1,650 drachmae, not bad eh! [Italian] Excavations in Caria seem knocked on the head by the [Italian military] evacuation of the Meander Valley but anyhow we are leaving for Rhodes on Wednesday next 24 May. Write to me here still as all letters will be forwarded in the leg[ation] bag. It has suddenly become very hot here & I will not be sorry to leave. You really seem to like the idea of becoming MP corresp more than I do. It never entered my head to do it seriously. They now have got a man, an ardent

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pro Tino: right after their late one had been murdered by royalists. What people! Am sending you some photos. (Tuesday, 16 May 1922) Shortly after Gilbert’s return to Athens, Gounaris resigned as Prime Minister a second time, followed again by Nicolaos Stratos, who resigned 22 May to allow for a Coalition Cabinet led by former Finance Minister Petros Protopapadakis with Gounaris, Stratos and Baltazzis as Justice, Interior and Foreign Ministers respectively. Little could these men have ever dreamed of the personal consequences of their own political appointments. If you think that this week I have been able to rest and recuperate after the fatigue of the journey, you are very much mistaken. I have been passing nearly all my time in the darkroom developing photographs, some 12 dozen of them, which I took during my travels and what is infinitely worse printing them. All the fingers of my right hand have turned black in consequence of the acids I have to use and therefore I have to go everywhere with a glove on my hand. The Parlantis & everyone are astonished at what good photographs I take it and what passione I have for them! So that’s that and I hope you properly admire the ones I sent you; I hope to send you off another batch before I leave. I take the torch even to the WC with me so that even there I can continue printing. … On Sunday saw the Courvoisiers who had just come back from the Argolis. They left on Thursday for Con/ple; wish I had been able to go too as it might simplify things a lot. The heat here is getting something terrific and I do not see how we are going to get along at this rate. They say of course as usual that it is exceptionally early just as they said that the bad weather this winter was also exceptional. On Monday had tea with Mme Prinko whom I had met in the street on Sat. and she had asked me to come in. There was there the very handsome Mme Pallis who is I think a very big gun at court or something. Had met her before at the Vicovaro’s.2 Everyone very much intrigued about Princess Elizabeth’s illness & of course in these circles they talk of nothing else. [Princess Cecilia Mercati, the daughter of Count Leonardo Mercati and Katerina Benizelos (daughter of Panayotis Skouzes), married in 1909 Antonios Pallis, a general and Aide-de-camp to Prince Nicholas. Cecilia’s brother, Alexander Mercati, was the Master of King Constantine’s household. Cecilia was a second cousin of the Princess di Vicovaro.

2

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Elisabeth of Roumania (1894-1956) married in 1921 Prince George (1890-1947), later King of the Hellenes 1922-24, 1935-47] Mme Prinko comes from Kephallonia and was much amused at my description of it.3 On Tuesday called on old Skouzes but he was out and so went on and called on the Serpieris. She is really very nice. The usual crowd there. The Georges Skouzes & Mika,4 the Grippes with their two daughters, Katerinopoulo pere, the Andritsakis, & Niko Baltazzis, the son of the minister … . The Serpieris asked me to go to Pyrgos where they have their summer residence when I come back; Mme Prinko has asked me to Kephissia & the Pozzles to Aegina so I am well provided for during the summer. Mika Skew is going to Mykonos with one of the Grippes so I simply must go to Delos. On Wednesday went & saw the Koundouriotis and had a very long political talk. She is really only amusing Venist here. I will have plenty of time as we leave on Wednesday afternoon and only put in [at Rhodes] on Saturday at noon. We touch at every little bit of rock which is dotted about on this sea. … anyhow we’re going to dig at Kos. The chief & Levi have gone up to Pharsalos to see about an excavation which may be done with my money. Of course if we do it I will direct it myself. W is much annoyed by ½ gent’s [Halbherr’s] communication in the Giornale d’Italia. When he was away the lily [Giglioli] and I fed together below. He is a gas-bag; you hit him off exactly. On Monday evening I went up to the B[ritish] S[chool] to see Casson and we had wine out in the garden but he was very busy as everyone is leaving for the dig at Mycenae and he had to shepherd them off. He seems to have had a very good season in Macedonia. Wace has been definitely booted out by the committee at the end of this year and is I believe very much upset about it. It is tragic turning out a man on to the world at his age and with his position.5 (Thursday, 25 May 1922)

3 Mme Constantine Pringo was born 1878 the daughter of Evangelos Tipaldo-Bassia of Kephallonia and Evgenia Skouzes (1847-1928), aunt of the Princess di Vicovaro. 4 Georges Skouzes, doctor & banker (1854 -1931) married his 2nd cousin Elisa Skouzes (1867-1957) & had Marie (Mika) (1898-1957); Elisa’s sister Marie Skouzes married Perikles Gripari (1853-1927); their brother Alexandre Skouzes (1853-1937) had been Minister of Foreign Affairs. 5 Alan Wace 1879-1957, a Cambridge graduate, served as Director of the British School at Athens since 1914 and began significant excavations at Mycenae in 1921. Nonetheless, in a still controversial decision, the Managing Committee in London decided to terminate his tenure as Director.

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Gilbert and his fellow students were about to sail on the gunboat Cirenaica out of Piraeus for Rhodes and the other Dodecanese islands. For the Italians, this voyage was a little like sailing home since these islands were at the time Italian territory with Italian currency and troops. For Gilbert, however, it would be a revelation as well as a voyage of discovery.

10. In the Land of the Knights of Rhodes Gilbert Bagnani, Doro Levi and Antonio Cattaneo left Piraeus with their camping outfits, trunks and passports on a Wednesday evening and sailed into the harbour at Rhodes Friday night. We slept on board & early next morning Maiuri came on board to land us. [Amedeo Maiuri (1886-1963) directed the Italian Mission in the Dodecanese from 1914 to 1924] We were lodged at his house, or rather the house belonging to the mission of Rhodes, which is the restored Inn of the Tongue of Auvergne 1507, a perfectly delightful palace but not very comfortable inside. We had an enormous room to ourselves & camped out in it with our camp beds etc. Signora Maiuri really delightfully kind and fed us like fighting cocks but then we did not like to accept the hospitality too often since they have few servants and three small children (girls) and so our arrival brings a kind of revolution in the house. Sat. Sun. Monday spent in seeing Rhodes which is quite one of the most interesting cities in the world. It is very cool and wet here. We must really come here for the summer. It is almost entirely Western in character; imagine a Viterbo1 inhabited by Turks, Jews & Greeks. The two former nationalities are numerically far preponderant in the city itself & are devoted to us.2 The monuments are magnificent and our work on them has been splendid. This year is the centenary of the great siege of 1522 when Rhodes was taken by the Turk & is being Famed for its medieval Italian architecture, including a papal palace briefly used by the Knights after their expulsion from Rhodes in 1522. 2 In Greek lands generally, the Turks had occupied the inner fortified cities while the Greeks lived in the outlying areas. As Gilbert implies, the Orthodox Greeks were not quite so devoted to the Catholic Italians, especially after the Governor, Count de Bosdari, removed the Metropolitan Apostolos from Rhodes to a monastery in Patmos. 1

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commemorated here by the restoration of the great bastion of England which sustained the heaviest fighting. (Wednesday, 31 May 1922) The city of Rhodes with its castle and fortifications of the Knights of St. John captivated Gilbert. The Order of the Knights Hospitaller was established in Jerusalem in 1113 to provide a hospital (monks) and protection (knights) for Christian pilgrims traveling in the East. After they were ousted from the Holy Land, they eventually seized the island of Rhodes by 1309 and soon became the heirs of the Knights Templar after their violent dissolution in 1312. As the Moslem world expanded ever more closely from the East, the Hospitallers constructed castles on Rhodes and other nearby islands. The Knights, no less than their ancient Greek predecessors, chose to build their fortification walls as aesthetically pleasing as possible on the island of the sun god Helios. Using Rhodes as their naval base, the Knights harassed Turkish shipping, which regarded them as pirates. Most of the Knights Hospitaller came from the landed classes of western Europe, and they organized themselves into an international confederacy of brotherhoods partly based on religious priories: Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Aragon, Castile, England and Germany. The lingua franca among such a polyglot assemblage was medieval Latin, while they spoke Greek to the local Rhodians. In their home countries, their inherited properties provided the income to maintain each priory under its Grand Prior and to send money to Rhodes. Major construction projects like castles required propagandistic fund-raising campaigns in the West of the sort: ‘the bulwark of Christianity defending against the Eastern infidel hordes.’ The flow of ships and people back and forth between East and West at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance facilitated a greater awareness of the West’s Greek heritage, so that scholars like the Florentine priest Cristoforo Buondelmonti lived and studied in Rhodes c. 1420 and brought back detailed knowledge of the Dodecanese as well as Greek manuscripts. The Knights even set up a publicly funded elementary school on Rhodes for the teaching of both Greek and Latin. In the city of Rhodes, each nationality was called a Langue or Tongue which had its own inn or ‘auberge,’ and each was assigned a designated portion of the fortification walls around the city to maintain and defend. Inside the Collachion, the inner city, occupied by the Knights themselves, the Cathedral had been converted from Orthodox to Catholic in western style with Gothic arches. On the opposite side of the public square they built a very large Crusader hospital, which the Italians under Maiuri’s direction had converted into an archaeological museum by 1918. The main street led from the Cathedral

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and the Hospital up past the Inns of the various Tongues to the Palace of the Grand Master and the Knights’ own Church of St. John, the burial site of the Grand Masters themselves. Effigies of their worn faces and medieval robes can be seen on the sculpted stone lids of a few of their sarcophagi displayed in the museum. With its exotic mixture of palm trees, fortified harbours, and medieval buildings still inhabited by a cosmopolitan variety of peoples, the city of Rhodes was unlike any place Gilbert had ever experienced. Having a British mother and an Italian father, Gilbert Bagnani could claim a particular interest in two of the Tongues on Rhodes. By the Knights’ traditions the Italians held the admiralty of the navy and the English held the position of Turcopolier, who was responsible for the irregular light cavalry and coastal patrols against raiding pirates. The restoration of the English Inn in 1919 was financed with the cooperation of the Italian authorities by Sir Vivian Gabriel, a Knight in the revived English Order of St. John. Upon his arrival in Rhodes, Gilbert was already able to identify at sight the symbols on the heraldic crests of the Grand Masters carved in stone set in the various fortification walls, which provide relative dates for the construction of the various walls and additions. Gilbert had immersed himself in the study of ancient and medieval history, archaeology, architecture and art history. Here was a site where he came into direct tangible contact with another world. Not only did it still appear frozen in time almost as it had been left by the Knights, but Gilbert also knew the names of the men who had created it and lived in it, men of the West and of his own ancestral nationalities. By studying, writing and lecturing about them, he was interacting with them and, in his own fashion, bringing them back to life. Gilbert began researching the English Knights like John Kendal, even obtaining copies of medieval Latin documents about them. At the time of the unsuccessful 1480 siege by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, the Turcopolier John Kendal acted as the Grand Master’s Ambassador to Rome where Pope Sixtus IV authorized Kendal to sell indulgences to raise funds to expand the fortifications against an anticipated return of the besieging Turks; with the advent and increasing use of gunpowder, the fortifications were extended after 1480 outward beyond wide ditches to keep the attacking besiegers at a greater distance from the original walls. The penultimate Grand Master, Fabrizio del Caretto (1513-21), employed Italian military engineers to design and oversee the construction of the latest fortification techniques intended to ward off artillery fire,3 and their combined efforts proved successful. 3

Spiteri 2001: 119-23.

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It was not until 1522 that Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent brought 100,000 troops including thousands of miners to besiege the city. The main attacks came from the higher land overlooking the southern walls, defended by the English and the Italians. Despite the overwhelming numbers, the few hundred Knights with a few thousand of the local citizens held out for six months and caused enormous loss of life among the Turkish attackers before they finally agreed to surrender the city on Christmas Day and abandon the most eastern Christian outpost.4 On Tuesday lunched with Bosdari who remembered us & where we lived in London but did not know of the death of my father.5 In the afternoon went out into the country with Mrs Maiuri & the girls & gave them a fine dinner. We embarked that evening on board this dirty armored yacht [Cirenaica] to go to Kos & Bodrum. The decision was to excavate at Capo Cefalo at Kos for a few weeks and then see if it were possible to excavate in Asia Minor. This morning we stopped at Kos & visited the castle which is a real museum of ancient marbles built into its walls. One of the sites though is the great plane tree which is supposed to be the plane tree of Hippocrates & is mentioned in Byzantine documents of 1000 years ago. Had lunch at the comando di presidio [garrison headquarters] & then crossed over to Bodrum or [ancient] Halicarnassos, to see if the caimacam [district official] would let us dig. The impression Bodrum leaves is indescribable. The great castle on the sea towering over the city; in the bay we see the first caicchi [boats] flying the Turkish flag. At our landing we are met by Kemalist gendarmes (who held in check two rows of staring Turkish children) & by the Capitano del porto, a fat Kurd in the uniform of the Turkish navy! ... The village is almost deserted; nearly

The surviving Knights sailed away with their treasures and eventually were granted the island of Malta by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. The Knights played a role in the last great naval battle of oared ships at Lepanto in 1571 when an armada led by Venice defeated the Ottoman fleet and prevented them from controlling the Mediterranean in western Europe. One year after Napoleon dissolved the Venetian Republic in 1797, he captured Malta and sent the accumulated Knights’ treasures on ships to France and Egypt; the latter sank, never to be seen again. A revived incarnation of the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta is now headquartered in Rome, in addition to the original Priory of the Knights of Rhodes also in Rome. 5 The Italian Governor of the Dodecanese, Count Alessandro de Bosdari (1867-1929), had known Gilbert’s father Gen. Ugo Bagnani when the latter was Military Attaché in London and de Bosdari was a Secretary at the Italian Legation. 4

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all the shops are shut [since most of the trade was in Greek hands] & the only people one sees all wear the fez.6 Then we visited the castle which is the finest in the East but has suffered dreadfully by the English bombardment. It is covered with the coats of arms of English knights & over the entrance is the cross of the Order surrounded by the garter. Almost the finest tower of all is the English one with the coat of arms of England and 28 [inset carved stone] shields of different English knights but unfortunately it is the one that has suffered most from the bombardment and is in a very critical condition. We [Italians] were unable to restore it owing to the expense but £200 would be sufficient to do it quite well. I think it would be quite easy to get the sum from the Order which is rich. Try and see if Mrs. H[arter] knows any big wig in the Order of St John because since their [English] guns more or less destroyed the tower, it is only fair that they should pay for its restoration. Maiuri thinks that it would be a good plan if I went over there [to England] in September to commemorate the siege & show slides of the English bastion at Rhodes restored and the tower of England at Bodrum. I think the Duke of Connaught is the Grand Prior of the order [in Britain] but we ought to find out what time would be the most suitable. As the siege lasted to Christmas Eve any month would do really. So it would be decided that we go to England. Of course we would have to execute the restoration, since it is our zone of influence [southwest Anatolia] and in any case as we have the plans all ready, it would be much cheaper. This is the one condition; we would on the other hand put up an inscription remembering that the restoration has been done at the expense of England and her knights. … The Kaimacam at Bodrum has received orders from Kemal to facilitate our mission and so we will probably excavate in some weeks’ time at Ghiök Ciallar near by, when we finished our dig in the island of Kos. This, which will be posted at Rhodes by the commander of the boat, will therefore be the last you will hear of me for some weeks since we are absolutely cut off from the rest of the world. I am very fit and enjoying myself hugely. (Wednesday, 31 May 1922) ‘Even more desolate is the ancient city [of Halikarnassos]. One can trace quite distinctly the immense circle of its walls, yet little stands above ground to record the power and wealth of the proud Carian Prince [Mausolus], and the satire of Lucian seems all the more bitter before the scanty ruins of the ancient city.’ (Bagnani 1922l)

6

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Italians had hoped to exploit commercial opportunities in south-west Anatolia employing the surplus Italian man-power, but by the spring of 1922 the Turkish Nationalist forces were in control of the mainland opposite the Dodecanese as far north as the Meander River, the boundary of the territory occupied by the Greek armies on the north side of it. There was now a shortage of adult male workers as most had fled civilian life to fight in regular or irregular forces. Nonetheless, although south-western Anatolia was now clearly occupied by the Turkish Nationalists, the Italian archaeologists still believed that they could play an active role there and were applying to the Nationalists for permission to excavate tombs at Ghiök Ciallar, ancient Pedasa, a few kilometers north of Bodrum. In addition, they hoped to solicit funds from the English Knights of St. John to support their activities, an opportunistic and naïve plan. Gilbert himself was happy to participate in promoting the scheme as it would facilitate his meeting the English Knights, who claimed descent from the medieval Crusaders.7 The British consul in Rhodes later told Gilbert that ‘Sir Charles Hilton Seely (elder brother of Colonel [Frank Evelyn] Seely) is a very big pot [sic] in the Knights of St. John. (They are not Knights Templars).’8 (Tuesday, 11 July 1922) Gilbert wrote a newspaper article about the final siege, ‘A Historic Siege – Commemorating the Fall of Rhodes.’ On June 1, four hundred years ago, began one of the most formidable sieges in history, a siege in which the defenders belonged to the all the nations of Christendom. The Knights of St. John, expelled from Jerusalem in 1291, in 1308 seized Rhodes, and there established the seat of their Order. For two hundred years, while all the other Christian communities in the Levant fell before the Turk, the power of the Knights steadily increased. At last, after the capture of Belgrade, Sultan Suleiman I, surnamed the Magnificent, turned against this last survival of the Crusading spirit. The time was well chosen: the struggle between the Papacy and the Reformed Churches had split the spiritual unity of Christendom even as 7 For example, Lt. Gen. Sir Aylmer Gould Hunter-Weston, Bailiff and later Chancellor of the revived English Order, claimed as his ancestor William Weston, English Grand Prior when Henry VIII dissolved the Order in 1540. 8 The Seely family were very rich industrialists, landowners and MPs, and Sir Charles (1859-1926) 2nd Bt, was a Knight of the Order of St. John.

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that between [the Holy Roman Emperor] Charles V and Francis I [King of France and ally of Suleiman] had divided the body politic. The garrison could have little hope of external help. The Knights were fully aware of the impending attack, and had made all possible preparations. On June 1, 1522, the Sultan sent his ultimatum, demanding that either the Knights should submit to hold the city as his vassals, or that they should depart. No answer being received the Turkish fleet, about three hundred sail in all, took to sea. The invading army numbered at least 100,000 men, with an immense number of miners from Bosnia and Wallachia. Against this multitude the defending garrison was indeed scanty: about 600 knights, 5,000 citizens able to bear arms, and some 1,000 sailors from the various ships, and it should be remembered that the length of the walls is at least of some 6,000 metres. Defeat with Honour. On December 20 the garrison capitulated on honourable terms, and with all the honours of war. On Christmas Day the Sultan entered the city by the gate in the Bastion of England, which is called the Gate of St. John or the Gate of Athanasius, and was the principal entrance to the city from the south. Legend declares that after his entry the Sultan gave orders that it should be bricked up, and that the access to it should be destroyed in order that none should ever enter the city again by that gate.9 But the star of the great conqueror is on the wane, and Rhodes is once more in the hands of a Christian and of a Western Power, and it is the intention of the Italian Government to commemorate the centenary of the siege by the reopening of Suleiman’s Gate and by the restoration of the great Bastion of England. The latter is, even in its present state, one of the finest in the city. It is calculated that the work will cost the Italian Government 100,000 lire. Even as I write the workmen are hard at work, and on September

9 Gilbert’s friend, Governor de Bosdari, as one his last official acts while in office there on 13 November 1922 was about to re-open the Athanasius Gate closed by the Sultan.

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24, on the anniversary of the great attack, the Propugnaculum Angliae [Bastion of England] will again appear in all its majesty. (Bagnani 1922i) While on Kos Gilbert sent an article to the Morning Post about the ‘Medieval Wonders of Halicarnassus’ which elicited a response from one of the English Knights of St. John, Lt-Col Sir A. C. Yate. He was complaining that Gilbert in his article had neglected to mention the Inn of England on Rhodes, recently restored by the Italians at the expense of Sir Vivian Gabriel. Once back in Athens Gilbert replied in a letter to Yate that he had only been writing about the castles involved in the great siege, and furthermore began to urge the repair of the English Tower in the castle at Bodrum. Its collapse ‘would be an irreparable loss to the monuments which testify Western civilization and culture in the Levant.’ For its restoration, the Governor of Rhodes would be willing to put an Italian government vessel at their disposal feeling that in holding Rhodes they were ‘merely caretakers, not the possessors, of monuments which belong to the whole of Western civilization.’10 A few months later in London, Gilbert would write the following in his lecture about the Knights of St. John, which was later published by the Central Asian Society: Of all medieval cities I have ever seen, Rhodes surpasses them all both for the grandeur of the monuments themselves and for their excellent state of preservation. Exactly 400 years have elapsed since the Knights left Rhodes for ever, yet the city is almost exactly in the state they left it. The port is still crowded with small sailing vessels which cannot be very different to the boats that used it in those days; the round, tower-like windmills which must have been introduced by the Northern Knights into the East still dominate the city, and only a few minarets have taken the place of the original church spires. But before anything else the perfectly preserved fortifications claim the interest of the visitor, both on account of the deeds of heroism which are associated with them and for their great importance in the history of fortification. They were built at a time when the capture of Constantinople [in 1453] in the East and the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII [of France in 1494] in the West had shown but too clearly that the medieval type of walled town was unable 10 Bagnani letter to Yate dated August 4, 1922, published with Gilbert Bagnani’s lecture in the Journal of the Central Asian Society 1923.

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to sustain a prolonged bombardment. The walls of Rhodes show the new system of fortification applied to a town of the earlier type. The whole circuit of the walls, some six kilometres in length, was divided into eight sections of posts, each entrusted to one of the Tongues of the Order. Those skirting the port belong still to the early fifteenth century type. Nor were they ever bastioned, since they could be beaten by no artillery [from sea], but are strengthened by several advanced ramparts. Such was probably the type of the fortifications landwards in 1480, when the Knights of St John defeated the great Turkish forces and compelled their general, the renegade Greek Paleologus, to raise the siege. It was in this heroic and fortunate enterprise that Sir John Kendal held high among the other nations of the Order the name of England, and for this victory the Grand Master, Pierre d’Aubusson, one of the ablest and most valiant soldiers of the time, received the Cardinal’s hat. But the defeat of the enemy was due more to the valour of the Knights than to the strength of the defences, and after the siege d’Aubusson and his successors almost entirely rebuilt the fortification landwards. … The work of fortification was still further carried on by the Italian Grand Master, Fabrizio Del Carretto, since the Turkish menace was ever on the increase. He was aided by the best military engineers of the age, and had practically completed his work when he died in 1521. He was only just in time. The following year the storm broke. For six months, from June to December, 1522, exactly 400 years ago, the new Grand Master, Philippe Villiers de l’Isle Adam, at the head of about 600 Knights and some 5,000 soldiers, held at bay a Turkish army of not less than 100,000 men. This great host was commanded in person by the greatest soldier of the day, Suleiman surnamed the Magnificent, flushed by his victory at Belgrade. And yet the city was not captured by storm. On Christmas eve the Grand Master capitulated with all the honours of war, when the ammunition was almost entirely exhausted, when the forces at his command were reduced to about 100 Knights and 1,000 soldiers, and when the Greek inhabitants of the city threatened to rise were the Knights to attempt to put into action their desire of burying themselves under the ruins of the city. Had the Christian powers sent the least aid to the besieged there is little doubt that all this heroism would not have been in vain. But Europe was

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at the time occupied with the struggle between Charles V and Francis I. The Crusading spirit was dead, … but the Crusades could not have a more glorious ending. ... One of the most interesting features of the siege was the great use of mining operations, for which the Sultan had brought some 50,000 Bosnian miners. Fifty four mines were dug under the walls, but most of these were intercepted by the skill of the great military engineer, Gabriele Tadino da Martinengo, to whose courage and ability is chiefly due the prolonged resistance of the fortress. He is usually believed to have been the inventor of the countermine, and also of the various systems of detecting and calculating the course of the enemy’s galleries. He dug long galleries parallel to the walls, in which he suspended barbers’ pannikins [metal cups], which vibrated at the approach of the hostile miners. The task of the besieging forces must have been greatly facilitated by the fact that the Knights, in digging their fosses, had cut through many of the drains and aqueducts of the ancient Greek city. There are numerous ancient galleries that run right through the ravelin and under the wall of the Post of England. ... Within the city the Latin civilization of the Order finds its greatest expression in the famous Street of the Knights. In it are the Auberges of the various Tongues, which were their headquarters and residence of their Baillies. We have been able through the interest and generosity both of the Government and of private individuals to restore nearly all these historic buildings. First comes the Auberge of Italy, the work of Grand Master Del Carretto, and, higher up, the Auberge of France, the finest and most imposing of them all. ... At the very end of the road, near the Turkish hospital, towered the Palace of the Grand Master, which was also the central keep of the city. It is the intention of the present Governor of the island, Count Bosdari, to restore the Palace and make it again the seat of the Government. Most of the other buildings along the road have also been restored, and I hope that in a few years’ time the whole street will have returned to the state it was in when the Knights used to hold their reviews along it, before going to battle. (Bagnani 1923) In the decade after its seizure of Rhodes in 1912, the Italian government in Rome had been happy to use its military resources to restore the walls of Rhodes. By

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prioritizing the medieval monuments of Rhodes over the ancient Greek, it could emphasize its historical links with the Grand Priory of Italy and the revived Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta, both based in Rome itself, and thereby conspicuously promote Italy’s claim as the heir of the Knights’ heritage in the East. It was in the 1920s and 30s that the Fascist policy of Romanitå would also emphasize the visible monuments of ancient Rome’s imperial past. It was Gilbert’s personal interest in the medieval period that impelled him to research it on his own and later give a public lecture in England about it. He knew not only the technical nature of the military improvements to the fortification systems but even the names of some of the English knights at their posts along the walls. Della Seta, however, the Director of the Italian School, did not share Gilbert’s enthusiasm for medieval European history. He had no personal interest in Byzantine or medieval remains and did not assign any related project to his students. In the meantime, however, Gilbert still had to participate in the School’s objectives looking around the Dodecanese for potential sites to excavate, an exploration during which he was nearly killed.

11. The King of Kos While preparing final details for their excavation near Bodrum in Anatolia, the Italians spent most of June, 1922, exploring and excavating around the nearby island of Kos. Famous in antiquity for its Sanctuary of Asklepios, the god of healing, it was also the birthplace of Hippokrates, the father of medicine. The Knights of Rhodes had fortified the harbour facing the Anatolian coast with a castle but surrendered it to the Ottoman Empire in 1523. In 1912 Italy seized the Dodecanese islands from the Ottoman Empire to serve as ‘stepping-stones’ to Anatolia. After the war the islands of the Dodecanese were part of Italy’s overseas empire, administered by Italian military officers and bureaucrats. Besides the Gregorian calendar, they used Italian lire as currency, at the time relatively stable compared to the rapidly declining value of the Greek drachma. The small population of Kos was still half Turkish and half Greek. When the archaeologists traveled around the island of Kos, wherever they went, they would meet the resident local Italian officer and occupy the largest house in the area; these accommodations were never luxurious but instead make-shift and Spartan, and the students slept on their own portable camp beds. The archaeologists each had their own agenda: Maiuri, the Superintendent of Antiquities of Rhodes, was looking for inscriptions, and della Seta and Levi for sites to excavate, preferably prehistoric. Gilbert, never liking the restrictions of compulsory activity and not always sharing the interests of his colleagues, preferred the freedom to explore anything that appealed to his own curiosity. So, while the others were excavating, Gilbert would find the means to escape and travel on his own. They first landed at a small harbour about 300 m below the village of Kephalos near the west end of the island of Kos.

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Down at the seashore, which has a lovely beach, there are a few houses and the station of the finanza [customs]. The climb up to the village is, however, very fatiguing and annoying owing to our enormous quantity of luggage. We have to get the donkeys to come down from the village and take us up again. In this country the ‘basto’ or saddle has only a slack rope, not a girth, and sticks on the beast’s back only through luck as far as I can see, and every now and then it turns round and deposits the rider or the luggage under the beast’s belly. We had needless to say, several of these incidents. We were welcomed at our landing by the Brigadiere di Finanza who is naturally the chief authority in the place and by a Maresciallo dei Carabinieri in pensione [retired police inspector] who had been stationed many years at Kephalos and had there married a Greek and so had settled down there. He was very nice and most useful. Having got up to the miserable village of some three hundred white-washed one-storeyed houses, we occupied at once the ex caserma [barracks] of the Carabinieri, the best house in the place, with two storeys and several rooms. In all we were 8, since there was W [della Seta], ourselves [Bagnani, Levi, Cattaneo], Parlanti, Maiuri, Maiuri’s Turkish photographer and designer Husny Effendi, an ex Inspector of Turkish schools, who is a freethinking Musulman and very amusing when the fancy takes him, & Jacobos Zarafti, the local historian of Kos, a dear old man with a long white beard, aged some 75 years but still very active. Neither Husny nor Zarafti speak any Italian; with the former we converse in French, with the latter in Greek. I must say that it was with a certain emotion that I watched the Cirenaica steam away leaving us marooned on the island. (Sunday, 25 June 1922) They stayed in the village of Kephalos, where they found the local Greek dialect incomprehensible. While washing at a Turkish fountain, Gilbert left a little silver watch that his father had given him 12 years previously in England, but it was returned to him later. They dug a few exploratory trenches at Astypalaia, a former capital of the island, which had already been dug but not published by a German [Rudolf] Herzog, but they found very little, apart from two over-life size statues which they struggled to take down to the coast to be shipped to Rhodes. Della Seta and Levi had much better luck in discovering and excavating a prehistoric cave at Aspri Petra 1 1/2 hours away. After a few days Maiuri decided to leave della Seta and Levi there and take Husny, Zarafti, and Gilbert with him to go exploring for inscriptions around the rest of the island.

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In the afternoon fairly early M & I & Zarafti & Husny went down to the sea and embarked on a caicco [boat] for Cardamina [a port further east along the south coast]. The wind was fairly good & I laid myself down on the deck and slept the sleep of the just. When we reached Cardamina we were received by the Brigadiere di Finanza [customs officer] who found us a room, of course unfurnished but we had our camp beds. Went and saw the few antiquities including the Byzantine church which must have been enormous but of which there are now only scanty remains, examined the inscriptions which were the things [Maiuri] had come to see and found several new ones. Dined quite decently with the Brigadiere and went off to bed. Our camp beds, or rather those belonging to the school, are exceedingly old, and mine during the night simply collapsed under me and deposited me on the floor. Managed to mend it with a little rope but no sooner had I got to sleep than a cock in the yard began crowing violently & woke me up at once. Moreover in the rafters of the room there was a swallows’ nest & the little ones kept chirping the whole time. ... Next morning Wednesday 7 we left on 4 mules on which we managed not only to load all our belongings but also ourselves. I had the mule with the beds and I must have represented a curious sight perched up upon this kind of sofa. M Husny & Zarafti went direct to [the village of] Pili where M wanted to see if it were worth while to begin excavations while I made a little detour in order to visit the Castle of Antimachia which is one of the finer lesser castles of the Knights. It is perched up on the sandstone ridge which forms the backbone of this part of the islands. ... Am glad however to have seen a fine castle which very few other people have seen. I then descend with much fear and trembling, got onto my flying bedstead & after a very fatiguing ride got in at last at the village of Pili, one of the richest villages in the island with very fine orchards. ... The Mayor had been called to [the town of] Kos & so there was no one to look after us as we do not have any of our soldiers at Pili. Fortunately the schoolmaster gave us the key of the school where fortunately the examinations had finished a week before and which therefore had been shut for the summer. There, much to M’s disgust, we were obliged to sleep. ... We bought a lot of beautiful apricots and ate them at the village fountain - delicious they were. Despite M’s forebodings we passed an excellent night in the school.

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In the morning went in dressing gown and pajamas to the village fountain where, in the presence of most of the women of the place who had come to draw water for the day, I performed very thorough ablutions and even managed to shave. We then went off on mules for Kos but passing by Paleo Pili which is a kind of Mistra on a small scale with a really magnificent Byzantine castle perched on a high rock. The Knights do not appear to have occupied the village, or at least there are no traces of their work anywhere, it is all pure Byzantine. Really very interesting. One of the two churches moreover was really fine. [The houses and churches occupy a saddle amid two high peaks.] We had not had any breakfast and we had not much prospect of any lunch & so we tried to see if we could get anything to eat in this deserted village. ... a Turkish shepherd came up & asked us to come to his hut, or hovel rather, where he managed to pull out some cushions & mats & made us quite comfortable on the grass & gave us cheese & ricotta in abundance & refused to accept a penny. Of course the Turks are famous for their hospitality. We then had a very long & very uninteresting ride to [the port of] Kos under a blazing sun. We got to the officers’ mess, where we were to put up, at about 3; of course the captain was sleeping so we simply dumped our luggage down & washed in the kitchen. The captain came down at 4 & welcomed us very heartily. He is in command of the company of Bersaglieri which garrisons Kos & several other islands as well. He is a fine type of Bersaglieri, a Sardinian Cabras by name & very alive & energetic, a live wire in fact, but with a pretty violent temper & tongue. He is also of course the civil governor as well & is in fact the ‘King of Kos,’ really a delightful kingdom. M & he & I went in the afternoon to visit the theatre which I was to excavate & which, I confess, appeared then to be quite promising. [Maiuri hoped to find inscriptions and the stage of the Roman theatre, whose excavation he entrusted to Gilbert.] The captain then took us into an orchard where we were able to eat figs to our heart’s delight. On Sunday 11 in the morning as usual went to the Museum, in the afternoon went with Zarafti to the Asklepieion or sanctuary of Asklepios, which was dug by the Hun Herzog. Very interesting and

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extensive. Knowing what Greek ruins look like I was quite ready to find only a few walls but I was agreeably surprised to find really quite a lot of interesting monuments and inscriptions, all unpublished. [The sanctuary is relatively well preserved, rising in terraces amid fragrant pine trees to the top level from which there is a grand view of the Turkish coast only a few miles off to the East.] Next morning Monday 12 my hard life began. As every day now resembled every other I will not describe every day in detail but will describe for all. Sleeping as I do with the window wide open (I have got used by now to the mosquitoes but am simply covered with bites) I wake pretty early, about 5 & wash & dress. If the prantore & the cook are awake they bring me an offering if not I do without. Fortunately Kos theatre is near at hand, about a quarter of an hour from our house. I should mention that this is the residence of the officers & their mess, which is at present only occupied by Capitano Cabras. Since the Garrison was reduced to only one company of Bersaglieri, he has only one subaltern & as that one is married, he has had the sole possession of the house. There is another officer however, Tenente Olivieri, who is in command of the Guardie di Finanza but, although he messes with us, he sleeps in his own office & has a mistress in the person of quite a pretty Turkish girl. He comes from Resina, the village on top of Herculaneum and is very nice. The house of the mess is quite a nice large two-storyed reddishhouse, built on the seashore about a minute from the city walls & is always cool and well ventilated. Kos is really a delightful place to pass the summer in, and some day we must spend our holidays here & at [the island of] Nisyros where are baths for uric acid. Quite good I believe. … The captain when he is in a good temper is very nice and excellent company but when he is in a bad one, it is best to keep out of the way. … He has also a most wonderful command of language. But his life is occupied by his company, poker & the chase for he is a great hunter in the sight of the lord. It is curious that he has no mistress. He likes me & I like him. Of course Dad being in the Bersaglieri was a great bond of union.1 (Sunday, 25 June 1922) The Bersaglieri were an elite corps of rapid light infantry trained to take initiative and act independently. During his rapid rise through the ranks, Gilbert’s father, Ugo, served as a captain in the 9th Bersaglieri. Since Gilbert habitually acted independently and took initiative, it seems Gilbert might have inherited these traits from his father.

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They might also have discussed the growing political unrest and civil strife in Italian cities between the Fascist and Communist factions. But to return to my life. At 6 get to the theater and begin work. At 8 the workmen have their breakfast and I eat some fruit, figs, apricots, plums or pears which are brought to me by one of the workmen who has an orchard. We then start work from 8 1/2 to about 12 1/2. Get to the mess at 12 1/2, & am back on the dig at 2. This is the worst part of the whole business, in the heat and after a heavy meal. At 6 stop work & dash off & have a dip in the sea. It is very nice as I can undress at home & then have a douche of fresh water at the fountain near by. I then bask in pajamas & dressing gown in the sunset until it is time to dress for dinner. After dinner play at Mous or écarté with the captain (I absolutely refuse to play poker with him with an opening at 5 lire) or else chat or else he sings Sardinian songs in the moonlight. [As a Colonel retired from the Bersaglieri, Pietro Cabras (1890-1956) wrote and published Sardinian poetry and songs.] Very nice & reposing after such a fatiguing day. So to bed at about 11 1/2. For nearly a month I have never been able to sleep more than five hours a day. It is not really sufficient but am getting used to it like an eel to grinning. As for the dig it is very very disappointing. The whole place has been destroyed almost to the very foundations and the little that is to be found is at 4 m. below the ground & very hard clayey soil at that. (Tuesday, 11 July 1922) The Roman theatre of Kos had seemed promising because the shape of its hollow, the cavea, was still discernible on the ground, and no other comparably shaped depression was visible in the local topography. After days of hard digging, however, it became clear that the theatre had been demolished in the Byzantine period, disappointing for both Gilbert personally and for the other Italians seeking evidence of ancient Romans on Kos. (Livadiotti and Rocco 1996: 156-58) On Sunday the 18th I had a really hectic day. As I mentioned before Captain Cabras is a Sardinian & a Bersagliere & is a very simpatico type of Bersagliere captain with an enormous esprit de corps but a very violent temper and extremely touchy. On the 18th of June is the Festa dei Bersaglieri [to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Bersaglieri] & he had organized one whole day of general festivities. In

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the morning at 8:00 he passed in review the company in front of the mess with all the authorities of the village. He made them a speech & afterwards one of the Turkish Beys offered an address in the name of the Turkish population and a Greek poet read a poem he had composed for the occasion. Just as the festivities had finished, the Cirenaica appeared on the scene. We were expecting it as Della Seta had written to Cabras to ask him to telegraph to Rhodes for it. We were having beer & vermouth when they arrived but they came at once to the mess. The W for some reason or another was very huffy. They had had quite a good campaign in their cave & found a lot of Neolithic pottery which at the best is not wildly exciting.2 They had been able also to drag the statues down to the sea but had only been able to load one on & into the Cirenaica. We then went to the very much beflagged castle to watch a regatta of caicchi; very pretty to see all the sea covered with these big sails. There was a fairly strong wind so they blew like anything. In the afternoon, after the banquet, there were due the Bersaglieri sports & at night they were giving theatricals. The W [della Seta] told Cabras that he couldn’t come to lunch (he had been invited when we first landed in Kos) and that we had to leave at once for Bodrum in order to arrange with the caimacam about the excavations at Giok Ciallar. The Captain was rather naturally perfectly furious and did not even insist upon their staying to lunch. It wasn’t pleasant for me too as I had to take them at once after lunch to visit the dig and although since then I’ve learned what heat is it was quite warm enough. The lunch was most successful. There were three big tables in the garden and all the funzionari and more important people in the place had been invited and there were three tables, one with the captain and more important people, one myself Olivieri and other civil functionaries including the local poet & one with the non-coms. Just as we had finished dinner arrived the Athena from Rhodes with on board officers who had been invited in rappresentanza. I had of course to go off at once to see my chief and take him & Maiuri & the rest to see the dig. Of course they were rather disappointed with the result but they said that 2 Della Seta, Levi, Parlanti, and a reluctant Cattaneo had also found Geometric pottery and clay statuettes of Pan and the nymphs of the 3 rd century BCE, but evidently their verbal reports and interests emphasized the Neolithic occupation of the cave high above the sea at Aspri Petra.

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since we had begun it was better to go on and get some definite result. Parlanti had to go back to Athens at once as his time to go on leave was almost due & so he left that very day with the Athena. Cattaneo, since no one wanted him was left with me at Kos with the instructions to ship him off to Athens with the first boat. Bosdari, (I wish you’d look up in the Almanach de Gotha whether he is just Bosdari or de Bosdari as he styles himself here) had notified that on Tuesday he was going with a [torpedo boat] to Bodrum and then on to Kos. I thereupon thought it would be a good plan to go over to Bodrum with the Cirenaica & leaving C to look after the dig, study and photo the castle [at Bodrum] properly & then return to Kos with His Ex[cellency]. But then there was the difficulty that I would miss the rest of the Festa dei Bersaglieri & that would embroil me irreparably with Cabras. So I then decided that I would stay right on till the end & then take a caico over to Bodrum arriving there at dawn. Cabras was as pleased at my bel gesto [nice gesture] as he was annoyed with W so it was alright. The sports were really very successful and there were among the Bersaglieri some awfully nice looking youths. But while they are giving displays of machine-gun fire, a Cretan Turk, who ‘da cretivo’ had put himself right near the targets was hit by a spent bullet but not very seriously. It was interesting to see these sports taking place in the ancient castle. After dinner the theatricals were also very good time although naturally a bit long. The theater also had been built in the Castle in a corner of one of the inner walls and the ancient masonry formed a very effective background for the actors. ... I was very happy as I found that a Greek boat but flying an English flag as the nominal owner is an English Smirniote had arrived during the night and was going over to Bodrum in the morning so I took my camp bed and went over on to the Elpinike. ... Oh I forgot to say that on Sunday 25 I nearly was killed. We had all been invited to assist at a Greek wedding in one of the principal families of the village & Cabras had insisted on my going too to see the ceremony. As we were going there after dinner we met a friend at the Caffe and stopped to have a caffe with him. We then went on to the house & as we were going in at the door we heard a great crash followed by shrieks. We dashed in & found that the floor of the room where they were having the review had collapsed under the weight of the people. We had a terrible

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time getting them out. Fortunately we were able to put out at once a fire that had been started by one of the overturned lamps but there were some 20 wounded, some fairly seriously. … On Tuesday 4 in the morning I got some 3 Bersaglieri & got suspended from the battlements of the castle at Kos to examine an ancient relief & I also found a new inscription. At midday a boat arrived & I said goodbye to Cabras & all the friends & left for Rhodes not without a certain regret. (Tuesday, 11 July 1922) Gilbert had a keen awareness of a distinction between the East and the West as separate civilizations: he was traveling in the East, a very small part of which (the Dodecanese) was currently in Western hands. As he wrote for the Morning Post, the star of the great conqueror is on the wane, and Rhodes is once more in the hands of a Christian and of a Western Power. … At Halicarnassus the finest monument … belongs to the civilization of the West, not of the East. … It is of especial interest to Englishmen, since in the 14th Century two English Knights were its wardens and had a great share in its construction, while from its walls came the slabs of the frieze of the Mausoleum which are now in the British Museum. . … During the brief Italian occupation [of Bodrum] Prof. Maiuri, the Superintendent of the Antiquities of Rhodes, with the aid of the [Italian] garrison was able to restore the two central towers of France and Italy, which had been the most severely damaged, but the work had to be suspended when on the withdrawal of the troops, the expense became very much greater. … By far the most interesting to the English visitor is the tower evidently built by the English Knights. On one side is the enormous coat of arms of England, one of the finest bits of heraldic sculpture in the castle, while over the entrance runs a continuous frieze of twenty-eight coats of arms, all belonging to English Knights, a piece of decoration unrivaled in the East. Unfortunately the tower is one of the most severely damaged by the bombardment, and it is particularly sad to think that English shells may have destroyed for ever one of the few monuments in the East of English medieval chivalry. (Bagnani 1922l) Gilbert was beginning to appeal to his English readers’ sense of pride in their medieval history, which he himself felt. His previous study of heraldry had

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enabled him to recognize at sight the stone-carved arms of the Grand Masters set in the walls of the Knights’ castles, and so he in particular was able to appreciate the uniqueness of the array of arms emblazoned in the English Tower at Bodrum. Gilbert was about to leave the relative safety provided by the Italian enclave of the Dodecanese and enter the real but soon-to-be extinguished world of contemporary Anatolia. Thanks to his social connections and eagerness to make use of them to chart his own path, Gilbert set sail for Bodrum and Smyrna.

12. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea The present country of Greece includes as much sea as land, and no other nation has such a lengthy coastline in relation to its land mass. There are hundreds of small islands, mountain tops really, scattered throughout the Aegean and, until the advent of flight in the twentieth century, the only way to travel to and among them was on water. For mainland coastal dwellers and islanders, the living sea was their economic hinterland and lifeblood, supplying much of the food and occupations. When the Greeks controlled the Aegean, it was their protector but, when they did not, it could be a potential threat. Just as Homer’s heroes sailed over the wine-dark sea in search of adventure or home, the same Greek waters were the medium for Gilbert’s transition from one world to another. While excavating the Roman theatre on Kos in June 1922, Gilbert had temporarily left Cattaneo in charge of the dig so that he himself could sail over to Bodrum, the site of ancient Halikarnassos, on the west coast of Anatolia. Della Seta had received permission to start excavating at the ancient Carian site of Pedasa on Mt Ghiök Ciallar a few miles to the north of Bodrum; he was hoping to discover anything about the mysterious Leleges, the legendary aboriginal peoples in western Anatolia, conceivably connected with the Etruscans who preceded the Romans in occupying central Italy. Any demonstrable connection between the Romans and the ancient Near East would have extended Roman history further back in time and space. I reached Bodrum at 6 on Monday the 19th in the morning and went over at once to the Cirenaica. I there found my people getting ready to start for Ghiok Ciallar (you will find in the Bollettino photos of the tombs they have excavated). [Della Seta 1921: 533-38] I landed with them and waited till the Caimacan [‘provincial governor’] was ready to receive me. 135

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I then heard that the Greeks had bombarded Samsun so that later when I saw the Caimacam over the coffee, I was able to give him quite a lot of interesting information about it.1 On the other hand he gave me leave to go all over the castle at any time I liked so we were all quite happy. It was a stifling day & I was almost fainting with the heat. At last when I got down to the port I signalled to the Cirenaica, anchored about 1/2 a mile away to send me the boat. But while waiting the heat got so great that I simply undressed on the pier and, leaving my clothes to be brought back by the boat, swam off to the Cirenaica. Quite a nice bathe but a lot of hot and cold currents. In the afternoon returned to castle, went round it in the boat and had another bathe. At 7 the others came down in a semiconscious condition as the heat up there had been terrific. Even the night was hot. I passed it on deck on my camp bed but it was a long time before I could get to sleep. (Tuesday, 11 July 1922) The next day the Italian Governor of the Dodecanese, His Excellency Count Alessandro de Bosdari, sailed over to Bodrum on his Torpedo Boat, the Canopo. While Doro Levi began excavating at Ghiök Ciallar, Gilbert joined della Seta and Maiuri in escorting the Governor around to see what little was still visible of ancient Halikarnassos. The Mausoleion, built by King Mausolos as his tomb c. 350 BC, had been one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, but little remained visible as the Knights of St. John used it as a ready-made quarry to construct their Castle of St Peter on the shore. At 6:00 the next morning the watch called out that the Canopo, H. E.’s [torpedo-boat], was in sight so we had to dress in double quick time. Maiuri W & I remained at Bodrum to take him about and Levy and Husny went up to the dig. The day was even hotter than the day before. H. E. sweats very very profusely and the back of his neck gets flowing and covered; not pretty. We took him all over the Castle which interested him a great deal. We were then received by the Caimacam and we then went to see the Mindos gate of the ancient city of Halicarnassos and the site of the Mausoleum. The heat was terrific. The Lieut of Gendar[mes] 1 A Greek fleet from Constantinople had tried to enforce its blockade of Anatolia by bombarding Samsun, a harbor city on the Black Sea coast where Russian arms were being imported to Kemal’s forces. Gilbert could not then have known that the Greek squadron failed to destroy the munitions, which were three miles inland, but did cause some damage and a few casualties before sailing back to Constantinople.

