In the Greek capital he lodged at the house of a respectable lady, widow
of an English vice-consul, who had three daughters, the eldest of whom,
Theresa, acquired an innocent and enviable fame as the Maid of Athens,
without the dangerous glory of having taken any very firm hold of the
heart that she was asked to return. A more solid passion was the poet's
genuine indignation on the "lifting," in Border phrase, of the marbles
from the Parthenon, and their being taken to England by order of Lord
Elgin. Byron never wrote anything more sincere than the _Curse of
Minerva_; and he has recorded few incidents more pathetic than that of the
old Greek who, when the last stone was removed for exportation, shed
tears, and said "[Greek: telos]!" The question is still an open one of
ethics. There are few Englishmen of the higher rank who do not hold London
in the right hand as barely balanced by the rest of the world in the left;
a judgment in which we can hardly expect Romans, Parisians, and Athenians
to concur. On the other hand, the marbles were mouldering at Athens, and
they are preserved, like ginger, in the British Museum.

Among the adventures of this period are an expedition across the Ilissus
to some caves near Kharyati, in which the travellers were by accident
nearly entombed; another to Pentelicus, where they tried to carve their
names on the marble rock; and a third to the environs of the Piraeus in
the evening light. Early in March the convenient departure of an English
sloop-of-war induced them to make an excursion to Smyrna. There, on the
28th of March, the second canto of _Childe Harold_, begun in the previous
autumn at Janina, was completed. They remained in the neighbourhood,
visiting Ephesus, without poetical result further than a reference to the
jackals, in the _Siege of Corinth_; and on April 11th left by the
"Salsette," a frigate on its way to Constantinople. The vessel touched at
the Troad, and Byron spent some time on land, snipe-shooting, and rambling
among the reputed ruins of Ilium. The poet characteristically, in _Don