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 Juan and elsewhere, attacks the sceptics, and then half ridicules the belief.

    I’ve stood upon Achilles’ tomb,
  And heard Troy doubted!  Time will doubt of Rome!
       * * * * *
  There, on the green and village-cotted hill, is,
  Flank’d by the Hellespont, and by the sea,
  Entomb’d the bravest of the brave Achilles.—­
  They say so:  Bryant says the contrary.

Being again detained in the Dardanelles, waiting for a fair wind, Byron landed on the European side, and swam, in company with Lieutenant Ekenhead, from Sestos to Abydos—­a performance of which he boasts some twenty times.  The strength of the current is the main difficulty of a feat, since so surpassed as to have passed from notice; but it was a tempting theme for classical allusions.  At length, on May 14, he reached Constantinople, exalted the Golden