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provided some horses for H. E. and M. Vitalis, his secretary for all questions relating to Moslems. As we came back from the mausoleum we came across a fine raspberry tree (they grow on trees in Anat. not on bushes) and we all devoured them greedily and consequently stained ourselves black. We then left Bodrum and I transported my effects to the Canopo, H.E. having said he would be delighted to have my company. He was traveling with a Cav[aliere] Vitalis, an Hebrew, who was a specialist in Turkish matters. … We had lunch together and H. E. talked classics all the time. We arrived at about 2 to Kos. H. E. said he’d go to sleep and then disembark, finish his business & go with me to the theater to see the dig. He then told me that he was going on to Tigani, the ancient city of Samos to see the antiquities and asked me if I would like to go with him. So accepted with enthusiasm. We, Vitalis & I, got off at once. The Bersaglieri and every one were schierati [lined up] waiting for H. E. and we had to tell him that he was coming on later. Even at Kos the heat was dreadful and we all sweated profusely. At last H. E. disembarked and went to the commando to do his business, afterwards we took mules furnished by Cabras and went to the theater. There was [Cattaneo] in attendance on the dig in striped trousers and black coat (I was in khaki shirt trench boots and otherwise quite cheerfully and frankly grubby); H. E. ignored him completely and he did not manage to get a word in edgewise. I did all the talking and they said I did it very well. We then got on board the TB and I took the opportunity of going all over its insides. We then had dinner (of course with H. E. on board we were done very well indeed) And H. E. continued to talk classics and one by one those poor officers escaped. I had the satisfaction at least of that. H. E. the next day said “I thought over what you were saying last night & I quite agree with what you said ... etc” I told him about my plans for [lecturing in London on] Bodrum and he promised to give me all his support and has already given me a letter for [Italian Ambassador to the UK Giacomo] de Martino. We had during the night a fairly rough sea but I slept excellently. They gave me a bunk with the non-coms. Of course on a [torpedo-boat] there is no room to swing a cat.2 Torpedo boats were light-weight craft designed for speed and lightning raids, hence their very cramped space. The Italians had improved their design and had over four hundred after the war.

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On Wed 21 in the early morning we arrived at Tigani [on Samos] and there, much to my amusement tinged however with a shade of annoyance, H.E. found that the governor is no longer such a big wig when off his own quarterdeck. [The island of Samos was part of Greece, not the Italian-controlled Dodecanese.] No one was there to meet him & when we went to the museum the keys were not forthcoming since the custodian was on the other side of the island. H. E. furious and to ease his mind he read me piles of modern Greek poetry. We then went round the village & went down to the port to go across the bay with our TB to see the Heraion which is perhaps the largest Greek temple in existence. But I found the commander of the Canopo on the verge of apoplexy. The port of Tigani is about as big as a small dining room table. The TB had managed to scrape inside and anchored near the quay. A Greek TBO arrived on the scene and, seeing us inside, felt it couldn’t very well anchor outside its own port when we had got inside & decided to try & get in too and stuck!!! The Canopo commander was hopping mad since it had gone aground in the middle of the entrance to the port and we were blocked inside and unable to get out. I think if Bosdari had expressed a wish he would have sunk the TBO on the spot. There was nothing to be done except to wait and we spent the time (including H. E.) in buying large quantities of Samian oil and wine which are excellent and very cheap. But fortunately the Greek TBO freed itself quickly & so we were able to get off soon & go to the Heraion which is certainly one of the most imposing ruins in Greece. We then dashed off, reached Kos at about 2 & I was dropped. Swore at [Cattaneo] because he had not worked hard enough & so concluded a really very successful trip. (Tuesday, 11 July 1922) Governor Alessandro de Bosdari was a career diplomat who had served as the Italian Ambassador to Greece during the war. Believing that the Greeks really did not want to fight another war, de Bosdari disliked and distrusted Venizelos and would have preferred that Greece remain neutral and not be in any position to benefit territorially after a victory. Indeed as a humanist he believed that neither Britain nor his own country should have entered the war. According to a British agent in Athens, ‘He was a man of distinguished ugliness with a clipped black beard and a harsh voice, and his manner was that of a grump professor who could not suffer fools and who desired to discourage most of the people he met from supposing even for a moment that he could. … His

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spiritual home was England …. [he] expressed his nostalgia for dinners at High Table and the conversation of the Senior Common Room.’3 His wife Giovanna was notoriously eccentric. While Governor of the Dodecanese, despite a thirty-three year difference in age between himself and Gilbert, their shared classical education and love of antiquities caused Bosdari to invite Gilbert to join him on his ship sailing around the islands and, years later after Mussolini dismissed him as Ambassador to Berlin, Bosdari and Gilbert would become traveling companions frequently exploring the antiquities and topography in the countryside outside Rome. In fact, Gilbert would later comment that he thought North Americans were odd in socializing within narrow age brackets. For him, age was irrelevant; it was the mind that mattered. After finishing his excavation and projects on Kos, Gilbert returned to Rhodes. ‘On arriving at Rhodes on the 5th [July] Maiuri told me that W & L had left the day before in the Cirenaica to go to Delos & Athens. I did not much mind. Went & saluted Bosdari who invited me to go to Lindos with him & the Demidoffs, the Russian minister in Athens, whom I had always wanted to know. Spent most of my time at Rhodes studying the walls & bathing. The heat was very great.’ (Tuesday, 11 July 1922) Elim P. Demidoff (1868-1943) was a descendant of one of the richest families in Russia and also inherited an Italian princely title in Tuscany, where he had villas. It was probably through his Florence connection that Gilbert had long heard of the family. Demidoff married in 1893 Countess Sophie Hilarionovna Worontzov-Dachkov (18701953) and had been appointed by Tsar Nicholas II as the Russian Ambassador to Greece. After the Bolshevik Revolution, however, Demidoff remained in Greece in a diplomatic limbo.4 On Thursday 6 in the afternoon went with [Maiuri, Bosdari] & the Demidoffs over part of the walls of Rhodes. The Prince and Princess are very nice people of that sort. He was educated at Eton & that of course formed a bond of union between us. On Friday at 7 went to Bos[dari] house to go to Lindos. We had quite a nice 2 1/2 hour motor drive there. The country on the whole was very pretty. We were welcomed at Lindos Mackenzie 1931: 145-46. Countess de Bosdari would wear evening dress and heavy make-up at her afternoon salons. ‘She was excessively thin, but too lithe and graceful for such an epithet. Her ankles were of a fineness quite incredible, and to see her fanning herself in a high-backed chair and pointing her foot to the floor was to be granted the effect of watching some ballerinas perform a miracle of exquisite poise.’ (Mackenzie 1931: 144) 4 His half-sister’s son, Prince Paul of Serbia, married Princess Olga, the daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece, in London in 1923 in the final days of the Greek monarchy. 3

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by all the population. We then toiled up to the castle to see the Danish excavations of the temple of Athena inside & I have never suffered such heat as the top of that acropolis. Bozzy sweats dreadfully, worse than me. We then came down and fed at the Caserma dei Carabinieri [barracks], too well in fact considering the heat. … After lunch the princess was taken to the house of a doctor to lie down & Bozzy & the Prince were given 2 bedrooms in the Caserma. They told me to come out into the street in front where there was a little air. Certainly it was the only place where one could breathe. In fact the Prince soon staggered out panting, sank into a deck chair & went to sleep. At about 3 we all got up, saw the local collections of Lindos plates & the fine church & so home. At parting the Demidoffs told me to look them up at Athens which I will. (Tuesday, 11 July 1922) Gilbert hoped to leave the heat behind when he left Rhodes on Monday 10 July for Smyrna with brief stops at Scalanova, now Kusadesi, the modern port for ancient Ephesos, which is now inland, and at Bathy on the island of Samos. On board the Gallipoli, however, he wrote to his mother ‘I know you will have been annoyed with me for not having written to you before now but the moment I finished my work [on Kos], the heat came upon us. You simply have no idea what the heat has been like since the end of June; we have all been simply gasping and panting with the heat. I am terrified at the idea of my return to Athens and of the excavation in Thessaly which must simply be a burning fiery furnace.’ (Tuesday, 11 July 1922) On Wednesday 12 July, Gilbert sailed into the great harbour at Smyrna. During the centuries of unrecorded history between the fall of the Mycenaean and Hittite Empires around 1200 BC and the re-emergence of literacy c. 750 BC, many Greeks sailed from Greece across the Aegean to settle throughout coastal western Anatolia. By trading and exploiting the river valleys in the interior, some of the scores of cities in their new world such as Halikarnassos, Miletos, Ephesos became even richer and larger than the mother cities back in old Greece, from which they had emigrated. These new cities eventually produced famed thinkers like Herodotus, the father of history, Hippodamus the father of town planning, and Thales, the father of philosophy. Though for a while part of the Persian Empire, they were liberated by Alexander the Great, who in the 330s BC defeated the Persians and created an even larger empire from Greece and North Africa to India. For three centuries after Alexander’s death in 323 BC Greek-speakers lived and ruled throughout

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the Middle East. Even after the conquest by the Romans, the eastern Roman Empire remained Greek in language and culture, a glorious heritage and breeding ground for Christianity. Indeed the first Christians were converted in the Greek cities of western Anatolia. Until the Balkan Wars, more Greeks lived in the Ottoman Empire than in Greece, and upwards of two million Greeks still lived ‘unredeemed’ in scattered parts of the Empire, which generally though not always had been tolerant of diverse ethnicities and religions. Educated Greeks had long risen through the ranks to become powerful bureaucrats in the Ottoman Empire, just as they had under the Romans. In the generations after the capture of Constantinople in 1453, some Greeks remained Orthodox but spoke Turkish, while others still speaking a form of Greek had converted to Islam. After centuries of intermingling, there were no clear boundaries between the various peoples inside the Empire, although Turkish Moslems outnumbered Greek Christians in possibly every region of the Ottoman Empire. Foreigners also could flourish from the Ottoman ‘capitulations,’ which were a separate legal system, postal system and low taxes negotiated with each European country. A modus vivendi of mostly peaceful co-existence had operated in the cities of Constantinople and Smyrna and Trebizond for generations until the advent of nationalism and the Young Turks began to cut the ‘Gordian knot of ethnicities.’ (Rodakis 1990) In fact, throughout the nineteenth century enterprising Greeks had prospered greatly by settling in far-flung ports like Odessa, Alexandria, Marseilles, and London, often establishing trading companies. Philanthropic and believing in the value of education, they built schools, hospitals, and charitable institutions with the result that there were flourishing colonies of middle class Greeks in cities scattered around the Black Sea, the Mediterranean littoral and Europe. These were the Greeks of the Diaspora. The further from Greece and Constantinople they were, the greater was their sentimental longing to see their homeland grow in size and to incorporate the so-called ‘unredeemed’ Greeks living under the Sultan’s authority. Many Greeks in Constantinople and Smyrna, however, had prospered under the Ottoman ancien régime and preferred the status quo. In the latter 19th century, European traders (including Greek citizens) in Anatolia benefited greatly from being sheltered from Ottoman laws, regulations, and taxation. Greeks who lived in the coastal cites of the Ottoman Empire were well placed to exploit their connections with (Christian) Europe. The Greeks in Smyrna had unrestricted access to the Anatolian hinterland and no interest in operating in a separate territory controlled by Greece, a

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nation which had no negotiated preferred status or capitulation rights for them. Acting as middlemen, they prospered from growing trade and the supplying of agricultural products from the East in exchange for the newly mass-produced manufactured products from western Europe. After c. 1860, the advent of steamships replaced the much slower sailing ships while the construction of Anatolian railways by European entrepreneurs partly replaced camel caravans and encouraged the expansion of agriculture within Anatolia. Thousands of acres of fertile land were put under cultivation, mostly by the Greek inhabitants of the hinterlands of the river valleys along the west coast. For centuries, agricultural and animal products made their way down from the hinterland - tobacco, raisins, figs, cotton, licorice, carpets, opium, as well as more exotic goods from distant lands brought by camels, all destined to be shipped to western European markets through Smyrna.5 Smyrna had one of the best naturally sheltered harbours in the world and, unlike its ancient rival ports along the west coast of Anatolia like Ephesus and Miletus, silting never affected access to its deep harbor. Alexander himself had founded the Hellenistic city of Smyrna on the lower slopes of Mt Pagos, and it was known for its straight stone-paved streets. As one of the seven cities named in the Book of Revelation, its Christian church was one of the very first and St. Polycarp was burned at the stake in the stadium for his Christian faith c. 155. After a devastating earthquake in 178, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius helped rebuild the agora/forum, which is still well preserved. When French engineers in 1874 transformed the harbour by means of a concrete quay along a broad waterfront avenue two miles long, even the largest seagoing ships could dock right across from the warehouses. International trade increased enormously, encouraging even more agricultural production inland, and eventually Smyrna surpassed even Constantinople in overseas trade with seven thousand ships docking annually. Smyrna with its mixture of ethnicities and religions was the largest city in Anatolia, far larger and more cosmopolitan than parochial Athens. In fact, the Kingdom of Greece was comparatively an economic backwater, much smaller and economically less diverse and productive than Anatolia. Smyrna’s mercantile leaders were mostly Greek, Levantine (Europeans born in the East), Armenian and Italian, and their mansions stood proudly in the suburban towns of Boudja, Bournabat, Paradise and Cordelio. 5 Turkish tobacco was so popular that, when blended by R. J. Reynolds with Virginia burley and called Camel, it became the first national cigarette brand in America. (Ureneck 2015: 24)

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The producing and exporting companies and the rail and shipping lines were all owned and managed by Christians. The great prosperity that came with ownership was distributed among Greeks, Levantines and other Christian peoples, and hence the Turks referred to ‘infidel Smyrna.’ The growing middle class in the late Ottoman Empire was predominantly Christian (Greek and Armenian). They benefited from the political status quo, unlike their compatriots in newly independent Greece. The ‘Europeans,’ i.e., middle-class Greeks and Levantines regarded as westerners by the oriental Turks, lived in imposing houses on grand streets near the sea while the mostly working-class Turks and their veiled families lived in lesser houses toward the south up on the slopes of Mt Pagos below the medieval castle on top. Smyrna was an exotic and till then peaceful mixture of the ‘timeless East’ of camel caravans and veiled women with the contemporary West of telephones, cars, and movie theatres. The population of Smyrna in 1920 was estimated at about 400,000, including 150,000 Greeks, 110,000 Turks, 15,000 Armenians, 10,000 Italians, and 10,000 Jews, each group occupying a distinctly separate district of the city. By the summer of 1922 when Gilbert stepped ashore, however, the bustling prosperity of trade and commerce had abruptly declined as imports no longer arrived by caravan overland from beyond the area occupied by the Greek forces. Municipal services like street cleaning and sewage maintenance were visibly reduced, and streets were no longer lit after dark. (Milton 2008: 205-06) On Wednesday [12 July 1922] arrived at Smyrna. There an Italian boy took hold of me at the quay & took me up to the castle & then to a carpet & embroidery shop where I bought this shawl for you & the embroideries for the fire screen. Of course I was fleeced & you need not ask how much they cost since I will pay them out of my 100s or else MP earnings if they ever publish anything of mine again. Smyrna is awfully expensive even worse than Con[stantinople] so they say. I then went & the boy took me to Ernesto [the brother of the Bagnanis’ maid Italia in Rome]. I found him in a large shop with any number of wheels and things & a petrol engine to send it along.6 He simply collapsed when I told him who I was. He introduced me to his eldest son [Michele], a good-looking youth of 17 and carried me off to Cordelio where they have their summer residence. Ernesto Ballardini from Prore in Trentino, Italy sharpened blades especially for hospitals and had his shop just two blocks inland from the inner harbour on Maltezika Street, which had been named after the Maltese fishermen who had a fish market there.

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He told me he was earning very well, that the hospitals of Athens even sent him all their work and that he was very satisfied. He has his house in town [Smyrna] into which he has built the shop which is now let at £250 Turkish a year, he has a house at Cordelio in which he lives himself and another which he lets. He gave his daughter [Maria] a good lot & has married her well to one of the foremen of the French railway; so he really has good ground to be pleased with himself. The house at Cordelio is quite nice and all the family is very good looking. Send you photos. He then made me rest after lunch and then insisted on taking me back to Smyrna in a motor.7 At about 7 went & saw the Lambs who were very pleased to see me and asked me to return the next day. (Friday, 14 July 1922) The British consulate, on the Rue Franque, was only a few minutes walk from Ernesto’s blade-sharpening shop on Maltezika Street. Sir Harry Lamb (18571948), formerly Assistant High Commissioner in Constantinople 1920, was the British Consul-General in Smyrna 1921-22. Lamb had married Sabina, daughter of Commendatore [Commander] Felice Maissa, who left Constantinople as the Italian Ambassador in September 1920 to serve as Governor at Rhodes until August 1921, immediately preceding de Bosdari. Ernesto showed me where to dine & insisted on taking me in a carriage to see the aqueducts next morning [Thursday July 13, along the way to the suburb of Boudja]. He was also imposs to argue with and gave me also a couple of razors and scissors. He was really a dear and the only thing that I could do in return was to buy with all the Turk money I had left sweets for the children. At 12 went to the Lambs. Dorina is very bad still & in the country.8 Sabina took me then to the wife of the manager of the Brit railway company who has a really wonderful collections of antiques. She then brought me home to feed. They were all very nice at Smyrna but the heat was awful and I spent far too much money. (Friday, 14 July 1922) Cordelio was a fashionable suburb with a majestic view across the bay south-eastward toward the port city of Smyrna. 8 Lamb’s younger daughter, Dorina Caroline, died after a long illness at the age of eighteen on Sunday 23 July, 1922 at Azizie, the British military outpost on the Tigris. Gilbert and his mother already knew the Lambs. Lamb’s son (later Sir) Lionel Henry Lamb was then beginning his own distinguished diplomatic career in China. 7

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Hon. Major Gen. Raymond de Candolle, of Swiss extraction but English, was a civil engineer specializing in building railroads. As the General Manager of the Smyrna Aidin Railway, he had a better grasp of the political realities in Greekoccupied Turkey: he had enquired of the British Foreign Office if he would be legally required to allow Greek military forces to requisition his railway and thus endanger British ownership of the railway vis-à-vis the Turkish Nationalists. His second wife, Gilbert’s hostess, was Beatrix Chapman Barclay, who was well known in social circles internationally.9 Their house was in a welltreed neighbourhood called the Point at the north end of the waterfront near the small elegant Aidin train station and within view of the Standard Oil tanks looming on the other side of the tracks. She had bought terracotta figurines found in Smyrna and Myrina on Lemnos. I mentioned a couple of times that you should send me 1000 lire to Rhodes and you never did so I have been living on the [Murray Young’s money]. Have received all yours up till now. Amusing the way you go and interview poor Paribeni; he must simply hate you. I have now before me this dig at Pharsalos & afterwards Crete. I should like to get out of the latter & instead go back to Smyrna & do the Meander Valley Ephesos & Pergamon etc. Well we’ll see. I don’t expect that I will be able to get to Rome till the end of August. I believe the W wishes both me and Levi to come back next year. I’ll accept & insist on your coming out too. This will be brought to you by Commander Magnetti with whom I have traveled from Rhodes and his wife was kind enough to offer to take the shawl and the embroideries for the screen too. Please do all you can for them as they have been very kind to me. He was Commissario of Castel Rosso or 9 Beatrix Mary Jay Chapman was the daughter of Henry Grafton Chapman, a New York stockbroker, and Eleanor Jay, herself the daughter of a US Ambassador to Austria and descendant of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States. J.S. Sargent painted Beatrix’s portrait as a child c 1883, but it was later accidentally destroyed. Her brother was a well-known American essayist, John Jay Chapman. In Washington in 1891 Beatrix married (later Sir) George Head Barclay (1862-1921), a wealthy British diplomat who rose through the legations at Rome, Madrid, Constantinople, and Tokyo before becoming Ambassador in Teheran and Bucharest. As Lady Barclay, she was ‘received at many courts and has shone in diplomatic circles in numerous capitals.’ (New York Times, June 13, 1920) Nonetheless, while in Bucharest she met Major Gen. Raymond Charles Pyramus de Candolle (1864-1935), eldest son of Casimir de Candolle of Geneva and she was divorced in 1919, naming de Candolle as the co-respondent. They married in London May 19, 1920. Her daughter Dorothy was divorced from Sir Coleridge Kennard in 1918. Beatrix had enough time on her hands while at Smyrna to assemble a collection of illicitly excavated terracotta figurines, for which see Courtois 2006.

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Castellorizo10 about which there is an article in Ausonia you might show him. (Friday, 14 July 1922) Gilbert walked through the Turkish district up the slope of Mt Pagos from which he took a photograph of Smyrna and its harbour. (Figure 13) It was a brief but memorable visit before he set sail again to cross the Aegean. He must have left no later than Friday morning 14 July since he was back in the School at Athens ‘all Saturday [July 15] and Sunday [working] hard at photos as our departure for the Pharsalos cave was fixed for Tuesday [18].’ (Tuesday, 25 July 1922) Unknown to all the Christian inhabitants of Smyrna and western Anatolia, the French, knowing how demoralized the Greek troops were in central Anatolia, were at that very moment secretly advising Gen. Kemal to begin his attack. Sir Harry Lamb reported that, according to his Italian sources, the French were ‘pouring war material up to the Kemalists.’ (Jeffery and Sharp 1987: 113)

Castel Rosso, the easternmost of the Dodecanese not far from Adalia in Anatolia, had just been seized by Italy in 1921. Magnetti was the commanding officer and Gilbert, as was as his usual custom at the time, imposed on them to take some souvenirs back to Rome for him. 10

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13. Monasteries in the Air Upon Gilbert’s return from sailing in the east Aegean, the School’s Director, della Seta, told Gilbert that he intended proposing to the School’s Committee that both Gilbert and Doro Levi be given bursaries to return to the School for the following year. I intend accepting from a variety of motives especially as I still have the several places to see: Asia Minor, Con[stantino]ple & Salonika, not to mention Thera & Delos (which I am thinking of doing on my way back from Crete.) Moreover I have still a lot of work to do and some four months I have been traveling since March are not really sufficient to study Athens especially when it is one’s first visit. I hope anyway that you will come out for the season but we’ll have to talk this over. (Tuesday, 25 July 1922) At the moment, however, Gilbert was tired of traveling and of the suffocating heat, and asked della Seta if he could return home to Rome before the end of August, thus avoiding a planned school trip to Crete ‘with forty degrees in the shade and malaria. ... Crete is going to swallow up 15 or 20 days,’ (Tuesday, 25 July 1922) but the Director adamantly refused. Gilbert resumed his archaeological activities, in particular taking and developing his own photographs for the School. Gilbert bought all the photographic material and converted the Young’s cheque into 7600 drachmae to pay for an excavation at Pharsalus in Thessaly, where a rock-cut inscription had led Halbherr to believe there was a cave of Pan or the Nymphs. On Tuesday morning [18] at 6 W [della Seta] & I left for Chalkis & Volo with two cameras and two beds not to mention lesser impedimenta. W 148

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is really a delightful traveling companion. At Chalkis [on the island of Euboea] we took the boat for Volo. At lunch on board there were two colorless Englishwomen who told me I talked English with a strong American accent [Gilbert’s mother was Canadian]. They were wives of employees in an English mining company in Euboea and I don’t think their accent amounted to much. After lunch W & I found some deck chairs & slept soundly for many many hours. Got in at Volo late at night. The hotel was full but we got them to open our camp beds in the drawing room. We then went to the cafe to see [Apostolos] Arvanitopoulos, the local Ephor of antiquities under whose control we were to dig. He talks quite good Italian as he studied in Italy. (Tuesday, 25 July 1922) Modern Volo includes the site of ancient Iolkos, whose King Pelias sent Jason away with the Argonauts to bring back the Golden Fleece from Colchis at the far eastern end of the Black Sea. Next morning Wednesday 19 we left Volo for Pharsalos.1 Got there at about 1. As Levi was not to be seen [in the village], the W at once set off for the cave, at 1 o’clock in the afternoon in the appalling heat of the Thessalian plain. It was a good hour’s walk with a hefty climb at the finish and we arrived in a semi-liquid state. Levi had already begun the dig & was quite cheerful about it as he had found quite a number of terracotta statuettes & hoped to find lots more, but as the cave was small the prospect did not appear to W to look very hopeful. And the next three days proved that he was right. The finds became fewer and fewer although nearly everywhere we got down to the rock. The cave seems to have been thoroughly pillaged in antiquity. The dig was frightfully fatiguing both owing to the heat & to the wind which caused a frightful quantity of dust which simply choked us. We became quite red from the earth that clung to our bodies and wouldn’t come off. As usual too there was little to eat except peaches of which we each used to eat some dozen a day; very bad for our insides. (Tuesday, 25 July 1922) Most of their finds were votive terracotta figurines actually excavated not inside the cave but out in front of the cave’s entrance, where inscriptions 1 Ironically, the outcomes of the civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic were all decided in Greece, the birthplace of democracy: Pharsalos, Philippi, and Actium.

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identify it as a cave of the Nymphs, local semi-divine spirits.2 The results were so disappointing that della Seta told Gilbert ‘it would be better for the School to pay the dig & the [Murray Young’s] money could be used next year in better circumstances. I’ll have to write to them about it. Thus ended our digs for the season which on the whole have proved disappointing. The program next year is a big dig of Acropolis slopes and excavations near Bodrum. My own personal plan, unless political conditions change, is to go via Salonika to Con[stantinople] and from there by rail to Smyrna thus seeing the bigger Asia Minor sites.’ (Tuesday, 25 July 1922) Thus already in mid-July Gilbert is contemplating the possibility of a change in political conditions in Turkey. Before returning to Athens, Gilbert wanted to visit the famous monasteries at Meteora, which are perched precipitously on the edge of very steep rock cliffs in central Thessaly. The next morning [24 July] early we went off to see the convents. They are very quaint and picturesque but more worth seeing on account of their situation and the fine scenery than on any other account. Visitors used to be pulled up to them in a net but we had no men with us who could work the windlass and so we had to go up by the ladders, an experience which is exceedingly terrifying & of considerable danger. The ladders are very high and cling close to the rock. Moreover they are all jointed & sway most dreadfully. I am sorry however not to have experienced also the feeling of going up in the net. The convents are perched on very high pinnacles of rock and are something like the Erd pyramidea at Bötzen [earth pyramids of Bolzano in the Tyrolean alps] on a gigantic scale. The whole tour took us over 6 hours and we visited 4 monasteries. It was very fatiguing but well worth it. At 2 we left Kalabaka for Trikkala where the heat was frightful, some 40 in the shade. (Tuesday, 25 July 1922) Gilbert later wrote a more detailed description of his ascent in a lecture entitled ‘The Monasteries in the Air.’ The approach to the monasteries used to be as remarkable as the buildings themselves. A windlass was placed in a projecting turret & a rope was lowered to the ground some three or four hundred feet below. The traveler was packed in a net or basket & was hoisted fish-like to 2

For the recent publication, see Wagman 2015: 35-36.

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the summit, considerably frightened no doubt, & with slightly ruffled vanity, but otherwise none the worse. But now the times are out of joint: Hagios Stephanos is reached by a bridge, at Hagia Trias the monks are too old & feeble to work the windlass, & at Meteoron the rope is worn out & they have not sufficient money to buy a new one. One is therefore obliged to mount by the ladder & the experience is distinctly alarming & fraught with no little danger. At Meteoron the height to be negotiated is about three hundred feet & the face of the cliff is perfectly sheer & in certain points even overhanging. A jointed ladder, which could be raised in case of danger, hangs freely from the summit, swaying perilously in the wind & swinging away from the rock under the weight of the visitor. Like all things at the Meteoron, it is much the worse for age; many of the rungs turn in the hand, some have been replaced by iron bars on which our hobnailed boots slip dangerously, & they are often so close to the rock that only the point of one’s boot can be inserted. It is better to look straight in front at the face of the rock & not to be tempted to allow one’s gaze to wander. At last the ladder disappears into a dark hole in the rock & we are inside the monastery. When we have sufficiently recovered from the effects of the ascent we advance to greet the sad-faced, emaciated, bearded ascetic who governs the community. Civilities are exchanged: masticha, a common Greek liqueur, is drunk with all the usual ceremony, & we are shown over the church, with its inscription commemorating its royal founder, & the monastic buildings.3 Past splendour & present ruin confront us everywhere; on all sides we can see the effects of poverty & gradual abandonment. The seven brethren live on dried provisions, the produce of their little gardens, & the scanty offerings of the faithful. The drinking water comes from cisterns dug in the rock & is kept clean (!) by means of a captive eel, on the principle, I suppose, that big fleas eat the lesser fleas. We fortunately found out about the eel after we had slaked our thirst. The abbot praises our courage: ‘Many are the people who come here but when they see the ladder & the height they go away again. Of a hundred 3 Gilbert was not shown the monastery’s library, concealed above the narthex accessible only via a stairway hidden behind a storeroom cupboard. (Staikos, 2007:481-2)

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travelers, not more than two or three will risk the ascent. There is danger, considerable danger: danger even of death! Kindynos thanatou!’ A cheering communication when the prospects of the descent are still before you! And the same spectacle is offered by the other monasteries. The spectre of poverty, with its inseparable companions, squalor & dirt, accompanied the memories of a glorious past. The churches are picturesque, & their decoration interesting, but our eyes still seek the views over the great expanse of the plain of Thessaly, of the scattered pinnacles of rock, with the imposing background of the Pindus. The works of Man are lost in contemplation of the works of God. Perhaps in a hundred years the last monk will have abandoned his semi-celestial refuge but these gaunt, red crags, a monument more endurable than bronze, will continue to point heavenward, laden with the Godly love of forgotten generations. (Bagnani, ‘The Monasteries in the Air’) On his way back to Athens, Gilbert detoured to see the unusual painted funerary stelai from Hellenistic Demetrias in the Volo Museum and the Mycenaean tholos tomb at Dimini. Unfortunately for Gilbert, back in Athens he discovered that all his photos from Pharsalos had turned out badly and despite the heat he had to rush north again to retake them. The ephor gave him the museum key so that he was able to work by himself the whole day in the museum. Among other gossip in Athens, Gilbert heard that ‘the incest’s 16 year-old niece, Mlle Momferratos, with whom Levi had a prolonged flirtation, ran away from home with a married undivorced man whose wife is in Austria, & had to be fetched back by the police. A good beginning!’4 Gilbert’s comment on the start of this young woman’s life is a good example of his biting wit. On Tuesday [August 1] went to lunch with the Demidoffs. Quite a good lunch and a lovely house. He is nice but not very intelligent, she charming. There was also a certain N. Zealand Colonel A[rthur] C[ecil] Corfe who is president of a L[eague] of N[ations] commission which has been set up to send the Bulgarians in Greece back to Bulgaria and the Greek Bulgarians back to Greece and so on. Good idea what!! He was Alexander Philadelpheus’ sister Maria married Momferratos and had a daughter Kalliope. According to Alexander’s grandson, also Alexander Philadelpheus, in a personal communication, ‘She was very smart and attractive so no wonder many men went after her!’

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very nice and said that he wanted to take a holiday in the Dodecanese so I promised to give him letters of introduction. Demidoff said that he was very surprised to find out how anti-French all the Italians were. That afternoon and Wednesday were passed in the darkroom developing in the photos. They had come out quite decently considering but W was not satisfied. He pretends that photos should give more than what is present in the original. I told him I did not think it poss[ible] to take much better photos and so left it that. He then started me off on the second Base [with relief sculptures] from the wall of Them. Damn them. I wish they had never been found! Parl[lanti] had not taken one of the groups and so I was sent off to take them. (Saturday, 12 August 1922) Later Gilbert ‘went to the Grand Bretagne [the grandest hotel in Athens] to take the letters to Colonel Corfe. He was in, gave me a w. & s. [whiskey and soda] and introduced me to a beautiful young man called Drummond-Wolff.5 So beautiful that I thought he must be dippy [a diplomat]. Asked me if I happened to be the correspondent of the MP. Answered that it had been offered to me but had refused and that another fellow had got it who was too royalist for me. We then started politics hard and he, I saw at once, was rather royalist and pro-Greek. Later when we were alone he said he meant to tell me that he had got the Morning Post. He is cousin of the Amb. in Madrid,6 the husband of the Giustiniani-Bandini.’ (Saturday, 12 August 1922) While increasingly sympathetic personally to the royalists in Athens, Gilbert consistently adopted a non-partisan stance in his articles for the Morning Post, despite its being a conservative newspaper. After Gilbert was exposed as a correspondent for the Post, subsequent articles were attributed to him although these were much more partisan. But Gilbert was not the only

Henry Drummond-Wolff (1899-1982) was the son of Cecil Drummond-Wolff and grandson of Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff, an Ambassador to Egypt, Teheran and Madrid. Gilbert’s new acquaintance was educated at Radley and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and from 1917 to 1919 was in the Royal Flying Corps. Later as a far right politician, he would become known for his pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic stances although his great grandfather Joseph was born Jewish, the son of a German rabbi. In 1933 he married Margaret, daughter of Gibson Fahnestock of Newport, Rhode Island. 6 Sir Esme William Howard, career diplomat and Minister Plenipotentiary at Madrid 1919-1923, ennobled in 1930 as Baron Howard of Penrith. He married Isabella Giustiniani-Bandini, a daughter of the 8th Earl of Newburgh, Prince Giustiniani-Bandini. Horatio Walpole, the 2nd Earl of Orford, had daughters Georgiana, the great grandmother of Drummond-Wolff, and Catherine, the grandmother of Sir Esme Howard. Given his anti-Semitism, it would seem probable that Drummond-Wolff was emphasizing his family’s non-Jewish connections in his conversation with Gilbert. 5

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one in Athens with a covert occupation as there was more to Drummond-Wolff also than met the eye.   His sister, Zaida Cecile, was married to the 2nd Baron Armstrong, heir to the Armstrong munitions empire. For several decades the British armaments companies Armstrong and Vickers had been commercial rivals, manufacturing weapons like the Gatling and Maxim machine guns, warships, submarines, aircraft, etc., for sale to other countries’ armies.7 Sir Basil Zaharoff, who controlled Vickers, was a Venizelist, and so with the change of Greek government to the anti-Venizelists in 1920, Armstrong saw an opportunity, albeit with a nearly bankrupt government. The arms manufacturers of Britain (Armstrong and Vickers), France (Scheider-Creusot) and Germany (Krupp and Thyssen) were privately owned and keen to sell across national borders to any country even at war, of course. While owning newspapers to foment national animosities favoring war over peace, they quietly traded across these same national borders (trading with the enemy). When the war was over, it was still in their interest to find combatants as potential customers. During the war, Basil Zaharoff had been able to cross borders at will as the representative of Vickers, and so he had a much more accurate knowledge of relative military strengths than did the politicians. It has often been alleged that Zaharoff financed Venizelos’ military expenses in Salonika as well as the Greek military occupation of Anatolia, but no documentary evidence has ever been produced. If he did support only the Greeks and not the Turks as well, it would have been an aberration for him, and it cost him dearly both in money and reputation. It was also alleged in Parliament in 1922 that Zaharoff influenced Lloyd George in the Prime Minister’s pro-Greek policy against the advice of his own advisers. [Drummond-Wolff] is really the representative of Armstrong’s and that accounts for his royalist leanings since Zaharoff the Venist is Vickers. Armstrongs have just signed a large [airplane] contract with the G[reek] Gov. I wonder if that is what’s behind [Lloyd George]’s latest [public support of Greece in Parliament]. [Drummond-Wolff] was very pleased to meet a kindred spirit & asked me to come round the next day Friday. I did so about 7 & he introduced me to various people including an Anglo Greek whose name I can’t remember. This chap, when we were about to toddle off together to the Zappeion to dine together, suggested that 7

The drastic loss of business in the post-war peace would eventually lead to their merger in 1927.

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we should go out to Kephissia. So he took a motor and we were at the Renaissance restaurant in no time. It is the smart Athenian summer resort about 20 minutes motor from Ath. There was a big bachelor dinner of the members of the Dip[lomatic Corps]. Most of our people were there. Had an excellent dinner wine cigar liqueur all of which were paid for by my unknown [host] who, like all Exohellenes, is a Venist so we both went for him. D-W told me that lots of people had been after the MP, that [the anti-Semitic Editor of the MP, H. A.] Gwynne had told him that I was their regular correspondent and that I was just off on leave. I wonder why. We then went on to the casino where unknown went off to play at baccarat & we looked at the roller skating. Had beer, Prince Paul [the twenty year old third son of King Constantine] was skating but came & joined us. [Gilbert was twenty-two and Drummond-Wolff twenty-three.] Had another bottle of beer, a caviar sandwich. D-W paid but we managed each to collar a Royal cig. Returned to Athens in the motor at about 2. Nice and inexpensive evening.8 Next day Sat [August 5] went to see the Grippes. Met their nephew who was present at the bombardment of Bodrum. Most interesting. On Sunday [August 6] hired a motor and went out to Pyrgos to see the Serpieris.9 The place is lovely, one of the nicest near Athens with a wonderful park. M. & Mme Baltazzis were there too - said that he had met you at the Metaxas [presumably when royalist Gen. John Metaxas was living in exile in Florence]. Everyone very bucked by Ll. G.’s speech. I said that I was afraid that Ll. G. was a gettatore [jinx] since all his pet notions seemed to end badly. They told me I was a pessimist which I suppose I am. (Saturday, 12 July 1922) Gilbert’s mother too had met George Baltazzi, the Greek Foreign Minister.

8 By a curious twist of fate, this encounter with Prince Paul would produce unpredictable results. Exiled from Greece, Prince Paul went to London in 1924 and looked up acquaintances there, including Drummond-Wolff. Through him, Paul was offered and accepted a job, working incognito as Paul Beck, as a factory mechanic in the Armstrong automobile and aircraft industries. (Hourmouzios 1972: 58-59) 9 Greece’s first Queen, Amalia, had created a large agricultural park with a Gothic mansion, the Tower or Pyrgos, a few miles north of Athens. The estate was eventually acquired by the Serpieri family, who still operate what land remains of it as a winery.

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Out of the blue on August 4 British Prime Minster Lloyd George in the House of Commons made a speech in which he strongly supported Greek claims to Asia Minor and Thrace. His speech encouraged the Greeks to hold on and the Turks to press their advantage before any help should arrive, but few knew that the Prime Minister did not have even his own cabinet behind him. Gilbert’s astute assessment of Lloyd George as a politician was accurate as well as pessimistic. Although Gilbert would have preferred to visit Byzantine and even Classical sites in Turkey, he was obliged to sail to the legendary island of Crete. As the southernmost part of Greece, it was also the hottest in a sweltering summer, and prehistoric archaeology then had little appeal for Gilbert. His sojourn in the seismic land of the minotaur would prove to be a greater ordeal than he anticipated.

14. In the Minotaur’s Labyrinth on Crete Even to the Romans Crete was famous for its distinctive and colourful myths. Zeus in the form of a bull carried the princess Europa on his back from Phoenicia across the sea to Crete where he resumed human form and fathered Minos. King Minos’ wife Pasiphae also was seduced by a bull and brought forth the Minotaur, a monstrous bull-headed human. Minos had the architect Daidalos build the labyrinth at Knossos in which to conceal the Minotaur. King Minos also demanded the regular sacrifice to the Minotaur of seven youths and seven maidens from Athens until the Athenian hero Theseus sailed to Crete with them; the king’s daughter Ariadne fell in love with Theseus and gave him a ball of string which he tied to the entrance to the labyrinth before descending to kill the Minotaur, and with which he found his way back out before sailing away with the princess. Wanting to escape from Minos, Daidalos constructed wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son, but Icarus flew too close to the sun, which melted the wax and he fell into the sea. These legends were so popular that Europa on the bull and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth were depicted on the Greek coins of Gortyn and Knossos and also in Roman mosaics in private homes. They continued to inspire artists and writers such as Mary Renault in the early twentieth century as well, especially with the much-publicized revelations of the recently discovered Minoan civilization. Gilbert had met the epigrapher Gaspare Oliverio (1887-1956) when he visited the Italian excavations at Cyrene in eastern Libya in June 1921. A fellow student with Carlo Anti and Biagio Pace at the Italian School in Athens in 1913-1914, Oliverio was a protégé of Federico Halbherr, who wanted both him and Cattaneo to help him traverse the entire island of Crete to look for more inscriptions. Gilbert had already summed up Oliverio as very nice, brilliant, and a trouble maker. 157

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On Thursday afternoon [3 August] Oliverio, the Cyrene chap, blew in on his way to Crete where he is working with 1/2gent [Halbherr].1 (Saturday, 12 August 1922) Gilbert’s ship sailed from Piraeus about 7:30 in the evening Tuesday 8 August, arrived at Chania in western Crete the next morning, and stopped at Rethymnon along the coast later that day before reaching Candia [now Heraklion] in central Crete early the following morning. All three cities preserved extensive fortification walls built by the Venetians to defend the island from the Turks in the seventeenth century when Venice owned the island of Crete. Christian Crete outlasted Constantinople by over two centuries before finally succumbing in 1669 after a long siege by the Turks. In that long interval, however, an influx of refugees from the Byzantine Empire contributed to a Cretan Renaissance, whose most famous painter was called El Greco in the West. Cross-fertilization between cultures continued with western Renaissance influence visible in icons, churches, and massive fortifications until 1669, when Venetian Cretans had to abandon the island and move to the West. After Crete finally obtained its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1899, English and Italian archaeologists began to discover a previously unknown civilization, called Minoan by Sir Arthur Evans, who had personally bought and excavated the site at Knossos just south of Candia in central Crete. Evans uncovered a vast structure buried several storeys deep whose systematic plan of rooms around a central court has since been found replicated at several other sites in central and eastern Crete. Evans called them palaces, but in concept architecturally they as much resemble medieval monasteries in the repetition of their similar plans around a central court. He partly restored portions of the palace in a rather moderne style, and his interpretation of the culture itself remains controversial though indelible. To Evans the Minoans ruled over a peaceful maritime empire from their unfortified island,2 not unlike an idealized version of the British Empire under Queen Victoria. Colourful Minoan art and wall paintings illustrate not only their love of flowers and nature but also the people themselves performing various rituals such as somersaulting over charging bulls. Images of double axes abound at Knossos and, since 1 In German, ‘halb’ means ‘half ’ and ‘herr’ means ‘lord’ or ‘gentleman;’ hence Gilbert’s bilingual codename for Halbherr was ‘Halfgent,’ written ‘1/2 gent.’ 2 It is now believed that Cretan sites actually were fortified until the final flowering of the Neopalatial period, a revelation to Minoan scholars a century after Evans first promulgated his peace-loving Minoans; see Alusik, 2007.

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labrys means double axe in the Carian language of Anatolia, the ancient word ‘labyrinthos’ could have originally meant simply the place of the double axe, but to the later Greeks a maze of confusingly interconnected rooms. At least in their frescoes and signet rings, women were portrayed in a dominant position in their culture. A female figurine holding snakes on her arms may be either a priestess or a goddess. Whether the flourishing Minoan civilization of Crete was destroyed by a titanic explosion from the nearby volcanic island of Santorini about 1600 BC or by subsequent human causes is still hotly debated. It was after the eruption and tsunami from Santorini that the Minoans designed pottery painted with sea creatures like starfish, murex shells and the octopus, an ungainly creature in real life but charmingly portrayed, emphasizing the three dimensions of vessels by flowing around them. Although Evans never realized it, and would never have wanted to, the few thousand clay tablets he found at Knossos prove that in its last phase the palace at Knossos was run by Greek-speaking Mycenaean bureaucrats from the Greek mainland before Knossos too was finally destroyed sometime after 1400 BC. This would have been the era (when mainlanders from Greece were most familiar with Knossos) that Theseus encountered the Minotaur in its Labyrinth at Knossos. At the moment of its destruction, a ritual was taking place in the Throne Room, a small frescoed room with a carved stone throne facing a sunken lustral basin: magnificent carved stone vessels were left scattered on the floor. Arrived yesterday [Thursday 10] after a fairly good cruise. 1/2gent is at Canea & will remain there another week. When he comes here [Candia/ Herakleion] he will probab. try to make me stay on [in Crete] I’m not having any. … The museum here is perfectly wonderful. We are leaving next week for the interior Gortyn, Phaistos etc. It is very hot; we are going to walk now (2 p.m.) to Knossos. I wonder if we’ll be alive. There have been several earthquake shocks since we’ve been here but nothing serious. (Friday, 11 August 1922) The heat is terrible and I am always very tired even when I’m not devel. photos. (Saturday, 12 August 1922) In the Spring of 1922, after publishing the first of several volumes on The Palace of Minos at Knossos, Evans had resumed his excavations at Knossos, interrupted by the war. Because of the perilous state of some of the remains, especially

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the several flights of a magnificent open staircase winding around a light shaft down to grand frescoed halls buried a few storeys underground, Evans had restored several parts of the palace, first in wood and then later in concrete reinforced with iron. This season he had just reconstructed the Grand Staircase beside the Throne Room rising up to the Piano Nobile, the main first floor. While trying to clarify some ceramic stratigraphy recovered from the deep excavation at the southeast corner of the palace, Evans uncovered a house with enormous blocks fallen from the palace above and, after experiencing a mild earthquake at the site, he began to consider earthquakes as potential causes of some of the violent destructions at Knossos. In an adjacent building in the opposite corners of a room Evans discovered very large bulls’ skulls and horns together with painted tripod altars. Beneath this area he excavated a man-made cavern ‘with three roughly cut steps leading down to what can only be described as a lair adapted for some great beast.’3 Combining all the evidence, Evans conjectured that, after the earthquake had destroyed the houses, the Minoans subsequently filled them up in order to build upon the ruins, at which time they sacrificed the oxen to appease the ‘earth-shaking Powers below.’ At the same time, the French were beginning to excavate yet another Minoan palace at Mallia, which had been discovered, explored and identified by Dr Joseph Hatzidakis near the north coast several miles east of Knossos. Behind an impressive western facade wall, storage magazines at Mallia still contained jars, and corridors led to a central court. Hatzidakis had also carefully excavated and published some impressively built Minoan country houses at Tylissos while his colleague Stephanos Xanthoudides had just published another Minoan villa at Nirou Khani which contained painted tripod altars and gigantic bronze double axes. Gilbert did not mention visiting any of these sites but saw the ‘perfectly wonderful’ finds from them on display in the Museum. The Italian archaeologists had their own motivations in their choice and interpretation of sites. Rather than looking for a validation of pacifist dreams like Evans, the Italians were keen to find evidence of their ancestors’ presence and rule over the Roman province of Crete and Cyrene. In 1884 the epigrapher Federico Halbherr (1857-1930) had uncovered in a theatre in Gortyn the longest known Greek inscription, the earliest preserved law code in Europe, and ever since then he had explored on horseback throughout Crete looking for more inscriptions. Thus he knew exactly where he wanted to dig when the opportunity finally arrived with the liberation of the island from the Ottoman 3

Evans, 1922: 11.

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Empire in 1899. The small theatre at Gortyn was actually a Roman odium or enclosed music hall reconstructed from a previous Greek political assembly hall or ekklesiasterion in which the law code had been inscribed on public display. Among the olive groves the remains of ancient Gortyn, so extensive that they are still largely unexcavated, were visible reminders of its heyday when it was the capital of the Roman province of Crete and Cyrene. Temples of Apollo and of Egyptian gods visible amid unexcavated theatres, amphitheatre, stadium and aqueducts formed the landscape. At the time of Gilbert’s visit in 1922, the Italians were continuing their excavation of the mansion of the Roman provincial governor at Gortyn, but later reuse rendered its plan difficult to make out. At nearby Phaistos, which overlooks the large fertile plain of Messara from the east end of a ridge of hills, Luigi Pernier (1874-1938) had excavated a palatial building very similar to Knossos though less extensive. The Italians, however, never had the financial resources to restore their discoveries to the extent that Evans did at Knossos. Not far away in Minoan villas at Hagia Triada, Federico Halbherr and Roberto Paribeni had discovered beautiful wall paintings and hundreds of clay seal impressions. The main focus of the Italians,4 however, was the search for Greek and Roman inscriptions especially in and around Gortyn, evidence for their imperial past. Unfortunately, the blazing heat in the summer of 1922, not to mention the earthquake shocks, overcame Gilbert, and he became physically ill with diarrhea. Instead of heading homeward back to Italy as he had hoped, he had been required to sail to the southernmost and hottest part of Greece, the island of Crete. Of the few surviving photographs taken and developed by him on the island, at least two were doubly exposed, probably because of Gilbert’s archaeological trial by fire. Gilbert succumbed to the oppressive heat and a nostalgic yearning to return to his home across the distance of several seas. In a letter to his mother, instead of writing a detailed account of his travels around Southern Crete Gilbert indulged his imagination and regressed to an adolescent desire to be pampered once again. Sunday 20 August Candia At last my homecoming draws nigh and I am counting the days that I have still to pass … before returning to civilization again. I am heartily sick of it and were it not for the fact that I have still a lot to study at Athens and that I have not seen Delos, 4 Except for della Seta, who had little to do with Crete and the origins of the Greeks, preferring instead to seek elsewhere for the origins of the Etruscans, predecessors of the Romans.

