Spirit of the Place

On September 15, 1802, the English brig "Mentor sailed fromPiraeus, its hold filled with the "Elgin Marbles" -- the Classical Greeksculptures that Lord Elgin, British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, had prised from the Parthenon in Athens. The ship was bound for GreatBritain, where Elgin intended the sculptures to adorn his family estate.This much is history.

William Hamilton, Lord Elgin's personal secretary and a witness to thestripping of the Parthenon sculptures, looks to what should be atriumphant voyage home, but finds himself beset with strange voices.Whispers heard deep in the hold lead to an uncanny encounter with a mostunusual stowaway... one destined to bring the "Mentor -- andHamilton -- to the verge of disaster.

With the treasures of Classical Athens -- a seeming realm of clarity, harmony, and order -- lying in fragments around him, Hamilton begins torealize that the Greek ideals his nation has embraced arose from darkerorigins, and that a "genius loci, the "spirit of the place"thought to abide in sacred sites, can be disturbed only at one's peril.