A visitor to an ancient Greek temple has caused outrage after a Facebook post showed him holding a piece of the marble ruins above his head while a woman took his photograph.
The incident reportedly took place on the islet of Palatia at the site of a set of 3,100-year-old archaeological ruins said to belong to a former temple to Apollo. Nearby, the Portara, a six-metre-high marble doorway, is the only standing remnant of the monument.
The incriminating picture has now been widely shared online, including by a local businessman, Kiriakos Jr. Boulamatsis, who is said to be the original poster. He published it with the caption: “Talk is cheap. Guard and protection right now. Not today but yesterday. They have crossed the line. Wake up before it’s too late and all that is left is a hill and some stairs. Stop it at once!”
The identity and nationality of the hands-on “history lover”, who is shirtless and whose face is blanked out in the picture, are unknown at the time of writing. Online commenters and the New York Post have nicknamed him “Jerk-ules” in a play on words referencing Hercules. Unfortunately for the would-be punners, Hercules is in fact the Roman version of the mythological Greek figure Heracles – the god of strength and heroes.
Far from being a hero, the man in question has attracted widespread condemnation. Concern over the issue has even reached the Greek parliament after the Cyclades representative, Markos Kafouros, wrote to the Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, calling for measures to prevent any repetition.
Some members of Reddit and elsewhere have pointed out that the temple is thought never to have been completed, and so it is hard to argue damage or “desecration.” Still more note that, despite some fencing, other tourists captured in the image are sitting directly on the unprotected stones. Many say there are similar ruins all over Greece and claim it would be impossible to safeguard them all.
Nonetheless, the controversy created by the photograph could go far beyond any one site or instance of bad tourist behaviour. Several of the online responses appear to cite the ruined monument’s lack of a security detail as a good reason why the British Museum should remain in possession of the Parthenon sculptures (a collection of different types of marble decoration from the temple of Athena on the Acropolis) that the UK has long refused to return to their homeland.
The Parthenon marbles are, however, arguably a case of quite a different order of importance. Though the ice has been broken on negotiations about their return in recent years, and Konstantinos Tasoulas, the man behind a long-running campaign to get them back to Greece, is now President, the British Museum maintains that the legal British Museum Act of 1963 prevents it from permanently removing objects from its collections.