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Thera, Asia M[inor]. & Con[stantino]ple I do not think I would accept the riconfirma [renewal of his bursary]. I am very tired; have been traveling almost continually since the end of March, over five months. This Cretan trip in the tropical heat has just been the straw that has broken the camel’s back. Moreover as Baedeker would say neatly and concisely (p. xvi), travelers in out of the way parts of Greece must be ‘young and vigorous ... and must be prepared to put up with the want of many comforts and conveniences which the ordinary European regards as almost necessaries of life,’ a phrase which I think I’ll inscribe on the first page of my album of photographs. By the way that reminds me that you might as well see about buying a really nice photo album in which I can paste all my photos: I can trust your taste perfectly and it will save me time if you buy it. … This grouse is merely to prepare you for what I want done on my homecoming which I hope you will treat as a really great feast, and slaughter the fatted calf & all that. I really feel that a birthday is due to me a bit. Civilization really means cleanliness and cooking. The first I need not bother about except that of course I want a bath and full of water so that I can simply wallow in it. I do not know what the heat is like in Rome but if it is above 25 I want an electric fan playing on me the whole time. … But my real dreams are gastronomic and this is the outline of the dinner of my dreams. At teatime I want beer, black, (you can get it in that shop at capo le case almost opposite the Taverna Russa) and it must be kept in ice the whole day. (You will have to buy at least a ton of ice; I want to feel at the North Pole). As for the dinner to begin I want all the silver on the table, candlesticks and all …, a nice subdued light, as un-Greek as possible. The hors d’oeuvres don’t matter much as they are the one thing these [people] know how to do really well. Then I want consommé, but not just the ordinary stuff but something nice thick and meaty the taste of really good fresh chicken and not something out of a box, and of course iced. … The sweet is a difficulty since I do not want the cream (I can get that here all right) but it must be iced and must be nice to look at, as well as pleasant to the taste; Peches Melba would be the thing really. Cheese doesn’t matter but the fruit is a difficulty as you can’t beat the Gr. Cretan melons grapes and figs … I don’t want champagne: have drunk gallons of it here. (Sunday, 20 August 1922)

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After several months of arduous traveling deprived of all but the basic necessities in sweltering heat, he was longing for the comforts of home but, even in his most anti-Greek rant, Gilbert had to admit how much he liked Greek food. Nonetheless, despite the tempting visions of home, Gilbert picked himself up and returned to reality to explain the immediate causes of his delusions. His ordeal by fire had toughened him for future infernos. This grouse is a consequence of the trip we [Gilbert and Doro Levi] took on Monday last [August 14] into the interior. Went to Gortyna, Phaistos, Hagia Triada the sites of our digs. I like them much better than Cnossos, where there is too much Evans, too little Minos. We came back on Thursday evening [17 August] nearly melted. I have never suffered such heat. Besides I was not well: caught a cold in my belly & had di[arrhea] in quantities. I do not feel energetic enough to write about the journey now, will do so later. (Sunday, 20 August 1922) While working in the Messara plain near the south side of the island, the Italians stayed at an excavation house they rented in Voroi, a village north of Phaistos. Just before the war Oliverio had unearthed a temple of Isis at Gortyn and had published two brief announcements of his discovery. Now he needed to examine and publish a full description of it, as the French had just done with their discovery of three temples of Egyptian gods on Delos, but he never did.5 The temple at Gortyn was unique, however, because artifacts were found in the stairway leading down to a small ritual crypt below the temple, namely terracotta cows presumably representing Isis searching for her deceased husband, Osiris, in the living water at the bottom of the crypt. Doro Levi was drawn by the Siren-call of the newly revealed Minoan culture on Crete to begin a life-long dedication to the research and publishing of Minoan civilization. Indeed, he would decades later discover, excavate and publish a palatial structure below the Minoan palace at Phaistos. Levi’s initial research on Crete started with the hundreds of impressions made by stone seals on clay sealings excavated at Hagia Triada and Zakros in eastern Crete

Oliverio never did publish the temple, nor much else that he discovered at Cyrene either. In his defense, his mentor Halbherr suffered from the same archaeologists’ malady of not publishing what they had uncovered. In the case of the Isis temple at Gortyn, there are written descriptions but no illustrations of artifacts now lost and no surviving knowledge of the precise contexts in which unique artifacts were found.

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years earlier, attesting to a Minoan bureaucratic recording system throughout the island. Unfortunately, Gilbert did not write an account of Levi’s first encounter with Phaistos and the Minoans on Crete. Gilbert’s reaction to the antiquities in the Candia Museum as ‘ perfectly wonderful’ reveals his own progress beyond his previous indifference to prehistoric antiquities. His reaction to the palatial remains at Knossos, ‘too much Evans, too little Minos,’ was a sentiment which reflected that of the Italians generally, as they did not indulge in restoration at Phaistos on the scale that Evans could afford to. Had no news of you for ages. Am leaving for Athens tomorrow [via Chania] and in 15 days hope to be in Rome. … 1/2gent [Halbherr] has not yet turned up here [Candia] & I hope to see him at [Chania] on my way back. A nuisance if I don’t but can’t be helped. Have bought 2 Cretan silk scarves 50 cm wide and one 4 m and the other 3 m long, very nice. As I have a lot of cash in hand will buy presents for people in England. Am so tired that I almost wish we were not going over there again. By this time you must have seen Giglioli [the ‘Lily’] & W [della Seta], who left for Italy last Monday. Hope the heat in Rome is not too bad, not over 30 at least. (Sunday, 20 August 1922) The usual mode of transport for travelers to reach the lush western end of Crete was to sail from Candia to Rethymnon in about five hours, wait there several hours, and continue on to Chania in another five hours. Gilbert’s ship, however, after Rethymnon was forced by stormy weather to put in at Souda Bay, across the peninsula from Chania. He went to the Chania museum to see Federico Halbherr. Since many years earlier Halbherr and Paribeni had excavated the Minoan villas at Hagia Triada with their frescoes and vases carved in relief, Halbherr would return periodically to Crete on the pretext of working on their publication, but he never lived to complete it. Gilbert had little choice but to seek out Halbherr, his former professor. Della Seta was going to recommend that Gilbert’s bursary be renewed for a second year, and Halbherr wanted to give Gilbert an assignment that would occupy his time back in Italy between terms. Gilbert’s academic task was to study two Roman statues in the Chania museum. In 1913 these had been removed from the Sanctuary in western Crete of Diktynna, a Cretan goddess identified with Artemis/Diana. The statue of Artemis resembled one of Diana in the Museum at Ostia, and the colossal statue of the Emperor Hadrian had many scattered

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comparanda. Gilbert obtained two museum photographs of the statues, one of Artemis and the other of Hadrian, with Halbherr standing behind the Roman emperor. From Gilbert’s point of view, his assignment to find comparable statues was more art historical than archaeological and would conceivably take him to various scattered museums; from Halbherr’s, however, it would have been politically popular to focus on two very Roman statues found in an ancient Greek sanctuary in Crete which had been restored by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. After two days closely examining the statues and recording them with his virtually photographic memory, Gilbert left the heat and earthquakes of Crete to sail back to Athens. Back in Athens by late August, 1922, Gilbert began packing and saying goodbye to his friends. Carl Blegen, the Assistant Director of the American School, had returned from a successful first season excavating at Kolophon, several miles south of Smyrna in Anatolia, before proceeding to his second season at Zygouries near Mycenae. At last this is the last letter that I will write to you [from Greece]. On my return from Crete I found your letter with the photo and the cutting. If you had any idea of the frightful rush it was getting off to Volo the second time you would not be so annoyed at not getting a line with the Lily [Giglioli]. I just had time to get all the films together and bolt. Same again with our departure for Crete. I found 3 letters from the Yate boy who has had my letter typed & sent to HRH [Queen Victoria’s third son, Prince Arthur, the Duke of Connaught, Grand Prior of England] and other influential members of the Order [of the Knights of St. John]. I evidently landed a big fish. I also got a letter from Rodd.6 I left Candia on Monday last [28] & the sea was so bad that we had to take refuge in Souda Bay. I took a carriage and drove to [Chania] where I found 1/2gent [Halbherr] & Maria [Fasoulaki, a Greek girl adopted by Halbherr]. He was delighted to see me & we went to the Museum where he at once made me study two rather fine statues, one rather like the Ostia Artemis and the other an imperial Roman colossal statue [of Hadrian]. I was obliged to remain As British Ambassador to Rome from 1908 to 1919, Sir Rennell Rodd had been instrumental in persuading Italy to join the Entente. He was not only a career diplomat but also a poet and an old friend of Mrs. Arthur Strong. Rodd would also have known William Miller in Rome, as they both wrote books on the history of the Franks in medieval Greece. So it is not surprising that Gilbert and his mother knew Rodd but the contents of Rodd’s letter to Gilbert remain unknown. Rodd would later be appointed to represent Britain at the centenary celebrations in April 1924 of Lord Byron’s death at Missolonghi.

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there 2 days & only got here Thursday night but was glad as I managed to do a lot of work. … No the trip to Crete was the last straw. Here too the heat is asphyxiating but nothing to Crete. We reached 50 in the shade in the Messara. I have already got my ticket and will leave on Friday [8 September] without any fail. I reach Brindisi on Monday morning and leave in the afternoon arriving in Rome on Tuesday morning a little after nine. Most convenient. I don’t know when you think of going to England but I expect the beginning of October will be the best date. Nothing doing here in the heat. Am engaged in packing, a most laborious task and saying goodbye to all the people I know who are still in Athens or in the immediate neighborhood. Do you know where Lugli & Mariani are? And is Paribeni in town? He really might perfectly well pay for my slides. Thank goodness that soon I shall be able to tell you everything viva voce. (Monday, 4 September 1922) On Friday 8 September, two men sailed away from worlds that were about to disappear violently: the one, homesick Gilbert Bagnani, never imagining the speed and scale of events to come, left ante-bellum Athens to go home before returning to a very changed world, and the other, Aristeidis Sterghiades, the High Commissioner of Smyrna, anticipating the unimaginable, walked hurriedly to a launch and into self-imposed exile never to set foot in Greece or Turkey again. The inferno of the summer of 1922 was just beginning for the unfortunate Christian inhabitants of Smyrna, however, as the mounted horsemen of the Apocalypse were already bringing the end of their days.

15. Inferno The summer of 1922 was one of the hottest ever recorded around the Mediterranean. The Greek armies, war weary and low in ammunition, were defending hundreds of miles of railroad tracks two hundred miles away from General Headquarters at Smyrna with only three wireless sets for communication among them. With the constant but covert Turkish buildup, the numbers of men and weapons on each side were becoming roughly equivalent but the contrast in morale and fervor could hardly have been greater: Greek morale was low from their prolonged existence in the middle of Anatolia while the Turks were fighting to recover their heartland. At the first hint of a Turkish attack, the Greek Commander Gen. Hadjianestis, who was so eccentric that it remains a mystery as to why he was ever appointed, sailed away from Smyrna to Athens while Kemal and his General Staff moved their headquarters westwards closer to the front. On Saturday 26 August, Gen. Noureddin as commander of the Turkish First Army led the main surprise assault against the Greeks just east of the railroad junction at Afyon in central Anatolia while Turkish cavalry attacked their weakest link, cutting the telegraph and telephone lines. As soon as the Greeks retreated to a potential defensible position, they found the Turks had preceded them. As the Greek soldiers began retreating en masse, they lost contact with one another and disintegrated as fighting units with each subsequent retreat. The Greek forces were scattered and increasingly separated from one another, and it became a rout with each soldier going as fast as his feet and stamina would allow, hotly pursued by Noureddin’s army and the Turkish cavalry, whose goal was now the Mediterranean Sea itself. It was a race to the coast to carry out or avoid annihilation. Greek troops in the north retreating toward the Sea of Marmara surrendered to the French, who turned them over to the Turks. 167

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The battle for Anatolia had been a vicious civil war fought not only by armies but also by irregular paramilitary civilian gangs who took no prisoners. Hence the panic among the defenseless civilians who were seeing their armies evaporate. As their soldiers fled, Christian residents panicked and joined them, allegedly taking the time to torch their own villages behind them. By the time that the Greek government in Athens finally replaced Hadjianestis with Gen. Trikoupis as the new Commander on Monday 4 September, Trikoupis had already been taken prisoner by the Turks! The few remaining army units still in orderly formation, some led by Colonels Plastiras and Gonatas, plodded south of Smyrna through the peninsula to Chesme, a naval port forty miles further west where they could board ships for the islands of Chios and Lesbos, but most of the thousands of young Greek men from Old Greece never made it that far. Perhaps half the Greek army was taken prisoner, and the other half fled. As town after town was evacuated like a line of falling dominoes, rumours of disaster began reaching Smyrna, and High Commissioner Stergiadis sent for Theotokis and Stratos, the War and Interior Ministers, but the situation was irretrievably lost. He ordered the provincial officials to assemble all their papers and secretly prepare to evacuate while still publicly advising the Greek population to stay in their homes. Trains brought wounded soldiers and terrified refugees into Smyrna: ‘passengers standing all along the footplates and others swarming on the roof. In the carriages the passengers were so crowded that dead bodies were passed out at stations on their way to Smyrna.’1 The Allies and the Americans were concerned only for the safety of their own businesses and nationals, and sent ships to transport no others but them away. When a shipload of Greek reinforcements from Thrace finally arrived in the harbour of Smyrna on Tuesday 5 they refused to disembark. The contagion of defeatism was enabling mutiny, hastening the slide into anarchy. Greek soldiers lacking direction wandered by mistake through Smyrna itself. ‘Defeated, dusty, ragged Greek soldiers began to arrive, looking straight ahead, like men walking in their sleep. … In a never ending stream they poured through the town toward the point on the coast to which the Greek fleet had withdrawn. Silently as ghosts they went, looking neither to the right nor the left.’ (Horton, 1926: 119-20) They were abandoning Smyrna and their compatriots to their fate. In a war where earlier entire villages had been

1 Admiral Sir Bertram Thesiger, Captain of the George V, Naval Memories, privately printed and cited in Llewellyn Smith, 1998: 302.

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torched and the inhabitants massacred, now the largest city in Anatolia lay defenseless on the precipice of extinction by the water’s edge. After the first soldiers straggled through the streets in a daze, thousands of civilians from the interior began streaming into Smyrna. Major Claflin Davis of the American Red Cross estimated that about 150,000 Christians poured into Smyrna in early September. (Dobkin, 1998: 265) The government in Athens appealed to the Allies to intervene, but it was too late. The Turks, having the upper hand, refused an armistice. In his article entitled ‘Greece’s Disaster – Misled by Mr Lloyd George,’ dated September 7, the day before he sailed away from Athens, Gilbert wrote that Kemal had captured the railway lines between Afyon and Eskishehr allowing him to concentrate his troops at any point along the front with great rapidity, and a general panic ensued among the foreign colonies in Smyrna. The Athenian press blamed Stratos for having taken 50,000 Greek troops from the Turkish front to Thrace to support the Greek bluff against Constantinople. The Greek people still hoped that the Greek army in Thrace would attempt to occupy Constantinople by force if the situation in Smyrna became too desperate, but Constantinople was already occupied by British and French forces. Lloyd George’s speech had lulled many Greeks into believing the British would in some way support them. The Greeks could hardly expect the French troops in Constantinople to hold their fire. The Greek Foreign Minister Baltazzi was powerless to muzzle the most violent anti-French articles in the press. People were starting to blame Gen. Hadjianestis for not communicating with the Greek naval authorities who commanded the Greek Air Force. New bank notes had just been printed to replace the previous halved notes, and the people suspected that these new ones were being issued in order to be cut in half again because the national treasury was drained. The Greeks were all now aware that they would have to abandon Asia Minor, but no one in Greece had the courage to face the returning army. Stating that Lloyd George’s policy of dilatoriness and rhetoric might have caused the ruin of European enterprise and influence in the region, Gilbert wrote that Britain and France should finally agree and force Greece to leave Asia Minor to induce Kemal to an armistice. (Bagnani 1922k) But by the day Gilbert’s article appeared, it was already too late to avert catastrophe. On Friday 8, the Naxos sailed away from Smyrna bearing the higher Greek officials and bureaucrats with their archives. The last Greek ships sailed out of the harbour to pick up their troops at Chesme. The last symbol of Greece in Anatolia and the Great Dream, High Commissioner Aristeidis Stergiadis

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himself, in the evening walked to a launch and sailed over to the Iron Duke and the next day, after transferring to a Romanian ship, sailed ignominiously away forever from Greek and Turkish soil to spend the rest of his life in self-imposed exile in southern France where he died in 1950. He ‘wrote a memoir which has not survived.’ (Llewellyn Smith 1998: 342) To maintain calm, prevent looting, and protect their respective nationals, consulates and business interests during the interregnum between governments, the Allies sent several dozen marines on land. The nervous inhabitants tried to convince themselves that they would be safe with the growing number of foreign ships in the harbor as witnesses to any events. Early on Saturday morning of September 9, Capt. Thesiger of H.M.S. King George V was checking his marine guard at the Standard Oil gas works near the railway station, when he saw looters suddenly stop and scream at the first sight of Turkish cavalry. He bravely interposed himself in front of the advancing Turkish troops and explained that European forces were there only to maintain order until the Turkish authorities arrived and that their best approach would be along the waterfront. At about 11 a.m., the eerie silence was broken by the clip-clop of horses echoing from the cobble-stoned avenue along the Smyrna waterfront. ‘Korkma! Korkma! [Don’t be afraid!]’ cried the black-clad cavalrymen. Seeing their long sabers and their high black fezzes emblazoned with the red crescent and star, the Greek inhabitants panicked and fled. An American tourist, Dr Oren Raber, who happened to have sailed in to Smyrna two days earlier just in time to see many Greek vessels steaming away, wrote an account of what happened next. ‘An Armenian concealed among the crowds about fifty yards from where we stood stepped forward and threw a bomb at the head of the troops. No one was injured save the Armenian himself, who was promptly shot down by one of the Turkish cavalry. From that instant death and destruction were let loose. Shots filled the air. … The quay became a scene of panic. Some fell on their faces to escape bullets; others tried to rush into the narrow streets leading from the quay, while still others desperately threw themselves in to the sea.’ (Raber 1923: 312-18) The Turkish cavalry at the head of the procession pressed on to Government House and the army barracks facing the waterfront. On Sunday morning victorious General Kemal rode through the redfestooned streets of the Turkish quarter in a triumphal cavalcade escorted by two lines of horsemen with swords drawn and gleaming in the sunlight. ‘The clash of steel and the beat of the iron hooves became deafening as [they] crossed

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the closed bazaars.’ (Edib 1928: 381) Arriving at Government House, Kemal refused to tread upon a large Greek flag spread like a carpet on the steps, but he appointed Gen. Noureddin as the military commander of Smyrna, a very ill omen. Noureddin had already been tried by the Ottoman Turks themselves for excessive cruelty to Greeks around Trebizond in the east, burning their villages and deporting survivors, and when he had been in charge of Smyrna three years earlier, he had been removed at the instigation of the Greek Archbishop Chrysostomos. Now it was Noureddin’s turn. He summoned Chrysostomos to a meeting at Government House. The archbishop was taken into his office for the interview, which did not go well, and so Noureddin delivered Chrysostomos to the waiting mob outside. As the archbishop walked down the steps he was seized and dragged to a nearby barber shop. According to a Turkish participant, ‘I was among those who blinded him, uprooted his eyes and dragged him from his beard and hair while he was bleeding through the Turkish neighborhood. We hit him, swore at him and cut off pieces from his skin. I was deeply impressed by his attitude. He neither begged, screamed or cursed while he endured all the tortures. His pale face, covered with the blood of his eyes, was constantly looking up towards the sky and he continuously mumbled something which could not be heard. … Every now and then, whenever he had the strength to do so, he would raise his right arm and bless his persecutors. A Turk realized what the Bishop was doing; he got so furious that he cut off the Bishop’s hands with his sword. He fell on the ground in a lake of blood and sighed. It was more a sigh of relief rather than a sigh of pain. I was so sorry for him at that moment, that I shot him twice in the head and that finished him off.’2 In order to find some peace of mind, this same Turkish soldier later freed some Greek prisoners including George Mylonas, an archaeologist who would admit later in life that he owed his freedom and life to the savage death of the archbishop, a life-long burden for him. The Greeks could always be expelled to Greece but what to do with the Armenians? They had no country of their own to be expelled to. On Sunday evening, according to the Italian consul, Kemal met with his aides to decide what to do. On Monday morning the Armenian quarter of Smyrna was

2 This account of the Turkish soldier was contained in a speech given by George Mylonas 16 December 1982 to the Academy of Athens, quoted in an article on the Slaying of Metropolitan Chrysostomos by Sarantis Kargakos in Oikonomikos Tachydromos 8, October 1992.

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surrounded by Turkish soldiers, and anyone caught concealing an Armenian was to be court martialed. At first, within hours of the Turkish cavalry’s entry into Smyrna, the trolleys along the waterfront had resumed running and bars and shops were open for business, policed by Turkish troops. The Allied marine guards had re-embarked onto their ships. Some Turks, either officers, educated, or at least still in possession of their humanitarian sensibilities, did indeed try to restrain the irregular soldiers and vengeful Turkish inhabitants of the city, but they were increasingly outnumbered. Rampant looting in the narrow back streets and sporadic resistance from Armenians led to the gradual breakdown of order, and back in the Armenian district soon began house to house searching and ‘the systematic hunting down of Armenians, who were gathered in batches of 100, taken to the Konak [Government House], and murdered.’3 By Monday afternoon, businesses near the waterfront began to close and shutter their doors. Mutilated corpses were first seen in the Armenian district of the city, where the terrified inhabitants hid behind locked doors in attics and basements and even in drains. The thousands of refugees from the countryside pouring into the streets had nowhere to hide. All Christian males of military age were declared to be prisoners of war and forcibly separated from their families to be marched off to the interior of Anatolia. Gen. Noureddin refused to protect any of the rapidly growing numbers of hungry Greek refugees in the streets. But as the tens of thousands continued streaming from the hinterland into Smyrna and its waterfront, they learned to their disbelief that the Greek military evacuation ships had sailed away days before and they instead saw flotillas of foreign ships both naval and commercial lying out in the bay refusing to budge. At a meeting with American officials asking for help for the refugees, Noureddin replied ‘Bring ships and take them out of the country. It is the only solution.’ Since, however, according to Lieut. Arthur Duckworth, Paymaster on board the Iron Duke, the Turks had proclaimed martial law and forbidden anyone from entering, leaving, embarking or disembarking, all the Christian 3 From an account given by Roy Treloar, a survivor in Malta, to the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, September 20, 1922, quoted in Hatzidimitriou, 2005: 85. According to Mylonas, (Kargakos 1992) this procedure was still being followed after the Armenians were all gone: ‘During the last days of September of 1922, a group of students from the International College of Smyrna and myself were imprisoned in a horrible cell in the building of the administration headquarters of Smyrna. The prison was packed with Greek Orthodox inmates, who were probably destined to die. At night-time, Turkish guards led by a high-ranking officer removed prisoners and executed them.’

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inhabitants of Smyrna were meanwhile trapped like prisoners. (Halpern 2011: 352) Americans, who had never declared war on the Ottoman Empire and remained officially neutral, were usually though not always protected by their flag. Many lived and worked for schools and charitable institutions in the suburb called Paradise. The American High Commissioner in Constantinople, Admiral Mark Bristol, was not so much pro-Turkish as a ruthless and narrowminded patriotic American who wanted to promote American business interests, especially oil, with Kemal’s government in Ankara. (Housepian 1983: 136) A succession of Ottoman governments had agreed to concede to American business interests led by Admiral Colby Chester all the mineral and oil rights within twenty kilometres of a rail line to be built wherever the Americans found the most lucrative mines and oil fields, but this agreement, much contested by other European governments, had never been ratified. (Woodhouse 1922: 95359) The British considered Bristol not only lacking in any previous knowledge of Near Eastern affairs but also ‘carefully spoon fed by the Turks.’ (Dobkin 1998: 13) He allowed American journalists to travel to Smyrna only on condition that they write reports favorable to the Turks, effectively censoring the journalists. He also ordered the US warships in the harbor not to intervene in the war between Greece and Turkey but to remain neutral and rescue only American citizens. His representative, Capt. Hepburn, told Noureddin that the American naval mission was to protect only American nationals not refugees in Turkish territory, hence ‘an open invitation to slaughter.’ (Dobkin 1998: 143) The American public, however, felt otherwise, having for many years charitably supported orphanages for Armenian children. The American Vice-Consul, Maynard Barnes, had adhered to Admiral Bristol’s hardline policy of refusing to help non-Americans (Dobkin 1998: 1415) and was boasting that the Turkish authorities were ‘facilitating in a marked manner American commercial activities4 whereas such facilities are not being granted to other foreigners.’ (Dobkin 1998: 213) George Horton, an often-cited eye-witness to the destruction of Smyrna, was the complete antithesis of Admiral Bristol. He became an ardent Hellenist while earning his BA in Classics from Michigan and, after working as a journalist in Chicago, wrote several novels and modern Greek poetry. Having served as In April 1923 the Americans would finally succeed in outmaneuvering the French and British oil interests in obtaining Ankara’s approval of the huge railroad and oil land concessions initially negotiated with the Ottoman government in 1909 by retired American Admiral Colby Chester.

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the American consul in Athens, Salonika and Smyrna for nearly thirty years, Horton was an experienced consul and fluent in many languages including Turkish. (Dobkin 1998: 124) His third wife was Greek and, while there is no reason to doubt his factual accounts of events, his frequent demonization of Turks in his novels reveals his prejudices. (Coleman 2006) The British were still technically at war with the Sultan’s government, and the further removed the politicians were from Turkey the more they were in denial about Kemal’s ability and willingness to continue waging offensive war. The British Consul-General at Smyrna, however, Sir Harry Lamb, happened to meet Kemal on the street. Kemal told Lamb that if he chose he could intern all British subjects in Smyrna, since they were still at war, but he would refrain. He declared that he could if he wished take Constantinople by force from the British but that he would prefer negotiating, although later he clarified his statement by saying the revolutionary government in Ankara was not at war with Britain. By Tuesday morning the streets were filled with hungry refugees and bloated corpses. Any building or structure with an American, French or Italian flag was packed with terror-stricken women and children. Horton firmly believed that Turkish troops were always well disciplined and would never have got out of control and that therefore any stern warning coming from the Allies could have prevented the deportations and slaughter. ‘When [Kemal] sees the great powers of the world sitting by in security on their battleships watching his fearful procedures, he is emboldened to greater and still greater excesses. The sight of a massacre going on under the eyes of the great powers of Europe and with their seeming tacit consent is one that I hope never to see again.’5 By Wednesday, as the city sank further into anarchy, Sir Harry ordered the remaining British nationals to evacuate and provided boats to take them to the ships lying out in the harbor, and his American counterpart George Horton, despite Bristol’s orders, ordered the Americans to evacuate, and the French and Italian consuls soon followed suit. Lady Lamb and her elder daughter6 had already sailed away Tuesday on the British hospital ship Maine bound for Malta. According to the American tourist, Oren Raber, although this must have been hearsay, the Armenians used their church not only for refuge but also as an arsenal, and on Wednesday morning the Turks threw a bomb into it which set the church on fire and exploded the munitions. Most of the buildings in 5 6

A dispatch of Horton’s from Athens dated 27 September, 1922 published in Housepian 1983: 156. The Lambs’ younger daughter, Dorina, had just died 23 July 1922.

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Smyrna were built of timber as an earthquake absorber, and it had been a very hot and dry summer. It was not until Wednesday that the winds starting blowing westward. Many eyewitnesses wrote and later testified that they saw regular Turkish soldiers systematically dousing houses and buildings in the Armenian district with gasoline before setting fire to them, evidently under orders to do so but, by this point, mob psychology reigned. By midday any occupants still hiding in the Armenian quarter were forced out or burned to death. Members of the local fire brigade, which included both Greeks and Turks, found gruesome remains of dismembered bodies in some of the houses they entered, but the spreading fires quickly overwhelmed their efforts, especially after they found their hoses had been cut. Two American boats from the USS Simpson approached the wharf directly across from the theatre which sheltered Armenians and whatever others who could crush inside. Squads of guards made their way through the mob and led the terrified occupants to the boats. As smoke began to engulf the American consulate, Horton had to abandon his life-long collections of books and mementos and flee with his wife through the screaming mass to the Simpson. As it sailed away at 7:45 pm it also carried the two American reporters whose previous reports had been skewed to please Admiral Bristol. Now, however, having barely escaped with their lives and bound for Athens, they wrote: ‘Smyrna has ceased to exist. The problem of the minorities is here solved for all time. … The torch was applied by regular Turkish soldiers’ and ‘Turkish soldiery, after finishing pillaging, set this city on fire.’ (Dobkin 1998: 166-67) Winds were driving the flames west toward the Greek quarter and the harbour, engulfing the Greek and European districts but away from the Turkish part of town in the south up around Mt Pagos. As the banks and warehouses burst into flames, the great fortunes of all the old Greek and Levantine families went up in smoke. The screams of the frantic mob on the quay could be easily heard a mile distant. There was a choice of three kinds of death: the fire behind, the Turks waiting at the side streets, and the ocean in front. As men and women left their homes to rush down to the sea, Kurds [who had fought alongside the Turkish troops] watching in the streets attacked, robbed and killed at leisure. Fathers were separated from children and husbands from wives. In modern chronicles there has probably been nothing to compare with the night of Sept 13 in Smyrna. Soldiers even as high in rank as captain stooped to robbery and murder. All the base passions

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which man is capable of feeling and responding to were released that night and from sunset to sunrise there was in Smyrna a veritable hell on earth - a perfect orgy of violence and crime. (Raber 1923: 317) Not until about 3 a.m. did British Admiral Brock finally disobey orders, at once followed by the other Allied captains, and send in boats to rescue the poor wretches trapped along the quay. From the rooftop of her house on the Point near the train station Gilbert’s acquaintance, Beatrix de Candolle, had watched the fire creep ever closer. By 4:00 a.m., she and her husband accepted Sir Bertram Thesiger’s offer of safety on board the King George V (they had played tennis together). They were indeed among the fortunate few because the wind soon after shifted and drove the flames away from the sea and the Point. Beatrix, after briefly returning to their house leaving orders to distribute food and clothing to the Greeks, sailed away on Tuesday 19 on the King George V, reaching Malta on Friday 22. Her husband, Gen. Raymond de Candolle, as Manager of the Smyrna–Aydin Railway, decided he had to stay so that the railway would not be legally abandoned as derelict, and he remained at Smyrna on Admiral Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt’s ship the Cardiff until he negotiated a settlement with Noureddin.7 Beatrix later donated her terracotta figurines from Anatolia, the ‘really wonderful collection of antiques’ she had shown to Gilbert, to the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva in 1923 and 1924.8 One Turkish journalist wrote: ‘Why were we burning down Izmir? Were we afraid that if waterfront mansions, hotels and restaurants stayed in place, we would never be free of the minorities? When the Armenians were deported in the First World War, this same fear made us burn down all the neighbourhoods fit to live in, in Anatolian towns. This did not derive from a simple urge to destroy. A feeling of inferiority had a part in it. It was as if anywhere that resembled Europe was destined to remain Christian and foreign and to be denied to us. ... I believe that but for Nureddin Pasha, known as a thorough fanatic and a rabble-rousing demagogue, this tragedy would not have run its course.’9 Another journalist said, however, ‘We have taken our revenge.’10 7 Letter (now in the Chapman archives in the Houghton Library at Harvard) from Beatrix de Candolle to her brother John Jay Chapman, dated 22 September 1922. 8 This collection has been the subject of a recent doctoral dissertation by Chantal Courtois, formerly Assistant Conservator at the Museum, who has kindly shared details about the figurines. 9 Falih Rifke (Atay) Turkish Nationalist journalist who came from Constantinople to Smyrna to interview Kemal, quoted in Mango 1999: 346-47. 10 Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglou, Turkish journalist publicizing Greek atrocities in Anatolia. Shaw 2000: 1733.

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Kemal declared that all Greek and Armenian males in Turkey between eighteen and forty-five (including civilians) were prisoners of war and that the rest had only until October 1 to leave the country. The surviving refugees, stranded amid the smoldering ruins on the waterfront and abandoned for days, were finally rescued thanks to the efforts of an American Methodist minister, Asa Jennings, who worked for the Smyrna YMCA. He had to threaten the traumatized Athens government with publicizing its inaction in order to bring a flotilla of Greek ships escorted by American ships to Smyrna to transfer the refugees to the island of Lesbos on September 24 and 26. About 180,000 refugees were taken to nearby islands, according to Commander Powell of the American ship Edsall. It is alleged that out of perhaps 400,000 Christians in Smyrna by the time of the fire, since 210,000 were transported to safety on nearby Greek islands, 190,000 were never seen again, although the numbers of the dead and missing have been debated. Meanwhile, Kemal turned his attention northward to the only remaining foreign occupiers of Turkish soil. To everyone else this was a ‘neutral Zone,’ a remnant of the unratified Treaty of Sèvres drawn up on maps by Allied statesmen in Paris after the war with no regard for the actual terrain. It was intended to run roughly along either side of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Hellespont Straits. The Allies’ so-called neutral zone was about eighty miles of undefended and indefensible territory, lacking any Allied forces, in other words a piece of paper. To Western statesmen and map-makers the Straits represented the boundary dividing Asia from Europe, but the Nationalists never recognized it and instead regarded the lands occupied by Turks on the European side including their old capital as part of their heritage.11 The first recorded clash between East and West occurred at the entrance to the Straits at Troy, where the Greeks of Homer’s Iliad had gone to recover Helen and their lost honour. Just recently the Turks had defeated the British Navy’s attempt to capture the Straits here at Gallipoli. Since gunfire from either side of the channel could reach the other side, safe passage of vessels required military control of both sides, and not just one. So even though it was never the intention to remain occupying Turkey, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill for the sake of the pride of the British Empire decided that they could not be pushed out by the Turks they had defeated but would make a stand on

11 By coincidence, the reality below ground was that the tectonic plate of Anatolia was colliding into the Eurasian plate along this same cultural fault line.

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the south shore at Chanakkale, a small port at the narrowest passage of the Dardanelles; in fact it used to be referred to as ‘the Dardanelles’ itself.12 The north shore opposite was the Gallipoli peninsula, attacked in vain at Churchill’s insistence in 1915 at such cost in lives. At the east end of the Sea of Marmara was Constantinople, whose hundreds of thousands of inhabitants included Greeks and Armenians, as well as Turks whose reactions to events on the south shore on the Ismid peninsula were unpredictable. Kemal wanted not only the old imperial capital but also Eastern Thrace, the hinterland of Constantinople which was heavily occupied by many thousands of Greeks as well as Turks. As Kemal’s troops disregarded the Allied neutral zone along the Straits and began to surround the small British force at Chanakkale, Lloyd George finally decided to hold firm and insist on a Turkish withdrawal from a zone they did not recognize. During the war the Straits had had a strategic importance for Britain because their control either enabled or prevented relief to Russia against Germany, but four years after the war and the Russian Revolution, their strategic importance was still being assumed without question. The trouble with Lloyd George at peace was that he was still fighting the Great War, unwilling or unable to grasp just how much was changed and changing, choosing instead to ignore any information or advice not conforming to his own overly optimistic hopes. Gone were the days when the British Prime Minister with a Zeus-like nod could make it so. He ‘seemed to come to some of his decisions by a process akin to clairvoyance.’ (Walder 1969: 219) He and his coalition Cabinet had bungled their way into losing everything they believed they had fought for during the war against Turkey, and were loathe to admit that so many men had died in vain because of their own mistakes. Since Britain had been dragged reluctantly into the War to help her Entente Allies, British leaders after the War found it difficult to comprehend that these nations were no longer really Allies. By relying solely on the Greek army to implement his policy, but without supporting it, Lloyd George risked losing everything, and he did. Like the ancient Greek gods, Lloyd George and Churchill fought to protect their honour. They led the British Cabinet to the brink of war over an The most impressive structure along its harbourfront was the elegant mansion of the Calvert family, who had acted as the consuls for several nations simultaneously, facilitating passage of foreign ships through the straits. Frank Calvert had explored his family’s lands so thoroughly that he was instrumental in helping Heinrich Schliemann find and excavate Troy at the west end of the Hellespont. See Allen 1999.

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insignificant Turkish port in a misguided attempt to salvage the honour of their Empire. Remarkably, soldiers on the front lines of both sides at Chanak were so close that they exchanged pleasantries and cigarettes. It was only thanks to the cool-headedness of British Gen. Harington that war was averted by his disobeying cabinet instructions during preliminary negotiations. Initially, Lord Curzon wanted to keep the Turks out of Europe, i.e., Eastern Thrace but, under pressure and back-stabbing by France and Italy, he yielded, and the Allied invitation on September 23 to armistice talks at Mudania on the south shore of the Marmara Sea already included indications of Allied willingness to surrender Eastern Thrace; only the details of its transfer were open for debate. The Turks were hoping for Western Thrace as well, where they wanted an early plebiscite held on its future status while the Moslems living there were still in a majority. Not only was Kemal more than a match for the Allied leadership, but also he did not have to deal with bloated bureaucracies and political considerations. Far better informed about his adversaries than they were about him, he could make decisions quickly and implement them immediately. He even disingenuously played ‘good cop, bad cop:’ his troops were so flushed with victory that he might not be able to restrain them, while he himself of course was trying to be reasonable. He sent his most reliable general, Ismet, as his representative at negotiations with Gen. Harington at Mudania and, by refusing to budge, peacefully obtained everything the Turks wanted, Constantinople and Eastern Thrace, while agreeing to allow passage of international commercial shipping. All the Christian inhabitants of Eastern Thrace, perhaps 250,000, began to flee for Greek territory west of the Maritza River as the Greek troops protecting them there were soon replaced with Turks. There were no roads, and the rail line was barely adequate to move the remaining troops. The silent procession of the soldiers and refugees walking in mud for days in the pouring rain was observed and vividly described by a young Ernest Hemingway when he was a reporter for the Toronto Star. All day I have been passing them, dirty, tired, unshaven, wind-bitten soldiers hiking along the trails across the brown, rolling, barren Thracian countryside. No hands, no relief organizations, no leave areas, nothing but lice, dirty blankets, and mosquitoes at night. They are the last of the glory that was Greece. This is the end of the second siege of Troy. (Hemingway 1985: 245)

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In Paris on the other side of Europe scarcely four years later the same author would describe another sort of displaced persons, the lost and aimless young men who had grown up in warfare. Meanwhile in Constantinople hundreds of Greek and Armenian businessmen fled to the Balkan countries as Nationalist forces advanced toward the Bosphorus, including Gen. Noureddin and his victorious First Army. Ali Kemal was a professor of literature and a former Ottoman Minister of the Interior who had been an outspoken pro-Western critic of the Nationalists; he was seized by the Ankara government’s secret service and lynched by a mob organized by Noureddin. (Shaw 2000: 1890) The shock waves from Kemal’s sudden and total victory swept across the Aegean destroying the Greek government in Athens and even toppling the rulers of the British Empire on the other side of Europe. Some of Gilbert’s acquaintances would not survive.

16. Executions On the morning of Tuesday 26 September 1922, a plane flew over Athens dropping leaflets signed by Col Stylianos Gonatas demanding the King’s abdication and the Government’s resignation. By that evening a flotilla landed at Laurion led by the battleship Lemnos. Mutinous officers were looking for scapegoats to blame for the military incompetence which enabled their shameful rout, and issued their face-saving ultimatum. By the next afternoon royalist Gen. Metaxas advised King Constantine to abdicate in favour of his eldest son, who became King George II. From his villa outside Athens at Tatoi, Constantine and his brother Prince Nicholas left for Oropos to sail in the Patris, a Greek troop ship, to exile in Italy. The Greek army decided to take its revenge on its former civilian leaders and a military Revolutionary Committee appointed a new civilian government to carry out its wishes. They immediately declared martial law throughout Greece and arrested Gounaris, Theotokis, Protopapadakis, Stratos and Admiral Goudas. As more extremist military officers kept arriving, insisting that someone should pay for their debacle, the atmosphere in Athens was charged with rumours of more arrests and even assassinations. Protecting Eastern Thrace was one of the chief demands of the Greek revolutionaries. The increasingly vindictive Committee insisted on a military court martial of the civilian politicians. British Ambassador Francis Lindley feared for the lives of the Royal Family still in Greece. Soon more civilians were arrested, including the Greek Foreign Minster, George Baltazzi. The new King was isolated in the Palace and closely watched, and all royal correspondence was opened. Foolishly, Constantine’s other brother, Prince Andrew, felt safe staying with his wife Princess Alice, their four daughters and their infant son, Prince Philip, at their palace of Mon Repos on the island of Corfu on the west side of Greece. In late October, however, Andrew was taken to Athens supposedly to 181

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be questioned but placed under house arrest without any communication with the outside world. Not hearing from him, his wife and their daughters became increasingly concerned. Another brother Prince Christopher risked his life to sail to Athens1 and managed to communicate with Andrew on a smuggled rolled-up cigarette paper before effecting his own narrow escape onto an Italian ship in Piraeus. As shipload after shipload of refugees disembarked from the East, a tsunami of human flotsam and jetsam inundated the land of Greece, leaving thousands of dazed refugees stranded on its shores. Lord Beaverbrook, who owned the Sunday Express, had traveled to Athens to report to Lloyd George. He described the ships arriving ‘crowded to the brim with infantry, old men, women, girls, so that the only method of sitting was to dangle your legs over the side.’2 All adult male civilians of course had been detained and sent to the interior as prisoners of war. On the beach at Piraeus, refugees camped out in the open wearing old sacks with makeshift sandals cut out of tires. In Athens the palace was used to distribute bread, and food stores had to be guarded by police and troops. ‘The glittering concept of a new Greek Empire which Venizelos had foisted on a gullible Lloyd George and a naive Woodrow Wilson had resulted in the biggest disaster suffered by the Greeks in modern times.’ (Walder 1969: 184) After the end of his first year in Greece in September 1922, Gilbert resumed his habit of going to Britain with his mother for the summer and remained in England from late September until sometime in November. After the Great War, the British Empire was at its largest extent, comprising one quarter of the earth’s land and peoples, acquired over the centuries more through the actions of individual adventurers than through the planning of its rulers, and greater London, its capital on the Thames, the largest city in the world with a population of over seven million, was as sprawling and unplanned as its seabased empire. Gilbert had lived in London for three years as a boy while his father was the first Military Attaché at the Italian Embassy.3 Gilbert attended Charles Herbert Gibbs’ pre-preparatory school, from which he claimed to have ‘learned to speak English at the Court of St. James,’4 and later spent summers in England passing 1 Thanks to his wife, a rich American widow, Prince Christopher brought a large cheque for the Greek refugees, which only partly alleviated the danger he himself was in. (Christopher, 1938: 17478) 2 Lord Beaverbrook’s observations from Politicians and the Press on the flood of refugees coming to Athens on Sept 16 are cited by MacKenzie 1960: 93. 3 In 1909 the Italian Ambassador, Marquis Antonino di San Giuliano, lived at 20 Grosvenor Square. 4 In the 1911 census, Lt Col Ugo Bagnani was living with his wife and ten year old son at 15 Onslow

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through London with his mother. So he felt almost as at home in the capital of the British Empire as he did in the former capital of the Roman Empire. From such a background, Gilbert was educated, urbane and sophisticated as well as detached and analytical. Gilbert reached London while the enormity of the calamity was still unfolding in Greece. Grant wrote to him on September 27, just as the coup was taking place in Athens: Now that King Constantine has gone, I should be so much obliged if you could sit down as soon as you get this letter and write us a long article bringing events up to date as far as you can about the feeling in Greece, the position of the Venizelists, and the events which have led to the King’s downfall. Make it as long as you like, and try and bring it in without fail to this office this evening. If need be we can take it up till 11, but of course we should like to have it much earlier. I can arrange here for secretarial assistance for you if you care to dictate it. In great haste, N. F. Grant In ‘The Bulgar Slayer’ dated September 28, 1922, Gilbert concluded that, while court circles had been aware of the militarily untenable situation since the Greek failure to capture Ankara in 1921, no one had had the courage to admit it and order the evacuation of the troops, even after it had become a certainty as a result of the Allied note in March. Gilbert’s source in Smyrna was perhaps the British Consul Sir Harry Lamb, who had told him in July that the Greek forces never occupied many of the Turkish villages behind their over-extended lines. Constantine was alleged to have positioned his political enemies at the front and royalist shirkers near the back of the fighting, and hence the revolution broke out among the front-line troops. (Bagnani 1922l) In his next article published two days later, ‘The New King of the Hellenes,’ Gilbert recounted a brief biography of Crown Prince George. He had followed his father Constantine into exile in 1917 and, with his uncle and mentor, Prince Nicholas, was believed by some to have been the actual leader of the Square, a walk away from the Victoria and Albert Museum, Hyde Park and 20 Grosvenor Square on the other side of Buckingham Palace. With them were Amedeo and Aimone di Savoia (the two sons aged 12 and 11 of the Duke of Aosta, first cousin of King Victor Emanuel), and the Bagnanis’ parlourmaid (Italia Ballardini), cook and housemaid. The two Italian royal princes staying with the Bagnanis may also have attended Gibbs’ school but, since Gilbert rarely ever refers to them in his adult years, the two young brothers may not have been open to developing a friendship with a commoner.

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opposition to Venizelos, although Venizelos believed that George was a weak character dominated by his uncle. After Constantine’s triumphant return as King in December 1920, Crown Prince George married Princess Elisabeth, the daughter of King Ferdinand of Romania. According to Gilbert, there had been a rumor in royalist circles that Ferdinand permitted the marriage only on the condition that Constantine abdicate in his son’s favour immediately after the wedding because of his unpopularity with the Allies, but the promise if ever made was broken. Nonetheless, Princess Elisabeth was beautiful, charming and more popular with the populace than her husband, the Crown Prince. George had been held responsible for the massacre of his troops as ‘cannon fodder’ and, in a subsequent military review of Greek troops in December 1921, George was greeted with hisses and hostile cries and forced to leave Anatolia. (Bagnani 1922m) Ever since he first saw the damaged English Tower in the Castle at Bodrum in May 1922, Gilbert conceived the idea of addressing the English Knights of St. John in London. Since it was the four hundredth anniversary of the Turkish siege of Rhodes in 1522, he wanted to take advantage of this coincidence to give an illustrated public lecture about the ruined castle and its English tower. While on Kos Gilbert had sent an article to the Morning Post about the ‘Medieval Wonders of Halicarnassus’ which elicited a response from one of the English Knights of St. John, Lt-Col Sir A. C. Yate. He was complaining that Gilbert in his article had neglected to mention the Inn of England on Rhodes, recently restored by the Italians at the expense of Sir Vivian Gabriel. Gilbert responded with a lengthy personal letter5 to him at the Athenaeum Club explaining that he was fully aware of its restoration by the Italians thanks to the generosity of Sir Vivian Gabriel, another of the English Knights. As a consequence, Yate invited Gilbert to address the Knights in London. This trip also gave Gilbert the opportunity of visiting the English Knights at their headquarters at Clerkenwell in London. Before their Catholic Priory was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1540, and all their estates, hospitals and churches were surrendered to the king, the English Knights had their Priory at the church of St. John in Clerkenwell, London.6 The original church was unusual 5 Bagnani letter to Yate dated August 4, 1922, published with Gilbert Bagnani’s lecture in the Journal of the Central Asian Society 1923. 6 Despite its gradual disappearance over the intervening centuries, given the rarity of known provincial headquarters of the international military orders, excavations conducted at Clerkenwell at the turn of the last century by H. W. Fincham and subsequently have clarified and emphasized the uniqueness of the site. See Fincham 1933 and Sloane and Malcolm 2004.

