National Museum [antikvár]

THE HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM The Greek Museums would contain only fragments of ancient marbles and other works, were it not for the fact that the Greek soil never tires of yielding up its gifts. Divine figures, carved by important artists, are continually coming to the light of day, vases are continually being discovered buried in tombs, and splendid bronze statuettes are revealed from time to time by the discovery of an ancient shrine. The organised plundering of ancient works would be the main reason so many of them are now lost. It began in the second century B.C., with the relentless sacking of the ancient cities on the orders of the Roman generals, and it has never stopped throughout the following centuries, though now it is less systematic. The mania has revived in modern times, though from different motives. European lovers of antiquity, collectors and merchants, some of them moved by the spirit of the Rennaissance and the esteem in which it held the ancient world, others driven by a passion for profit, hastened to the enslaved Greek sites, either to study there (especially from the eighteenth century onwards) or to pillage. We may concede to the best of this latter group the mitigating factor that they were enchanted by Greek art and,