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in having a circular nave comparable to other twelfth century churches of the Templars and Hospitallers, conceivably to resemble the round church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Only the crypt under its chancel survives, lined with stone benches perhaps originally intended to serve as the Knights’ chapter house or refectory. Apart from the prominence given to its unusual architecture, the enclosed precinct of the Priory actually was similar to contemporary palaces in London, and the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos resided at the Priory during his visit to England in 1401. The modern Knights of St. John used the imposing Gatehouse nearby, built by the penultimate Grand Prior, as their library, museum and assembly hall and, with a charter from Queen Victoria, now had the Duke of Connaught, King Edward’s younger brother, as their Grand Prior. Ironically, while walking around Clerkenwell Gilbert would have heard his father’s language spoken as it was one of the neighbourhoods inhabited by poor Italian immigrants, some of whom were anarchists being carefully watched by the Italian Legation in London! (Dipaola 2004) While Gilbert was researching and writing his lecture on the medieval Knights, Lt Col Arthur Campbell Yate was preparing his own assault on the contemporary Knights. As a retired military officer from the sub-continent of India, he had recently signed on as Honorary Secretary for the Central Asian Society, and aggressively and successfully recruited so many new members for it that he multiplied its membership many times over. He intentionally sought out the movers and shakers of British society as a means of persuading more to join. By the time of Gilbert’s talk, its membership of six hundred included over thirty generals and Winston Churchill. Its Chairman was the first Baron Carnock, formerly Sir Arthur Nicolson, ennobled for his lifework as a career diplomat in the Middle East. Gilbert’s intended audience was another chance for Yate to recruit, and he offered the Knights of St. John one hundred free seats at the lecture being sponsored by his Central Asian Society. At this point the Society was still trying to determine the most effective time for public lectures and was transitioning between afternoons and evenings. The venue they used was provided by the Royal United Service Institution, a British military ‘think tank’ founded by the Duke of Wellington. Their headquarters, built in 1895 next to Inigo Jones’ Banquet Hall in Whitehall, housed both a large lecture hall and a museum. The displays of Napoleon’s battles would have particularly interested Gilbert, a student of Napoleon’s battles.

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Dear Dr. Bagnani, I hope my telephone message of yesterday reached you. Lord Carnock & the Council C. A. S welcomed your offer to lecture and named 31st Oct. as the date. I saw the Secretary Roy. U. S. Institution, Whitehall at once & secured their Hall for 5 p.m. on 31st October. It remains for you to call on Miss Kennedy at 74 Grosvenor [the Secretary of the Central Asian Society] and talk things. Your lantern slides are extremely good. You will meet in the C.A.S. an audience of an intellectual order, and all that you think fit to tell them of the Hospitallers in the Dodecanese and at Smyrna and Bodrum will interest them. Let them know that Tamur the Lame drove the Knights out of Rhodes7 and tell them of the Dragon of Rhodes and the gallant Knight (afterwards Grand Master) Dieudonné. I8 had a letter by air mail yesterday from Capt (or Major?) Arthur Barstow at Baghdad [Yate’s 2nd cousin] and one this morning from Mrs. Edith Dichter [Arthur Barstow’s sister], who is with her mother at Bordighera [a winter resort on the Italian Riviera popular among the English]. Old Mrs. Barstow is very ill, in great pain, and probably very near the end.9 I will see you at about 3 p.m. on Sunday & talk over everything. Yours sincerely, A.C. Yate (Letter of Yate to Gilbert Bagnani dated 12 October 1922) Gilbert already knew Mrs. Barstow and her daughter Edith Dichter as they lived in Rome, and conceivably he had inquired about their attending. Dear Dr. Bagnani, Lt General Sir Aylmer Gould Hunter-Weston has asked me to pass on to you the enclosed letter. He is very disappointed at being unable to leave his Constituency and to come to London & hear your lecture. [Hunter-Weston, knighted for his South African and war services, claimed descent from Sir William Weston, the last Grand Prior of England, but was actively campaigning for his seat in Parliament representing Ayr and Bute in north Scotland.] I should mention that we publish all lectures delivered before our Society in our Journal. I will Yate was wrong about this, as the Mongolian ruler Tamerlane lived and died a full century before the fall of Rhodes. 8 Arthur Campbell Yate (1853-11 June 1929) was the son of the Rev. Charles Yate and Jane Ann Campbell, whose mother was Jane Barstow (1790-1861), a sister of Major-Gen. John Anderson Barstow (1795-1863), grandfather of Arthur Edward Barstow. 9 Major Gen. Arthur Edward Barstow (1888-1942), son of Jane Cape Bodda Taylor (1858-1926) who married (1) Boddam Wetham and (2) Thomas Adam Anderson Barstow. Edith Jane Barstow, the daughter of Lieut Col Thomas Adam Anderson Barstow and Jane Taylor Barstow, married in Mentone, France, in 1921 Gabriel Dichter. 7

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therefore ask you to write out your lecture, & after you have delivered it, please hand the MS to Miss Kennedy. With her consent you might perhaps lend the MS to the Morning Post reporter, on condition that he returns it within 24 hours. On Monday afternoon I wrote Lord Carnock & recommended him to write the Duke of Connaught, the Grand Prior of England, to attend your lecture on 31st. Lord Carnock phoned to me yesterday morning that he was writing to the Duke. Say nothing about this till I tell you what the Duke’s reply is. A.C. Yate (Letter of Yate to Gilbert Bagnani dated 18 October 1922) Meanwhile, a British-style revolution was underway. A general election had been called and the largest faction in Lloyd George’s coalition government was the Conservative Party. They were growing increasingly restive under the leadership of the Liberal Lloyd George and had to decide if they wanted to campaign as a coalition or on their own, but Lloyd George’s handling of the Chanak affair was the last straw. For almost embroiling Britain in a war that no one wanted and the humiliating surrender to Britain’s formerly defeated enemy, the Conservative members of Lloyd George’s coalition government met on October 19 at the conservative Carleton Club and voted to end their coalition partnership. Without Parliamentary support, Lloyd George immediately resigned as Prime Minister, and the electoral campaign took on a new dynamic. So while it was the 400tth anniversary of the fall of Rhodes, the immediate timing was not good for Gilbert, as some of his intended audience had to be out on the hustings instead of in the lecture hall. Gilbert made an effort himself to encourage attendance by inviting individuals of whom he was aware: Dear Dr. Bagnani, I have your letter of the 27th and am going to try to come to your lecture myself though I shall probably be late. I was not able to find another member of our Society [of Knights Bachelor] willing to go in my place. I think they were afraid of going to what they imagined would be a very learned gathering! William Bull.10 Gilbert presented his lecture on Tuesday 31 October for the Central Asian Society at the Royal United Service Institution in Whitehall. He began with a history of the 10 Letter of Sir William Bull of the Society of Knights Bachelor to Gilbert Bagnani dated October 30, 1922.

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Knights of St John in the East and, after describing the Castle St Peter in Bodrum, identified most of the unique assemblage of arms emblazoned in the walls of the English Tower, dated to King Henry IV (1367-1413). He then explained how at Rhodes the Knights had added new fortification techniques to the walls of 1480 to ward off the possible effects of artillery bombardments, and used the English sector as his examples. He had researched what roles various English Knights had played in the sieges of 1480 and 1522, and even tried to track down what had become of various artifacts known to have been taken from Rhodes to England, such as a missing fireplace from the Grand Master’s Palace and an armorial tablet of Sir John Kendal, which was to be returned to the now restored English Inn. He leavened his talk with a touch of humour hitting just the right tone for his audience: ‘Foulques de Villaret bought Rhodes and some other islands from a Genoese Admiral, who incidentally did not own the place and had no right to sell it, a kind of contract not unknown even at the present day.’ ‘The defiant inscription which summarizes briefly the aims of this last bulwark of Christianity in Asia, Propter catholicam fidem tenetur locum istum [‘On account of their Catholic faith this place is held’], and below the name of the Captain of the Castle, James Gatineau, with the date 1513. The inscription proves that Brother Gatineau was greater as a soldier than as a Latin scholar.’ He ended his lecture with a flourish, comparing the idealistic medieval organization of the Knights Hospitaller with the revived international Knights of St John, whose ‘motto might be recommended to the League of Nations: Pro fide, pro utilitate Hominum. [For the Faith, in the Service of Humanity]’ (Bagnani 1923) Gilbert’s age of twenty-two was likely about one third the average age of his audience. In the version of Gilbert’s lecture published in the Society’s Journal, Yate listed the Knights of St. John who were already members of the Central Asian Society, and then dropped a few more names of the Knights who were in attendance at Gilbert’s lecture, including the 5th Earl of Ranfurly and the 9th Earl of Shaftesbury. Gilbert’s topic attracted a very distinguished crowd that Yate was eager to embrace. It is little wonder that the Society’s numbers grew so rapidly under Yate’s guidance. In the ensuing discussion after Gilbert’s lecture, the Assistant Librarian of the Knights of St John, H. W. Fincham, who had excavated in the crypt under Clerkenwell two decades earlier (Fincham 1933), unhelpfully observed that none of the twenty-eight coats of arms embedded in the English Tower represented Hospitaller Knights but rather Knights of the Garter, but Gilbert was aware of this already and prepared to make what links he could: he illustrated an indulgence manuscript in the British Museum for Sir William

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Fitzhugh, whose arms Gilbert identified on the tower, and made it clear that these English Knights of the Garter had contributed toward the cost of the tower in return for papal indulgences. Gilbert had done his homework. Edwin Freshfield, the amateur Byzantinist and also one of the Knights of St John in attendance at Gilbert’s lecture, described himself as ‘as an important English landlord in Smyrna. He had more than an academic interest in the city, and he could say that conditions there were appalling’11 at the end of October. Although the English Tower at Bodrum was not restored until several decades later, the contemporary Knights did arrange to have an agent oversee their castle at Kolossoi in Cyprus, perhaps as a result of Gilbert’s emphasis on the state of their castles in the East. The English Knights also arranged to have decorations bestowed upon Italians who were ‘keenly interested in Rhodes,’ including Maiuri and Bosdari, perhaps to help achieve their goal of establishing a relationship with the Sovereign Order of Malta, which was now based in Rome. They followed up on their renewed interest in the East with a ‘pilgrimage’ made by the English Knights of St John in 1926 to the Holy Land, Rhodes and Malta. (King 1926) Since one of their members, Sir Vivian Gabriel, had already paid to restore the English Inn on Rhodes, Gilbert’s lecture perhaps helped to fire their collective enthusiasm for ‘their Eastern heritage.’ While Gilbert was still in England, momentous events were still cascading in Turkey. The Grand National Assembly in Ankara declared the Sultanate abolished retroactively as of March 1920, when the Allies had occupied Constantinople in force and dissolved the Ottoman Parliament. Moreover, Istanbul was to become a province of the Republic of Turkey whose capital would be Ankara. The last Ottoman cabinet in Constantinople resigned and the Nationalists would now assume control of administration, resisted by the Allied occupiers. Fearing for his life, the last Sultan, Mehmed VI Vahdettin, fled in the night with his family on to a British ship for Malta. The Turkish Assembly elected Crown Prince Abdul Mecid Efendi as the new Caliph of all Moslems everywhere. The ground was beginning to shift under Gilbert’s homeland in Italy as well. After a series of strikes and growing civil unrest between Fascists and Communists, Mussolini staged a peaceful coup. At a mass rally in Naples, 11 Edwin Hanson Freshfield (1864 - 15 May 1948) was the son of Edwin Freshfield who married in 1861 in Smyrna Zoe Charlotte Hanson, daughter of James Frederick Hanson and granddaughter of Nathaniel Werry, Consul at Aleppo, and great granddaughter of Francis Werry, for 38 years Consul at Smyrna. So Freshfield’s inherited legacy around Smyrna was ‘old money,’ now on the verge of being lost.

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Mussolini and his Fascist black shirt supporters threatened to take over the country by force if the government were not handed over to them peacefully, and King Victor Emanuel, preferring not to try to order his army to fire on his own people, instead offered the premiership to Mussolini who rode into Rome in triumph on October 31, his so-called ‘March on Rome.’ Soon after, he instituted a Fascist Party militia of 200,000 armed men financially supported by the state. On the pretext of maintaining public order, the ‘black shirts’ intimidated and terrorized any political opponents. Editors, journalists and even street vendors of non-Fascist newspapers were beaten, offices were ransacked, and papers burned.12 At the British general election on Nov 15, Lloyd George’s Liberals lost badly, and Churchill lost his own seat. For the rest of his life Lloyd George remained out of office and unrepentant. In the ‘what ifs’ of history, if anyone other than the mercurial philhellene Lloyd George had been Prime Minster of England in May of 1919, the Greeks might never have been sent to Smyrna. Lord Curzon missed his chance to become Prime Minster but stayed on as Foreign Minister. Curzon was increasingly concerned for the safety of the incarcerated Greek politicians in Athens. They were charged with treason for having allowed the Turks to occupy Greek territory (which legally it had never been). Another accusation was that their having allowed King Constantine back as King had alienated Greece’s European supporters and as a result they had not provided adequate financial aid to the armies. (Papadakis 1923: 673) Even before the kangaroo trial began, Curzon through his Ambassador in Athens, Sir Francis Lindley, was trying to prevent the executions relying upon the Foreign Minister Politis13 as the intermediary with the Revolutionary Committee. A ruthlessly ambitious hardliner, Gen. Pangalos presided over the Commission of Inquiry to find someone to blame for the military disgrace, and 12 As the Socialist Deputy Giacomo Matteotti wrote, ‘membership of the Fascist party is a second and more important form of Italian citizenship; to be without it is to forego civil rights, and to lose liberty of voting, domicile, movement, assembly, work, speech, and even thought.’ (Matteotti, Fascisti Exposed, p. 61) Not long after writing this, he was kidnapped and brutally murdered by Fascist thugs in June 1924. 13 Nikolaos Politis (1872-1942) born in Corfu, was educated in Paris where he taught international law, of which he was an acknowledged authority having written many articles. Living in Paris, he had taken French citizenship. He was an ardent supporter of Venizelos, serving as his Foreign Minister during the war, and later as Ambassador to France and to the League of Nations. At one point in April 1917 when King Constantine offered a reconciliation with Venizelos, Politis successfully intervened opposing any compromise. He had welcomed Allied intervention at Salonika but now resented British Ambassador Lindley’s increasingly urgent warnings against the executions as ‘odious interference’ in Greek affairs.

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set up a special Court Martial to try the imprisoned politicians. After the arrest of George Baltazzi and Prince Andrew, Lindley increased the pressure on Politis, who promised he would do everything he could to postpone the trial, but the Government was not able to control the more extreme military Revolutionary Committee. Moreover the Venizelists and the republicans saw their chance to eliminate their political enemies by using them as scapegoats for the military disaster. Every military and political decision that had gone wrong since the royalist election victory in 1920 was now considered as deliberate high treason. The accused civilians faced a court of ten officers in the Old Parliament chamber in Kolokotronis Square in central Athens. According to Politis, even before the trial began the Committee feared it would lose credibility if it did not execute at least two or three civilians and further that their opponents might feel emboldened to oppose them and start a civil war. The war-weary soldiers, however, who disembarked from the ships without officers drifted through Athens more interested in getting home. Politis did offer the possibility of commuting the sentences to life-long banishment from Greece if the British Government would guarantee that the accused never returned. Unable to do that, Curzon threatened to break diplomatic ties with Greece, the most severe action that the Foreign Office could take. In response, Politis said the civilian government would have to resign, removing any restraint from the Revolutionary Committee, but he well knew that France approved of the executions. Curzon pleaded with Venizelos to intervene, and Venizelos sent a mildly worded telegram that executions would make his position more difficult while agreeing to send his friend British naval Commander Gerald Talbot to negotiate in great secrecy for their lives.14 The implacable Revolutionary Committee had the trial rushed to a speedy conclusion. On Tuesday 28 November, 1922, the accused men were transferred to the Averoff Prison at 2 a.m., their sentences (six were condemned to death while Admiral Michael Goudas and Gen. Xenophon Stratigos were sentenced to life imprisonment) were read out in absentia at 6:30 a.m., and they were reluctantly allowed to see their wives and children for the last time (Gounaris was a bachelor). Ironically it was Stratos, who had been a political opponent of Gounaris but had joined his Coalition Cabinet, who not only led the defense at their court martial but also had to support Gounaris physically as he had been Gerald Talbot had been the British Naval Attaché (and secret agent) in Athens during Venizelos’ government and Venizelos had attended his wedding to a rich French widow in 1920. They lived in Paris, as did Venizelos.

14

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suffering from typhus throughout the trial. The six men were then taken in trucks to the military barracks at Goudi where they were told to stand in front of their individual graves and shot by firing squads of soldiers just half an hour before Talbot arrived. The number of Greeks killed in 1922 rose by six. As Curzon had repeatedly warned, in protest against the executions Ambassador Lindley immediately left Athens and broke off diplomatic relations as Greece’s only real ally. World-wide sympathy for the plight of the Greeks suddenly chilled, and eventually donations for the refugees dried up, an unintended consequence if ever there was one. Col. Plastiras, the leader of the revolution, defended the executions of the ‘criminals’ as a necessary catharsis or purification. The executions did restore discipline to the army and put an end to unrest in Athens but further embittered the political factions in Greece. Prince Andrew was charged with refusing to obey an order to advance his troops further into Anatolia in August 1921. Talbot immediately began to negotiate with the Colonels themselves for the safe release of Prince Andrew, in secret because it was feared that any overt foreign intervention might provoke a negative reaction. Talbot obtained a promise from Pangalos and Plastiras that Andrew would not be executed. The British chargé, Bentinck, reported that such secrecy was required that not even Andrew nor his wife Princess Alice were told of the arrangements. At his trial on Sunday 3 December, Andrew was condemned to perpetual exile. Andrew and Alice sailed quietly away from Phaleron on the British warship Calypso, stopping briefly at Corfu to pick up their four daughters and eighteen month old Prince Philip.15 King George of Greece was a virtual prisoner in his palace at Tatoi, a puppet Head of State with his every movement and communication watched. As wave after wave of destitute refugees landed by the shipload on Greek shores, the scale of the humanitarian disaster grew daily through October, November and December. Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer serving as the High Commissioner for Refugees for the League of Nations, acted as an intermediary negotiating between Venizelos and Kemal. The latter had been consistently suggesting a population exchange since March 1922 and saw the The direct role, if any, played by King George V in rescuing the family of his cousin Prince Andrew (brother of King Constantine and whose father King George I of Greece was a brother of Queen Alexandra, King George V’s mother) remains uncertain. His interest certainly added willingness on the highest levels to act, but in the greatest secrecy because of perceived public opposition in both countries. Similarly, his role in abortive attempts to rescue his Russian cousins, the Romanovs, is discussed in McNeal, 2003. All the marriages interconnecting European royal families failed to prevent wars among their nations but resulted in severed personal connections among the individual family members, sometimes fatally.

15

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necessity of forcing the 350,000 Moslem farmers of northern Greece to evacuate their homes to make way for some of the one million Christian refugees. By insisting on the exchange being compulsory, the Turkish Nationalists prohibited the Christians from ever returning to their homes. There had been small scale population exchanges before in the Balkans, but never on such a scale and never compulsory. Such an idea was repugnant to the British negotiators but nonetheless accepted as a lesser evil than further conflict and slaughter. The refugees from Anatolia brought with them their traditions which were often distinctive from one another as well as from the mainland Greeks. Many had Turkish as their mother tongue and wrote their language using Greek script. All these hundreds of thousands of predominantly women and children had to be fed and sheltered as well as assimilated. The Athens Government tried to keep many of them dispersed in the islands but eventually they either made their way to the major cities or decided to emigrate. Despite the plight of the swelling numbers of refugees, politics prevented government action. It was decided that ‘only through an independent, non-political organization could something be done,’ and the Refugee Treasury Fund directed by Epaminondas Charilaos was established by the Greeks themselves to begin the Herculean task of sheltering and resettling the refugees. (Morgenthau 1929: 71-78) As a distraction in the newspapers from the horrors recently suffered by peoples in the Near East, the most sensational archaeological discovery of the century was taking place in Egypt. For many years Howard Carter had been searching for tombs in the Valley of the Kings near ancient Thebes, and in early November under ancient workers’ houses, he discovered steps leading down to a sealed door and sent for his long-time financial backer, George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. Upon breaking through on November 26, they found a corridor leading down to a second wall. When they broke through this they could see by candlelight ‘wonderful things’ in the antechamber, shimmering golden couches with animal heads whose shadows menaced on the walls. At the end of the month, they announced to the media their discovery of a fabulous tomb filled with gold statues, chariots, and furniture including a throne of a long-forgotten pharaoh, Tutankhamen. The discovery of a nearly intact and unplundered tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh was sensational news that sold papers, and soon the modern town of Luxor was invaded by reporters ravenous for stories. Carter and Carnarvon realized they needed expert help to handle the finds and appealed to their Egyptological colleagues for help. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was eager to suspend some of its fieldwork in order to make available its people, in the implicit expectation of an eventual share of

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the spectacular finds. Among other specialists, the Museum lent the services of Harry Burton as the excavation photographer. Gilbert Bagnani would have a particular interest in the discoveries since Harry and Minnie Burton lived in Florence and were friends of the Bagnanis. Subsequent news coverage of the opening of every sealed room in the tomb lasted for months, and Tutmania seized the world’s attention. The newspapermen’s ‘Curse of the Pharaohs’ would even touch Gilbert.

17. The Pharaoh’s Curse Both Gilbert Bagnani and Doro Levi had been awarded a bursary to return to spend a second year in Greece. In della Seta’s letter of recommendation of October 1922, after outlining Gilbert’s school-related activities during 19211922, della Seta wrote that Gilbert ‘had a keen cleverness, solid learning and singular acumen in monumental research; he signals himself therefore as a promising force in our archaeological studies. In the long cohabitation of the trips and explorations, I have also been able to appreciate, beyond his gifts of character, his passion for research and his endurance for the work.’1 Gilbert and Doro Levi were accompanied on school trips their second year by a new student, Giulio Jacopich, in place of the long-suffering Antonio Cattaneo. Unknown to the others, Jacopich had a sinister secret: he was not only opportunistic but also anti-Semitic, and years later as a successful Fascist archaeologist he would fatally betray his Jewish colleagues. Almost invisible in Gilbert’s letters, however, were three female students also studying at the Italian School that same year: Gina Reggiani, Emilia Zalapy, and Maria Caianiello, born respectively in 1896, 1895, and 1893. The families of the young women had entrusted the safety of their daughters to the protection of the Director, and the women were expected to be content with study in libraries and not to participate in excursions or excavations. (Bandini 2003: 90-94) Gilbert rarely refers to them at all, let alone as individuals, and seems to have had very little interaction with them, at least partly because the ‘girls are not in a convent but are staying in the school and that is why I have to clear out.’ (Thursday, 25 January 1923) Their presence was a distinct inconvenience to Letter dated 18 October 1922 from della Seta to the Director General of Antiquities and Fine Arts, Roberto Paribeni, now in the archives of the Italian Archaeological School at Athens, which has kindly allowed me to copy and make use of it.

1

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Gilbert, forcing him to move out of the School.2 In addition, the young women were all older than Gilbert and in fact he was the youngest of all of the students despite it being his second year in Greece. That he was so dismissive of the female academics reflects more widespread patronizing attitudes of that era in Italy generally. In any case, Gilbert would have to look for accommodations outside the Italian School. When I arrived in Athens Levi met me & told me they were leaving that very day [on a school trip] for the Cyclades, Thera & Syra. As I could not leave that day am going on today and will pick them (all the males, the females being left behind) at Syra and so on to Santorini. We’ll be away about a week. The question of the room is still undecided. …  I think the prospects of getting a tolerable room in Athens are very gloomy. … It was raining when I arrived at Piraeus & Levi who met me was soaked through. Got up to the school and had lunch, saw W [della Seta] and the females. Oh Lord! Levi told me coming up that they were simply impossible and that he was longing for my arrival because he couldn’t have stood them much longer. (Wednesday, 3 January, 1923) The students were required to go on school trips as part of their learning experience in Greece. In Gilbert’s case at least, these trips broadened his horizons. The dynamics among the Italian students are notable: Levi, who was Jewish and a flirt, told Gilbert that he preferred Gilbert’s company to their compatriot female colleagues. The Parlantis were very pleased to see me and liked their presents very much. One of the principal reasons why in any case I cannot stay at the school is that I have no place to put my clothes, etc. [Gilbert was temporarily sharing a room with Doro Levi.] In the afternoon I went up to the Brit School and saw Woodward [British School Director 19231929] who was very nice and gave me tea but told me regretfully that they themselves were so full up that they did not know what to do.

The sudden influx of refugees into Athens raised similar challenges at the other foreign schools. The emergency compelled the Managing Committee of the American School reluctantly to allow female students to live in the same dormitory facilities with their male counterparts; see VogeikoffBrogan 2015. The British School had already dealt with the advent of having to accommodate female students in 1920; see Waterhouse 1986: 26.

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All the islands are full of refugees from Asia Minor ... who spoke to me with much gratitude of the hospitality and ‘philoxenia’ [‘kindness to strangers’] of the Cyclades. But they are certainly a grave burden for the islands, most of which are unproductive ... and the boat was simply packed with them. We saw a little child blowing his nose with a handkerchief so we gave him a drachma. We then went on to practically all the other Cyclades, Nios, Sikinos & Pholegandros wasting the whole day. The sea fortunately was quite good but we had made the mistake of coming in the Greek Xmas week and we found out to our consternation that there would be no steamer for our return earlier than Friday week, so that we were abandoned on Santorini for 6 whole days. We reached Santorini late at night with a full moon. The island is merely the lip of a crater which has split in two places letting in the sea and lava cliffs rise sheer above the water some 1000 feet. The scene with the moon was wonderful. The boatman there spoke Italian very well having served on the Lloyd steamers. We climbed up the zigzag road to the town [Phira] and went to the inn which is quite tolerable. (Friday, 19 January 1923) Santorini is the most spectacular of all the Greek islands, being the remnants of a volcanic crater into which ships can sail around the small new islands growing in the centre. Some thousand feet straight up the sheer cliffs of pumice and ash perched on the edge sits the town of Phira, which is approached by a zig-zagging donkey path. Sometime around 1620 BCE, one of the most massive eruptions ever documented emptied the mountain which then collapsed deep into the sea, leaving the enormous crater. The cataclysm destroyed and buried the Minoan settlements around the island under many metres of ash and pumice, which was later used by French engineers to build the Suez Canal in 1869. One particularly observant Frenchman actually conducted the first scientific excavation under the ash layer of a prehistoric settlement, whose pots Gilbert saw on display in the local museum. At that time, however, the most extensive remains known on the island were Classical, especially the Hellenistic city of Thera on the south coast. Gilbert’s very brief report (Bagnani 1924-25: 83) observing some classical remains of an ancient town near the north coast is now cited as the only trace of evidence for its location.3

3

Sperling 1973: 34.

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We left on mules to visit the ancient ruins of [the Hellenistic town of] Thera. The way was all through the vineyards which were most strange and impressive since they entwine all the shoots in such a way as to form a kind of basket and it is extraordinary to see these fields covered with baskets. The ruins were very interesting and the views over this volcanic group of islets really superb. On Sunday 7 Visited all the north part of the island and saw some Roman rock tombs and a cave. Monday 8 went to the island Therasia which forms the outer lip of the [west side of the] crater. Found no antiquities but excellent wine. Coming back we visited the small islands which are in the center of the crater and which are still active, the largest having been formed in 1866. They are formed entirely of black lava, in some places covered with a little moss and are most romantic. Entering a little bay the water gradually gets a light green in color and then passes to blood red while its temperature rises constantly so that near the bank it is hardly possible to keep one’s finger in it. We ascended the principal crater and saw several blow holes which still emit sulphureous fumes. Most interesting. Tuesday [9] we visited the S part of the island and saw an ancient well-preserved temple [now the church of Hagios Nikolaos] and a fine Byzantine church. Wednesday 10 it rained all day, first day of really bad weather we have had. Went to the very interesting museum in the morning and clearing up later on went for a walk in the village. Thursday [11] went off to dig in the cave [in the north part of the island] which we had found but with no result since we had no time to go deeper than a couple of meters. On the other hand we discovered a fine Cyclopean cistern and the site of an ancient city.4 On Friday morning [12] we paid a call on the two Italian Dominicans one of whom had been 25 years on the island. He took us down to the cellars of the monastery and gave us excellent wine and we arranged to get wine to Athens to the school. At about 12 the same boat that took us to Syra arrived & so away. Same trip reversed reaching Athens Sunday morning [14].

The published report of the Italians’ trip was slightly more detailed: ‘We turned our attention to the walls and cuttings in the rock on the costone di monte [‘ridge of the mountain’] below the village of Finikia…. These last traces serve to indicate the existence of an ancient centre, which is confirmed by the proximity of a large cistern adapted in a natural grotto and lined with squared blocks.’ (della Seta 1924: 83)

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Jacopich is quite a good traveling companion, very merry and jolly at times but inclined to take things most frightfully seriously. He is still very young but gets on well both with us and the Worm [della Seta]. Now when we get back to Athens we are going to start the Acropolis dig so we will remain fixed for couple of months. I expect to find a room within a week, if not will seize the bathroom of the school. … The health conditions here are perfectly normal and most of the refugees have been got off to the islands. (Friday, 19 January 1923) Upon returning to Athens, Gilbert had to find accommodations. No longer the bourgeois ante-bellum provincial capital, the Athens that Gilbert sailed back to in January 1923 was much changed from his first year: grim, freezing cold and full of misery. On the streets formerly prosperous civilians had been replaced with armed soldiers and hungry refugees, and modern Greek by mutually unintelligible Anatolian dialects and even Turkish. As more boatloads arrived daily on any available beach with hundreds of women, children and orphans, the schools, churches, and even the theatres were filling with the remnants of suddenly destitute families. Any available open spaces, such as around the Temple of Hephaistos (Chater 1925: 572) or the bare hills around Athens, were occupied by thousands of refugees huddled in tents of burlap bags, shanties jerry built of five-gallon cans or caves scraped out of the hillsides. Although one of the stated aims of the Revolutionary Government had been to remain above party politics, they replaced anti-Venizelists with Venizelists on both the Greek Church’s Holy Synod and the teaching faculty at the University. The military leadership soon became a many-headed Hydra, however, with no single mind leading it. Col Plastiras was the only military leader to remain out of government and not seek his own self-interest. The others were split, just like the Venizelist civilians, into at least two opposing camps, moderates advocating a constitutional monarchy, and radicals pressing for a republic. One of the latter was the new Interior Minister, Georgios Papandreou, founder of a political dynasty in modern Greece, who was gerrymandering the electoral districts to ensure that the Venizelists would never suffer another electoral defeat like the one that so surprised them in 1920. So the Revolution’s leaders were very much involved in politics, and the elections were indefinitely postponed as they each jockeyed for power and influence. Far away, in the warmth and comfort of their luxurious hotels in the Swiss Alpine resort of Lausanne, foreign statesmen like ancient gods were negotiating the lives and futures of a million helpless people in Greece and Turkey. Lord

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Curzon was prepared to sacrifice British interests, including Greece, for the sake of presenting a unified front among the Allies; for this reason he had opposed separate negotiations between Greece and Turkey. This priority was not shared by the French or Italians, however, who did not hesitate to deal secretly with the Turks for their own hoped-for benefits. On the other hand, the Turks were skilled at dividing their enemies. The actual negotiations on the population exchange were conducted substantially between Ismet Pasha and Venizelos who, though not in power, had such personal prestige both in and out of Greece that he was able to represent and negotiate for Greece’s interests. An ‘exchange of populations’ was a misleading euphemism for ‘expulsion’ because the Turks had already eliminated about 15% of the population of Anatolia, including all the middle class and countless productive farmers, and the Greeks in eastern Thrace had already fled to the West. Local pressure was building to drive out the remaining Greeks from the Black Sea and even Cappadocia, where the Moslems and Christians had co-existed peacefully for centuries. Ironically, its capital Konya was the centre for a distinctively Turkish form of Sufism, whose adherents believed in love and tolerance; its local practitioners would ritually whirl around in circles to the music of flutes and drums attempting to attain a mystical state of union with Allah. Nonetheless, their Christian neighbours were torn away from the region, and the whirling dervishes themselves would soon be outlawed in the enforced purification of the new state. The Greek war refugees were already in Greek islands and ports, but the Turks insisted on the immediate and forced removal of their remaining religious minorities, reflecting the prejudice and pent-up hatred against their own former subjects. The Allies readily, though reluctantly, consented to ethnic cleansing as a solution to irredentism. Curzon thought it was inhuman. The Turkish Nationalists wanted the Armenians expelled as well, but there was no one to negotiate with, nor any country to take them. But when it came to determining who was Greek or what it meant to be Greek, the only criterion used for the ‘exchange’ was religion, not language or self-identification as Greek, and this increased the significance of the Greek Orthodox Church as a culturally unifying factor in modern Greece. What the Turkish-speaking refugees had in common with their fellow refugees in Greece as well as with their new compatriots was their faith. The Orthodox church united the Greeks both inside and outside Greece. No Greek politician dared to attempt to secularize Greece by separating church and state, as Ataturk would soon do in Turkey.

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The ‘exchangeables’ (a bureaucratically impersonal term for human beings) were to be forcibly evicted from their homelands and impoverished for generations to come. Thousands of Karamanlides (Turkish Christians who wrote Turkish using Greek letters) in Cappadocia, who had remained as peaceful subjects alongside their Moslem neighbours throughout their recent history, were also suddenly included in the expulsion. Even hundreds of thousands of Moslems in Macedonia and in Salonika who had been living peaceably in northern Greece for centuries appealed to stay in Greece but would be uprooted and expelled as refugees in modern Turkey, a calamity for everyone involved. Venizelos’ ready acceptance of the compulsory expulsion, to make space for the newcomers, partly absolved the Turks of the charge of unilateral ethnic cleansing. The Allied governments were only too happy to make use of the Norwegian negotiator, Fridtjof Nansen,5 as the scapegoat for suggesting such a radical solution; he was being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at this time for his work among Russian refugees. Venizelos and Ismet signed a Convention at the end of January 1923 for the remaining expulsions to occur when the final Treaty was implemented. The Christians were hoarded into refugee camps at ports like Constantinople and Mersin on the south coast, awaiting food, medicine and ships. As a result the Nationalist Turks needed to re-populate their territory with workers, and the only people their ideology would tolerate were other Turks. Although the Turks lacked sufficient ships to transport their own from Greek ports to Anatolia, they refused the lowest bids from the Italian Lloyd Triestino shipping line in favour of subsidizing their own ships to be refitted. So the ‘exchangeables’ were left in limbo for months, hoping desperately but vainly for the Convention to be rescinded. In the agreements to exchange populations, at the time only governments benefitted from the forced expulsions.6 The Lausanne Convention ‘effectively established the legal right of state governments to expel large parts of their citizens on the grounds of ‘otherness.’ (Gerwarth 2016: 246) It was the first wave of refugees who had fled for their lives which now filled every available space in Athens.

For Nansen’s role with the Greek refugees, see most recently Psomiades 2011. At least some of the refugees would later idealistically recall their lost Eden as living harmoniously with their Turkish neighbours, with whom they would exchange food during the festivals of Ramadan and Easter. Instead, they blamed their forced expulsion and abruptly impoverished lives on the politicians, especially after Lausanne rendered the ‘exchange’ of populations irreversible and Venizelos bargained away their promised compensation in 1930. (Hirschon 2004c, 330-331)

5 6

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Upon returning to Athens from his school trip on Sunday 14 January, Gilbert began looking in earnest for accommodations. Arrived on Sunday in Athens. … I slept in Levi’s room that night. I was rather in the dumps the last time I wrote about the lodging question which is now happily settled, but I had seen how W had been here for three weeks & had not found anything & did not seem likely to. His game was like the Turks’ diplomacy: get me to share Levi’s room while he leisurely hunted rooms. I would thus have been stuck with Levi for probably a month without even the possibility of opening my trunks. Sunday morning I went to see a room in a very convenient quarter for 700 dr a month. Would have been excellent but it was kept by 5 young coquettes and to end up in a brothel would have been the last straw. … I decided I could not go on like this and, so as not to delay the chief ’s game, I went and took a room at the Gr[ande] Bretagne [the most expensive hotel in Athens]. I can therefore give you charges. … Chief furious at my taking things in my own hands like this but I don’t mind. … Had a bad night thinking about all the money I am spending but your letter of 3rd which I found on return from Santorini telling me to be comfortable and hang expense cheered me up. On Tuesday [16] went house hunting with the Koundouriotis.7 We were practically in despair when she thought of going to the Pension Merlin [on Merlin St. opposite the old Royal Palace8], between the Brit School and the Gr. Bretagne, a very good position. We had been there when I arrived and they said it was hopeless. This time the woman told us that in a few days the best room in the house would be free but that they wanted 75 dr a day for it but breakfast included. In the afternoon I went to see it and found it to be so attractive that I engaged it at once managing to beat down the price to 60 dr a day. I wonder what you will think about it and if you have a fit. The W is going to pass the 800 a month for the alloggio [‘lodging’] and so it only comes to 1000 a month out of pocket. … On Friday morn [19] yesterday moved into my new abode which is really delightful. I have a really big cupboard in which I can hang all my clothes & plenty of Olga Koundouriotis, born 1887, and a supporter of Venizelos. A fire had devastated the old Royal Palace in December 1909 and restorations ceased when King George was assassinated in March 1913. King Constantine and his successors occupied the Crown Prince’s Palace nearby as the new Royal Palace, now the Presidential Mansion. (Kardamitsi-Adami and Hatzivassiliou 2018: 50 and n. 4.)

7 8

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furniture of all sorts. It is a very high room & must be fully as big as the [Millers’] drawing room. It is in fact the best hotel bedroom I have ever had. (Saturday, 20 January 1923) Gilbert astutely perceived that della Seta’s approach to looking for a room for him might well drag on and he was not prepared to put up with the inconvenience indefinitely. So, as was often the case, Gilbert took matters into his own hands and, with the help of his connections, found what he was looking for – a spacious though pricey room in the upscale Kolonaki area near both his society friends and the British and American Schools. Gilbert wanted to resume writing political articles, but no mention of the death of ex-King Constantine was permitted. When he went into exile in Italy the deposed King felt that, through Venizelos’ craft, he had been portrayed as a traitor to Hellenism. He died in Palermo, Sicily, January 11, 1923, at the nadir of both his Greek and his international reputation. Unlike Venizelos, he would not live to see his name exonerated. His son, King George II, was not allowed to leave Greece to attend the funeral in Italy nor to have Constantine’s body returned to Greece for burial with his father and brother at Tatoi, the royal estate outside Athens. King George was a virtual prisoner in his own palace, his movements watched and controlled, and his family scattered to Florence, Paris and London. The cold-blooded murders of their cousins, Tsar Nicholas and his family, were still fresh in their collective memory.9 The military government was censoring telegrams and tapping wireless messages, forcing the newspaper correspondents in Athens to try various means to bypass the press censorship, such as by transmitting articles from ships, even though such messages could still be monitored. So Gilbert began enclosing his newspaper articles in his letters to his mother for Miller to forward to the Post.10 Passed Wednesday [17] chiefly in darkroom. In the next letter wish you’d send me out another envelope of Safranina [the latest chemical technology of the early 1920s used to develop photographs]; you’ll get it 9 Tsar Nicholas’ mother, Dagmar, the Tsarina Maria Feodorovna, was the sister of King George I of the Hellenes and now staying with another sister Queen Alexandra at the private royal estate of Sandringham in England. Their sister-in-law Queen Olga, King George’s widow, also stayed there. Both Dagmar and Olga had lived to see the assassinations of their son and husband respectively. 10 The Morning Post also printed articles about Greek politics evidently written by others but still being attributed to Gilbert by Athenians.

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at Navone’s. In the afternoon went and saw the Eleutheron Bema people; found them violent Republicans, especially a man named Nachos, and rather anti English. Went on to Serpieris to take the taste out of my mouth. Metaxa, master of King’s household there but had no news of the funeral of the King. Several ladies including Mme Metaxa. … The day before I had seen the Caterinopule, very indignant over the murders although not an ultra Venist. On Thursday morn [18] went and introduced myself to Bentinck [UK chargé d’affaires, senior British diplomat in charge after the recall of Ambassador Lindley] who was very nice to me. Told me that Curzon had told Kaklamanos [former journalist and Greek Ambassador in London] that if the men were shot, Lindley would be withdrawn two days before he instructed Lindley to act, so that the people here knew that it was not simple bluff on Lindley’s part. Very angry with MP for article on the murders; he too had come to conclusion that it was Kalopothakes [who wrote the article]. Furious with Politis whom he accuses of having double dealt all round & lied to Lindley. ... Lunched at [Mme Boubouli]’s with Guiccioli & Perrone [the Italian military attaché]; the latter is an ass! Mme Boubouli & the Guiccioli both charming. Everyone seems excited about [Greek military] concentrations in Thrace. In the afternoon tea-d with the Caterinopule to meet Demertzis, one of the leaders of the new party that is being formed against both Venist & Constantinians. Struck me as a clever but lazy man who sees all the defects of his countrymen but does not want to have to put them right. At the hotel saw General Hoare Nairne dining with the funny little English boy. Found out that he was the cor. of the Daily Express. Another Drummond Wolff! After the lunch at the Boubouli’s Prof. Andreades came in talking about politics.11 Please ask M. to telegraph at once the following: The Greek military operations in Thrace & Macedonia are causing much uneasiness in Athens. General Pangalos has reconstructed the army there on an offensive not on a defensive scale. While it is undoubtedly necessary for Greece to be prepared for a resumption of hostilities, the recent gigantic military expenditure on the part of a defeated and bankrupt 11 Andreas Andreades was Professor of Economic History at Athens University and resolutely nonpartisan, consistently refusing offers of cabinet positions. For a brief sketch, see Miller 1928: 17374.

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country is absolutely unjustified by the Turkish attitude which has been consistently peaceful. The tone of the revolutionary press moreover becomes every day more bellicose & the Venizelist ‘Ethnos’ recently stated that the military position of Greece was such that a resumption of operations would lead to a triumphant walk-over. The respect of Constantine’s governments for the wishes of Great Britain last year was always a guarantee for peace; the present Revolutionary Committee is under no such restraining guidance.* But, since it is scarcely creditable that a resumption of hostilities is meditated, there is a growing suspicion that General Pangalos, a man of violent & headstrong character, intends to use his army for the proclamation of a republic. It is to be hoped that M. Venizelos, whose intimate friend he is, will keep him from any precipitate action. *These are almost the very words of Bentinck. M[iller] can of course correct anything. (Saturday, 20 January 1923) On Friday [26] I saw Balugdic, the Yug minister [Serbian Ambassador]. A very nice old beard but most indiscreet. He was most interesting and gave me a lot of information on the Salonika prob. on which I’ll write an article next week (Bagnani 1923c) but I should never have talked the way he did to someone I did not know very well indeed. I found from the papers that evening that he had been in the morning to the F.O. to discuss the matter & he had evidently not got much satisfaction. (Sunday, 28 January 1923) Salonika was important both commercially and politically to the land-locked Balkan states. (Bagnani 1923c) Please give the following to [Miller]: The Athenian press of all parties adopts an aggrieved tone in commenting on the allied warning to the Greek government to respect the armistice zone. They observe that such a warning should be addressed to the Turks rather than to the Greeks whose intentions are openly peaceful. The same papers, however, commenting in other issues on the close of the Lausanne conference, employ very bellicose language and the Eleutheros Typos openly says that the cannon must put a stop to Turkish intransigence and the disaster in Asia Minor is attributed to the Gounaris Government, and not to the army. Some ultra Venizelists go so far as to

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say that the government provoked the catastrophe in order to abandon Smyrna!! (Sunday, 28 January 1923) Gilbert’s mother received the letter on 3 February and his article on the ‘Bellicose Athenian Press’ appeared in the Morning Post date-lined February 4, minus the last sentence, perhaps edited out by Miller. (Bagnani 1923b) The Foreign Ministers left Lausanne in early February, unable to come to terms with the Turks. This breakdown in talks between Britain and Turkey actually encouraged extremists like the zealous Gen. Pangalos, who saw it as an opportunity for renewed hostilities to avenge the Greek military collapse and restore honour to the Greek army.12 I am furious with [Foreign Editor] Grant as I do not receive MP so do not know what is mine and what isn’t. Didn’t write anything on Tino’s funeral as no one was allowed to comment on it here. I have done a good deal on the Serbo Greek treaty about Salonika & sent a wire on Monday [29]. I am told Henry [Drummond Wollf]’s wirelessing his stuff is all my eye [i.e., nonsense] as the Gr. government would have tapped it and would know all about it, so the beautiful Apothecary [Kalopothakes] says. ... I am so busy I can’t even find time for society. Next week we start digging the [south slope of the] Acropolis. I am still looking forward to your visit. (Friday, 1 February 1923) Wace has started giving lectures on his finds at Mycenae at the BSA at the awful hour of 9:00 p.m. Most sleepy time! He is very down on his luck being booted out in this unceremonious fashion. Woodward is a nice quiet sort of man with, at times, rather a nasty tongue. I asked him what Casson was doing at Ox[ford]. ‘Teaching archaeology?’ ‘Yes & perhaps learning it.’ Neat and nasty. … Have also started taking Turkish lessons with Levi from a refugee provided for us by Mme Boubouli. Since the refugee only talks Greek and Turkish they are amusing lessons but I am 12 The Greeks had seized Eastern Thrace in July 1920 and obtained it on paper in the aborted treaty of Sevres. Pangalos had redeployed the Greek army in Western Thrace on the pretext of crossing the Maritza River to recapture Eastern Thrace. What the Greeks in Greece failed to appreciate was that the Allies’ interests and reputation in Constantinople and the Straits were threatened by Kemal’s victorious armies, and so they had agreed to surrender Eastern Thrace immediately at Mudania as well.

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rather in despair about it as I don’t think I’ll ever be able to learn the beastly tongue. (Sunday, 11 February 1923) On February 10 and 11, ten of the Athens daily newspapers refused to publish in order to protest the military censor’s earlier threat to suspend publication of any papers, leaving blank spaces indicating where news items had been suppressed. Three weeks later, some military officers, presumably antiVenizelist, were being court-martialed on charges of arming civilians to cause racial strife. ‘The way the [Morning Post] is cut up about Luxor is amusing. How dreadful Allan’s murder; how did it happen? [Harry] Burton I expect is furious about the photos.’ (Sunday, 18 February 1923) Gilbert knew Harry Burton, of course, as well as the murdered man. On the evening of Tuesday 30 January Travers Allan, a forty-year-old bachelor, left his private sailing ship on the Nile for his usual evening stroll amid the ruins and streets of Luxor. He never returned and his body was found the next day in an unfrequented spot outside town. He was the grandson of Sir Hugh Allan of Montreal, founder of the Allan Shipping Line and one of the richest men in Canada. Travers and his cousin, James Bryce Allan,13 who lived in Rome and knew Gilbert, were travelling around the world and had been at Luxor for two weeks before Travers was murdered. On their dahabiya or sailing barge, the Truisah, they had invited Harry Burton’s wife Minnie for lunch the previous Tuesday, according to her diary,14 after which they then joined her along with Howard Carter for tea at the Winter Palace Hotel. They would undoubtedly have been among the spectators who would watch exotic treasures being carefully carried out of the tomb over to the Tomb of Pharaoh Seti I for conservation and photography, and Burton himself bustling back and forth to his dark room in nearby Tomb 55. Lord Carnarvon, in order to simplify their own activities in Egypt, had naively assigned the exclusive rights to the news coverage to The Times of London, incurring the opprobrium of all the other journalists; after Carnarvon’s sudden death in early April from an infected mosquito bite, the ‘curse’ of the disturbed James Bryce Allan, b. 1861, son of Andrew Allan and nephew of Sir Hugh Allan (grandfather of Hugh Travers Allan), died Nov. 10, 1945 in Montreal. After retiring from law in 1903, he spent several years traveling in Europe before settling in Rome, but returned to Montreal before the outbreak of war in 1939. His younger sister, Brenda, was married to Sir Vincent Meredith of Montreal, another acquaintance of Gilbert and his mother. 14 Extracts from Minnie Burton’s diary for 1922-26 have been published in Frayling 1992: 136-40. 13

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tomb of Tutankhamen on anyone remotely connected with its opening became another sensational story for the media to sell. In the growing list of so-called ‘victims’ of the curse, Travers Allan would have been the first! Just had yours of the 15. You give me quite a shock by showing me that [Verschoyle] Blake is coming out. I had gathered by your last letter that he had given up the idea. It means more house hunting. It is extremely difficult here to find cheap rooms for someone who does not speak Greek. Even here where I am the servants only speak G. ... There is very little news & I am racking my brains trying to think of something to send the MP. I have suddenly discovered that I can draw, at times, caricatures which are not all bad. (Monday, 21 February 1923) Then like manna from heaven a new decree from the military government gave Gilbert a new topic. After Russia and other revolutionary governments adopted the western Gregorian Calendar in the wake of World War I, the colonels in Greece suddenly issued a decree on January 18 replacing the old Julian calendar with the Gregorian civil calendar by declaring that Thursday 16 February would be Thursday 1 March, skipping thirteen days in February. The Greek church authorities opposed the reform, and Gilbert obviously enjoyed describing the consequences. In his first article written after returning from home back to Greece, Gilbert was the detached observer once again, bemused by the curious situations resulting from the Greeks’ calendrical manipulations. The result for a foreigner living in Greece of the abolition of the Julian calendar is at first confusing, but when one has become used to it, it presents considerable advantages. The duplication of all feast days enables the foreigner to live, especially in winter, in a perpetual round of festivity. The prospect of two birthdays a year commends itself to many young people. Their elders, too, find it useful to be able to antedate letters which they have postponed writing, without fear of being given away by the post-mark. All this is to be done away with, and we foreign residents will no longer be able to lead double lives. The decree which has been submitted today for the Royal consent (the Committee occasionally remembers that Greece is still a Monarchy) orders that February 16 (Old Style) is to be termed March 1, and that, therefore, the month of February is

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to be considered as only having 15 days. In all this the Government is only following the example of Romania, which adopted the Gregorian calendar at the end of the war. The only opposition to the measure comes from the Church, which cannot admit that the Greeks should celebrate Christmas thirteen days before, say, the Serbians. The result is that the Gregorian Calendar is only to apply to civil affairs, the ecclesiastical calendar remaining Julian. Therefore next Christmas will fall on January 7, 1924 - a strange date for Christmas! The Greek Government, however, in union with the Holy Synod of Athens, will ask the Ecumenical Patriarch to consider the advisability of adopting the Gregorian Calendar for all the autocephalous Orthodox churches.15 (Bagnani 1923a) Gilbert was about to encounter two new people in his life, the one a Canadian traveling companion and the other a politically dangerous young Greek woman.

15 As Gilbert predicted, in Greece the secular calendar year of 1923 had no Christmas until January 6, 1924, after the secular New Year’s Day! This anomaly forced the Orthodox Church to compromise in accepting the Gregorian calendar for all holidays except Greek Easter, which it would continue to determine itself. Some years later, Carl Blegen wrote an essay entitled ‘The Christmasless Year of 1923.’ (http://nataliavogeikoff.com/2013/12)

18. The Castles of the Giant Cyclopes Gilbert’s world of the 1920s can be seen through his letters and articles. By a stroke of luck, Gilbert himself can be seen through the surviving letters and travel diary of an acquaintance who traveled with him in Greece. In late February 1923 Gilbert’s mother made her only known trip to Greece to visit Gilbert. Accompanying her was Verschoyle Blake, the son of her Canadian friend Ethel Benson Blake of Port Hope, Ontario.1 Vers, as he was known, though a year older than Gilbert, was far less mature and certain of himself. Indeed, Vers was still looking for a sense of direction and toying with the notion of being an archaeologist, for which he had no training or experience. As the scion of a prominent legal and political family in Ontario, Vers could have had his choice of vocations but it would be many years before he would find his calling: he would be esteemed for combining his interest in local history with his advocacy of architectural conservation and environmental preservation in Ontario, early hints of which can be seen in his letters from Greece. Gilbert, by contrast, was already actively pursuing his interests of history and politics and excelled at them. At this early stage in his life, Gilbert was not an easy person to get to know nor to get close to. The first encounters of the two young men in Greece were somewhat strained, probably through Gilbert’s intellectual impatience and arrogance, and the substantial differences in their personalities, education and training. The contrast between them at this stage is striking. Only years later under entirely different circumstances when both were living in rural Ontario did the two men become close friends and indeed Gilbert regretted how badly he had treated Vers in Greece. Ethel Benson of Port Hope, Ontario, had married Edward Blake, the son of Edward Blake who had been a prominent member of both the Canadian and Ontario legislatures and who served in the last as Premier.

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In his letters to his mother in Canada, Vers vividly describes, sometimes even with sketches, their excursions around Greece in March and April, 1923.2 After first meeting Gilbert, Vers wrote to his mother on March 4: As you see I have got to Greece and am comfortably settled in the same pension as Madame Bagnani. Gilbert is killing, about ten years older than I am in most things, not in all though. I think I shall get on all right with him but I doubt if we could ever be very intimate. I have got very fond of his mother. I don’t think he and I are likely to be intimate because [he] is so much more developed and has so much better a brain than I that he can hardly help regarding me as a fool. He won’t be altogether right, but that will not make any difference. In some ways I suspect he is a bit of a fool himself and also very young. However it is too early to judge yet. We’ll see later on. Then a few days later on March 8, Vers wrote: My ideas about Gilbert are changing a bit. We are getting on easier terms with one another. I like him and I think he likes me. But a few days later, This trip to Greece has not done everything that I hoped but that is natural enough. I haven’t got much out of Gilbert. He is hard to approach in some ways. I’ll manage it some how, though but I don’t think this will come to anything. ... The buildings [on Lykabettos] are largely white-washed. There are ‘anti-aircraft’ guns on the lower terrace. At least they say they are ‘anti-aircraft’ but I think they are quite as much anti-royalist. I hear a great deal of politics and am learning a lot about the transactions here during the great war. They are not exactly to the credit of the allies. In fact we treated the Greeks abominably. ... The ruins [at Eleusis] are very interesting but very jumbled. They would not show well in a picture except perhaps one magnificent round tower and bit of wall. The fortifications interested me extremely but as G.B. was not at all keen about them I did not get as much chance to as I would like. 3 I am very grateful to Mrs Elisabeth Bacque, Verschoyle Blake’s niece, for sharing her memories of him and for allowing me to make use of and publish his letters and travel diary in her possession. Verschoyle Blake, quoting from a diary entry for March 18 written in a letter to his mother. Vers

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At the annual Open Meeting of the Italian School, 15 March 1923, Doro Levi spoke on his excavations of the previous year, particularly in the Neolithic cave at Aspri Petra on Kos and in the Cave of the Nymphs at Pharsalos. Gilbert spoke about his analyses of the two statues on Crete he had been assigned by Halbherr to study. He compared the statue of Artemis Diktynna from the Museum at Chania in west Crete with a statue of Artemis in the Museo Torlonia found in Portus (Gasparri 1980: nr 366) and another of Diana at Ostia.4 As in the previous year, Gilbert probably had some of his friends from among the Athenian elite in his audience and, as on later comparable occasions, his mother was undoubtedly in the audience beaming over her son’s public achievements. Vers Blake records the first mention of Anna Kozadinou during an excursion to Sounion in late March. ‘A political friend of G’s, a Miss Cosadino of whom more anon, came to lunch with us and then we all four went taking our tea. This is my diary slightly expanded. Miss C is ‘Royalist,’ quite pretty and clever, a very bitter partisan (I don’t much wonder now). [Gilbert] was a bit superior and not very tactful, at times I thought even rude, but the conversation was interesting.’ (Blake’s letter to his mother dated May 3, 1923 written from Naples) Anna was the eldest daughter of Athina Roussopoulou and George Kozadinos, who had prospered trading grain between Russia and Piraeus, but lost his fortune during the War. Anna was extremely conservative and infatuated with royalty all her life.5 In the heated political atmosphere of Athens under a military dictatorship and censorship, Anna had endangered both herself and her friends. [Anna Kozadinou] wrote me saying trouble over letter serious & that she could not send me her stuff as she could not get hold of it. Destroyed her letters … [Boubouli] warned me after dinner that the Koz was suspect. (Sunday, 1 April 1923) By destroying her letters to him, Gilbert prevented any of them from being used to incriminate her, or himself for that matter, if they were seized. It is not later included descriptions and sketches of the fortification walls and towers of the fort at Eleutherae, which they inspected on a school excursion from Eleusis to Thebes. 4 Now in the Museo Nazionale delle Terme in Rome, then recently discovered and published in Notizie 1922, p. 88 ff. 5 According to information generously shared with me by her nephew, Prof. Dr Alexander Papageorgiou-Venetas. The Kozadinos family claimed descent from Italian conquistadors from Bologna established on the island of Kea c1400 CE.

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known precisely what Anna had done but getting out of Athens on a trip with other young people was probably a good idea for her. Even though Gilbert and Doro Levi had already traveled around the Peloponnese in 1922, they were more or less expected to take part in the school trips the following year as well. Della Seta, who had not always accompanied the students on their travels the previous year, could feel confident with such experienced and responsible men acting as guides for the new students. In April both Gilbert and Vers wrote travel diaries for the first part of the annual school trip around the Peloponnese, providing contrasting perspectives on the same journey. Since Gilbert’s mother, the usually intended recipient of his daily activities, was accompanying them, Gilbert’s daily notes both on his archaeological observations and on his political conversations were possibly intended for later use in his articles. By contrast, Vers’ very subjective and sensitive responses to the aesthetics of every building and the scenery contrast strongly with the objective comments of Gilbert, who of course had visited many of these sites before. Gilbert continued to pursue his interviews with local politicians and political appointees like guards but, since the conversations were entirely in Greek, Vers was left to observe for himself. Vers used his diary to facilitate writing letters home later on to his mother. It was the week after Easter but leading up to Orthodox Easter, and Vers’ enthusiasm for writing his travel diary lasted only one week. Only a close reading of both diaries reveals that the three female Italian students accompanied them. Although no mention is made, conceivably Gilbert’s mother could have been regarded, or at least presented by the female students, as their chaperone. A photo survives of Florence Bagnani, Verschoyle Blake and Gilbert Bagnani taken at an unidentified site from their travels around Greece, but with no indication of any other companions. (Figure 14) On Monday, 2 April 1923, Gilbert ‘left at 5 & got mother & Blake [from their pension on Merlin St]. At [train] station met Aubrey Smiths6 & Hoare Nairnes off to Olympia. Arrived in good time at Corinth. Drove to excavations [in old Corinth] where had lunch. ... Went up to Acrocorinth. Walked all the way. Mother had horse but very frightened.’ According to Vers on the same day, the lunch [at Corinth] was amusing. We sat and lay about and were waited on by the senorinie [sic] and the caretaker [Parlanti] and friends. 6

Rear Admiral (later Sir) Aubrey Smith was the Head of the British Naval Mission to Greece.

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14. Left to right: Florence Bagnani, Verschoyle Blake and Gilbert Bagnani

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Levi & his Greek girl [Anna Kozadinou] funny, rather silly. Jacovitch is a continuous amusement. He wears what is said to be the Austrian uniform but looks exactly like the British officers (with plain buttons of course) and is hung all about with odds and ends, water bottle, camera, glasses, etc. He is very energetic and very much the ‘tramper.’ After lunch and a rather hurried and very argumentative round of the antiquities we started for the Acrocorinth, the ladies riding two donkeys & three horses [i.e., the three Italian students plus Anna and Gilbert’s mother. The men walked up.]. Mme B. did not like it much. (Blake, Diary entry for Monday, April 2nd 1923) Gilbert’s notes are more matter-of-fact, precise and laconic, omitting travel details that he and his mother already knew, while Vers was still enraptured with the Greek scenery. He happened to have chosen the best time to see Greece - in the springtime when the countryside is covered with blankets of tiny yellow and red and purple wildflowers. Among many other sites, Gilbert and Vers visited the fortified palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns in the Argolid. When Schliemann unearthed these sites, he was uncovering more than just their material remains, but an entire lost world. Thanks to the new pottery typology being studied and published by Blegen and Wace, recent excavations were showing that the legendary sites where Homer’s kings supposedly lived had one archaeological aspect in common: they were all occupied at the same time, towards the end of the Late Bronze Age c. 1200 BC. In other words, if these heroes ever did live at one and the same time, archaeologically it was during the Late Bronze Age.7 The mainlanders in Greece had a distinctive culture of their own with a highly developed bureaucracy which kept rough notes on clay tablets. This world ended abruptly c. 1200 B.C. at about the same time as the Hittite civilization and others ended around the Near East. Sites were abandoned and literacy or at least record-keeping ceased. In 1923 the nature and degree of influence of the Minoan civilization of Crete over that of the Mycenaeans of mainland Greece was starting to be hotly debated. The pottery and frescoed walls of the Mycenaeans on the Greek mainland were clearly influenced from Crete, but their fortified citadels The ancient Greek poet Hesiod wrote that mankind had lived through a deteriorating succession of ages starting with a blissful Golden Age and declining through Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages, and also that there had been an Age of Heroes before the advent of the Iron Age. Archaeologists have applied the Hesiodic terms to the sequence of cultures in Greece which used tools of bronze for two thousand years before they started using iron after 1200 BC.

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were the antithesis of the apparently unfortified Minoan culture. It was the notion of an independent civilization on the Greek mainland that Sir Arthur Evans rejected. What few suspected then was that the mainland Mycenaeans spoke Greek, and were thus the ancestors of the singers and their listeners who preserved the oral memory of legendary Mycenaean characters through the later centuries. Oral poets such as Homer sang of legendary characters like King Agamemnon of Mycenae who led the Achaeans against the Trojans in northwest Anatolia, the first recorded war between East and West. When literacy resumed centuries later, many Greeks had migrated eastward across the Aegean to the fertile valleys along the west coast of Anatolia. At Mycenae the carriages were there & we went up. The weather was dark but it was not raining. Mycenae lovely. Saw many of Wace’s tombs & the Aegisthus but it was full of water. Had a good tea at the Belle Helene. Went on to Tiryns which we reached at sunset & so on to Nauplio where we arrived for dinner. Woodward, the Heurtleys & Clarke there.8 Slept well but very cold. (Bagnani 3 April 1923) Just as Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae, was the leader of the other Greek kings, so too the site of Mycenae possessed more grand tholos tombs than any other contemporary site. One of the engineering marvels of the Mycenaean world, these unusual tombs were round underground spaces built up of circular courses of large cut stone blocks rising in ever decreasing diameters to a dome at the top, resembling a beehive. The entrances of the largest were embellished with half columns and coloured stone incorporating lintel blocks weighing over one hundred tons. The largest and best preserved tomb has been referred to as the Treasury of Atreus ever since Classical antiquity and its dome is still standing after more than three thousand years. Many have been named in modern times after the members of the family of Agamemnon, who was murdered on his return from Troy by his wife Klytemnestra and her lover Aigistheus. The construction date of these impressive tholos tombs was becoming very controversial. Schliemann had discovered several tombs in vertical shafts arranged within a circle filled with the fabulous and exotic gold and ivory treasures later on display in the National Museum, which appeared to Stewart Studdert Clarke (1897-1924) described as charming, adventurous, humorous, a Craven Fellow at Oxford, and student at the BSA 1922-23, drowned off Salamis May 3, 1924.

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be roughly contemporary with Sir Arthur Evans’ Minoan civilization on Crete. Evans had suggested that Alan Wace try to clarify the architectural levels at Mycenae in the light of his own finds from Minoan Crete, and even provided funds and his architect and draughtsman Piet de Jong to help.9 Wace had just conducted three seasons of excavations at Mycenae before his appointment as Director of the British School was abruptly terminated by the Managing Committee of the British School. It was the dating and more specifically the evolving structural history of the tholos tombs that would later cause an academic rift between Wace and Evans: Wace believed that the tombs became grander and more evolved over time from c. 1400 BC to c. 1250 BC, but Evans insisted that their designs deteriorated over time since they must have derived from Minoan prototypes on Crete. So the tholos tombs at Mycenae were suddenly a hot topic of controversy.10 According to Vers’ diary entry for April 3, the students walked up to the acropolis at Mycenae and inspected a recently excavated rock-cut chamber tomb as well as four tholos tombs including Atreus, Clytemnestra and Aigistheus before passing through the Lion Gate, the main entrance to the citadel. [Vers] could not follow everything and they were very slow due partly to the Principal’s shortsightedness. The ruins are very confusing. The [grave] circle fine and the walls in places magnificent but G.B. is rather silly about them. He makes a great fuss about the size of the stones which is immense but as most of the walls are of the roughest pelasgic style (i.e. gigantic dry walling) they seem to me not to be mentioned in the same breath as the [carefully cut blocks of the] Treasury. The covered way to a spring house is very fine, but after one allows the vast amount of labour, the skill is the same as that of a drain in a field wall 9 Wace also enjoyed considerable participation by Americans, with Carl Blegen as his active colleague, Richard Seager as a significant benefactor, and Leicester Holland as architect. It was very much an international co-operative effort, with Christos Tsountas generously conceding his prior rights to dig at Mycenae, and Axel Boethius of Sweden actively assisting Wace. 10 Despite very productive results, the Managing Committee decided to terminate the British School excavations at Mycenae in favour of returning to dig at Sparta, making the upcoming 1923 season at Mycenae necessarily focused on studying what had already been excavated. Final publication was delayed until after the Second World War, during which the recorded stratigraphical contexts of the excavated material so carefully arranged on storeroom shelves according to their stratigraphical find-spots was irreparably damaged and lost. After Blegen discovered inscribed clay tablets at the Mycenaean palace at Pylos on the mainland in 1939, Wace was among the few hoping and predicting that their language was Greek. (Fappas 2015: 71)

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and any one who has done dry walling knows that the larger the stones the easier the work. This is all really in answer to G.’s raving, not lack of appreciation of the magnificence of the ruins. (Blake, Diary entry for Tuesday, April 3rd 1923) Gilbert was describing the extensive fortification walls around Mycenae, whose boulders were so massive that ancient Greeks later believed that only legendary giants called Cyclopes could have built them, while Vers was more impressed with the fine masonry used to construct the tholos tombs. As usual in his diaries and letters, Gilbert omits any description of his academic pursuits. Since the previous year he himself had been thrilled by Mycenae, especially its setting, his enthusiastic ‘raving’ was not just feigned for the benefit of his audience. Moreover, during the intervening year, Gilbert’s interests had progressed from being dismissive of prehistoric artefacts to appreciating Late Bronze Age remains. It is also possible that Gilbert’s ‘raving’ about the Cyclopean rocks was intended to provoke della Seta. Vers wrote ‘Then a weary drive to Tiryns which we saw in the fading light, all pretty tired and growing cross. Tiryns is not in the least impressive from the outside but [is] much more interesting than G.B. will allow. ... The ruins of the palace are very interesting and quite clear but the chief [della Seta] was distressingly blind and the other two smartly incredulous to an unnecessary degree.’ (Blake, diary entry for Tuesday, April 3rd 1923) Although its setting is less impressive than Mycenae’s, the walls of the castle of Tiryns are better preserved. A series of easily defensible gateways led to a typical Mycenaean palace, now known at other contemporary sites. From an inner courtyard a columned porch preceded a vestibule to a large rectangular hall or ‘megaron’ as Homer called them. The great hall of Mycenaean houses was formally ritualized in each of the palaces with a large round hearth in the centre and a place for the throne on the right wall. The floors and walls were all once painted in vividly coloured frescoes of shields, wild boar hunts, and women riding in chariots. These palaces had been built and inhabited by the heirs of the Minoan civilization after the destruction of the palace at Knossos on Crete c. 1400 BC. While Vers lacked Gilbert’s knowledge and understanding of the subject, he was also unaware of the dynamics between della Seta and his two brilliant students, who took delight in provoking him, hence their ‘incredulity.’ On April 4, the students visited the Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros with its famous theatre. Gilbert’s account is to the point and sardonic:

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Left in the morning for Epidaurus. The Fords were horrible, one without brakes & one without anything. Saw the Cyclopic bridge. Went on to Epidaurus & saw antiquities. Photographed a lot. Vers on the other hand expatiated on the setting as well as on the various buildings: The secular buildings, palaestra, gymnasium, guest houses, etc. particularly interested me. The Theatre is magnificent of course it is the most perfectly preserved in Greece, but even if only a few stages were left it would still beautiful. Each detail, moulding or curve, seems perfectly suited to their place. One feels that they are so right they are inevitable, the perfection of art. (Blake, Diary entry for Wednesday, April 4th 1923) The party then waited at Argos to meet up with della Seta to catch a crowded train to Tripolis. It was Gilbert, not the School’s Director, who took the initiative to argue their way in Greek into the guards’ carriage on the crowded train. He had the self-confidence of a natural leader, a trait likely shared with his father, Gen. Ugo Bagnani. It is noteworthy that on this trip around the Peloponnese with his mother and his friend, Gilbert still managed to continue his journalistic pursuits. He was organized to the point of having arranged to bring letters of introduction to particular local politicians. When the train came in it was so full that there were people even on top & so I managed to get the guard to allow us to go in the van. So we were quite comfortable. ... After dinner when church was over about ten, called on Tourkovasili, a big fat man but very nice [a Parliamentary Deputy to whom Gilbert had a letter of introduction]. Told me that he had been in prison 3 years under Ven. & his eldest brother had died in exile. Said that the only natural heir of Gounaris was Metaxas. (Bagnani, Diary, Thursday, 5th April 1923) According to Vers, it was raining fairly steadily and when the train from Athens came in a few minutes later, it looked as if we would have to ride on the roof. However, G.B. managed to wangle us into the guards van. ... We got to

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Tripolis long after dark ... and then set out through dripping streets to find a meal. It was lenten fare, bean soup, stewed vegetables, bread & halva, etc. Then to a café for coffee where we played cards as long as we could (1 hour) and then found the Deputy to whom G. had a letter. A long interview with him over coffee, very dull for me and so to bed. (Blake, Diary entry for Thursday, April 5th 1923) In Tripoli Gilbert met several times with the Deputy Tourkovasili, who took them to see the Greek Good Friday nighttime service. At this point just before Greek Easter, unfortunately Vers stopped writing his travel diary. He was completely oblivious to Gilbert’s conversations in Greek about Greek politics, finding them tedious, and was not inspired enough by anyone else’s enthusiasm to overcome his own reluctance to write. Gilbert was evidently more interested in journalistic research into Greek politics than in entertaining Vers Blake and continued writing his travel diary for several more days before giving up on it. He made a habit of interviewing local political appointees for their views, which he recorded in his diary. While visiting Arkadian Orchomenos, Gina ‘Reggiani had lingered on the way & held us up 1/2 an hour,’ Gilbert’s only reference to any of the three female students accompanying them on their tour around the Peloponnese. (Saturday, 7 April 1923) They crossed the causeway to reach Monemvasia, often called the Gibraltar of Greece. It had been occupied and fortified by a succession of Byzantines, Venetians and Turks. Its walled lower town preserved the medieval churches, houses and streets. Gilbert particularly noted the Venetian churches and the Venetian loggia along the church of Hagia Sophia perched high above on the edge of the precipitous cliff. While sailing to Gytheion, Gilbert talked with a young thin-looking man dressed in uniform. Told me he was a returning prisoner. Said that he had been employed in Smyrna itself & so had not been sent to the interior. Said that they got nothing to eat practically but that the T[urkish] soldier did not get any more. Bastinado [beating, especially of the soles of the feet] was frequent but so it was among the Turks. (Tuesday, 10 April 1923) They sailed around Cape Matapan at the southern tip of the Mani peninsula to Kalamata, where they caught a train for Kyparissia. By this time Gilbert also stopped writing his diary, but continued maintaining a list of places and

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expenses for which he was to be reimbursed. From Kyparissia they proceeded on mules to Platania from where they hiked to Phigalia, an Arkadian city high above the Neda River known for its worship of horse-headed Demeter in a cave. Then they rode by mule again along the Neda valley to the train junction at Tholos, stopping on their way to see the walls and Demeter temple at Lepreon. Reaching Olympia by train, they stayed six nights to study the sanctuary and museum. They then traveled by train to Patras, by ship to Itea, and on horseback up to Delphi, where they stayed three nights before returning to Athens on April 26, Gilbert’s 23rd birthday. After celebrating, his mother and Vers sailed back to Italy. Gilbert, however, began arranging with Anna Kozadinou to interview Greek political prisoners incarcerated in Athens.

19. A Surviving Byzantine Republic In May 1923, after his mother and Vers Blake left for Italy, Gilbert resumed his hectic social life in Athens, developing photos and submitting articles to the Morning Post. In addition to meeting with Karapanos and Anna Kozadinou about politics, he ran into the influential Florentine art historian, Bernard Berenson, who was traveling around Greece with his entourage and the medieval art historian Kingsley Porter.1 They told Gilbert about an incident which had just happened to Porter’s Rolls-Royce at Chalkis in Euboea. While it was parked in front of their hotel along the waterfront, the chauffeur let it ‘roll slowly and majestically’ into the Euripos Strait, an image that Gilbert enjoyed relating many years later.2 Gilbert, with della Seta, Levi, Jacopich and Parlanti soon set sail for Lemnos, stopping briefly at Chios and Lesbos ‘which were interesting but full of refugees.’ (Friday, 18 May 1923) Inhabited long before Greeks arrived, the island of Lemnos was associated by the Greeks with Hephaistos, the god of fire, iron, blacksmiths and artisans, because the earth around the volcanic island emits smoke and vapours. A sanctuary for the northern Aegean mystery cult of the Kabeiroi, twin sons of Hephaistos, likely reflects the original Thracian inhabitants of the island. Nearby was the port of Palaiopolis, ancient Hephaistia, long the capital of Lemnos. The Italians spent several days systematically exploring the west, centre and east for possible excavation sites. Della Seta had his own reasons for wanting to excavate on the island. Before taking over as Director in Athens, he had been an inspector at the Villa Giulia Museum in Rome, famous for its collection of Etruscan bronzes and sarcophagi. During his trip, the Jewish Berenson befriended Doro Levi, whom he would years later during the Second World War help to find a job at Princeton in America. 2 The late Prof. Fred Winter recounted Gilbert’s version of the story in an interview November 2007. For the Berensons’ later version, see Mariano 1966: 79-80. 1

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Contemporary with the classical Greeks, the Etruscans lived in separate citystates north of Rome centuries before Rome ruled all of Italy. The colourful wall paintings in their tombs have intrigued art historians for generations, and their language remains enigmatic, isolated from all other known families of languages. A debate has raged since antiquity about the Etruscans’ origins, whether they emigrated from Lydia in Anatolia, as Herodotus wrote, or evolved purely on Italian soil, a notion particularly popular in Italy of the 1920s. In 1885 a stone stele had been discovered on Lemnos with an inscription which resembled Etruscan and seemed to support the idea that the Etruscans had stopped there on their way from Anatolia to Italy. Della Seta then was keen to discover any other archaeological evidence for a datable Etruscan presence on the island, i.e., anything non-Greek. The most extensive remains on Lemnos were at Palaiopolis, but they appeared Roman and Byzantine.3 In the middle of the island, Mudros Bay had been used by the Allies during the war as the base of their failed naval operations against Gallipoli. It was on board the Agamemnon in Mudros Bay that the Ottoman Empire had signed an armistice with the Allies. ‘The Allied occupation seems to have left it pretty much as it found it. The only traces to be seen are dumps of empty tins & petrol cans. ... After a day at Kastri we left about midnight on Saturday on board a caicco [‘sailboat’] for Mt Athos 45 knots away.’ (Friday, 18 May 1923) Soon after, the Greek Archaeological Service infuriated della Seta by refusing to allow him to excavate on Lemnos, on the grounds that they had not looked at the island yet themselves since its recent acquisition from the Ottoman Empire in 1912.4 The men then sailed to Agion Oros, the Holy Mountain to Orthodox Greeks. Mt Athos is a mountain range at the south end of the peninsula projecting into the northern Aegean. It is in some ways the most remote part of mainland Greece, as far away as possible from interaction with other humans. For over a thousand years the monks and hermits from the Orthodox world have maintained a rigorous way of life, and their commitment to it has helped to preserve their semi-independent state, first recognized by international treaty in 1878. Three monasteries belonged to monks from Russia, Serbia and Bulgaria

Later Italian excavations would reveal an archaic necropolis and sanctuary, a Roman theatre, and Byzantine churches, and across the bay a sanctuary to the Kabeiroi. 4 Years later, the site of Poliochni on the east coast of Lemnos would become the major excavation of della Seta’s career, with four superimposed settlements from the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. 3

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and hence had drawn the interest particularly of Tsarist Russia.5 No females, not even domesticated animals or chickens, were allowed (although Jewish families were sheltered during the Nazi occupation of Greece). ‘Eggs have to be imported from Salonika and milk is condensed. This prohibition accounts for the wonderful vegetation and covers all the slopes of the mountain. All the East has been denuded by the ubiquitous and rapacious goat, but here all shrubs and trees are safe from the depredations of everything except man.’ (Wednesday, 18 July 1923) Time may not have stood still here, but it has passed more slowly and gently. The monks continue to use the two thousand year old Julian calendar, some thirteen days behind the rest of the world; their day starts at nightfall, and they divide both the dark and sunlit parts of the day into twelve equal hours whose length varies with the season. Gilbert found this different dimension of time very congenial. The students first landed near the southern tip of the peninsula at the small harbour for the Great Lavra monastery, the oldest and largest of the twenty monasteries on Mt Athos. Its rectangular compound was surrounded by fortified walls on a natural terrace some 500 feet above the sea for protection against pirate raids. Everyone including visitors had to be inside the walls before the gates were closed at 12 o’clock Byzantine time, i.e., at nightfall. Centuries ago the monks had lived a religiously regulated cenobitic way of life, with all property held in common and meals eaten together in silence to the reading of the scriptures, but now the old dining refectories were mostly abandoned. The Great Lavra, like most of the other monasteries, was now adhering to the more self-regulating idiorhythmic lifestyle: each monk could keep his own private funds and eat by himself or in small groups. Such freedom from regulations in the past had encouraged the development of free-thinking creativity, such as the use of cursive writing. We passed all Sunday [13 May] on board the boat and it was only at about 5 that we got to the convent of Lavra which is the most ancient of the monasteries. Mt Athos is one of the most beautiful places I have seen 5 Two weeks later, an American yacht owned by George DuPont Pratt and carrying Thomas Whittemore, would bring relief supplies to these three monasteries. For more on this Aegean excursion of American archaeologists, see Vogeikoff-Brogan 2014. For the Russian refugee humanitarian and Byzantinist Whittemore, see http://www.doaks.org/library-archives/icfa/ special-projects/online-exhibitions/before-byzantium/whittemore-biography/humanitarianwork

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anywhere. The general character of the coast reminds one of PortofinoRapallo, wonderful flowers and thick woods and shrubs while above this vegetation towers the solitary snow-covered peak of the mountain. Then the monasteries are perfectly wonderful & unlike anything I have ever seen before. They are regular villages and, usually square, enclose the church in the centre. They are very fine & impressive & contain wonderful Byzantine reliquaries & MSS [manuscripts]. The monks at Lavra were very hospitable & since our host informed the W that he wanted an Italian decoration.6 We fed excellently; no meat [because no domesticated animals were allowed even for breeding] but 2 kinds of fish which were delicious & macaroni or rice. Next day Monday [14] to the Mon[asteries] of Karakalu & Iviron both very interesting & slept at the latter. (Friday, 18 May 1923) Further north but near the east coast, the monastery of Iviron was an elevated stone rectangle on which were perched the monks’ dwellings. Hidden within the walls were vast cellars containing enormous wooden barrels for making and storing wine for the few hundred monks that once occupied the monastery. The katholikon or main church in the central courtyard was lavishly decorated with colourful marble slabs aligned in geometric patterns in the floor and on the walls shimmering in candlelight, hinting at ancient Byzantine opulence. The monastery’s library, formerly on the upper level of the narthex as often in Byzantine monastic churches,7 included many small scrolls of hymns which were depicted in use in 16th century wall paintings, the largest collection of Byzantine music in the world. Indeed, the tradition of Byzantine music still lives when chanted in the monastic churches of Mt Athos. The scenery, the Byzantine art and architecture, and the survival of the medieval way of life all appealed to Gilbert’s sensibilities. The theocratic republic on Mt Athos evolved democratically through the centuries. Each of the twenty monasteries would send a representative every year to live in the capital of Karyes, where they could meet sitting on divans around a large room. From this assembly an elected group of four served as the executive with a protepistates (‘First Overseer’) chosen for life. Each of the four carried a quarter of the great seal which had to be temporarily re-assembled in Foreign war decorations fascinated the monks at Lavra, as Robert Byron recorded a few years later that a monk from Lavra was asking him for British medals. (Byron 2000: 84) Bakirtzis 2006/2007: 41-42.

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order to seal documents; in other words as Gilbert noted in a later lecture, their decisions had to be unanimous: ‘it may therefore be surmised that the gentle art of obstructionism is known and practiced on the Holy mountain.’ (Bagnani ‘Mt Athos’) Greeks have always been curious and spirited; hence, they question and argue. Under the Byzantine emperors, their theological arguments were bitter and protracted, but under the Ottoman sultans, according to Gilbert, they transferred the arena of their arguments from religion to politics. Gilbert also astutely observed that, since the Orthodox bishops, unlike their priests, must be celibate, the bishops were derived not from the ranks of the priests but from the celibate monks. Hence, the monasteries were places not only of influence in the running of the Orthodox church but also of political intrigue in the ecclesiastical careers of the monks/bishops. At the time of Gilbert’s visit, the monasteries around Mt Athos had just emerged from nearly five centuries of Turkish sovereignty, mostly left to worship in peace except for a brutal repression after the monks’ support of the Greek revolution of 1821. Ironically, the Greek government was now being forced to expropriate all the monasteries’ properties in Greece in order to help provide for the influx of refugees, but the community’s self-governance would be enshrined in the Greek constitution. ‘On Tuesday [15] we went to the village Karyes which is the capital of the local republic. It is very picturesque & curious since of course there are no women in the place & most of the shops are kept by monks.’ (Friday. 18 May 1923) ‘It is amusing to watch the bearded and long-haired priests baking bread, or a venerable black-robed father sitting on the pavement mending shoes with his head surmounted by the characteristic top hat. The Church at Karyes of the Protatou is a very old Church and forms as it were the Cathedral of the community, where great communal services take place. In it is preserved a very ancient icon of the Virgin,’ (Bagnani ‘Mt Athos’) the Axion esti, a miracleworking icon of the 10th century. From there we walked to Vatopedi [Monastery] which contains the finest treasures & books8 & then crossed the hill over to Daphni where we just managed to catch the boat for Salonika. Of course we were far too short One of the most distinctive treasures of Vatopedi was a vermeil chalice incorporating a bowl carved from a single translucent piece of jasper, a gift from the Despot of Morea at Mistra in the latter 14th century.

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a time on the mount but I intend some day to pass a summer there as it would be a perfectly ideal resort & the monasteries seem pretty clean. (Friday, 18 May 1023) Unfortunately, the opportunity for Gilbert to return to this living Byzantium never arose. ‘On Wednesday [16] got to Salonika which we visited pretty thoroughly. It is a most depressing town & frightfully dirty but the churches are most interesting only they have been filled with refugees. Some of the mosaics are wonderful & it is nice of them not to have knocked down the minarets.’ (Friday, 18 May 1923) From its heyday as a capital of part of the Roman Empire, Salonika still had the Arch of the Emperor Galerius surrounded with its sculpted friezes, and early Christian mosaics could still be seen in the Rotunda and the Acheiropoietos church. Having heard George Soteriou lecture on his discovery of the ancient crypt under the burnt Basilica of St. Demetrios, then being restored under the direction of the modern Greek architect Aristotle Zachos, Gilbert and the other Italian archaeology students would have been most interested to see the newly exposed evidence for a Roman bath and sacred spring. This was long considered a source of holy water associated with the martyrdom and burial of St. Demetrios beneath the Basilica, and so once a place of pilgrimage. Salonika, the birthplace of Kemal Ataturk when it was still part of the Ottoman Empire, was captured by the Greek army led by King Constantine in 1912, at once becoming the second largest city in Greece. Refugees from the first two Balkan Wars then began descending on the city. Its great harbour had served as the main outlet for trade from the Balkans and was desired by all the newly independent Balkan countries adjacent to it. Although formerly controlled by the Turks, most of its inhabitants were Jewish. While Greece was still technically neutral, French and British forces occupied Salonika in 1915 to counter the Bulgarians nearby, bringing tens of thousands of soldiers from the British and French Empires to the region. Then in 1917 a devastating fire destroyed most of the old city, leaving 70,000 homeless, and immediately the Greek government in Athens began planning to exploit the opportunity to redesign and rebuild the city with broad straight avenues and no ethnically separate quarters. Finally, after the Greek debacle in Asia Minor in September 1922, a much greater human flood inundated the area, doubling the city’s population within weeks. So when Gilbert visited Salonika in May 1923, it was a city in transition from Eastern and Jewish dominated by Turks to Western and Orthodox. In the following year, all the remaining Moslems would be ordered

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to leave, taking their belongings with them, to provide space for the homeless Anatolian refugees, many speaking Turkish.9 We are off in a few days for Rhodes. I am going to stop a few days at Kos to finish my work there and then will join Levi & Jacopich at Rhodes. The W is waiting to see if he can get over to Anatolia; personally I think it is out of the question. If we can’t, we hope to be able to dig at Scarpanto (Karpathos) which is the most God forsaked island in the whole of the Aegean. I do hope Maiuri won’t let us go there. I suppose we’ll be out the whole of June & then in July go to Lemnos. ... On Saturday went to see the Bouboulina10 who had a Colonel Levidhi with her who had just come back from accompanying the King and Queen on a visit to Tripoli, Sparta & Mistra. The King is sightseeing in earnest. Wonderful how elections make people move about! He said the people were most enthusiastic, and that he did not think there was much chance of a republic in consequence. (Thursday, 24 May 1923) Dimitri Levidis was a friend and equerry to King George who later accompanied the King into exile in London. King George II and Queen Elisabeth were enthusiastically received by the royalist population of the Peloponnese in May, to the dismay of the military government. In a remarkably bold, courageous, and potentially dangerous move, Gilbert interviewed the two survivors of the kangaroo court who had been sentenced to life imprisonment. Gilbert visited Admiral Michael Goudas in prison and General Xenophon Stratigos, who had only been placed under house arrest 9 Moslem Turks were allowed to remain in nearby Western Thrace, however, by the Allies’ decision. In May, war seemed imminent as the Turks were demanding reparations and ambitious Greek generals were eager to avenge their reputation. Venizelos’ offer to concede Karagatch satisfied the Turks as an indemnity and hastened the end of dragged-out negotiations. The readiness of the growing Greek forces in Western Thrace to fight against evidently decreasing Turkish troops was used very effectively by the British as negotiations progressed, not only to oppose Turkish demands but also to halt French and Italian secret encouragements to the Turks behind British backs. For all the pro-Turkish machinations of France and Italy, both nations had their Anatolian hopes dashed by the victorious Turks. Ironically, the final negotiations were prolonged by French creditors trying to secure payments from the Nationalists for French loans to the Ottoman Empire. 10 Laskarina Bouboulina (1771-1825) is the most famous of hundreds of Greek women who actively fought in the Greek War of Independence in 1821. The widow of two ship-owners, she built and armed several ships and joined in naval blockades of Nafplio and Monemvasia. Streets around Greece are named after her and the Tsar declared her posthumously an Admiral of the Russian Navy. The family of Gilbert’s good friend Mme Bouboulis was related and Gilbert uses this name as a term of affection for her.

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because of his health. Gilbert was accompanied by Anna Kozadinou, the 28 year old royalist whose letters Gilbert had destroyed since she was a ‘suspect person.’ It seems unlikely that the military authorities with their policy of censorship and monitoring of telegraphic communications would approve of a foreign journalist providing publicity to their enemies. Nonetheless, whatever pretext Gilbert used to gain access to the two prisoners and whatever information and opinion Greek military intelligence had on Gilbert are not known. Anna and her letters had evidently been under watch for several weeks. Gilbert made use of his interviews in his subsequent newspaper articles, in which he does not name his sources, but Anna’s motivation in accompanying Gilbert can only be surmised; she clearly had strongly held beliefs which she was prepared to act on at considerable personal risk. On Monday [21] I went with the [Kozadinou] to see Goudas at the prison. He has been rather bad, had a heart attack some time ago when I was at Lemnos, but is better now. He is writing the history of the trial. The [Kozadinou] tells me poor Mme Baltazzis [widow of the executed Foreign Minister George Baltazzi] is very bad, and has grown terribly thin. ... I have also seen Stratigos, the other man who was condemned at the trial but who is allowed to live at home as he is crippled with arthritis. He is, I find, one of the more intelligent and less violent royalists. Got a lot of very sound common sense. ... I see from the It. papers that archaeology is in a bad way now from the axe of Mussolini. I am very much afraid that arch. may leave me. See if Lugli can offer any prospects. I should very much like to know if there’s any chance of getting on to the MP regular. I wonder if Miller could do anything: I expect he could but won’t. ... Have you seen Mrs Stevens? & what did she say?11 The Bouboulina is looking very tired & not a bit well. We are arranging to go to Arcadia together the moment W’s back is turned. It will be hot there but not unbearably so, at least I hope not. So now you know pretty well what our plans are. June Dodecanese, July middle August Lemnos, end of August Arcadia with the Bouboulina, September finish my work in Athens &, I expect, the [Greek] elections. I don’t believe that peace will be signed before the end of June & then I do not see how they can have the elections before a couple of months have elapsed. They must demobilize, settle Gorham Philips Stevens, architect at the American School in Athens, married Annette Notaras, whose sister Julia Notaras married Nicolas Peroglou.

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the refugees & form a government. I am curious to see whether they will do the latter. I am very much afraid that the revolutionaries are going to try to play the game out to the end [i.e., declaring a republic]. ... Tell Miller to send the MP if he likes the following news. Everyone seems expecting war. The country is dead against it & is quite willing to pay any indemnity in order to get peace, but these people find themselves in such a hole that they consider war as a possible solution of their troubles. It is said that new classes are being called under arms. Everyone asks me whether I think there is any chance of England stepping in & forcing Greece to give way, but fear that Gov. will continue to exploit inter-allied jealousies. All this would not pass censor. Personally I think they are bluffing. (Thursday, 24 May 1923) I enclose a couple of letters of the [Kozadinou] to be sent on. Find out the exact postage as they don’t wish to have trouble in Paris. They must not be registered. We have been having a very anxious time over the war scare but this morning we have the news that the Turks have accepted [without demanding an indemnity]. I am glad for I have been doing nothing else all these days but prophesy that war would certainly be avoided and have been considered all the time, especially by the [Kozadinou], an optimistic fool in consequence. Now I can say I told you so. ... Yesterday I was at Stratigos and got him to read me his translation of Dante in Greek which he began while in prison. I think it is quite good. The day before yesterday went to tea with the Grippes [Grippari family] to show them my photos. Mika [Skouzes] was there and Niko Baltazzi [the son of the executed Foreign Minster]. (Sunday, 27 May 1923) Both the temperatures and the exchange rate in Greece soared. I certainly shall not go back [to Greece] again this winter and I think the M[illers] will find it a pretty big expense [moving to Greece in the Autumn]. I am glad you saw the Burtons. It will be nice for me if I go to Egypt next year as they certainly will get me to see the Tut affairs.12(Wednesday, 6 June 1923) 12 In Cairo in early April the Earl of Carnarvon died suddenly from an infection. The news media, excluded by Carnarvon’s deal with The Times from covering the Tutankhamen excavations in detail, began trumpeting an ancient curse falling on anyone with the slightest connection to ‘violating’ the tomb of Tutankhamen and looked for ‘victims.’

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Gilbert was also making the rest of his summer travel plans around the Dodecanese and Lemnos which would include the discovery of a lost city on a remote island.

20. Karpathos: The Island of Poseidon In June 1923, Gilbert and Jacopich set sail again for the Dodecanese. Since Levi had a fever, Parlanti stayed behind with him. They stopped at Kos, where the heat was stifling. Jacopich familiarized himself with Kos while Gilbert took photos in the museum and the Crusader castle. He received a warm welcome from his friends from the previous year, but the Kaimakam [‘prefect’] of Bodrum informed them that the heat there on the Anatolian mainland had rendered the dogs rabid and wild jackals were roaming the area. Gilbert himself was ill from the heat and began worrying about what lay ahead for him. ‘I wish I knew something about my future: am beginning to get seriously worried’ about job prospects. (Wednesday, 6 June 1923) Maiuri informs me that the S.O.M. [Sovereign Military Order] Malta has offered a borsa di studio [‘bursary’] of 6000 lire for research connected with the history of the [Sovereign Order] in the Near East. The Missioni Italiani in Oriente add 4000 making it 1000 [sic] lire & the Rhodes Gov. gives a room free. Evidently this year, the concorso having taken place in April, no one went up for it. I wish you’d go to Paribeni and get him to give you all the details about it as I think it would be very easy for me to get it. Maiuri tells me to go ahead and one never knows if one might not get a permanent job here in the East. I love Rhodes & its history and I could manage very well here and do both archaeology and medieval stuff. (Sunday, 10 June 1923) In Rhodes Gilbert and Jacopich met della Seta, who had visited Maiuri’s new excavations at Philaremos and Ialysos on Rhodes. The three then left for Scarpanto, the medieval name then still used by the Italians for the island of Karpathos. Three millennia ago, Homer’s descriptive term for Karpathos was 232

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windy, and the relentless winds blowing from the north force even the trees to bend over permanently toward the south. In the summer months these north winds even had ancient and modern names, etesian and meltemi, respectively. Karpathos was so far off the usual shipping lanes in Gilbert’s day that he referred to it as ‘the most un-get-at-able island in the whole of the Aegean so I fear you’ll not have any news of me for some time.’ (Sunday, 10 June 1923) To add to their feeling of remoteness, their voyage from Rhodes to Karpathos was memorably rough, and Gilbert clearly enjoyed writing his account of it: W., Jacopich & I left Rhodes on the gunboat Palmaiola bound for Scarpanto. It was distinctly a soi-disant [‘so-called’] gunboat: it was really a tug with a gun, distinctly small, mounted on the bows; it goes about 7 knots & pitches abominably. On board, besides ourselves, there was a regular galaxy of great men. Major Liverani of the 34th Fus[iliers] was going out to inspect the garrisons of Scarpanto & [the nearby island of] Kasos & was accompanied by two lieutenants of his corps, one a certain T. Bellomo who isn’t but thinks he is [a ‘fine man’], & the other T. Saccone, whose perfect & impassive calm I have never seen troubled, speaks hardly at all, & is therefore either a great genius or a great fool: all the probabilities point to the latter. There were moreover on board Capitano Biscio, the commander of the Carabinieri who was an old friend of last year since he gave us hospitality when I went with Bozzy [de Bosdari] to Lindos [on Rhodes], Captain Tringali the commander of the guardie di Finanza, a certain Florentine Cimino, a specialist in scientific agriculture who was going to Scarpanto to investigate the philoxera attacks1 & a friend of his, a Roman Conte Vannicelli, who is an engineer on the Smyrna railway but as the T.T. won’t let him engine [sic] & as he found Smyrna both dull & expensive he came on to Rhodes & was doing the trip for pleasure! That morning however all went well. We fed bravely & told long, or rather deep, stories of the deep, & of the terrible crossings we had encountered bravely. Foremost in proclaiming his seamanship was Captain Biscio for indeed that day the sea was calm. I played bridge & lost 25 lire, the others sat & talked politics shop & women, the usual 1 The phylloxera aphid destroyed virtually all the European vineyards c. 1870 except those on the volcanic island of Santorini.

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topics of conversation amongst army intellectuals. (Wednesday, 18 July 1923) They landed first at the island of Khalki where they spent the night. We left [Khalki] in the morning decidedly full of beans but with a certain sense of foreboding. There is a stretch of open sea between [Khalki] & Scarpanto [to the north] which is notorious. At first all went well. We laughed and chatted gaily, but no one suggested bridge. Indeed the one cabin in the boat was already occupied by Cimino and one of the lieut who thought discretion was the better part of valor. The bunk on the bridge had been taken by Biscio who of course did not mind the sea in the least, but it made him sleepy. The sea got rougher and rougher, the spray forced us to leave our corner and seek shelter behind the bridge near the door of the cabin. But the Major [Liverani] did not move. At last a big wave drenched him severely and, pale and trembling, he sought refuge near us. We all got up; ‘Ti accomodi, signor Maggiore’. [‘Sit down, Major’] But I happened to be cheerfully smoking a Toscano. The major gave one look at my cigar and crying ‘No, No’ dashed into the cabin. It was the signal to break up. Only three remained standing Vannicelli Jacopich & myself who found that the bridge was the safest place of all. All the others, including a good percentage of the crew were hors de combat. The Major took the one bunk in the commander’s cabin, the others occupied the floor or the table. W does not suffer the sea as long as he is able to lie down and he took part of the floor under the major. The latter, poor chap, in the midst of the sufferings, still realized that the floor was occupied and suddenly a cry rent the air ‘Quick quick for pity’s sake bring me a basin someone or I’ll throw up over someone.’ You should have seen W’s bound when he heard this dreadful warning. Leaving the cabin’s dubious security he lay down on deck, with his little hat rammed low over his eyes and his hands crossed over his white waistcoated belly. A pretty sight! The whole deck seemed a battlefield covered with the bodies of the slain. But worse was in store. A huge billow burst right over the ship. We on the bridge got the spray but those below got soaked. The W for one instant disappeared from view & then jumped up drenched from head to foot. Sacconi who was sitting near the bulwark, was nearly carried away and all but his head submerged. He however still kept his impassive calm: he was very very ill. That wave

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cleared the battlefield and the poor corpses sought drier resting places. W hung himself out to dry on the bridge and did not open his eyes for the rest of the voyage. About halfway over we heard sounds behind us and saw Biscio emerge from his bunk. I, thinking that he really did not feel the sea was just about to chaff him when I fortunately noticed his hue & his expression & refrained in time. When it was all over the commander went kneeling by his bunk gave him ghostly consolation and advice. It was as touching as a deathbed scene. But all good things ahead eventually come to an end & so even the canale di Scarpanto was over in the morning. (Wednesday, 18 July 1923) It was as though Poseidon, the pre-Christian god of seas and storms, were still protecting his island from modern intruders. They landed at the largest town, Pigadhia, the best harbour on the east coast of the island. Its ancient name was Poseidion, Poseidon City, which was Potidaion in the local dialect, and it had once occupied the acropolis overlooking the bay to the north. The modern town extended northward around the bay over the necropolis of the ancient town of Potidaion.2 Ancient coins of Karpathos illustrate two dolphins swimming together as the emblem chosen to represent the island. As usual the Italians requisitioned the largest house available, which was a very traditional Karpathian home. We slept in the mayor’s house. Although quite modern it repeats the general type of the Karpathos (Scarpanto) houses. The floor is of beaten earth. In the center a big square post, sometimes carved, supports the main roof beam, also sometimes carved. The back half of the house or room (the term is synonymous as there are no houses with more than one room) is occupied by a sort of scaffold placed at about half the height of the walls, & reached by 3 high steps. On this scaffold the family throws mattresses & sleeps. Beds are unknown.3 The lower half of the scaffold is used as a sort of huge cupboard or storeroom. The other half of the room is the living room. On the walls brackets hold rows & rows of plates but hardly any of value. This disposition is very convenient if you have camp beds as there is plenty of room to put them in.4 (Wednesday, 18 July 1923) For a thorough discussion of this as well as of all the place names on Karpathos, see Minas 2000. The upper sleeping level supported by a central post on Karpathos is as distinctive as Odysseus’ bed built on an olive tree on the island of Ithaca. 4 It is easy to envision the inside of the distinctive wooden Karpathian house as having derived from the inside of a captain’s cabin on a wooden ship, so much so that traditional Karpathian houses may be still more circumstantial evidence for the unique seafaring heritage of the island. 2 3

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They traveled around the island on mules, three used for riding and two for baggage. On the outskirts of Pigadhia at Myli on the road to Menetes they explored an elaborate but looted Greek rock-cut tomb. Crossing over the mountain range from the east to the west coast, Gilbert admired the spectacular scenery (‘extraordinarily picturesque’) of both coasts simultaneously before descending to Arkasa, ancient Arkaseia. The harbour at Arkasa is dominated by an enormous promontory attached by a shallow neck of land to the beaches on either side of it. On this neck near the small church of Agia Sophia a round threshing floor had recently been constructed on top of the remains of an ancient church and its cemetery. A little clearing soon revealed the extensive and colourful mosaic floors ‘extraordinarily rich in geometric patterns’ of the atrium and narthex of an early Christian basilica dedicated to Agia Anastasia. To their surprise, only a few centimeters below these mosaic floors they discovered the well-preserved mosaic floors of an even earlier basilica, perhaps destroyed by an earthquake. Unlike the pagan Greeks who used to worship their gods outside in the open, the earliest Christians were forced to worship secretly indoors. At first using private homes, they later adapted the large architectural Roman structure, the basilica, to enclose and shelter their rituals. As the earliest form of Christian church in Greece, the basilica was a rectangular assembly hall with a curved apse at one end. The walls and ceilings would be decorated with paintings and mosaics illustrating biblical stories. Thus the inside of the earliest churches was much more significant than the outside. The early Byzantine Empire was essentially a sea empire, the first Christian thalassocracy, whose lands around the Mediterranean were united by fleets of naval and commercial ships when sailing was both safe and profitable. The rapid growth in population of the new imperial capital of Constantinople throughout the fourth and fifth centuries necessitated ever more shipments of grain from Egypt and accordingly a huge increase in south-north maritime traffic through the Dodecanese. The early Christians in the Dodecanese were so numerous and prosperous that they built dozens of basilicas along and around the coasts of every island, at least thirty-five around Karpathos alone, mostly along its shores, especially in ports.5 The sea-side locations are especially appropriate for a new religion that must have come by sea. Karpathos was well situated to benefit from the unique circumstances of the Early Byzantine world. Where its mountainous areas lacked much arable 5

Information kindly supplied by Vassilis Karambatsos.

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land, it did have harbours naturally sheltered from the north winds along the west coast, and its forests of pine trees could have provided timber and pitch for ships, but its greatest resource was its people. Located at the maritime crossroads of the sea lanes between Constantinople and Alexandria, Karpathian sailors became as renowned as Homer’s Phaiacians for their knowledge of seafaring. In the early fifth century, a fleet of state-owned Karpathian ships regularly brought grain from Alexandria in Egypt to Constantinople. Indeed, it may have been the Karpathian sailors’ knowledge of how to sail northward into the north winds of summer and against the southward currents that prompted their reputations as sea-farers. So the prosperity of Karpathos and the people living around its harbours derived from the sea and depended upon unimpeded safe passage. All of this peaceful prosperity of the Karpathians’ Golden Age came to an abrupt end, however, when Saracen pirates began raiding the Aegean in the mid-7th century, cutting off the sea lanes and terrorizing all the inhabitants of the coasts. They abandoned their ports and fled for safety to the highest nearby mountain tops. In the 10th century Karpathians contributed to the development of galley ships (Pryor and Jefffreys 2011: 191) and, when Nikephoros Phokas was planning his naval attack to expel the Saracens from Crete in 960 AD, he relied on Karpathian sailors to pilot his ships. When the Venetian monk Buondelmonti visited Scarpanto c. 1420, he observed that the inhabitants were stained black from pitch, the sap from pine trees which was used to make wooden ships water-proof. (Legrand 1974: 25, 181) So the Karpathians had a documented history as sea-farers and ship-builders spanning at least a thousand years. The local mayor at Arkasa, ‘a small calm fat man, eternally smoking a pipe,’ (Wednesday, 18 July 1923) let the Italians use his house and provided them with twenty workmen including himself as foreman at 20 lire per day to excavate. Leaving Jacopich to supervise the clearing of the mosaics, Gilbert and della Seta set out to explore the rest of the island. They rode northward along the west coast for another eight hours over ‘a difficult and in certain points ruined mule path’ to the next natural harbour at Leukos. Here four beaches served as ancient harbours sheltered from the north winds by the large offshore islet of Sokastro.6 On it they discovered many half-underground cisterns and a few large ones, all surrounded by fortification 6 Gilbert’s unpublished report on the Italian explorations around Karpathos contains a lengthy description of the remains around Leukos. The Italian Archaeological School at Athens generously gave permission to research and publish Gilbert Bagnani’s report.

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walls. Along the shore of the harbour they saw scattered walls of a bath house, perhaps belonging to one of the churches, and cuttings in the rock from industrial or commercial activities like keeping mollusks for their purple dye, evidence of the maritime endeavours of the early Byzantine inhabitants. A large natural amphitheatre faces west toward the islet of Sokastro. Here, just below the brow of the plateau, many caves still preserved large ancient blocks which had been reused to form doorways in enclosing walls. Some of the caves had been used for Roman burials. A small stairway cut into the rock supposedly descended under the water and re-emerged on Sokastro according to the local inhabitants, an oral tradition still current at Leukos even now. Up on top of the plateau, several round threshing floors contained triangular cornice blocks originally extracted from enormous quarries nearby and conceivably used in the pediment of a Greek temple-like structure. Also in the vicinity an elaborate L-shaped subterranean cistern had been constructed partly cut out of the living rock and partly built up with a ceiling of large blocks supported by rows of pillars. The ancient geographer Strabo wrote that Karpathos used to have four cities, including Nisyros, and Gilbert suggested that these extensive scattered remains around Leukos must have been an ancient port city, possibly the Nisyros mentioned by Strabo. Subsequent surveys and research have found evidence supporting Gilbert’s suggested identification. In the Late Roman/Early Byzantine period, the harbor town at Leukos had at least two basilicas and evidence for purple dye extracted from murex shells. (Nelson et al. 2015 and Karambatsos 2008) This flourishing port probably serviced the town further inland up on the plateau and must have had a name, and Nisyros is the only surviving unlocated place name available. In the Middle Byzantine period c. AD 1000, a fortified settlement was constructed on top of the islet of Sokastro with many small cisterns and several enormous ones, conceivably storing fresh water for fleets of ships. As the only island along the west coast of Karpathos and occupied in the medieval period, Sokastro must correspond to the island named on old Venetian maps as Sorzadori, which actually means ‘Anchorages’ in the Venetian dialect, sorgitori.7 The name of Frangolimnionas beach at Leukos still preserves the memory there of the Franks, or western Europeans such as the Venetians. It may well be that the sea-faring Venetians made use of the harbour at Leukos and the islet I am very grateful to Prof. Domenico Pietropaolo of the University of Toronto for assistance with the meaning of ‘Sorzadori.’

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of Sorzadori. At least one of these same medieval maps indicates that ‘paleoNisiro’ or ‘ancient Nisyros’ was located on the coast opposite Sorzadori. (Begg 2011 and Begg forthcoming) So Gilbert’s astute suggestion that the remains here are of ancient Nisyros, while not yet proved, is supported by documentary evidence. Gilbert and della Seta rode inland and upward for seven hours to reach the mountain-top village of Elymbos. Here, remarkably, the town was so isolated that its inhabitants still spoke a distinctive form of Greek related to ancient Dorian dialect.8 Their system of matrilineal inheritance through the female line seemed also to preserve a tradition of the ancient Karpathians, very suitable to the absence of their men folk away for prolonged periods at sea sometimes never to return. Women performed many tasks usually done by men such as managing the shops and animals, though now the men were out on the hills as farmers and shepherds. Long ago the villagers had brought inscriptions and other building blocks with them up from the harbours of Leukos and Vergounda to incorporate into their houses. The villagers could spot any ships approaching along the west coast from their perch 300 meters above the sea, adorned with many windmills. Gilbert and della Seta rode down to the ancient harbour at Vergounda. Until they were forced to flee the Saracen raids, the Early Byzantines had occupied the ruins here of the much older ancient Greek city of Brykous, whose defensive walls still surround the promontory. Gilbert examined the many tombs in the vicinity, including an unusual rock-cut two-storeyed tomb. At the end of a spur of the promontory a grotto, perhaps once a cave of pagan deities, had been converted into an underground church of St. John the Forerunner, now the focus of an age-old pilgrimage every August 29. Near the north end of Karpathos, the safe but small inlet of Tristomos offered a shelter to ships, as marked on most medieval maps. Either here or nearby on the narrow strait separating Karpathos from the island of Saria once stood a temple of Poseidon Porthmios, who offered protection from stormy seas.9 Crossing back over to the small port of Diafani on the east coast of Karpathos, della Seta and Gilbert sailed up to the now deserted island of Saria. Here at Palatia on both sides of a small cove they explored some unusual The linguistic scholar R. M. Dawkins had studied and published the dialect in 1903. The later Christian equivalent of Poseidon was Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of seafarers. There were several churches and beaches named Agios Nikolaos scattered around Karpathos.

8 9

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rectangular barrel-vaulted structures and domed square ones, one still with a partly preserved red-painted inscription. Although now believed to be Early Byzantine in date,10 nothing quite like this enigmatic assemblage of structures has been found anywhere else in the Aegean. After they sailed back south to Pigadhia, della Seta set sail for a brief circuit of the Dodecanese while Gilbert returned to Arkasa to excavate up on top of the promontory overlooking the basilicas by the shore. He discovered some Roman houses near the remains of a small Byzantine church and sketched some of the sections of walls on the promontory. He also sketched the walls and the beach harbour at Phoiniki north of the promontory and took photographs of the basilica mosaics. Jacopich would later publish the two superimposed basilicas at Arkasa11 while Gilbert’s report lay forgotten. Only in recent years has it become evident that the island of Karpathos lies at the east end of the Hellenic Trench, a major geological fault line below the sea where the African tectonic plate is lifting up the Aegean Sea plate. As a result, Karpathos has endured so many seismic shocks that it has become an ideal location for tectonic seismologists to study.12 While the violent separation of Sokastro from Leukos may have occurred in prehistoric times, it is hardly surprising that the Karpathians in historic times venerated Poseidon, who was not only the god of the sea but also the god of earthquakes. It was another summer of blistering heat and after three weeks exploring around Karpathos Gilbert set sail from Pigadhia back to Athens by way of Smyrna to see what was left of the city after the fire.

10 11 12

Deligiannakis 2016: 71-86. Jacopich 1925. Information kindly supplied by Prof. Karen Kleinspehn of the University of Minnesota.

21. Paradise Lost In July 1923, one year after visiting their maid’s brother Ernesto Ballardini in Smyrna, Gilbert returned to what was left of the once bustling city. Four months earlier, Gilbert’s American friend Carl Blegen had sailed to Smyrna on an American destroyer, since there was no longer any regular steamship service, to look into conditions at the American excavations at Kolophon (Deirmendere) in the Anatolian interior. As Blegen wrote on March 5, 1923, to the American excavator Hetty Goldman: Since the fire Smyrna is a miserable place, the best quarter and the larger part of the town lying completely gutted and in ruins. There is only one hotel which those who have used it say is extremely poor. We were fortunate on the Destroyer in making the acquaintance of Mr. [John Kingsley] Birge of the International College who took us out to Paradise [a suburb just east of Smyrna] and put us up in a comfortable room in the [College] President’s house. ...The Vali (of the Vilayet, Mustafa Abdul Halik Bey) added that we could always count on his cordial support and cooperation. How much that is worth I do not know; from what people in Smyrna said the Vali has little if any power, being obliged (or preferring) to refer even the slightest question to Ankara for settlement. ... Of course I spoke with Mr. Treat who is now in charge of the [American] Consulate. He seemed gloomy about the situation in Smyrna and advised us strongly not to go to Deirmendere. He said endless formalities were required and besides it would make him responsible for us, a responsibility he was decidedly unwilling to assume. Mr Van Hamster, whom we met at Paradise, was more optimistic. He said the country was perfectly quiet out toward Deirmendere and there was no question of any danger. Throughout this district there are, however, 241

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now no Christians left and just at the present moment some hostility is being manifested toward the French and the English. Americans on the other hand if recognized as such are regarded as friends and no one would harm them. ... To our great disappointment we learned that we could not go by train without a special permit from the Vali [governor]. .... According to all the people I talked with the most serious difficulty in the way of excavations will be for a long time the lack of workmen. There are none to be had now. All the Christians are of course gone and all able bodied Turks are mobilized in the army. There is no telling when the situation will be improved in this respect; certainly not until some time after a definite peace is made. ... About Smyrna, it seemed to me, there is still a feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty. The atmosphere is still a bit tense. The few Americans there go about rather cautiously not afraid, for there really is no danger whatever, but with a sort of subconscious hope that nothing will happen. It may be nothing more than the lingering effects of the disaster and the scenes that some of them saw. But there seems to be something oppressive about the air of the place.1 By the time Gilbert sailed into the harbor at Smyrna in July, 1923, rebuilding had begun. He reported that Ernesto and his family, who had a summer home across the bay in the suburb of Cordelio, ‘are very well & are still doing a lot of work. He is still one of the ones who is in the best position. His son-in-law is building bridges on the railway & in a month he made 40,000 lire. His son-inlaw’s brother is making the Italian school, so they are all quite well & do not need anything.’ (Wednesday, 18 July 1923) Gilbert’s carefully worded letter did not inform his mother or their maid Italia that Ernesto’s blade sharpening shop on Maltezika St. had been destroyed in the blaze. Ernesto undoubtedly gave Gilbert a vivid description of the fire as seen from across the bay in Cordelio, but this too he spared his mother. Gilbert’s newspaper article on ‘Smyrna Today. Life Amid the Ruins’ offered more general observations. It is far from easy nowadays to disembark at Smyrna, though there are no hard and fast regulations. On some days the passport examination Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, the Archivist at the American School at Classical Studies in Athens, generously gave permission for the publication of this letter preserved in the Carl Blegen archives, Series III, Box 9, Folder 3.

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is simply nominal, a few days later not even a Turkish visa will secure a landing. A spruce Turkish naval officer comes on board, accompanied by an equally elegant officer of police. They are both perfect linguists and perfect gentlemen. They listen to our protests and explanations with truly Oriental patience and courtesy; they are profusely apologetic; they make a note of our names and business, and assure us that they will immediately inform the Vali, who will certainly give us the desired permission to land. We part the best of friends and, of course, hear nothing more of the matter. With a little knowledge of Turkey, however, with unlimited time and patience, a friend in Smyrna with whom you can communicate (with the help of a megaphone long conversations can be held with the quay), and a well-filled purse, it is possible to get permission to land. Turkish officials suffer from erratic payment of salaries, and naturally they must make a living somehow. One of the easiest ways is the ‘facilitating’ of foreigners’ efforts to get into the town. Another is prohibition. The cafes now only serve coffee and lemonade, but no one finds any difficulty in getting spirits for home consumption. At present there are few foreigners in Smyrna, with the exception perhaps of Italians. They mostly reside in the suburb of Cordelio, supposed to be a landing place of Richard Coeur de Lion. The Italian colony numbers about 10,000. There are some 500 French and a few English and Americans, the latter chiefly engaged in buying tobacco; and there is, of course, a sprinkling of Jews. Italian is the language chiefly heard, besides Turkish and Greek. The Italians have most of the retail trade that exists, and are on the whole prosperous. Trade, however, is practically at a standstill, and the port is indeed a sad spectacle for one who remembers what it was like last year. Words cannot convey a true impression of the desolation of the city. The principal streets have indeed been cleared, but that is practically all. A few buildings in ferro-concrete have survived the fire, but nearly all the private houses have been utterly destroyed. Frank Street, formerly the busiest street in Smyrna, is now the centre of the wilderness, and a wide clearance marks the spot of the British Consulate [where Gilbert had visited Sir Harry Lamb and his wife].

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Along the quay a few cafes have sprung up in the ruins of the greater buildings, and the Italian Government has started to repair the larger portion of its schools, but this is all that has been done so far towards rebuilding the city. The Turks have drawn up a regular town-planning scheme, and anybody who engages in building must sign an agreement by which he renounces all claims to compensation if the Government finds it necessary to demolish the building. This is naturally far from encouraging to enterprise of any kind, and Smyrna is urgently in need of legislation of a character somewhat more elastic. (Bagnani 1923d) Winds blowing westwards had spared the neighbourhood where Beatrix de Candolle lived at the far north end of the Point along with the Aidin train station and the oil tanks nearby, the last also guarded by American sailors.2 In July 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed. Its terms were far less favorable to Greece and the Allies than the proposed Treaty of Sevres three years earlier but had to be accepted. The Turks were adamant about eradicating any possible foreign influence such as the old capitulations system which had given legal preferences to foreigners. Still the British managed to obtain all that was possible for the Allies because the British were intercepting and deciphering the Turkish telegrams between Ankara and Lausanne and knew precisely where the Turks were willing to compromise. In August, with the ratification of the Treaty, the terms of its Convention came into force, by which citizens of each country, according to their religion, were to be forcibly deported, lose their nationality and forbidden to return. Greece, whose population had roughly doubled from the Balkan wars only a decade earlier to about 4.5 million, now had to provide shelter and incomes for 1.2 million refugees, an instant population explosion of an additional 25%, nearly all requiring urgent assistance. Turkey by contrast would endure a net decline of over a million people, a major part of the merchants, bourgeoisie, and farmers. (Hirschon 2004b: 14-15) On both sides, the ‘exchangeables’ were awaiting deportation while pleading in vain with their governments not to be forcibly expelled from their homes. For the Greeks of Anatolia the Great Dream of their compatriots in Old Greece abruptly became a permanent living nightmare that shattered their Capt. Hepburn, the American Chief of Staff on board the USS Lawrence, had sent sailors ashore to guard the American consulate, schools and Standard Oil property. The ship’s passengers included Standard Oil officials from Constantinople. (Dobkin 1998: 174)

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lives forever. The brutal loss of everything they and their ancestors had known made their former lives seem like a vanished dream. For the rest of their lives they nursed a bitter nostalgia for a return that could never be to their lost Garden of Eden. Greek authors later referred to Anatolia as a ‘blessed land’ or even the ‘Promised Land’ after their expulsion.3 The refugees on the east coast of the relatively barren island of Lesbos could even see their lost homeland where ‘the mountains are so high that the snow never melts, and people bring it down to make sherbets with honey and rosewater; there are golden seas of wheat that feed the poor throughout the winter, the great rivers flow with rose-sugar and milk, and the bunches of grapes hanging from the vines are as big as babies,’ an enormous and bountiful land of milk and honey providing more than enough for everyone.4 Disoriented and deprived of money, occupations, status, identity and a sense of belonging, the refugees in Greece enshrined the collective memory of their lost communities, a heritage that helped to keep them culturally distinct and segregated from their new environments. Often they named their new settlement after their old community. For another decade many retained the dream of being able to return to their ancient homelands someday, while others hoped for the promised compensation for their losses, which rarely materialized. They faithfully supported the Venizelist party politically until he and Kemal agreed to abandon the refugees’ claims to compensation in 1930. Apart from the manner of their flight, the Turkish refugees would fare little better in their new homeland, as the Nationalist government was ‘blatantly indifferent’5 to their plight: any shelter they found was already in ruins and not yet legally theirs on a permanent basis. Regardless of any urban backgrounds, they were divided into agriculturalists, tobacco workers, or grape and olive producers. Merely for being in the wrong place and time, i.e., Greece in 1922, they too were turned into unassimilated refugees for the rest of their lives. Many Turkish women remained cloistered in the shadow of their husbands whereas the Greek female refugees, in the absence of their husbands, had to lead what was left of their families in public view. Most political scientists regard the Convention as successful because it prevented further wars between Greeks and Turks but other disciplines criticize it for its lack of ethical and humanitarian concerns. Moreover, over Mackridge 2004: 238 Stratis Myrivilis wrote the novel The Mermaid Madonna from the perspective of the island of Mytilini (Lesbos) opposite Anatolia, quoted by Mackridge 2004: 239. 5 Yildirim 2006: 142. 3 4

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the longer term, diminished contact between the peoples does not promote mutual understanding, but allows for separate national myth creation and historiography. (Hirschon 2004: 9-10) To the Turks Izmir was the successful culmination of their War of Liberation but to post-war Western writers Smyrna was the beginning of a new era where there were neither heroes nor winners in wars, nothing but victims. (Roessel 2002: 215, 224) Gilbert sailed back to Athens where he wrote several articles partly based on interviews with a ‘distinguished Greek general,’ whom he named in his letters to his mother as the imprisoned General Xenophon Stratigos. In reaction to former Prime Minister Lloyd George’s speech on the Lausanne Treaty, the Venizelist press portrayed Lloyd George as having lost his powerful position because of his love for Greece, and Greece would someday raise a statue of him. The royalist opposition, on the other hand, felt betrayed regarding the Eastern peoples as his victims and bitterly blamed him for exploiting Greece’s traditional faith in British prestige and urged that ‘it would be better for him to remain silent, remembering the ruin of Greece.’ (Bagnani 1923e) In essence the general believed that Kemal had had the time to gather his forces during 1920 because of Venizelos’ compliance with Allied reluctance to allow the Greek armies to advance while they still had superior numbers. It was only after the change of regime in Athens at the end of 1920 and the effective breaking of ties with the Allies that the royalist government was free to allow the Greek armies to advance, by which time it was too late. This article of Gilbert’s provoked a subsequent detailed debate in letters to the Post’s Editor from pro- and antiVenizelist writers. Reporting on ‘Republican Efforts in Greece. Fiasco by Land and Sea,’ Gilbert wrote: Since rumors have been current abroad about an attempted Republican coup d’état in Greece, a summary of the facts may be useful. When, at the end of May, it became evident that there would be no war with Turkey, the Commander-in-Chief, General Pangalos, thought he would use the troops to proclaim a Greek Republic. General Pangalos relied chiefly on a Division composed largely of Cretans, which he transferred to the neighborhood of Salonika, and on the Navy. But when the officers and troops learnt that they were to be used to further General Pangalos’s political aims, they refused to follow him. Remaining thus a General without an Army, he had a stormy interview with Colonel Plastiras, which ended in his forced retirement, and the appointment

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of the Minister of War, General Mavromichalis, in his place. Admiral Hadjikiriakos later concentrated the Fleet in Crete, hoping for better success. But the superior officers of the Navy refused to follow him, and the attempt has ended in a ridiculous fiasco. Admiral Hadjikiriakos’ popularity among the lower ranks has so far prevented his removal. Although the greater part of the Venizelist Party is more or less openly Republican, most of them realize that the present moment is unsuitable for a coup d’état. (Bagnani 1923f) There was an urgent need to hold elections for a new assembly in Greece to bestow some credible legitimacy on the government officials and to give formal approval to the backing of a loan, but when and how to do it were matters for discussion. Demobilization of the troops was imminent and would greatly affect the outcome of any national election. Thus who should conduct the elections, a civilian or a military government? And how should the transition to civilian government take place? Gilbert observed ‘the late Commander-inChief, General Pangalos, whose recent attempt at a Republican coup failed so ignominiously, is still watching for a chance to fish in troubled waters; on the other hand, General Metaxas, the leader of the Opposition, is not a man to allow himself to be muzzled indefinitely.’ (Bagnani 1923g) Each man would later become a dictator in Greece, as Gilbert astutely predicted. Gilbert was not shy to criticize publicly the censorship in effect in Greece, which had affected both the transmission of his own articles as well as his personal correspondence from Anna Kozadinou. A strict censorship is still in force [August 4]. The correspondence of suspected persons is tampered with, and foreign correspondents have to put up with the military censorship which, instituted ostensibly to prevent the communication of news of military importance, continues in peace time its vexatious interference in purely political matters. (Bagnani 1923g) Despite another heat wave, Gilbert developed his photographs of the mosaics on Karpathos, and was telegraphing a good deal lately and sent an article about Smyrna. Wonder if they will publish it. The elections will probably be held at beginning of October and ask the MP if they want me to cover them. If

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they do I’ll ask for a good salary while doing them. If I’ve got to stay here any longer than is necessary [for the School] it must be made worth my while. (Saturday, 28 July 1923) Meanwhile Della Seta was furious because the Greek Archaeological Society had rejected his request to excavate on the island of Lemnos until they had a chance to look at it although they had already allowed the French to work on the recently acquired islands of Thasos and Samothrace. Yesterday Halbherr passed through on his way to Crete. He seems pretty fit although he has had a bad rheumatic attack. He asked to be remembered to you. The chief expects to leave on Monday for Italy and I will go the same day to Delos. One of the Grippe girls is at Mykonos, and I shall probably be put up there by them. ... Goudas & Stratigos ought to be let out of prison now under the peace treaty but so far no sign of it. Please tell me how much the Acqui cure costs as Stratigos is thinking of going there if they let him out and I promised him that I would let him know. (Thursday, 9 August 1923) I have been spending a delightful fortnight at Mykonos. There were a lot of nice people there. Helen Grippari of course took me under her wing and gave me a room in her uncle’s house. There were originally 7 Grippe brothers and now there are 3, all resembling one another in a ridiculous way. They are all more less violently Venists. Then there were the Kambanis. I had met the father [Michael Lorenzo Kambanis from Mykonos] who was (royalist) MP in the last Parliament. He is very rich and has a magnificent collection of Greek coins, and makes a good deal of money in trafficking in them. He is very nice and has a very kind wife. His daughter Sophie is not pretty and has a very nice figure and holds herself very well. Her younger brother and sister are both handsome. They will pass through Rome in October and I have promised to give them a good time. Sophika is furious with me because in the evenings, instead of going out for a walk with her, I used to sit and talk politics with Papa. Can’t you see me! ... The people at Mykonos are very proper, no mixed bathing is allowed, and Helen told me that my bathing drawers were scandalous. They are rather shoddy but not as bad as all that. Indeed I told her that it was only in reluctant compliance with popular feeling that I wore anything at all. The temperature was delightful and there is always a breeze. (Sunday, 26 August 1923)

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Gilbert so enjoyed his stay on Mykonos that he waxed poetic in his subsequent article about it. When in August the temperature in Athens is somewhere about 100 in the shade and the political thermometer is above boiling point, it is high time to quit if one desires to preserve one’s sanity. I can never understand why people here go to Europe for the summer when Greece itself offers thousands of spots which seem to have been created on purpose for a rest cure. ... Mykonos has a large and interesting museum; it has also some ancient ruins, but you will find out all about them in guide books: let me rather dwell on that most interesting subject of all, the country itself and its inhabitants. (Bagnani 1923i) After noting the presence of bracing winds and about 350 churches for a population of only 5,000, and admiring the Venetian-style iconostasis in the monastic church of Tourliani, Gilbert concluded: And how can I sufficiently praise the charming hospitality and courtesy of all classes of the population? ... I reached my high water mark when our excellent old housekeeper, Katernõ, addressed me as Ματια μου, ‘my little eyes’! People have called me many names, some pleasant, some otherwise, but never before have I been someone’s ‘little eyes,’ And it is therefore to Katernõ, the personification of the island’s kindness and simplicity, that I dedicate this insular dithyramb. (Bagnani 1923i) In response, his hostess Helen Grippari sent him a most appreciative note. Gilbert enjoyed his respite from his compatriots while vacationing on Mykonos. He sailed over to the small nearby island of Delos twice, the first time alone and the second time with acquaintances from Mykonos. After having to comfort the ladies from sea sickness in a small boat, Gilbert wrote I am neither made to be a father nor a sweetheart. I intend before I marry to find out whether she is a good sailor.6 My stay at Mykonos has done me a lot of good: I am far less grumpy and dissatisfied than before I went when I was badly in the blues. ... Here I am alone since the

6

Ironically, years later, Gilbert’s wife, Stewart, disliked sailing as it made her seasick.

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others are in Crete or Rhodes and am very quiet and contented. ... The [Kozadinou] has got off to Crete with Levi. (Sunday, 26 August 1923) In his newspaper article on Delos and its famous sanctuary of Apollo, Gilbert described everything except the sanctuary itself, preferring instead the secular and commercial aspects of daily life there. Delos was in the First Century B.C. the greatest mart of the East, the meeting-place of East and West. ... On the north side of the Sacred Lake, on the shores of which Latona had given birth to Apollo and Artemis, a corporation of Italian merchants, calling themselves the Hermaistae from the god [Hermes] under whose protection they trafficked, built themselves a huge and sumptuous exchange. In the centre is a great quadrangle surrounded by a portico on to which open numerous rooms of various size, many still preserving their sumptuous mosaic floors. Numerous inscribed bases attest the Corporation’s gratitude to its benefactors. A similar, but smaller, exchange was built by the merchants of Berytus who placed themselves under the protection of Poseidon, and these buildings give us a vivid idea of the commercial life of the ancient, who, even as now in Southern countries much business is done round cafe tables, did not have regular business premises, but bought and sold in the open air, in the shadow of a portico in their club. In the hours of leisure, Delos offered plenty of amusements. Besides the big theatre, built in Greek times and enlarged and improved under the Romans, there are still the remains of the stadium and of a large gymnasium. Thanks to the generosity of the late Duc de Loubat the French School has been able to excavate a considerable portion of the residential quarter of the city. The streets were very narrow, and cannot have been used by wheeled traffic, but they are well paved and the drainage is excellent. A butcher’s shop with the marble table on which he cut the meat and which retains the signs of the blows, shows still in a little niche a relief of the butcher, wearing a large brimmed hat and holding in his hands a goat and a goose, evidently the most popular of his goods. On the stuccoed walls idlers as usual have written their names, done accounts, and drawn various designs. One of the most popular subjects were ships, which shows what a part the sea played in the prosperity of the town.

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The houses are smaller than the Pompeian ones and have no gardens; evidently the cost of land was considerable. All houses have a central court surrounded by columns, and sometimes paved with beautiful mosaic, on to which open the reception and living rooms. In some cases the stairs leading to the upper stories are preserved. The mosaics are often very fine: one represents Dionysos riding on a tiger; a very frequent motive is an anchor round which curls a dolphin, exactly similar to the well-known mark of Aldine editions, and evidently refers to the sea-faring life of the proprietor. In one house the presence of a mosaic representation of a panAthenaic amphora with an olive crown proves that some member of the household was victorious in the Athens games. Since there is not a drop of water on the island, the question of the water supply must have been very acute. Every house has a large vaulted cistern for the rainwater, sometimes of enormous depth, under the floor of the court, and there are huge public reservoirs, one behind the scene of the theater. Half way up the rocky slope of the Cynthus [mountain] is the oldest sanctuary of Apollo, one of the oldest temples in Greece. A fissure in the rock has been artificially widened and covered with ten enormous blocks of granite, weighing several tons apiece; a large block of granite on the floor looks as if it had been prepared to receive an image. This is the site of the most ancient oracle of Apollo, even older possibly than Delphi itself. From the sanctuary two stairways cut in the rock lead to the summit of the Cynthus, which was crowned by a temple of Zeus and Athena. Many remains of the temple are preserved, including some mosaic pavements. But these ruins are forgotten when, before our eyes, the explanation of the name Cyclades is unfolded to us. All round us is a circle, a ‘Kyklos,’ of islands, large and small. Almost touching Delos is Rheneia, the Greater Delos, which was the Necropolis of Delos itself, whose sacred soil could not be polluted either by a burial or by birth. Further away are Mykonos, Tenos, Syra, Paros and Naxos, and, in the gaps we catch glimpses of islands still further away, the Cylcades dancing round the birthplace of the son of Zeus. (Bagnani 1923h)

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Just when Gilbert had decided to accept a permanent position as a correspondent for the Morning Post, murder upset his plans and he would be asked to spy for Mussolini.

22. Mission to the Underworld: Spying for Mussolini On the morning of Monday 27 August, 1923, a Ford automobile carrying Greek Col. Dimitrios Botzaris turned a corner on the road between Ioannina and Kakavia on the Albanian border and suddenly came upon a Lancia saloon car surrounded by the bullet-riddled bodies of Gen. Enrico Tellini and the other members of the Italian delegation assigned to determine the border between Greece and Albania. A car with the Albanian delegation had set out first from Ioannina for Kakavia followed by the second car with the Greek delegation led by Botzaris, but the Greeks had encountered car trouble and so had stayed behind in Ioannina for repairs, allowing the Italian car to be the one immediately following the Albanian car. An initial Greek investigation later that same day determined that robbery was not the motive since no valuables had been taken. Footprints could be seen leading into the dense forest towards the Albanian border, only 45 minutes away from the scene of the crime. The murders were clearly premeditated because, after the passage of the Albanian car in front, tree branches had been placed along a part of the road to slow or stop the second car. Although the frontier area was notorious for lawlessness and bands of brigands, the unsolved murders have always appeared politically motivated. It has never been certain, however, whether the intended victims in the second vehicle were the Italians or the Greeks. Indeed, only a few months later Col Botzaris was ambushed himself. (Barros 1965: 20-32) Mussolini’s immediate reaction to the massacre of the Italian delegation was moderate, even uncertain, but he was spurred to over-reaction by antiGreek demonstrations throughout Italy and the cables from his ambassador in Athens: Giulio Cesare Montagna was so openly hostile to the Greek revolutionary government that Greek newspapers denounced him. Soon Mussolini demanded a public funeral, an enormous fine, and an investigation by Count Ferdinando Perrone di San Martino, the Italian Military Attaché in 253

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Athens. In fact, Mussolini had already been planning to occupy the defenseless island of Corfu in case of any Greek reaction to Italy’s imminent proclamation of sovereignty over the Dodecanese. He took advantage of the massacre of Italians on Greek soil to send ships which bombarded the old fortress on Corfu housing refugees, despite secret reports and assurances from Perrone that Corfu was not defended by any artillery (Barros 1965: 79). Several were killed, mostly school children, from among the 20,000 or so refugees on Corfu. The Italian navy occupied Corfu under the guise of a ‘pledge’ against payment of the fine. The resulting anti-Italian demonstrations on Crete were so violent that they persuaded Halbherr to tell the Italian students there to leave Crete immediately as he could not ensure their safety. The female students left Greece itself soon after, reluctant and embittered over their aborted studies. Here is a pretty kettle of fish! I was lucky enough to send off my last letter with Parlanti who left with the last boat to leave for Italy & which must have reached Corfu the very moment of the bombardment. I think the latter has put us [Italians] completely in the wrong, & I must say the people here [in Athens] have behaved very well about it. The [Italian] legation & the Patissia schools are guarded by troops but here [at the School] we have nothing [no troops] and nothing has happened. I was to have left tomorrow for Arkadia with the Bouboulina but we have put it off for the moment. On Sunday [2 September] I went to the Serpieris at [their country estate at] Pyrgos and stayed to dinner. De Facendis, the consul whom you saw at my lecture, arrived there to speak to Serpieri and give the truth according to the legation. [Domenico de Facendis was the Chargé d’Affaires at the Italian Embassy in Athens and far more moderate than Montagna.] One never knows now what the morning may bring, Tokyo earthquake [of Sept 1, when over 100,000 were killed] or other disaster. Grant telegraphed to me to cover the situation by wire but I had to write to him and tell him that as a member of the Italian School I could not possibly mix myself up in the matter as it might compromise the legation. Pity as now I had a chance of making heaps of money out of the MP. (Friday, 7 September 1923) Since it was now general knowledge that Gilbert was the foreign correspondent for the Morning Post, any information in his articles might be construed as revealing the thoughts coming from sources inside the Italian Embassy and Government. Rather than take advantage of his connections, Gilbert’s clear

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sense of diplomatic and journalistic ethics cost him this opportunity with the Post. The day before yesterday [Wednesday 5] the Kozadinou, Levi, Jacopich, & the Reggiani came back from Crete. Halbherr did not want them to stay any longer and so back they came. As they were turning in the car the last corner of the Phaleron street quite close to the School another car butted into them and upset the car. The smash was bad but luckily only the chauffeur was seriously hurt. Levi is the worst of our lot and only just escaped putting his eye out. He has a wound on the temple however and will have to stay in bed for some 10 days. The others got off with bruises, the least hurt was the Kozadinou who is nursing Levi with me. She enjoyed Crete immensely and declares she is in love with Halbherr. … Of course if this crisis continues and there are still no boats I will come back with the O.E. [Orient Express] but I hope by the end of the month it will all be over. I did not write before as the post was all at sixes and sevens and these last two days have been nursing Levi. What a life! Next time I am going to be ill. Am so glad that you have been sensible and have not been sending me hysteric telegrams. (Friday, 7 September 1923) Although Greece agreed to accept most of Mussolini’s demands, the Italians steadfastly remained in possession of Corfu while an international investigation began in Ioannina. Gilbert was already developing photos of the massacre for the Italian Legation when Ambassador Montagna asked him to report on the political feeling in the Peloponnese, which Montagna undoubtedly would have ‘spun’ against the Greeks. In addition, Gen. Perrone asked Gilbert to reconnoiter the potential military vulnerabilities of the railway running along the south coast of the Corinthian Gulf. Decades earlier the Italians had built a traction rail line to bring ore down from Kalavryta through a narrow winding gorge to the coastal rail line along the Corinthian Gulf at Diakopto. Since Gilbert had already been planning a hike with Mme Bouboulis through Arkadia, he undertook the ‘spy’ mission as he called it under the cover of hiking with Mme Bouboulis and Mme Eydoux1 to the so-called Source of the River Styx. The Styx was one of the legendary rivers in the underworld, famed for French General Joseph-Paul Eydoux trained the Greek army before the First War and died in 1918.

1

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its miraculous powers, either protective or lethal, and was located in Arkadia. This region was also known for its caves, both in Greek mythology when the maddened daughters of King Proitos took refuge in one, and today where the spectacular Cave of the Lakes is indeed reminiscent of rivers leading into deep dark underground worlds. In the twentieth century, however, the Source of the Styx referred to Mavronero, a remote waterfall in Arkadia difficult to reach. In the Spring, melting snow from Mt Chelmos flows over the top of a steep cliff some 600 feet straight down to a small stream which cascades its way eventually into the Krathis river, and it was this waterfall that Gilbert and the ladies trekked to see. On their ascent, the travelers walked up to the cave monastery at Megaspeleion (which later blew up in a disastrous explosion in 1934) and on to the village of Kalavryta before passing over eastward to the waterfalls on the east face of Mt Chelmos. Today there are several hiking paths in the area, but those closest to the waterfall itself are arduous and treacherous with loose stones and, since the lofty waterfall can be more safely seen from a distance, it seems likely that Gilbert and the ladies hiked only within viewing distance of the waterfall; certainly they neither touched nor crossed over it. At last your letter of the 3rd inst. So glad you have been sensible about all this bust up. I did not send you a telegram on the 14th [his mother’s birthday] as I was afraid it might give you a shock but I can assure you that you were in my thoughts. … Tomorrow morning [Sunday 16] we, Boub, Eydoux & I leave for the Peloponnese. The motor is to be here at 5: it is now a quarter to 1 (of tomorrow a.m., not p.m.) so I expect to sleep in the train. Will probably be back Wednesday or Thursday. … The Kozadinou leaves on Tuesday for Vityna [a summer resort in the mountains of the Peloponnese] so I have said goodbye to her today [as Gilbert expected to be soon leaving Greece himself]. I made her a present of a Greek embroidered dress which she had admired very much and which really is to her very becoming. I think she was very touched. I have not the vaguest idea of what to give the Bouboulina: as I practically live there I must give her something really nice. Ought I to tip her servants and how much? Saw Perrone & Montagna yesterday [Friday 14] as I had been printing for the legation over 100 photos of the Jannina crime. Perrone wants me to report on the military possibilities of the railway & especially

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on what points are vulnerable from the sea; Montagna a report on the political feeling. Quite an important personage! I think it funny my spying while traveling in the company of two Greek ladies one of which I am half in love with. ... Jacopich & the Reggiani are leaving on Monday and will take this letter. It is now after one and as I have only three hours I hope you will excuse me. (Saturday, 16 [sic] September 1923) The journey to the Source of the Styx and back to the land of the living was Gilbert’s initiation into the world of ‘spying’ for the Italian government. While he had voluntarily sought out political feelings in Greece before as an anonymous correspondent for an English newspaper, he was now reporting officially to the Italian authorities, Montagna and Perrone, who were reporting directly to Mussolini. Moreover, Gilbert was now investigating the military aspects of the railway along the Gulf of Corinth for potential points of attack by the Italian navy, the rail line he and his companions were taking to Diakopto, up to Kalavryta, and back from Akrata to Corinth and Athens. I have had a most enjoyable trip to the Styx with Mmes Bouboul & Eydoux. The B. lost the train at Corinth but came along later in a goods train. We went to the convent of Megaspeleion & Kalavryta & then went up the Chelmos, whence one gets a perfectly glorious view & to the falls of the Styx which would be magnificent if there was a little water, but there isn’t [in September] & so back to Akrata [train station on the coast] & Athens. Great fun & the ladies stood it really wonderfully. (Monday, 24 September 1923) Gilbert’s reports to Montagna and Perrone are not known, and he makes no further reference to them in his letters to his mother. While he was still ‘spying’ in the Peloponnese, a public funeral was held in Athens [Wednesday, 19 September] for the victims of the massacre and full honours were paid to the Allies, but Mussolini did not abandon Corfu until the end of the month. By rejecting the validity of the League of Nations, he was setting a precedent. Britain and France had acquiesced in his extortionate plan and Greece was humiliated. Only later was it revealed that an Albanian witness testified that on hearsay evidence a band of local Albanians, including at least three born in Greece, had carried out the massacre. The Albanians in the first car were never questioned. (Barros 1965: 28, n. 32)

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As the end of Gilbert’s second year in Greece neared in late September, he began saying goodbye to his society friends, some of whom were leaving to winter in other countries. His fellow students were also in the process of leaving for home. After being released from prison, Admiral Goudas invited Gilbert to join him on the island of Poros in the Saronic Gulf, about two hours sailing from Athens, together with Mme Baltazzis, and he stayed with them from Monday 1 until Thursday 4 October, before returning to Athens to sail for home. On Thursday [20] Goudas came to see me. He has been let out at last & has gone off to Poros. He has asked me to go there with the Baltazzis at the beginning of next week & I have accepted. They tell me it is very pretty & there is a temple [of Poseidon] there in which Demosthenes committed suicide. ... On Friday dined with the Corriere della Sera correspondent and took him to see the Karagiozis, the Greek Punch and Judy [traditional shadow puppet theatre emanating from Asia Minor] … The Kozadinou has gone to Vytina [a mountain resort in Arkadia in the central Peloponnese], I think with Levi, with whom I suspect she is in love. [In 1928 Doro Levi and Anna Kozadinou would marry in Florence2] … Parlanti writes that Della Seta3 has married!! Sara vero? [‘Can it be true?’] Jacopich & the Reggiani have left for Italy, the Caianiello back from Rhodes has gone to Mykonos & Delos, & Levi is in the Peloponnese, I think, as I mentioned, with the Kozadinou. (Monday, 24 September 1923) The last letter from Athens! I am leaving tomorrow [Monday 1 Oct] for Poros & will come back probably on Thursday. Levi is leaving Tuesday [October 2] & will take this [letter]. (Sunday, 30 September 1923) Gilbert was beginning a new friendship with Mme Chariclée Baltazzis, the bereaved widow of one of the executed politicians. Her father and grandfather had both served in the highest political posts, and her late husband had served as Foreign Minister in Prime Minister Gounaris’ cabinet. Gounaris and Baltazzi had traveled together to London and Paris in a vain effort to obtain loans the previous year. Gerlini 1995: 170). It was a summer for School Directors’ getting married. See Pounder 2015 for the unusual marriages of the Americans Carl Blegen and Bert Hodge Hill.

2 3

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The Baltazzis has sent me a photo of her husband. I wrote a nobilissima lettera [very eloquent letter] that took me the whole of the afternoon to compose. I was afraid I had laid it on a bit thick & showed it to Levi who thought it was excellent, &, as he said, in the circumstances she is not so critical about rhetoric as we are. It was certainly a very good bit of writing. I think that Wace will leave by the same boat as I do: cheerful the return of the unemployed! I have a most fearful amount of luggage with me. Am going to roll up all my embroideries in the mattress of my camp bed & will try & bluff my carpet through as a plaid but I don’t know where to put the Rhodes plate & the coffee service & all my books! What a life! Am glad to hear that Lugli has increased the population! Has he been born with a black shirt [i.e., Fascist]? I can’t be bothered to write any more when we are about to meet again so soon. (Sunday, 30 September 1923) In late October, a counter-revolution encouraged largely by retired officers broke out among army garrisons in Euboia, Macedonia, Epirus and primarily in the Peloponnese, the royalist stronghold, but significantly not in Athens where so many successful military coups began. Plastiras closed anti-Venizelist newspapers, re-established martial law and censorship, and soon defeated forces near Salonika and Megara, re-occupying Corinth and Patras. Some editors and officers escaped but many others, including Admiral Goudas, were arrested. As the leaders were known Venizelists, it is more likely they were attempting to return to constitutional rule rather than install Gen. Metaxas in power. Nonetheless, through November extremists in the military openly agitated for a republic and began holding demonstrations in Athens. In November Henry Morgenthau, formerly American Ambassador to Constantinople, arrived in Greece as the head of the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission for the League of Nations. With loans from abroad, he was able to follow Charilaos’ lead in providing for the permanent resettling of the refugees still sheltered in schools, churches, warehouses, etc.4 Gilbert’s friend in Rome, the journalist/historian William Miller, also moved to Athens in November 1923. In response to the growing calls for a republic, a massive royalist demonstration held in early December ended violently when several were shot and killed. At the elections on December 16, many royalists abstained from 4

Morgenthau 1929; see also Howland 1926 and Ladas 1932.

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voting, and in a confused result various pro-republican groupings gained the upper hand. Army and navy officers, led by the dangerously ambitious Gen. Pangalos, who would later become a dictator over Greece, forced the Cabinet to advise King George and Queen Elizabeth to leave Greece immediately. Protesting his impartiality, the King left for Romania just three years after his father’s triumphant return from exile. The Cabinet and politicians finally succeeded in persuading Venizelos to return from Paris to Athens, and December 30 Venizelos set sail from Marseilles for Athens. His return was short-lived, however, as even he could not control the military and socialist politicians and he once again went back into self-imposed exile in Paris, his second home. Ironically, it was Greece where the million Orthodox refugees were forced to live in permanent exile from their homeland. Gilbert’s friend Mme Bouboulis wrote to him lamenting how bleak everything now seemed in Athens, especially with many of her friends wintering in France or Italy. The embittered widow of the executed Foreign Minster George Baltazzi wrote of Venizelos: ‘After having assassinated all the political men able to stand up to him, he will continue his work of destruction while always maintaining that he doesn’t dabble in internal politics. Unfortunately you are no longer here; for your pen would have presented to the whole world this entire tragedy with the clairvoyance which characterizes you.’5 Having rested from his travels, in March Gilbert offered to translate George Baltazzi’s legal defense into English to help exonerate his reputation internationally and restore his good name. The grieving widow was profoundly grateful. When Gilbert mentioned Sir Arthur and Lady Crosfield6 in one of his letters to her, Mme Baltazzis asked him if the Crosfields’ close friend Lt Col Henry George Mayes, who was then in Rome, could supply the names of politicians, financiers, journalists, and members of society who have associated, chatted and worked in London with Mr. Gounaris and my husband. ... My husband often spoke with emotion of his inexhaustible interest & of his infinite pains which he gave Letter dated 27 December 1923 from Chariclee Baltazzis to Gilbert Bagnani. Sir Arthur Crosfield was a wealthy industrialist whose family made its fortune from soap manufacture in 19th century Warrington, in Cheshire. Entering parliament as Liberal MP for Warrington in 1906, he moved to London where he married Domini Elliadi, a beautiful Greek millionaire. They built a lavish house called Witanhurst which still dominates the Highgate ridge not far from Kenwood. The Crosfields had offered their London Highgate home to Venizelos when he married the wealthy Helena Schilizzi 15 September1921. After Venizelos’ death, his widow sold her house in Athens to the British Government to be its Embassy; see Llewellyn Smith 1998. 5 6

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himself during their stay in London to back them up and facilitate their so arduous task. Will you tell him that in the correspondence of my husband that his name comes up almost every day with the expression of his acknowledgement for services rendered.7 Mayes was a former Manitoban tennis champion who trained the Canadian Air Force and the RAF and was invited by the Greek Government in 1919 to advise on national physical education. He had closely followed the court martial proceedings and sent unheeded warnings to the British Foreign Office of the imminent danger to the accused.8 When Mayes died of blood poisoning at their London home in 1928, Crosfield wrote his obituary for The Times. Mme Baltazzis also asked Gilbert if he could supply names of friends encountered during her husband’s long stay in Rome in January-February 1922, such as [Italian Foreign Minister for part of 1922 Carlo] Schanzer, [Italian Foreign Minister Tommaso] Tittoni, [Italian Ambassador to London Marchese Pietro Tomasi] Della Torretta, Cardinal Gaspari, Roberto Galli [Italian Deputy who turned in his Greek medals upon hearing of the execution of the politicians] and several journalists, diplomats and ordinary people. ... It is impossible for me to tell you how much your desire to publish in England the defenses of the victims with the official documents has moved me to the depth of my soul. I have thought of it several times without finding the means to do it. I feel - I am sure – that they would have desired that, and that we owe it to them.’9 In May 1924, Gilbert sailed once again from Brindisi to Patras and, since the Corinth Canal was closed, took a train to Athens. For parts of his journey he was accompanied by Paul Whitbrooke, another Byzantinist friend of Mrs Strong in Rome. Gilbert described him as stingy and complaining about expenses, with an inclination to childish tantrums.10 As the train entered the station, Letter dated 28 March 1924 from Chariclee Baltazzis to Gilbert Bagnani. Vickers 2001: 167. 9 Letter dated 3 April 1924 from Chariclee Baltazzis to Gilbert Bagnani. 10 Augustus Julius Wattenbach was born in April 1882 in Garden Reach Camberwell Surrey/London at the same address as Augustus Wattenbach retired East India merchant and President of the London and Hanseatic Bank who died January 1888. In 1917 while he was a member of the Isthmian Club in London he changed his name to Augustus Julius Paul Whitbrooke. In 1927 Whitbrooke would split with Mrs Strong and write an article about a 13th century Italian tomb ‘Intorno ad una tomba [Tomb of Cardinal Annibaldi by Arnolfo di Cambio] del Duecento,’ Roma V (1927): 49-51. In 1945 as Paul Whitbrooke living in the Casa San Paolo in Ascona, Switzerland, he prepared an 7 8

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a porter jumped onto the train shouting my name so I got hold of him & he took me to the Majestic where Anna Kozadinou had only managed to get me a double bedded room. Athens is simply packed. I went round & saw her that evening & I told her about everything. Yesterday I went round & got some money, changed at 210 & today it’s 220: just my luck. ... I then met Jacopich in the street & he told me a lot of gossip about the school. The marriage [of Alessandro della Seta] has been a disaster as Mrs W [della Seta] is terribly jealous & had opened all his correspondence & has found there letters which confirm her suspicions. She has made awful scenes which have been heard all over the house & has upset the applecart generally. She has also forced him to be very rude to the Kozadinou who has behaved very nicely about it. And more to be told viva voce. I then went to the K[ozadinou] & we went on together to poor Mme Baltazzis whom I found very much in the same condition as last year. She seems very grateful. The K agreed that the French [translation?] was awful. I there met Ma Bouboulina very pleased to see me. Mme B thanked you so much for all that you had done & were going to do. I then went & saw the Millers who seem very fit & he seems to be very happy to be here. Full of politics but very reserved. They took me to dinner & talked Byzantine [Miller was a well-regarded historian of medieval Greece] & Rome gossip etc. Rather colorless. Very full of the Hermes affair. Morgenthau’s first idea was to buy the statue!! Wonderful! [Henry Morgenthau, unofficial adviser to the Greek government, announced in Geneva in April that the Greek government had offered to lend to the US the famous statue of Hermes attributed to Praxiteles, but Dr. Edward Robinson, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, objected saying it would be too risky.] ... I have naturally seen a good deal of the Baltazzis. ... The old lady [Mme Baltazzis] I find is no worse physically than last year, of course she is no better. They all say that I do her such a lot of good and treat her so well. She was perfectly delighted with your letter to the Kozadinou. She weeped [sic] as she spoke to me about it yesterday morning. She told me to thank you so much and that she felt so much your phrase that ‘it was a labor of love.’ She has given me a beautiful old silver Greek répoussé exhibition of Byzantine icons from Russia and the Balkans from private Swiss collections. He was still residing there when he died 10 July 1951 in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, aged 69.

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bowl. Of course I did not want to accept it but she insisted. She is going to send you some cards to put into the [translated defense] pamphlets. You might send a few copies to the Kozadinou. I think they would be quite safe. (Thursday, 15 May 1924) After the last Tsarist Russian Ambassador to Greece, Count Elim Demidoff, had been expelled by the Bolsheviks from his house in Athens, Mme Demidoff was staying with Gilbert’s friend, Mme Bouboulis, while they looked for a new home. They lived in Athens for the rest of their lives. Gilbert met della Seta and his new wife, who was a violently jealous woman. There was a cooling in the friendship between Gilbert and William Miller over Greek politics. Gilbert had spent the better part of two years living and traveling in Greece, and after time to reflect saw more clearly that his own sympathies were with the aristocratic royalists while Miller, who had only just moved to Athens from Rome, like most outsiders supported Venizelos. Having experienced first-hand both the royalist and pro-Venizelist military governments in Greece, Gilbert now felt sufficiently self-confident in his views to oppose Miller, his political mentor. M[iller], when I said that if I came back [early from Turkey] I wanted to see the Lakes, said ‘But why be in such a hurry to see them now?’ and I answered that I did not know when I should next be in Greece. Whereupon M. said ‘Oh you’ll be in Greece next year. I think you have got the disease very badly.’ I must say that there is a raffroidissement [cooling] between us; so silly just because of the politics of a country which is not our own. Politis is here & once when dining with [the Millers] I let go at Mrs M. about him & the murders [Nikolaos Politis had refused British appeals to intervene to prevent the executions and resigned instead] & she simply took it like a lamb & didn’t answer anything. Of course we saw a good deal of each other & were very amiable but we did not talk controversial politics. ... Lady Law came back from [the thermal springs at] Ipati last week and saw her for an instant on Friday [23]. She was just going out &, after saying that she was so glad to see me, she went on to complain how the M[iller]s had gone off and said that they had been so rude to her. Then just as I was leaving her, she asked me to go & motor with her on Saturday [24] and added: ‘It is so nice to meet a gentleman again!’ Wouldn’t the M.s be furious if they knew! Told the remark to Heurtley the Vice Director of the B.S. who simply exploded!

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[Heurtley knew Miller as he frequented the British School library.] ... Everyone seems to have liked my articles on Mykonos; one Miller told me had been translated in the Messager d’Athenes. The dog is as much of a nuisance as ever.11 ... I did not see any Venizelists and why should I! ... Yes I think I have got the disease badly [loving Greece] but no one can say that I have become royalist through snobbishness; I have only been royalist since they could do nothing for me. (Monday, 26 May 1924) When Gilbert ran into Gen. Perrone in the lounge of the Grand Bretagne Hotel, Perrone introduced him to the new Italian Ambassador to Greece, Giuseppe Brambilla, and his American wife, the daughter of George Meyer, a former American Ambassador to Italy, ‘who were kind enough to ask me to join them at dinner. Awfully nice of them: they are really delightful! Much nicer than the Mountains. Jacopich has got a job as inspector at Rhodes [replacing Maiuri] and is going out at once there and won’t be able to come back to Italy before 2 years. I am very glad it was not offered to me; I should have liked to accept it but I should have done wrong if I had.’ (Monday, 26 May 1924) No ordinary student of archaeology would have been invited to join the new Ambassador and his wife over dinner. Gilbert’s fortnight in Athens was a convenient and useful stopover on his way to Constantinople, but the subsequent itinerary remained open. One possibility was Albania. With the disappearance of both the Austrian and Ottoman Empires from the Balkan peninsula, Mussolini hoped to exploit the opportunity by making use of Albania against the other Balkan states.12 The Italians also wanted to counter French influence in Albania and had just concluded a commercial treaty with the Albanian Prime Minister, Ahmed Zogu (later King Zog). The political situation in Albania was becoming increasingly unstable, however, and the Harvard-educated Orthodox bishop Fan Noli led a Miller must have felt the British School at Athens to be a kind of home since he later had his bothersome dog buried near the west wall of the British School grounds, and left his papers to the British School before immigrating to South Africa in 1941. 12 In reaction to the French creation of an archaeological mission to Albania in 1923, Paribeni sent Luigi Ugolini to conduct two exploratory missions in 1924 to locate promising sites in Albania. In Vergil’s epic poem, the Trojan prince Aeneas escaped the flames of Troy after its capture by the Greeks to found a new city in the West, i.e., Rome, and during his voyage west Aeneas stopped at many lands, some of which the Italian Government now wanted to exploit for propaganda, such as the Graeco-Roman harbour town of Butrint on the Adriatic coast in Albania opposite Corfu. Anything prehistoric, i.e. ‘Trojan,’ or Roman excavated there would be grist for Paribeni’s mill. (Gilkes 2003 and Gilkes 2004) 11

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leftist coup that ousted Zogu on June 10. This political instability was probably the reason for Gilbert’s decision in late May that he should bypass Albania. Gilbert and Whitbrooke left Athens for Constantinople on Sunday 25 May. Gilbert wrote on a postcard: ‘Leaving tomorrow for Constant[inople] & I don’t know when back. Don’t think Trebizond poss. or Albania advisable.’ (Saturday, 24 May 1924) On board Gilbert wrote that Whitbrooke was ‘giving up the idea of Trebizond. Everyone seems to think that it will be frightfully difficult to get there but other people now on the boat seem to think not. Well we’ll see. ... If I do not go to T I’ll come back to Athens in a fortnight and then go with the Bou & Mika to the lakes and so up home.’ (Monday, 26 May 1924) Why Gilbert took the time and trouble to travel to Constantinople and then so far east and into the interior of Anatolia remains mysterious. Usually, unless required to do so by the Italian School, Gilbert traveled where he wanted, but on this mission every place after Constantinople was not only undecided and potentially dangerous but of no compelling archaeological or art historical interest to Gilbert. No longer a student at the Italian School in Athens, he had no academic assignments to carry out, and there was no art or architecture displaying western influence which would personally appeal to him either in Albania or eastern Anatolia. Since Gilbert stayed at the Italian Embassy during his sojourn in Constantinople, his travels were officially, if not financially as well, supported by the Italian government. In all likelihood, at the suggestion of other Italian authorities Paribeni sent Gilbert to sound out the political feelings, reconnoiter military possibilities and/or seek opportunities for Italian commercial interests, more or less as he had done a few months earlier in Greece. And, after all, while traveling he could ‘pass’ as an archaeologist, not the first one to ‘spy’ for his country in the Near East,13 by sailing to Byzantium.

13 E.g., in 1921 Biagio Pace traveled in eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus as an archaeologist but published his report on the commercial opportunities for Italy in 1923.

23. Lost Greek Empires While sailing east again, Gilbert had time to reflect on how history repeats itself, on how the Greek army fled and disintegrated, abandoning the city to the foreign conquerors. Inflamed by hate, greed and lust, these assailants torched and pillaged the city ‘for three days, the customary and accepted period of time for the sack of a conquered city.’ (Queller and Madden 1997: 193) The occupiers neither understood nor appreciated what they were destroying. Not satisfied to destroy, they raped women and slaughtered men. Formerly well-to-do Greek refugees scurrying away to escape from the city were despoiled of any movable wealth. But the marauders who devastated the city were not the victorious Turks in Smyrna in September 1922 but French and Italian crusaders, western Christians who mercilessly plundered Orthodox Constantinople in April 1204. In AD 330, Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome, had chosen the ancient Greek city of Byzantium as the site of his new capital because it lay on the hills of a naturally defended peninsula beside the great harbour of the Golden Horn, along the sailing route through the Bosphorus to the Black Sea.1 Constantine’s palace complex adjoining the hippodrome and colonnaded avenues replicated Old Rome, but he also adorned public spaces with bronze and marble statues taken from many other, mostly Greek, cities and sanctuaries. These, whether displayed formerly as dedications to pagan gods at Delphi, like the Serpent Column, or as loot in Rome, were appropriated and re-purposed to convey the new secular propaganda that Constantinople was the inheritor of the Greco-Roman past and the centre of the world for the future. (Bassett 2004) A few generations later, emperors added hundreds of Christian relics 1 Another possible site for New Rome on the passage to the Black Sea was Ilion, the site of Troy from which the Trojan prince Aeneas escaped on his way to becoming the spiritual founder of Rome.

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from the East, imbuing Constantinople with an acquired religious mystique as a Christian city while still surrounded with its pagan past. A thousand years later, western pilgrims had been attracted to the City by its concentration of religious relics and treasures accumulated from the East. After being admitted through the gates of the largest city in Christendom, pilgrims would see an enclosed world of vineyards and orchards and aqueducts as the undulating skyline of domes rose up before them in the distance. Vast open spaces along the main colonnaded avenue were adorned with pagan statues so life-like that they seemed as if they would move. The citizens even dressed distinctively, wearing garments woven of the gold and silk threads whose secret method of production and exclusive trade Constantinople had monopolized for centuries. Scores of churches and monasteries were embellished with floors and walls of coloured marbles and silver and gold, and mosaic ceilings of glass and gold gleamed in candlelight. Most stupendous of all was the ancient cathedral of Saint Sophia, built centuries earlier by Justinian’s architects, with an enormous dome so high it could encompass the tallest of the commemorative columns around the city. A favoured few were allowed into the ancient palace to see some of the treasured relics and marvel at the automata displayed in the throne room: a golden tree with mechanical singing birds, lions that roared and moved, and a throne worthy of Solomon that would rise up toward the ceiling, all designed to strike awe in impressionable visitors. The tales of the wealth of the city were legendary, reaching as far as the Vikings who called it Miklagarth ‘Great Town.’ Visitors would be showered with gold coins as presents, again intended to impress. Such largesse was made possible by the 10% customs tariff charged on all imports and exports passing through the city, and by the silver and copper mines south of Trebizond in Anatolia. But such displays of wealth inspired not only wonder and fear but also avarice and greed. Intending to attack Moslem Egypt in a Fourth Crusade c. 1204, Frankish crusaders needed ships from Venice for transport but lacked the funds to pay for them. To raise money, they supported a losing claimant to the Byzantine throne but after he was murdered they remained unpaid. After breaching one of the gates, the western crusaders poured into Constantinople to extract as much as they could from the defenseless citizens. All available gold, silver, and bronze objects were seized to be melted down for coinage, including ancient Greek statues and cult figures. Walls were stripped of their tapestries of silk and gold. The Franks were particularly keen to seize hundreds of religious relics to take back to France. Among the most celebrated may have been the Image of Edessa

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or the Shroud of Turin. Except for their jewel-encrusted covers, manuscripts were fortunately of no interest to the illiterate barbarians. A few Venetians at least preferred to preserve some beautifully carved sardonyx bowls such as the Tazza Farnese and chalices encrusted with enameled gold and jewels as well as the wonderful team of copper horses from the Hippodrome to be displayed at the Doges’ chapel, now St. Mark’s in Venice. A Greek senator in Constantinople observed that Saladin, the Moslem conqueror of Jerusalem in 1187, had recently treated the defeated Christian inhabitants there with more respect and chivalry than did their fellow Christians from the West in 1204. In Rome Pope Innocent III was shocked and appalled when he learned the extent of the sacrilege, rape, and theft of relics in churches and monasteries. Two centuries later with a Turkish siege imminent in 1453, many in Constantinople still believed ‘better the Turkish turban than the Papal tiara.’ The Byzantine Greeks eventually regained their capital by 1261 but the empire never recovered from its dismemberment. Its twilight did, however, last two more centuries, long enough to facilitate the transmission of the accumulated learning of antiquity to the eagerly receptive minds of the Italian Renaissance before the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Many officials as well as private individuals traveled back and forth to Venice, Milan, Florence and Rome not only for commercial purposes but also to solicit help against the impending Turkish attacks. Some far-sighted teachers not only inspired their students to learn and teach more students, but also translated Greek texts into Latin and vice versa. In contrast with the West, traditional Byzantine education was secular, using ancient Greek pagan texts to teach reading, grammar, and rhetoric. For nearly a thousand years residents had been constantly surrounded by secular images and reminded of the glorious pre-Christian past of which they were the possessors. It was only after the massive looting and melting down of bronze statues in 1204 that the secular tradition in Constantinople began to lose its hold. Only in its last centuries, just as Patriarchal control over education was increasing, the texts which had survived for a millennium in scattered libraries were re-discovered and gradually taken by collectors to Italy, where they were a revelation of the accumulated learning so admired by the ancient Roman writers such as Cicero but subsequently lost to the West. That as much of the learning of antiquity had survived the intervening ‘dark ages’ as it did was little short of a miracle. In addition, the mathematician Chioniades traveled to Persia to learn of Arab and Persian advances in astronomy, bringing back

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manuscripts to Constantinople, and Chioniades’ own manuscripts eventually influenced Copernicus and his proof of the heliocentric solar system. (Paschos and Sotiroudis 1998) Thus the transmission of Greek texts from the dying eastern Empire gave birth to the Ages of Discovery and Enlightenment in the West. Despite the approaching end of their world in the 1400s, Constantinople’s religious establishment as well as the populace at large became increasingly conservative, even mystical, and rejected the unification of the Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic churches agreed upon at Florence in 1439. ‘Their most urgent priority was to save their immortal souls, not to preserve what was now an essentially Greek state … The mainstream of Byzantine civilization had already turned toward a better life in the next world while resigning itself to Turkish captivity in this one.’ (Wells 2006: 92). Ironically, the Italian city where most of the refugees from Constantinople settled after 1453 was Venice, which had directed its capture in the Fourth Crusade. Thus it was in Venice in 1495, after the invention of the printing press, that Manutius Aldus began printing the texts of the surviving Greek authors, spreading their availability throughout western Europe. After the wrenching loss of their City in 1453, during later centuries of servitude and impoverishment, the era when Greeks had led the world culturally for two millennia came to be regarded by modern Greeks as their lost Golden Age. As the heirs of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Greeks of Constantinople and Anatolia had proudly called themselves Romaioi, as opposed to the pagan Hellenes of the ancient Greek mainland. Moreover, ‘in much the same way that the Roman Church was the spiritual successor of the Roman Empire in the West during the Dark Ages, the Orthodox Church preserved and nourished the immortal soul of Byzantium after its body had been destroyed by the Ottomans.’ (Nicol 1972: 435) By the turn of the twentieth century, Constantinople still had a substantial population of prosperous Greeks, many of whom, however, would have preferred that their Orthodox compatriots in mainland Greece would not keep recklessly rebelling against their Ottoman overlords in Constantinople. Gilbert was at last able to achieve his dream of visiting Constantinople, ‘the only place on earth to have been the epicenter of both Christendom and global Islam.’ (King 2014: 10) On his eastbound journey, he was in the city from Tuesday 27 May until Wednesday 11 June. He photographed what was left of the first emperor’s column, once in the centre of the Forum of Constantine to commemorate the founding of the City in AD 330 but now the only remnant of the Forum left standing, having barely survived countless

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fires and earthquakes.2 Gilbert visited Justinian’s magnificently domed church of Hagia Sophia, then still used as a mosque, as well as the site of the ancient Hippodrome. Because of its sheer size, the location of the racecourse had never been lost although the seating area had been encroached upon and built over by later structures. Along the central spine of the racetrack still stood the giant bronze column in the shape of coiled serpents which Constantine had removed from Delphi among other great art works and relics carried off from ancient Greece, and whose inscriptions, which listed the Greek city states who fought at Plataea, had just been exposed at the base below ground level in 1920. Among the churches Gilbert saw was the Pammakaristos, once a convent and for a while the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch after the Turkish Conquest. Although subsequently converted into a mosque, the south facade of its chapel was still one of the most typical and attractive of the late Byzantine architectural compositions. Its multi-storeyed arcades of arches within arches was comparable to Romanesque arches in western Europe, Gilbert’s favorite architectural style, and he took a photograph of it. He also photographed the unusual horseshoe shaped arcade in the Nuruosmaniye Mosque, whose architectural details were reminiscent of the then contemporary European Baroque. During his visit to Constantinople Gilbert did not stay at a hotel but instead at the Italian Embassy across the Golden Horne over in Pera, the international quarter of the City where all the palatial embassies and European banks were located. The Galata Tower built long ago by Genoese traders visibly dominated this area, also known as Beyoglou. Once surrounded by vineyards on the south slopes of the Galata hill, and long occupied by the Venetian Bailo, the ornate Italian mansion had been lost to Austria in the Napoleonic Wars, but the Italian High Commissioner, Count Carlo Sforza, had just re-acquired it for Italy in 1919. Gilbert’s sojourn in Constantinople coincided with the Conference on Mosul, which began May 19 in an Ottoman neo-Classical palace used by the Turkish Admiralty on the east shore of the Golden Horn. Before the War, oil had been used largely for kerosene, and companies like American Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell competed for global resources. Just before WW I, the British Navy was beginning to realize that oil-driven ships could be smaller and sail faster and further than comparable coal-fired ships and be refueled at sea. Although Britain had coal mines, its Empire lacked oil fields. During the war, the use of 2 To counter the effects of repeated earthquakes, the Turks built structures of timber, which enabled fires to spread and devastate entire neighbourhoods. (King 2014: 19)

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tanks, planes, and ships rapidly increased the demand for and shortage of oil so that all governments suddenly became acutely aware of its paramount strategic and military importance: the land war alone was said to have demonstrated the victory of gas-powered trucks over coal-fired locomotives. It was ironic that the European War demonstrated the crucial importance of oil, which Europe lacked. The so-called peace negotiations at Paris included a scramble by the victorious European governments for suspected sources of oil anywhere around the world, but especially in the newly liberated Middle Eastern nations of Persia and Mesopotamia, now called Iraq. Although the Mudros Armistice between Britain and the Ottoman Empire had been signed on 30 October, 1918, British forces nonetheless forcibly occupied Mosul within days afterward to gain the upper hand in negotiations with France as well as with Turkey over the potential oil region for British-controlled Iraq. During the War Britain had occupied the southern Mesopotamian province of Basra to protect her oil interest in Persia needed to supply the British Navy through the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, and there was no naturally defensible boundary between flat Mesopotamia and mountainous Anatolia until the north side of Kurdish Mosul. British High Commissioner to Iraq, Sir Percy Cox, and the remarkable Gertrude Bell had together guided the British mandate from foreign military occupation to the independent Kingdom of Iraq in 1921. The existence of Iraq was recognized by Turkey in the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, but its precise boundaries remained a matter for dispute in Constantinople. In 1923 oil was finally struck in the south of Mesopotamia, and the presence of oil was strongly suspected in the northern Mosul province as well,3 thanks to countless pits of naphtha and bitumen, which had been used centuries earlier by the Byzantines to make ‘Greek fire.’ At loggerheads whether the province of Mosul should be assigned to Turkey or to Iraq, the British and Turks had agreed at Lausanne to pursue bilateral negotiations for nine more months after which they would submit the decision for arbitration by the League of Nations. Britain’s chief negotiator at the Constantinople conference was Sir Percy Cox, formerly British High Commissioner to Iraq, ‘an awe-inspiring man renowned for his ability to keep silent in a dozen languages.’4 The Turkish negotiators argued that Mosul was inhabited by Kurds who were Sunni Muslims like The Americans were clamoring to be let in to drill through their Open Door argument, but the wily Armenian Calouste Gulbenkian eventually managed to include them in the Turkish Petroleum Company cartel on his terms, receiving five percent himself. 4 According to the traveler, Wilfred Thesiger, cited by Townsend 2010: 193 3

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the Turks, unlike the Shias around Baghdad in southern Iraq, but Turkish newspapers pointed out the real motive was oil. Neither side budged from their positions and the conference ended on June 5 in a stalemate. Nonetheless, Gilbert’s mission coincided with the conference, and his Italian overseers would have been happy to receive any of his observations. Also while Gilbert was in Constantinople, the Nationalist Turkish Government closed down the British-owned Eastern Telegraph Company, which transmitted telegrams all around the Mediterranean. (Berridge 2009: 135) The pretext was a dispute between Greece and Turkey over revenues the Company had collected during the Greek occupation of Smyrna, but this was a convenient story to cover what was likely the real reason: it was through the Telegraph Company that British agents in Constantinople were intercepting and deciphering telegrams throughout the Middle East, especially Russian and Turkish. Telegraphy then being a relatively new technology like the internet, no one had yet anticipated its potential to attract governmental interest, oversight and intrigue. The under-cover British intelligence gathering operations in Constantinople after the War were regarded as one of the best in the Near East and the Empire, largely because they so successfully intercepted coded diplomatic and military messages sent via telegraph cables and radio signals which they deciphered. (Jeffrey 2010: 203-4) As early as October 1921, they had identified the organizational structure and functions (arms thefts and smuggling, bank transfers) of all the Nationalists’ cells in Constantinople but did little to stop them either to conceal awareness of their ability to read coded messages or because they had inadequate resources to deal with the situation. (Cross 1999: 137) Gilbert already knew the Italian Ambassador and his wife, who had just been transferred from Athens. Montagna was not only nervous and highlystrung, but wanting so much to impress Mussolini, who acted as his own Foreign Minister, that Montagna’s manner offended the Turks. He was undoubtedly intending to repeat his modus operandi in Greece of exploiting every Italian official in Turkey as a source of information. One such, mentioned in Montagna’s official telegrams, was Bernardino Nogara, mining engineer, bank director, and railroad entrepreneur who advocated the exploitation of resources around Adalia.5 In a 1925 memorandum to Mussolini, Montagna outlined an ambitious plan to establish an Italian academy in Turkey, another 5 Nogara would later become infamous as the amoral director of the Vatican’s controversial investments after 1929.

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attempt at ‘peaceful penetration,’ and explicitly mentioned Gilbert Bagnani among the Italian students traveling in Anatolia in 1924.6 Montagna’s wife introduced Gilbert to the ‘Embassy set,’ such as Lady Belle Cox, the wife of Sir Percy. A devoted wife honoured by the British Government the previous year for her endurance in Iraq, she was ‘a motherly woman with a happy disposition who loved to dance.’ (Townsend 2010: 202) One time in Baghdad she danced on carpets spread on the grass till 4 a.m.7 Gertrude Bell, however, considered her to be ‘so damned stupid. ... She is as kind as ever she can be, but there’s no possible subject on which you can converse with her.’ (Wallach 1996: 165) Together [on a Sunday] ‘with some people (League of Nations) whom we had met on the boat coming here,’ (Tuesday, 3 June 1924) Gilbert took a ferry to Prinkipo, the largest of the small group of the Princes’ Islands near the Asian side of the Sea of Marmara, a summer resort occupied by wealthy foreigners and weekend holidayers. With cars banned, the only means of transport was by pungent horse-drawn carriages.8 Representatives of the League of Nations were also in Constantinople to observe the conference since the dispute over Mosul was to be turned over to the League. The French, British and Italian troops, who had unilaterally occupied the old city of Stamboul, Pera/Beyoglou across the Golden Horn, and Uskudar in Anatolia respectively since November 1918, and had broken into the legislature to arrest and deport Nationalist deputies in March 1920, were forced to evacuate the city by October 1923 in accordance with the terms of the Lausanne Treaty. The initial elation of the Turkish residents was soon being tempered, however, by the political shock waves emanating from Ankara. The capital of the Ottoman Empire had been desired both by the Greeks and by the Russians, who wanted a secure outlet to the Mediterranean. Gen. Kemal, however, who had defeated the Greeks and outmaneuvered the Russians, after securing the city for the Turks abandoned it politically for 6 Elliot 2004. I am very grateful to Matthew Elliot for sending me a complete copy of the original Italian memorandum in the Italian State Archives. 7 For an account of the festivities held by the British and Turks in conjunction with the Mosul Conference, see Ryan 1951: 222-225. The British Representative, as the British High Commissioner in Constantinople was called that year, Sir Ronald Lindsay, a son of the Earl of Crawford, left Constantinople immediately after the Conference to marry his second wife, leaving Sir Neville Henderson to serve as Acting Representative while [later Sir] Telford Waugh [uncle of Evelyn] was Consul General. 8 The island of Prinkipo had been the proposed location of an abortive conference between the Allies and all the Russians in January 1919, and later Leon Trotsky would live there as a modern exile 1929-1933.

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his new and distant capital at Ankara in central Turkey. Suddenly a political backwater, Constantinople was starved for economic resources being diverted to Anatolia. So to the already destitute Russian and Anatolian refugees who had recently flooded into the city were added the impoverished Turks themselves, increasingly out of work as foreign owned companies left. While the city had suffered the loss of its pride as the only capital occupied by enemy forces after the War, it suffered far longer and more profoundly by its abandonment by the Nationalist Turks in Ankara. Kemal himself did not visit the city until 1927. It suited the purposes of the new regime in Ankara to demonize Pera/Beyoglou as a cesspool of immorality, blaming especially the nearly two hundred thousand refugees from Russia who had inundated Pera/Beyoglou eager to sell anything for money.9 Well, here is a week in Constant. I am very comfortable in the Embassy: central, quiet & cool, the three chief points. Life is fairly expensive but distinctly amusing. ... Here I am working very hard sightseeing: have been rather disappointed in St. Sophia but other things are wonderful. The town is one of the most picturesque I’ve ever seen and is really worth coming to. ... The Turks are very pleasant to get along with as long as you don’t ask them to do anything. It seems settled that I go to Trebizond with the next Lloyd [ship] together with our consul there who is now here. Of course the present incident [over Italian troop concentrations in Rhodes] may upset matters but I shall certainly not go if I do not think it is safe. He tells me I ought to go up to Erzerum; a rather expensive trip ought to be interesting. Yesterday I went to tea with the [Ambassador’s wife Mme] Montagna who was very nice and introduced me to all the Embassy set. Quite nice people too at our Embassy. [Ambassador] Montagna as you well know is now in Rome but will probably come back pretty quick after all this fuss about Rhodes. As I am going (evidently) to Trebizond I shall probably be away rather longer than I expected & therefore don’t expect to be up at Zeiss before the end of next month. Have called on Mrs. Woods, Fluffy’s [Minnie Burton’s] friend, and am going to tea on Thursday [5 June].10 I have been It was ironic that when the Russians, who had long coveted Constantinople, finally arrived in force, it was as refugees forced to flee their own homeland. 10 Col. Harold Edwin Manthorpe Woods (1878-1952), the son of Sir Henry Woods Pasha and his wife Sarah Whittall, was the Commercial Secretary at the British Legation in Constantinople. He had married Helene Souvatzoglou (1876-1949, daughter of Pericles), a Greek Orthodox lady, at her 9

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disappointed in the bazaar in general, but one shop has some really fine things. ... We go out at 8 1/2 in the morning and go on till about 1 & then in the afternoon I feel abso[lutely] played out. (Tuesday, 3 June 1924) Politics unavoidably affects archaeological pursuits. Some governments choose to use it to emphasize their heritage, like Italy’s use of ancient Rome wherever they could find it. In other cases, however, the presence of visible antiquities runs counter to the political message desired by the government of the day. The Ottoman’s Imperial Archaeology Museum was happy to include artifacts from the Empire’s storied past but, for the Nationalist Turks, Greek and Byzantine monuments were a reminder of the recent enemy. During the Allied occupation of Constantinople, French Gen. Charpy conducted excavations in substructures under what had been the Byzantine palace at Mangana and the church of St George, just below the old Ottoman palace of Topkapi. (Freely and Cakmak 2004: 196-98) He found a relief of the Virgin which he wanted to donate to the Louvre as part of the spoils of war, but the Director of the Ottoman Museum, Halil Bey, caught between rival masters in Constantinople and Ankara, insisted that it be turned over to his museum before he would approve any further French applications to excavate elsewhere in Anatolia. (Lerou 2004: 278) The week after the French troops left the city in September 1923, the stairs and electric lighting system installed by the French to enable the public to visit the substructures were removed, (Demangel and Mamboury 1939: 5) an action which may have inadvertently helped to preserve the remains. The British wanted to excavate around the ancient Hippodrome but when they applied in 1923 they were refused since this was in Stamboul, the most ancient and central district of Constantinople, which was then occupied by the French. In 1927, however, Stanley Casson was allowed to dig a few trenches and discovered the width and precise orientation of the hippodrome. (Casson et al. 1928) Unlike Old Greece where western archaeologists swept aside Byzantine ruins to gain access to the deeper Classical Greek remains in order to emphasize Greece’s most glorious period, in Constantinople for one very brief moment archaeologists focused on Byzantine archaeology as an end in itself, here again emphasizing the period they believed to be its most glorious. The nationalistic Turks, however, were suspicious of any foreign attempts to study or emphasize Anatolia’s Greek, Roman, or Byzantine heritage. In addition, the parents’ house on Prinkipo in 1901. Minnie Burton (1876-1957) was the same age as Helene Woods and may have suggested to Gilbert that he should meet her friend.

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Turks refused all foreign requests to excavate after 1922 until any artifacts previously discovered during the time of foreign occupation of Anatolia and Constantinople were given to museums in Turkey. Italian agents and diplomats in Turkey did not try to disguise their hopes and intentions to obtain their share of Anatolia. They were watching for their opportunity, anticipating a military conflict between the new Turkish government and either Britain over the formerly Ottoman territory around Mosul or Bolshevik Russia with all its Armenians and Moslems. In March 1924 with the backing of his army Kemal had the National Assembly in Ankara abolish the international Caliphate, leaving a potential void of leadership to be filled by others with ambitions. They also closed all the religious courts and schools, which used Arabic, replacing them with secular Turkish-language schools, thereby breaking the transmission of Islamic religious and cultural heritage in Turkey. Unlike British politicians, Kemal did not worry about the reactions of Arabic-speaking Moslems outside of Turkey. Ambitious Italians, however, would see a potential opportunity. In February 1924 Mussolini announced he would be looking to the East for commercial expansion.11 He had just signed a commercial treaty with the Bolsheviks giving Italians trading access from the Black Sea across the Caucasus mountains to the Caspian Sea. At the same time, Italian oil interests were seeking concessions in both Russia and Romania. (Taylor 1924: 140) Biagio Pace, the politically ambitious Italian archaeologist (he was nominated as a Fascist and elected in the April 1924 elections), published his book on his travels through the Caucasus in 1921, emphasizing the mineral and oil riches of the region. (Pace 1923) It was an opportune time in Italy for politically ambitious bureaucrats like Roberto Paribeni to suggest revisiting the region under the guise of archaeology, especially if any outbreak of hostilities in the After the War, when Britain was under increasing pressure both economically and politically to bring her troops home, Lloyd George decided to withdraw British forces from the Caucasus in eastern Anatolia in the belief that this force was no longer necessary in the defeated Ottoman Empire, and so in February 1919 he invited Italian Prime Minster Orlando to send troops to oilrich Azerbaijan as a potential Italian zone of influence. Orlando sent two investigative missions in April and June to Azerbaijan. Young Prince Aimone, the son of the Duke of Aosta and a childhood friend of Gilbert’s, was sent on both these missions although King Victor Emmanuel himself was opposed to the expansionist plan. They looked for coal mines and checked if their radiotelegraph tower had been installed yet for direct communication with Rome, in preparation for sending 100,000 Italian troops to the Caucasus. Despite the hopeless financial situation and lack of effective local government in the face of the Bolshevik tide, members of the mission suggested a massive investment by other European countries in order to exploit the enormous oil and mineral resources of the Caucasian republics, but King Victor Emmanuel opposed it on grounds of being too antiRussian.

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region might render the political situation more fluid. If any Turkish war were to break out, what should Italy’s specific goals be? Just a line in haste in answer to your letter. I am leaving today for Trebizond & Whit[brooke] is not yet back from Broussa. I do not know what he is going to do afterwards [in Greece] … As to my plans, I do not know when I am coming back from Treb and Armenia. The journey is a long one, week there and back and if I stay there a fortnight it means three weeks at least. Then I should like a week in Athens and so home. I should like certainly to come back via Rome as I could leave most of the things collected. I am going to get a big Venetian lantern for the front room to go with our Venetian mirrors and am going to get a mosque lamp for my room. [Venetian mirrors and lamps would reflect Byzantine styles] No, you do not know the kind of thing. Have seen Fluffy’s friend Mrs. Woods who had me to tea. There I met Lady Cox [who loved dancing], the wife of Sir Percy Cox, & on Friday [29 May] we went together to see the dancing dervishes.12 She is very nice; quite the biggest woman I have ever met but charming. She has asked me to go and see them if I go to London. Very nice of her. On Monday [2 June] was at the Montagnas. She is much nicer to me this year than when she was in Athens: I think there the School was a social drawback from her point of view. She is a very poor hostess and shows quite plainly that it bores her stiff to entertain people. She has asked me to call on my return at Therapico, their summer residence [a three-storeyed wooden yiali or seaside mansion at Therapia toward the eastern end of the Bosphorus]. There is one very good and expensive antiquary here on whose neck I have fallen but the bazaar itself is disappointing. I am writing on the boat which is good like all the Lloyd’s but is full of Turks. Now I know what it is to be in a country where I do not know the language. I have spent a lot of money here as everything must be got by tipping and as a £T [Turkish pound] is = to 12 lire it is expensive. I do not suppose T[rebizond] will be bad [expensive] but getting about costs an awful lot. 12 The main monastic lodge for the Turkish dervishes in Constantinople was only a short walk from the Italian Embassy in Pera. Past the grilled gateway and beyond a small courtyard of ivy and roses the great domed dancing hall with its arcaded galleries accommodated visitors to witness the ritual. The skirted dancers whirled majestically, entranced by the mesmerizing rhythm of drums and the plaintive tones of reed flutes accompanied by sung Sufi poetry, all very haunting to western ears. Since they too would be outlawed by Kemal the following year, Gilbert was among the last to see their rituals for many years.

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Anyhow do not get excited if you do not get any letter for some time. No news is good news here. Only hope there won’t be another Italo-Turkish incident. Montagna is rather a jettatore [jinx]. (Wednesday, 11 June 1924) Several days after the end of the conference on Mosul, it was ‘settled’ that Gilbert was to go to Trebizond together with the Honorary Italian Consul of Trebizond, Amedeo Guglielmo, who suggested that he continue inland through western Armenia to Erzurum, where a devastating earthquake had just killed a reported 136 people. So the inland part of his trip to Erzurum was an afterthought. Similarly, he did not sail back from Trebizond directly to Constantinople as he originally thought but traveled further east to Batum across the border in Russian Georgia. Gilbert was not deciding his itinerary by himself but in concert with officials in the Italian Embassy, where he was staying. In addition, Gilbert’s friend William Miller was in the process of writing Trebizond, the Last Greek Empire, published in 1926 but, since there is no section of acknowledgements in Miller’s book, Gilbert’s precise contribution to it is unclear though very likely. Nonetheless, under the guise of seeing eastern churches, Gilbert would investigate the political situation on the eastern frontiers.

24. Land of the Golden Fleece Despite warnings of the dangers and a recent diplomatic flare-up between Italy and Turkey over an Italian military presence on Rhodes, Gilbert sailed up the Bosphorus and out into the Black Sea eastward, following the route of Jason and the Argonauts along the Anatolian coast, toward Trebizond. By day he saw the Pontic mountain range all along the coast, which acted as a geographical and cultural barrier between the dry upland plains of Anatolia and the rainy and lush semi-tropical coast. The Roman Emperor Hadrian had built a harbour at Trebizond because the city was situated at the end of the Zigana Pass descending through the mountain range and also was naturally defended on a fortifiable acropolis surrounded by deep ravines. For centuries camel caravans brought Persian spices to be exported by Genoese merchants in Trebizond.1 From 1204 until 1461, Trebizond was an independent Byzantine Empire ruled by the great Komneni family, the longest family reign in Greek history, but they surrendered the city and its empire to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror of Constantinople, without a battle in 1461. Trebizond’s most famous son was the theologian Bessarion, who studied Platonism under Gemisthos Pletho at Mistra, argued for church unity at the Florence Conference of 1438/9, and became a Catholic Cardinal, even a candidate for pope. When Nicholas V, the first pope trained in the new humanist tradition, founded the Vatican Library, he asked Bessarion to oversee the project of assembling and translating all ancient Greek literature, both Classical and Christian. As one of the most influential Greek humanists in Renaissance On his return from the far East in 1294, the Venetian traveler Marco Polo passed through Trebizond just as the Genoese were entrenching themselves in their monopolistic hold on the city’s overseas trade, and he would have been staying in the seaward commercial district of Daphnous when he and his father and uncle were robbed of much of the treasure they brought back with them.

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Italy, Bessarion gave to the Library of St. Mark’s in Venice his collection of six hundred Greek manuscripts, including his own ‘Encomium on Trebizond.’ His mathematical and astronomical manuscripts were still bearing fruit long after the Renaissance. Cardinal Bessarion vividly described the terraces and marble halls of the old palace of the Trapezuntine emperors in the upper Citadel ending with its chapel ‘decorated with beautiful paintings and adorned with sacred offerings which, if not very numerous, are of outstanding beauty. What the church lacks in size it makes up in comeliness.’ (Mango 1972: 254) The Byzantine palace had been used by their Ottoman successors until the 19th century but had fallen into ruin since then. Wall paintings of Constantine and his mother Helena with the True Cross were still visible until the tower with the chapel in it was destroyed in 1932. During the brief occupation of Trebizond by the Russians from 1916 to 1918, a Russian archaeologist excavated the only visible tomb at the former Metropolitan Cathedral of the Chrysokephalos Panagia, where the Trapezuntine emperors had been buried. From a broken sarcophagus he extracted a decapitated skeleton, which he gave to the Greek Metropolitan Chrysanthos, who sent it to the Byzantine Museum in Athens in 1923.2 By the time that Gilbert visited the Chrysokephalos cathedral in 1924, however, the tomb had been destroyed. Treb is quite attractive but very hot. The scenery is lovely but the antiques are not very numerous. One church only is very interesting. There are a certain number of nice Christian [presumably Russian] families which are quite nice. I am living in an empty room of a house belonging to the convent, together with two employees of the Ottoman bank. One is a Jew, prewar Austrian now Pole, born in Cairo, son of a doctor, a very nice gentlemanly fellow.3 I am great friends with the Ottoman bank and with the Soviet consulate. At lunch one talks French English Italian German Greek Turkish Arabic and Russian which is not bad considering that we are only six or seven people. (Thursday, 19 June 1924) The body, now believed to be that of the assassinated Emperor Alexios IV, was eventually laid to rest at Vermio in Greece near the other Pontic treasures salvaged from Soumela. Confusion has been caused by a certificate signed by the Metropolitian Chrysanthos declaring the skeleton to be that of Alexios III, supported by the historian Meliopoulos, on whose judgment Miller also relied in his 1926 book on Trebizond, p. 70. 3 This banker is typical of Levantines, who were a cross-cultural mixture of religions and ethnicities in the former Ottoman Empire. 2

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Gilbert admired the Byzantine church of Ayia Sophia to the west of the city. Founded by the emperor Manuel I (1238-63), the church reflects a diversity of influences appropriate to its time and place: porches from Georgia, unusual relief sculptures of Adam and Eve from Armenia, and interior paintings of the Apostles thematically from Constantinople but rendered in a local style. Here was an eastern version of the Pantanassa at Mistra, revealing in its own way western, in this case Constantinopolitan, influences in the East. Gilbert managed to take several photos of the church, although the Turks did not like the taking of photographs in the region.4 The Church of St Sophia is very interesting but it is far from easy to take photos, the Turks do not like it. Life here is not so bad and there is no danger so you can put your mind at ease. My difficulties are with the lingo but I manage to stagger along; at least in the streets and restaurant. Have bought a couple of antiques but there isn’t much. Lovely sea bathing. To return to my plans, I shall go next week to Erzerum and catch the next Lloyd [steamship] which will get me to Constant on the 10th [July]. Go to Broussa and then to Athens on the 19th stay there a few days and so home. … The heat here is great and stuffy without sunlight. It is a nuisance not speaking the lingo. I should have been back from Erzerum by now if I had been able to. It is such a nuisance to have to rely on people who have no idea of the value of time. Food quite good but the place is fairly dirty & my nerves are rather on edge. (Thursday, 19 June 1924) During the War, Tsarist Russia had occupied eastern Anatolia including the cities of Trebizond and Erzerum but the Bolsheviks abandoned it. After Kemal signed his agreement with the Bolsheviks, they re-established the Russian consulate in Trebizond to facilitate trade and information-gathering. Gilbert later wrote that ‘at Trebizond, the port of Armenia, nearly all the little trade there is passes either directly or indirectly through Greco-Russian hands. Since the present regime in Turkey is by no means well-disposed towards foreign merchants, there are endless quarrels between the Turkish authorities and the merchants, supported by their diplomatic and Consular representatives.’ (Bagnani 1924a) The foreign consulates around Anatolia were not only 4 When Miller wrote his book on Trebizond in 1926, the nearby bell-tower of Ayia Sophia was thought to have been used as an astronomical observatory by a local school of Byzantine astronomers, but this notion is now discredited. (Miller 1926: 119-120).

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reporting to their governments on social and political developments in Turkey but were being spied upon by the xenophobic Turkish Nationalists, particularly in Trebizond, where there was an ‘exceptionally high level of Soviet espionage and propaganda activity in this district.’ (Berridge 2009: 161) It was through the Russian consul, Aron Samoiloviç Trabon, that Gilbert obtained his travel visa to Batum in Russian Georgia. A few miles south of Trebizond lay Soumela, the richest and most spectacularly sited of the monasteries of Byzantine Trebizond. The Altindere Valley begins as a narrow gorge only wide enough for a roadway beside the flowing current, but upstream the valley widens out between steep slopes covered with trees of all shades of green amid wispy clouds. During the ascent under the shade of these trees can be heard the sound of the cascading water far below. Then suddenly appears the multi-storeyed monastery perched on the narrow ledge of the sheer cliff about 300 meters above. The monastery contained guesthouses, a library and a remarkable marble basin to catch drops of moisture falling from 100 metres above. The main church itself was formed by walling up a cave and painting all the inside and outside surfaces with frescoes arranged in an unusual narrative sequence of panels. The monastery was also famed for its wealth and treasures, including the legendary miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary painted by St. Luke. Trebizond lay on the north-east coast of Anatolia. Since the Anatolian peninsula is surrounded on three sides by water, access was controlled through its ports. In addition, permission was needed to go further inland, and bribes no longer worked as the authorities were cowed by the military government in Ankara. Gilbert later wrote that secret police reported on all such activities to Ankara. He was right: in Anatolia the Nationalists’ military police ran a counterespionage organization with agencies based in the more important inland and coastal towns whose duties were rigid passport control of all persons entering or leaving Anatolia, and the surveillance of all foreigners. (Cross 1999: 137) Moreover, in general the Turkish Nationalists were always keenly suspicious of foreign, particularly Italian motives. Just as when he visited the Greek political prisoners in Athens, however, Gilbert was not intimidated by potential danger. As in the region around Smyrna, Gilbert would have needed permission to travel inland from Trebizond, since the region south of Trebizond included six forbidden provinces and three military zones. (Berridge 2009: 160) After a disastrous winter campaign against the Russians in 1915, the Turkish War Minister Enver Pasha had blamed the Armenians, using them as scapegoats for his own incompetence, and launched the massacres driving

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the Armenians from eastern Turkey. So when the Russians occupied eastern Anatolia in 1916, including Erzurum and Trebizond, the Armenians actively supported them but, after the Russian Revolution and withdrawal from eastern Turkey in 1917, it was open season on any remaining Armenians throughout Anatolia. After the Greek occupation of western Anatolia in May 1919, the Pontic Greeks in and around Trebizond were also at risk. Nationalist Turks had lost no time in ‘deporting’ the remaining Greeks far away from the coast. Whatever Christian population remained had just been forced by the Treaty of Lausanne to abandon the region where they had lived for thousands of years. Even the lofty and isolated cliff-side monastery of Soumela was not immune: although vandals soon pillaged the remote aerie for treasure, its monks had successfully hidden a few of their most precious relics which were retrieved a decade later to be taken to Greece. Gilbert crossed through these troubled regions beginning at the coastal mountain range and onto the upland plateau of central Anatolia into western Armenia. The plateau was well watered but endured long cold winters. The region was depopulated of men, of course, the Turks serving in the Nationalist army and the Armenians having been marched off to oblivion in arguably the first holocaust of the genocidal twentieth century. It was now literally a noman’s land of destroyed villages and deserted farms.5 The largest city, Erzurum, had once prospered from trade on the silk route from Persia to the Black Sea and was fought over for centuries, but only recently had been depopulated of its Armenians and adult males. The latest blow to the area was a destructive earthquake, just three weeks earlier on 13 May, centered on the town of Horasan a few miles east of Erzurum, with much loss of life.6 It may have been the destruction caused by this earthquake that led the Italian consul, Amedeo Guglielmo, to suggest to Gilbert that they should visit the area to see what potential opportunities there might be for Italy, e.g., possible aid for the survivors, but in such a place at such a time few inhabitants would have Any Armenians who lived in ports and towns near the Black Sea coast had been exposed before the War to western European ideals of justice and democracy, but during the War faced charges of potentially aiding the Russians or Allies. In early 1915 Armenians serving in the Turkish army were disarmed and assigned to road construction before being killed. (Payaslian 2009: 278, and Hovannisian 2009: 356). The extremist Young Turk government ordered the Armenians to be evacuated immediately in July 1915, and either drowned at sea, shot, or marched hundreds of kilometers to their death. Post-war Ottoman trials of individual Turkish culprits were soon ended as the region came under the control of the new Nationalist Turkish assembly in Ankara. 6 The Times May 1924. The Horasan earthquake was followed by an even more destructive earthquake in the same area of Pasinler on 13 September 1924. 5

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been able to speak anything but Turkish, and Gilbert would have to have relied upon translators, especially after he left Trebizond for the interior of Anatolia. For a few months after the War, Armenians had hoped that America would come to their rescue and support an independent Armenian nation. President Wilson appointed a committee which recommended including both Erzurum and Trebizond within Armenia’s borders, but by the time the report was received at the end of 1920, the proposed nation was a non-starter as no western country was prepared to implement the proposals militarily against the Turkish forces in the field. In addition, the American Senate rejected Wilson’s plan to support even the League of Nations, preferring instead isolationism from the eastern hemisphere, but there was nothing isolationist about America’s Open Door Policy on oil: if there had been any prospect of oil fields in Armenia, the isolationist Senate might have eagerly accepted the proposed American mandate over Armenia. But Turkish Armenia had no oil, and now no Armenians. (Hovannisian 2009: 363-70) From Erzurum the road north through what had once been western Armenia passed the waterfalls at Tortum and followed the course of the Coruh River as it zig-zagged its way down through the gorge whose rocky scarps displayed every earth-tone imaginable (rusts and purples) in parallel undulating striations. Down along the coast, Gilbert crossed over the Russian frontier into Georgia and the once bustling sea-port of Batum. Batum lies at the southern point of a triangular alluvial plain whose several rivers flow down from the surrounding mountains into the Black Sea. In its semi-tropical climate, Batum was surrounded by eucalyptus and palm trees, forests of magnolias and blue hydrangeas, and tea plantations up to the lofty mountains. A cosmopolitan life had briefly been enjoyed by newly enriched Greek, Armenian and Moslem oil magnates, but its formerly peaceful mixture of Georgians, Armenians, and Moslems exploded violently, during labour strikes, some led by Stalin, under the harsh working conditions in the first decade of the twentieth century. Georgia claimed to have been the legendary Colchis, the land of the Golden Fleece. In Greek mythology Jason sailed with his fellow Argonauts from Thessaly through great obstacles across the Black Sea to Colchis at the end of the world known in Greek legend in order to steal the Golden Fleece and bring it to the West. In the twentieth century the westerners’ quest in Georgia was for black gold. The oil fields around Baku on the landlocked Caspian Sea had exuded fumes and oil for millennia. Not until the 1870s, however, were the fields drilled and exploited, largely by the Nobel family for export to Russia. After Batum had

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been surrendered by the Ottomans to the Russian Empire in 1878, Batum began to flourish as the harbour for exporting produce from Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Rothschilds built a railroad and later a pipeline to convey oil from Baku through the Caucasus mountains to their refinery at Batum. From here, fleets of oil tankers sailed out across the Black Sea and through the Dardanelles and on to Europe and Asia. By 1888 the Baku oilfields rivaled American production. Thus Batum had become the main outlet for oil from Russia and Persia to the rest of the globe. With the collapse of the Tsarist government in 1917 and the withdrawal of Russian imperial forces, three idealistic socialist democracies soon declared their independence in the Caucasus between the Black and Caspian Seas Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. For a brief time Italy opened commercial shipping lanes from Batum and began negotiations with both the short-lived Georgian government and the white Russians for the oil and mineral wealth of Georgia, but all opportunities abruptly ended with the Bolshevik capture of Georgia in 1921. Not long before Gilbert set out for the East, in February 1924 Mussolini officially recognized the new Communist regime by concluding a commercial and navigation treaty with Bolshevik Russia, the first of the western Allies to do so. Italy would be able to transship exports, i.e. oil, from Baku to Batum for her merchant marine to ship home. The expanding Italian navy would soon grow increasingly reliant on oil from Soviet Georgia. It was from Batum in Georgia that Gilbert wrote ‘Turkey and Russia. The Reason for Strained Relations,’ analyzing the potential for war between Turkey and Russia. After noting that Turkey’s relations with Britain were still strained over Britain’s insistence at the recent conference that her Iraq mandate include the potential oil lands around Mosul, Gilbert pointed out that Turkish fears over Russia’s ambitions to obtain Constantinople, as recently outlined by Trotsky, and even more the ongoing Armenian disputes would likely lead to another war in the region, an opportunity much desired by ambitious Italians. Far more serious are all those questions that can be lumped under the heading Armenia. Armenia is now rather a misnomer, since in all that large province there is not an Armenian left alive, except a few girls or children who have been married or adopted by Turks in order to get possession of their property; but the term is useful as a ‘geographical expression.’ In Armenia and Lazistan, parts of which were Russian before the war, and most of which were occupied by it during the war, Russian interests are numerous and varied. The boundaries have been

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fixed, it is true, and a diligent search through the different Treaties may enable one to trace them on the map, but no one, least of all the people on the spot, know exactly where they run. Therefore frontier incidents occur with monotonous regularity. Russian properties in Armenia were very extensive, and the claims and counter-claims to these properties have practically produced a diplomatic deadlock. The question is further complicated by the fact that a good many of them were the property of Armenians of Russian nationality, whom the Turks very impartially massacred and confiscated their possessions. Now the Bolsheviks, very naturally, want them back and the Turks, equally naturally, refuse to disgorge. To a European it appears to be the quarrel of two murderers over the division of the spoil. But the Armenians are dead, and ‘les absents ont toujours tort.’ [‘the absent are always in the wrong’] (Bagnani 1924a) Gilbert concluded that not only was a war between Russia and Turkey inevitable but also that Mussolini would not hesitate to take advantage of it. Indeed, by June Mussolini was ordering his War Minister, di Giorgio, to prepare plans to invade Turkey, an utterly impossible demand. (Steiner 2007: 340-41) Lastly, the Turks are seriously worried by the relations between Italy and Russia. After Russia the nation they dread most is Italy, whose aspirations in South-Western Anatolia are well known. The retention at Lausanne of Castellorizo [an island off the south coast of Turkey], the establishment of a seaplane base at Leros [in the Dodecanese], and Mussolini’s interest in the Eastern Question have confirmed these fears. Turkish public opinion is convinced that, besides the official and published Italo-Russian treaty, there is a secret agreement between the two countries for an eventual partition of the Turkish Empire in Asia. It is, of course, highly improbable, not to say impossible, that any such document should exist in black and white, but whether the subject may not have been discussed in conversation is quite another matter. What is certain is that, in the event of a Russo-Turkish war, Mussolini will not remain idle. What is equally certain is that, sooner or later, such a war is bound to take place. (Bagnani 1924a)

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Gilbert was virtually admitting that the partitioning of Turkey was still being discussed by officials in Italy, who believed or hoped that a war between Russia and Turkey was inevitable, and Italy was eager to get her share this time, whether land for her emigrants or some of the natural resources that she lacked. Gilbert was also right in perceiving Mussolini’s undiplomatic and aggressive tactics in the international arena. Gilbert speculated that Kemal’s secular reforms would so alienate Moslem peoples such as the Laze7 that they would readily accept Russian support against the new Turkish government. The Turkish Government must also consider the feelings of the local population in the event of a Russo-Turkish war. The Laze are good soldiers and fanatical Moslems, and as such contributed largely to the war against Greece, but all the recent anti-religious legislation, culminating in the suppression of the Caliphate and, above all, of religious instruction, has caused a widespread feeling of discontent. It is well known, official denials notwithstanding, that in the Vilayet [region] of Trebizond several medressehs [religious schools] are still open, and the despoiled hodjas [ecclesiastics] inflame the population against the Ankara government. In such a state of affairs, the Laze would be only too willing to get Russian support against their own Government, since in Anatolia Russia is [considered] a Moslem Power. The various provinces of Transcaucasia, Azerbaidjan, Georgia, Bokhara, etc., are all more or less largely Moslem, and the Soviet Government is believed to have been either unable or unwilling to interfere with the organized religion to the same extent as Ankara. It is therefore quite possible that in case of invasion the Laze may welcome the Russians as liberators. (Bagnani 1924a) Gilbert was unaware, however, of the rebellious turmoil brewing in Georgia during his brief sojourn there. Just two months after Gilbert’s visit to Batum, a nation-wide rebellion rose up in August against the Bolsheviks, who sent their armies in to suppress the insurrection brutally. Thousands of Georgians were imprisoned or executed, and thousands more fled into the mountains. In neighboring Azerbaijan, a Moslem nation speaking a Turkish dialect, Turkish The Laze people lived between Trebizond and Batum. Although their language was related to Georgian, those in Turkey had converted to Islam.

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forces were supporting the insurgents against the Bolsheviks, but the Russians brutally quelled the revolt there too before it spread beyond the Caucasus. While the forcible suppression of Moslem courts and schools by Turkey would have roused Moslems in Turkey, Russia’s brutal repression of Moslem rebels in the Caucasus effectively removed them as potential soldiers for Russia against Turkey, and so the Moslem faithful in Anatolia no longer had potential external supporters. Gilbert sailed back from Batum on a Turkish ship with Reshid Pasha,8 formerly the Sultan’s Governor of Sivas. Located in central Anatolia, Sivas was a transportation centre inhabited by Greeks and Armenians, even more so after forced deportations there from Trebizond. After Kemal landed at Samson in May 1919, he began organizing resistance to the Allied occupation, first with a congress of representatives from the eastern provinces at Erzurum and then a smaller congress at Sivas in September. Its intent was to have delegates representing all the Turkish provinces to legitimize the National Assembly being formed in Ankara. The Sultan ordered the local Governor, Reshid Pasha, to prevent the congress from occurring in Sivas and to arrest any delegates attending. Kemal, however, told Reshid how impossible it would be for any force of the Allies or the Sultan to stop the delegates attending. Reshid agreed with Kemal and was replaced. When Reshid gave Gilbert an earful it is no wonder that Gilbert wrote that he could not put their conversation in a letter from Turkey and would have to tell his mother about it privately back in Rome. Reshid died later in the same year. Decades later, Gilbert explained to a student interviewer at the University of Toronto that he traveled to eastern Turkey because he had been interested in the ‘Byzantine churches in Armenia,’ an evident cover story, as the only church structures still standing in Armenia had been Armenian, not Byzantine, and the only church he ever mentioned seeing was Ayia Sophia in Trebizond, not in Armenia. On the other hand, however, there was indeed an academic controversy then brewing over the influence of Armenian architecture on the churches of mainland Greece, which Gilbert could easily have expatiated on if called upon to do so.9 In any case, Erzurum and probably Batum were afterthoughts added on to his originally planned trip to Trebizond. His mission, 8 This cannot be the Reshid Pasha who was the Ottoman Foreign Minster because he died in April 1924. 9 Kourelis forthcoming. I am indebted to Kostis Kourelis for email discussions and kindly sending me his not yet published article on Millet, ‘Gabriel Millet and the “Greek School” of Byzantine Architecture. The Geopolitics of Scholarship.’

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presumably assigned by Roberto Paribeni, was to gather up-to-date political, military and/or commercial information in the region that might be of use to the Italians. Gilbert stayed another week in Constantinople, presumably at the Italian Embassy again, where Ambassador Montagna was back in residence from his recent trip to Rome. Gilbert sailed across the Sea of Marmara over to Mudania on his way to Broussa, the modern Bursa, where he could enjoy the famed hot thermal springs in a Turkish bath. While sailing there Gilbert could not have avoided recalling the tense British-Turkish negotiations the previous October at Mudania over Lloyd George’s last stand at Chanak, several miles downstream in the Dardanelles. He probably reflected as well on the first perceived encounter between East and West at Troy at the entrance to the Dardanelles. Gilbert celebrated the end of his mission in Constantinople with a mild shopping spree, buying two large and expensive Byzantine icons, a Venetian lantern resembling a birdcage, and ‘two perfectly lovely old Turkish mashlaks, a kind of kimono, simply gorgeous.’10 One of these was later described as ‘a wonderful Turkish robe of a queer [blackish] purple & white made of the most beautiful silk.’ Centuries earlier the wearing of purple silken robes had been restricted to the Byzantine emperors. So as mementos of his sojourn Gilbert chose a blend of eastern and western objects which taken together were reminiscent of the Byzantium of the Venetian Crusaders’ era. Then on July 5 Gilbert sailed on the Leopolis to Athens for a week, where he was reachable at the Italian Embassy. He retrieved the silver bowl, tassels and amber comboloi (‘worry beads’) he had left with Anna, and sailed from Athens Monday 14 for Rome, his home in the West. Of the worlds Gilbert left behind, the Athens of the 1920s is mostly forgotten, apart from archival papers and photographs, although some of its buildings can still be seen. The British and American archaeological schools, the Serpieri mansion and the Old Parliament where the show trial of the royalist politicians took place are ready to take their stratigraphical sequence in Athenian archaeological history after the earliest (Neolithic) occupation of Athens (excavated by Gilbert) and the glories of the Periklean Acropolis. No longer

‘Mashlak’ was used by Ronald Firbank in his 1923 novel, The Flower Beneath the Foot for an exotic kimono.

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visible, however, are the jerry-built shanties fabricated of Standard Oil cans which sheltered so many refugees. (Clark 2006: 142) It was oil which had fueled the flames and ‘oily black smoke’ (Price 1957: 129) which destroyed Smyrna and her inhabitants, and the desire for Turkish oil by western governments which prevented their offering humanitarian aid at Smyrna when it was most desperately needed. To appreciate the significance of oil, one has only to contemplate the result if the oil fields had belonged to Greece or Armenia instead of Turkey. Many Christian inhabitants of Smyrna were killed figuratively as well as literally by oil. Ironically, one of the few parts of Smyrna not destroyed was the depot of the Standard Oil Company, protected by American sailors. The remains of Smyrna, however, lie buried under modern Izmir,11 intact and silent until some archaeologist in the distant future lays eyes once again on the Pearl of the East.

Having to deal with what remained after the fire, in 1924 the Turks had just established a municipal fire brigade in Smyrna, renamed Izmir, and an idealistic urban plan was being submitted to replace the burnt-out centre of the city with entirely new broad boulevards and open spaces, though never brought to completion as such. (Serce, E., Yilmaz, F., and Yetki, S. 2003: 6171)

11

Epilogue During his three years in the East from 1921 until 1924, Gilbert Bagnani had a unique opportunity to travel on a voyage of discovery through the origins of western civilization. As a fresh graduate of the University of Rome, he had arrived in Greece fully conversant with classical archaeology, but as an archaeologist in Greece he travelled through time seeing history repeat itself:1 Minoan Knossos, Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Smyrna were all violently destroyed c. 1400 BC, AD 1204 and 1922 respectively, but the survivors escaped to the new worlds of Mycenaean Greece, Renaissance Venice and modern Greece, to each of which the survivors contributed significantly. Although Gilbert did have a genuine interest in art history generally and classical sculpture in particular, it was the medieval period that most appealed to him, especially any evidence for the intermingling of the West in the East, as at Byzantine Mistra, Crusader Rhodes, and Venetian Constantinople. It was contemporary politics, however, that he found irresistible. Thus he was an ideal man to act as a government agent under the guise of an archaeologist or correspondent, his only limitation in Turkey being his lack of fluency in the language. Like the ships lying idle out in the harbour at Smyrna, he had evolved from a passive observer to an active agent. Gilbert witnessed a living Greek tragedy on a national scale. Modern Greece was the tragic figure: excessive pride in herself and her accomplishments, both ancient and modern, led her to be blind to contemporary reality; nemesis in the form of Kemal and the Nationalist Turks led to her downfall; and a wrenching catharsis through suffering and executions led to a recognition of and adaptation to the new geopolitical reality, all accompanied by a chorus of Not unlike the Argonauts themselves who encountered ‘remnants from various stages of the development of the world and of life in it.’ (Thalmann 2011: 38)

1

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Gilbert’s articles as the observer’s commentary. The gods of course were the great distant leaders who thought they could negotiate the fate of humankind, mindless of their own fallibility. Many times in the past conquering armies had slaughtered defenseless foes, but at Smyrna in the twentieth century history was written not only as usual by the victors but was also recorded by the victims. At the same time, however, the twentieth century itself was so filled with reports of ethnic cleansings and genocides on such a scale that the reports brutalized the humanity of the supposedly civilized people reading about them, and the tragedy of Smyrna disappeared from public awareness between the cataclysmic upheavals of the First and Second World Wars. In December 1924 in Rome Gilbert met Mary Augusta Stewart Huston, who was descended from an old socially prominent family of Toronto, Ontario, and they began a lengthy courtship. His social connections with the old black aristocracy in Rome gave him entrée into their castles and palaces. He accompanied Alessandro de Bosdari, the former governor of the Dodecanese, and Thomas Ashby, the former Director of the British School in Rome, exploring the topography in the countryside around Rome, and Ashby gave him his archaeological notes on an old unpublished excavation in central Italy. By attending the salons of Mrs Eugénie Strong, the former Assistant Director of the British School, Gilbert met many eminent academics. He assisted his fellow scholars in their publications and translated some into English. In 1926 Gilbert sailed to the United States and Canada on an archaeological lecture tour and observed the curious customs of New Yorkers and Torontonians. In 1927 and 1928 he traveled around central Europe for research for his book on Rome and the Papacy and visited sites of the Holy Roman Empire for a projected guidebook. He flew from Bonn to Berlin, taking his own aerial photos. In 1928 both Gilbert and Stewart traveled with friends up the Nile in Egypt. In 1929 he published The Roman Campagna and its Treasures, Concrete in Ancient Rome: the Pantheon, and Rome and the Papacy. Gilbert and Stewart married in Toronto in 1929 and began living in Rome. In 1930 Gilbert was asked by Carlo Anti, then the Director of the Italian Mission in Egypt, to become his assistant at his excavations at Tebtunis, and he threw himself whole-heartedly into the task, visiting Egyptian collections in European museums and studying hieroglyphs under Sir Alan Gardiner, the leading authority. Gilbert’s facility with Arabic and other languages, his elite social connections as a member of the British Turf Club in Cairo and his status as Field Director of the Tebtunis excavations gave him unique access to society

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in Cairo as well as to all the other excavations which he visited at Luxor and along the Nile. In Egypt Gilbert began in the Valley of the Queens cleaning the Tomb of Queen Nefertari, an old Italian excavation, and then joined Anti at the GrecoRoman site of Tebtunis in the desert near the Fayyum oasis. There they discovered a huge sanctuary of the oracular crocodile god Sobek surrounded by the houses of the priests. Their most spectacular discovery was the cache of papyri originally deriving from the temple library itself. In 1932 Stewart joined Gilbert on the dig and described living among their Egyptian and Bedouin workers and families, including a visit to the sheik’s compound. Gilbert also began taking movies of the excavations. In 1933 Tebtunis was visited by the entire Italian royal family including Prince Philip of Hesse, a high-ranking Nazi. Gilbert visited Berlin and Vienna in 1932 and 1934, noting the increasing presence of Nazis. He continued working at Tebtunis until 1936, discovering frescoed Coptic churches and arranging to have aerial photographs taken over the site. In 1934 he flew by seaplane from Italy to Rhodes on his way back to Egypt but lamented the extent of Italian restorations inside the old walled town, especially in the Palace of the Grand Masters. In 1935 Gilbert gave significant help to a papyrologist from Milan, Achille Vogliano, who was eager to dig at the nearby site of Medinet Madi, from which codices of a Manichaean sect had been showing up in antiquarian shops in Cairo. Gilbert set up the excavations and at once discovered the court of a Middle Kingdom temple built by the pharaoh Amenemhet III. In May, 1936, Gilbert and Stewart sailed from Alexandria to Athens. King George II, Constantine’s eldest son, was back on the throne and had just appointed the ‘inveterate political schemer’ Ioannis Metaxas as Prime Minister. (Llewellyn Smith 2004: 188) Gilbert and Stewart spent two weeks in Athens, catching up on gossip with the Millers and Mme Bouboulis among others, and visiting Mycenae, Olympia and Delphi before setting out on a long drive through Yugoslavia toward Italy. This was their last excursion through Europe until after the war as they decided to escape Fascist Italy and move to the New World. By then having no other family but themselves, Gilbert bought a cattle farm near Port Hope, Ontario, near where his mother had been born, and built a large addition to the farmhouse for his art collection and library. He reinvented himself yet again as a Classicist when he was invited to teach at the University of Toronto from 1945 until 1965. Both Gilbert and Stewart were invited by the Founding President of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Prof. Thomas Symons,

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a former student of Gilbert’s, to teach part-time at Trent over the course of the next decade. Although Gilbert did visit Italy while on sabbatical leave after the war, he never returned to Greece, nor looked back on his earlier life as a young student of archaeology there, the lost world of his youth.

List of Figures 1. Italian School����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������9 2. Italian School and Acropolis from Olympieion�����������������������������������������������������������������10 3. Roman Agora��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������31 4. Delphi Marmaria tholos and treasuries������������������������������������������������������������������������������74 5. Gilbert Bagnani overseeing dig on South Slope����������������������������������������������������������������77 6. Mistra Pantanassa monastery����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������89 7. Mistra Ayia Sophia before restoration��������������������������������������������������������������������������������92 8. Mt Ithome Monastery of Vourkano left to right: Gilbert Bagnani, monk, Doro Levi��94 9. Olympia Temple of Hera ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������96 10. Naupaktos harbour��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������98 11. Arta Ayia Theodora with bell tower ������������������������������������������������������������������������������102 12. Orchomenos Skripou church��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������105 13. Smyrna and its harbor from Mt. Pagos��������������������������������������������������������������������������147 14. Left to right: Florence Bagnani, Verschoyle Blake and Gilbert Bagnani������������������214

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Bibliography Agard, W. 1923. The Date of the Metopes of the Athenian Treasury at Delphi. American Journal of Archaeology 27.3: 322-333. Allen, S. 1999. Finding the Walls of Troy. Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik. Berkeley. Allen, S. 2011. Classical Spies. American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece. Ann Arbor. Alusik, T. 2007. Defensive Architecture of prehistoric Crete. Oxford: Archaeopress. Anastos, M. 1952. Pletho, Strabo and Columbus. Mélanges Henri Grégoire IV, 1-18, reprinted in Anastos, M. 1979. Studies in Byzantine Intellectual History. London: Variorum Reprints. Andrew, C. and Noakes, J. (eds) 1987. Intelligence and International Relations, 19001945. Exeter. Arseni, K. 2004. Athens Between the Wars. Athens, Commercial Bank of Greece. Bagnani, G. 1919. The Subterranean Basilica at Porta Maggiore, Journal of Roman Studies 9 (1919): 78-85. Bagnani. G. 1921. Hellenistic Sculpture from Cyrene. Journal of Hellenic Studies. 41.2: 232-46. Bagnani, G. 1922a. An Archaic Relief. Morning Post. February 7 (dateline). Bagnani, G. 1922b. The Question of the Patriarchate. Morning Post. February 22. Bagnani, G. 1922c. The Parthenon. Restoration Projects. Morning Post. February. Bagnani, G. 1922d. Wall of Themistocles. Morning Post. Undated Bagnani, G. 1922e. The Greek Crisis. Venizelist Moves. Morning Post. Undated Bagnani, G. 1922f. M. Gounaris and an Armistice. Peace at Any Price. Morning Post. March 26. Bagnani, G. 1922g. The British School at Athens. Plea for Excavations at Constantinople. Morning Post. Dated March 26, published April 4. Bagnani, G. 1922h. Greece Relieved. Satisfaction over Adrianople. Morning Post. March 30. 296

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Index Acropolis of Athens 10–14, 104–140, 199 Agard, Walter 75 Agora, Roman in Athens 30–47 Agrinion 103 Albania 264 Alexander, King xxxiv, 17–51, 101–111, 152, 212 Alexandra, Queen 20, 192–203 Alexandria xxxiv, 51, 83 Alice, Princess 39 Ali Pasha 100 Allan, Sir Hugh 207 Allan, James 207 Allan, Travers 207–208 Andreades, Prof. Andreas 204 Andrew, Prince 49, 101, 18, 191–192 Ankara 56–61, 173, 241, 283–287 Anti, Carlo 7–40, 90, 153, 211, 276–287 Antimachia Castle 127 Aosta 27, 182, 276 Apollo 70–73, 75, 79 Apsley, Lord 65, 106–107 Argos 80 Argostoli 97 Arkasa 236–237, 240 Armenians 3, 61, 172, 283–286 Armstrong Whitworth & Co 154–155 Armstrong, Zaida Cecile 155 Arta 17–27, 101–102 Artemis 164–165, 212, 250 Arvanitopoulos, Aspostolos 149 Asklepios 80 Ashby, Thomas 18, 54 Ashmole, Bernard 36 Aspri Petra 131 Astypalaia 126

Atchley, Shirley Clifford 62 Athos, Mount 26, 224 d’Aubusson, Pierre 122 Averoff, George 51 Azerbaijan 276 Bagnani, Florence 213–14 Bagnani, Gen. Ugo xiv–xv, 117,182, 219 Baku 284–285 Balanos, Nikolaos 24,46, 53 Ballardini, Ernesto 143, 241 Ballardini, Italia xv, 143, 183 Baltazzi, George xxxvii, 25, 32, 49–67, 111, 155, 169, 181, 191, 229 Baltazzi, Niko 112, 230 Baltazzis, Chariclée 155, 259–262 Balugdic, Zivojin 205 Barstow, Arthur 186 Bathurst, Lady 65 Batum 287 Beaverbrook, Lord 182 Bell, Gertrude 101–102, 281 Bentinck, Sir Charles 192, 204–205 Berenson, Bernard 222 Bersaglieri 129–133 Bessarion, Cardinal 279–289 Beyoglou 270, 273–274 de Billy, Count Robert Black Sea 136, 266–283 Blake, Edward 210 Blake, Ethel Benson 210 Blake, Verschoyle x, 208, 210–222 Blegen, Carl 37–53, 209–258 Bodrum 46, 118–135, 186 de Bosdari, Count Alessandro  114–139 Botzaris, Col. Dimitrios 253

304

24. Land of the Golden Fleece Bouboulina, Laskarina 228–254 Bouboulis, Helene (Skouzes) 228 Brambilla, Giuseppe 264 Bristol, Admiral Mark 173–175 Brock, Admiral Sir Osmond 3 Broussa 277–281 Bulgarians 152 Bull, Sir William 187 Buondelmonti, Cristoforo 115, 237 Bursa, see Broussa Burton, Harry 194, 207 Burton, Minnie 194, 207, 274–275 Buschor, Ernst 45 Byron, Lord 76–100, 165, 225 Cabras, Capt. Pietro 129–133 Caianiello, Maria 195, 258 Calendar 6, 209 Cambridge 36, 112 Candia 164 de Candolle, Beatrix Chapman Barclay 145, 176 de Candolle, Major Gen. Raymond 145, 176 Capsule [Dimitri Kapsalis?] 6, 7, 25 25Carapanos, see Karapanos  Carnock, Baron 186–187 del Caretto, Fabrizio 116 Casson, Stanley 18–112, 206 Caterinepule, 45 Cattaneo, Antonio 15–18, 86–138 Cavaphis, Constantine xxxiv Central Asian Society 121, 184–186 Chanakkale 178 Chania xxvii, 158, 164, 165, 212 Chapman, John Jay 145, 176 Charilaos, Epaminondas 193, 259 Charles V, Emperor 117 Charpy, Gen. 275 Chios 88 Christopher, Prince 182 Chrysostomos, Metropolitan of

Smyrna 171 Churchill, Winston xxviii–xxiv, 84, 177–178, 185, 190 Cilicia xxxiv, 56–61 Clarke, Stewart 216 Clemenceau, Georges xxix, xxxi, 51 Clerkenwell 184 Colchis 149, 284 Columbus, Christopher 88 Connaught, Duke of 118, 187 Constantine, Emperor 266–280 Constantine XI, Emperor 90 Constantine I, King xxvi– xxvii, 18–27, 48–49, 59–68, 99, 111, 155, 181–205, 266 Constantinople 16–88, 136–206, 244–277 Cordelio 143–144 Corfe, Col. Arthur 152 Corfu 17–40, 81, 190, 254–264 Corinth 39, 78–108, 213, 257 Cosadino, Anna 21 Courvoisier, Edouard 83  Courvoisier, Léonie 83 Cox, Lady Belle 273, 277 Cox, Sir Percy 271, 273 Crete 145–161, 247–255 Curzon, Lord xxxi, xxxvi–xxxvii, 49,50,56, 62,66, 179, 190–192, 200, 204 Cyrene 84, 158–163 Danglis, Gen. Panagiotis 27 Daphni 14–42, 226 Dawkins, Richard 239 Delos 22, 148, 251 Delphi 29, 74–75 Demeter 42, 221 Demidoff, Count Elim 153 Dervishes 277 Dewar, Florence  xiii Diana, see Artemis Dionysos 8, 95, 251 Dousmanis, Gen. Victor 54

305

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Drummond–Wolff, Henry 65, 153–155 Egypt 51–83, 117, 153, 230 Eleusis 14–42, 211 Elisabeth, Crown Princess 20, 211 Enver Pasha 61 Epidauros 80 Erzerum 274–281 Eydoux, Gen. Joseph– Paul 255–257 De Facendis, Domenico 254 Fago, Vincenzo 56–57 Ferdinand, King of Romania 20 France 22, 61, 117–133, 186–190, 228 Freshfield, Edwin 82, 189 Gabriel Sir Vivian 116, 121, 184,189 Gallipoli xxxiii, 177–178,223 George I, King  192–203 George, Prince 20, 49, 112, 183–184 Georgia 287 Ghika, Col. 17–23 Ghiök Ciallar 46, 118 Giglioli, Giulio Quirino 110 Gonatas, Col. Stylianos 5, 168, 181 Gortyn 163 Goudas, Adm. Michael 181, 191, 228–229, 248, 258–259 Gounaris, Dimitrios 49 Grand Master 122–123, 186 Grand Prior 118–119, 186–187 Grant, Neil Forbes 44–66, 183, 254 Granville, Lord 68 Gregorian Calendar 6, 209 Grippari Helen 248–249 Grippari, Perikles 112 Grippari, Maria Skouzes 13, 112 Guiccioli 204 Gulbenkian, Calouste 271 Gustaf VI Adolf, King of Sweden 80

Gustaf VI Adolf, King of Sweden 65 Gwynne, H. A. 65 Gytheion 220 Hadjianesti, Gen. George 21 Hadjikyriakos, Admiral 247 Hadrian 8, 46, 164–165,279 Hagia Triada 163 Halbherr, Federico 40, 112, 158–164, 255 Halil Ethem Bey 275 Halliday, Edward 76 Harington, Gen. Tim 179 Hatzidakis, Joseph 160 Hephaistos84, 199, 222 Herzog, Rudolf 126, 128 Heurtley 263–264 Hill, Bert Hodge 1, 37–39, 226, 258 Holland, Leicester 217 Holy Roman Empire 292 Horton, George 174 Howard, Sir Esme 153 Hunter–Weston, Lt. Gen. Sir Aylmer 119, 186 Husny Effendi 126 Huston, Mary Augusta Stewart 292 Hymettos, Mt 53 Ioannina 100 Iraq xxxi, 271–273, 285 Isis 163 Ismet Pasha 200 Iviron 225 Izmir, see Smyrna  Jacopich, Giulio 199–257 Jason 149, 279, 284 De Jong, Piet 217 Kaklamanos, Dimitrios 204 Kalabaka 150 Kalamata 93, 220 Kalavryta 257 Kambanis, Michael Lorenzo 22, 248 Karakalu 225

24. Land of the Golden Fleece Karapanos, Alexander 222 Karyes 225–226 Kavaphakes, Andreas 63–65, 107 Kemal Ataturk103, 200, 227 Kendal, Sir John 116, 122, 188 Kephallonia 112 Kephalos 126 Knights Hospitaller of St. John 115, 185–188 Knights Templar 115, 119, 185 Knossos 45, 157–164, 218, 291 Kolophon 165, 241 Koromilas 24–26 Kos 112–138, 228 Kotopouli 38 Koundouriotis, Lily 26, 107, 202 Koundouriotis, Olga 202 Koundouriotis, Admiral Paul 26 Kourouniotis, Konstantine 24 Kozadinos, George 212 Kozadinou, see Cosadino Lamb, Sir Harry 146, 174, 183, 243 Lamb, Sabina Maissa 144 Lambros, Mlle 24 Lavra 224–225 Law, Lady Catherine Hatsopoulou 21, 23–26, 35, 45–47, 64, 68, 263 Law, Sir Edward 21 Lawrence, Arnold W. 64 Lawrence, T. E. 64 Lemnos 97, 223–228 Lesbos 245 Leukos 237 Levi, Doro 18–41, 81–163, 196–259 Levidis, Dimitri 228 Lindley, Sir Francis 55–62, 190 Lindos 139–140 Lloyd George, David 48, 276 Lugli, Giuseppe 40, 166, 259 Luxor 193, 207, 293 Macedonia 82–112

Maissa, Felice 144 Maiuri, Amedeo 114–139, 228–232 Mallia 160 Malta 117, 172, 232 Manetas, Gen. Theodoros 33 Manetta see Manetas Manos, Aspasia xxxiv Marco Polo 279 Mariani, Lucio 40, 166 da Martinengo, Gabriele 123 de Martino, Ambassador Giacomo 57 Matapan, Cape 220 Mausolus 118 Mavromichalis, Gen. Periklis 33, 247 Mayes, Lt Col Henry 260 Megara 54, 259 Megaspeleion 257 Mehmet II, Sultan 90, 116 Mercati, Alexander  111 Meredith, Sir Vincent 207 Mesolonghi 103 Metaxakis, Patriarch Meletios 63, Metaxas, Gen. Ioannis xxix, xxxiv–xxxvi, 27, 38–39, 49–54, 155, 181, 219, 247, 259, 253 Meteora 150 Meyer, George 264 Miller, William xviii, 26–65, 165, 204, 264–281 Mistra 89–92, 226–228 Momferratos, Kalliope 152 Monemvasia 228 Montagna, Giulio Cesare 16–33, 254–278 Morgenthau, Henry 259 Morning Post 13, 54, 187–203 Mosul 273 Mudania 206 Mudros xxx, 223, 271 Mussolini, Benito 27–37, 80, 286

307

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Lost Worlds of Ancient and Modern Greece

Mycenae 36, 80–112, 206–217 Mykonos 22, 248–264 Nairne, Gen. Edward Hoare 35, 204, 213 Nansen, Fridtjof 201 Nauplia 80 Nicholas, Prince 21, 81–139, 203, 239 Nikopolis 99 Nogara, Bernadino 272 Notaras, Annette 229 Notaras, Julia 229 Noureddin, Gen. 5, 167, 171–180 Nymphs 131 Olga, Queen 23, 203 Oliverio, Gaspare 158–163 Orlando, Prime Minister Vittorio 276 Orlandos, Anastasios 40, 91–101 Ottoman Empire 48, 100, 228, 276–280 Pace, Biagio 265 Padua (Padova) 7–8 Pallis, Antonios 111 Pallis, Cecilia 111 Pan 131 Pangalos, Gen. Theodoros 206, 246 Papandreou, Georgios 199 Papoulas, Gen. Anastasios 62 Paribeni, Roberto 145–195, 232, 264 Parlanti, Andoni 7–18, 81, 126–131, 213, 254 Patras 95–103 Pera 277 Peroglou, Marietta 35 Peroglou, Nicolas 17, 23, 63, 229 Pernier, Luigi 8,161 Perrone di San Martino, Fernando 27, 57–58 Phaistos 163 Pharsalos 99–112, 145–149 Philadelpheus, Alexander 40–55,

99, 152 Philip, Prince 181, 192 Pigadhia 235–240 Plastiras, Col. Nikolaos 246 Pletho, George Gemistos 88–91, 279 Politis, Nikolaos 17, 190, 263 Poros 258 Porter, Kingsley 222 Post, see Morning Post Pozzle see Peroglou Preveza 99 Prinkipo 273–274 Prinko, Constatntine 111–112 Protopapadakis, Petros 68 Rados, Constantine 26 Reggiani, Gina 255–257 Reshid Pasha 288 Robbins, Edmund 13 Rodd, Sir Rennell 165 Russia 20, 61, 261–287 Salonika xxvi, 29, 148, 190–246 Samos 138 Samson 288 Santorini 196–233 Saria 239 Seager, Richard 217 Seely, Sir Charles  119 Serbia xxx, 139, 223 Serpieri, Fernando 19 Serpieri, Laura (Skouzes) 16–76, 155, 254 della Seta, Alessandro della Seta ix, 11,17, 29–34, 41–46, 56–58, 76–223, 262 Sèvres, Treaty of 26 Sforza, Count Carlo 50 Sivas 288 Sixtus IV, Pope 116 Skouloudis, Stephanos 52 Skouzes, Maria Kleopatra 13 Skouzes, Alexander 13, 51 Skouzes, Isabelle 13 Skouzes, Mika 17, 112, 230

24. Land of the Golden Fleece Skripou 104–105 Smith, Sir Aubrey 2, 36, 168, 213, 260 Smyrna 1–32, 66, 143–247, 290 Sokastro 237–240 Sophie, Queen 248 Soteriades, Prof. George 27, 35 Soteriou, Georgios 52, 227 Soutsos, Alexander 44 Soumela 280 Sounion 71–76 Stergiadis, Aristeides 101, 168–196 Stevens, Gorham Philips 16, 229 Strabo 88–90, 238 Stratigos, Gen. Xenophon 230 Stratos, Nikolaos xxxvii, 25, 35, 64 Stratou, Dora 25 Stratou, Maria Koromila 22, 25, 35 Streit, George 25 Strong, Mrs Arthur 56–83, 149–165, 261 Suleiman I, Sultan 117–122 Svoronos, Ioannes 25–26 Symons, Prof. Thomas v–x, 293 Syria xxxiv, 61 Talbot, Gerald 191 Tatoi xxiv, 181, 192, 203 Tebtunis 292–293 Tellini, Gen. Enrico 253 Thebes 104, 211 Theotokis, Ioannis 21 Theotokis, Nikolaos 21–27, 168 Thera, see Santorini Thrace 206–228 Tiryns 80, 216 Tourkovasili 219 Trebizond 274–287 Trent University 44 Tripolis 220 Tsountas, Christos 217 Turkey 16–22, 57–61, 246–287

Ugolini, Luigi 264 Valassis, Victoria Fatopedi 40 Venice 117 Venizelos, Eleftherios xxviii, 13–49, 190–228, 260 Vickers 51, 261 di Vicovaro, Princess 111–112 Victor Emmanuel, King 276 Vitalis 137 Volo 148–149 Wace, Alan 34–112, 206–217, 259 Walker, Alice Leslie  39 Weston, William 119, 186 Whicher, George 13 Whitbrooke, Paul 261 Winter, Prof. Fred 39, 186, 222–230 Woods, Col. Harold 97–104, 225, 274–277 Woods, Helene Souvatzoglou 97–104, 225, 274–277 Woodward, Arthur 206–216 Wooley, Sir Leonard 64 Worm – see della Seta Xanthoudides, Stephanos 160 Yate, Lt. Col. Arthur 121, 184–187 Young, Andrew Murray  17–23, 64–71, 145, 182–220, 276–283 Zachos, Aristotle 227 Zaharoff, Sir Basil 51 Zakros 163 Zalapy, Emilia 195 Zarafti, Jacobos 126

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Gilbert Bagnani, the subject of Ian Begg’s book, was unknown to me, and I am glad to have made his acquaintance. The book covers the period 1921-1924. Gilbert comes across as a fascinating character, who encountered the Levant at a critical time for both the Greece of Eleftherios Venizelos and the Turkey of Mustapha Kemal Atatürk. He was bilingual in Italian (from his father) and English (from his mother): an archaeologist but always more than that. He knew and was helped by the excellent William Miller, which led to his contributing incisive articles about the politics of Greece and the Levant to the Morning Post in London. As a member of the Italian School of Archaeology in Athens he travelled around Greece and the islands and found himself in Asia Minor at a critical phase of the Greek occupation and Kemal’s war of independence. All this and much more is described in Gilbert’s letters to his mother. His grasp of local and international politics was impressive. He and Begg paint sparkling pen pictures of personalities such as Bosdari, the Italian ambassador during the Great War, and later Governor of the Dodecanese, Prince Demidoff the Russian ambassador, Harold Lamb the British Consul at Smyrna and family, Greek personalities such as Stratos, Kalapothakis, Karapanos, and colleagues at the Italian School. Gilbert emerges as clever, sometimes arrogant, fascinated by people especially from high society, and with a weakness for royalty. Begg does him justice in a well sourced book. This is a lively account of a formidable personality, scholar and archaeologist in the making. The black and white photographs by Gilbert himself are excellent. Sir Michael Llewellyn Smith, British Ambassodor to Greece 1996 – 1999

Gilbert Bagnani, of Italian and Canadian extraction, arrived in Greece at the age of 21, already well-connected through his parents’ social and professional circles. He was ostensibly studying Greek Archaeology and participating in fieldwork, research and assisting with educational trips for the Italian and other Western archaeological institutes in Athens. However, secretly, he was sending well-informed reports on the dynamic political situation in Greece and between Greece and Turkey to a London newspaper, while later spying for Mussolini. This first of three volumes based on his personal letters and news’ reports covers the momentous years from 1921-1924, which witnessed the disastrous failure of the Greek invasion of Western Turkey, the sack of Smyrna, a military coup and executions in Greece. We are also treated to highly-entertaining sketches of leading archaeologists in Greece, and the way fieldwork was conducted, as well as the social life of the political class and wealthy elite of Athens – into which, despite his youth, he quickly found a niche, thanks to his family connections and obvious social graces. Informative, excellently-edited and a delight to read. Professor John Bintliff, Edinburgh University

Ian Begg studied archaeology in Greece at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, traveling around Greece on student trips much the same as Gilbert Bagnani had done a half century earlier at the Italian School. Specifically for Lost Worlds, the author retraced Gilbert’s footsteps around Greece, the Aegean, Turkey and Libya. He has not only participated in excavations in Sicily, Greece, Crete and Egypt but also initiated a survey on the island of Karpathos especially for the chapter in Lost Worlds. After working on the Gilbert and Stewart Bagnani archives for two decades, he is planning two more volumes on their early lives in Europe and Egypt, where they conducted excavations at Tebtunis. Together with his Italian colleagues in Padua and Venice, he has co-authored many papers and articles on these astonishingly productive excavations in the 1930s.

Archaeopress Archaeological Lives www.archaeopress.com