August 14 Wednesday – QC arrived at Piraeus, Greece at noon. The ship was quarantined again, but Sam, Dr. George Birch, William Denny, and Dr. Jackson snuck off the ship and visited Athens that night.

Most of the Parthenon’s imposing columns are still standing, but the roof is gone. It was a perfect building two hundred and fifty years ago, when a shell dropped into the Venetian magazine stored here, and the explosion which followed wrecked and unroofed it. I remember but little about the Parthenon, and I have put in one or two facts and figures for the use of other people with short memories. Got them from the guide-book.

As we wandered thoughtfully down the marble-paved length of this stately temple, the scene about us was strangely impressive. Here and there, in lavish profusion, were gleaming white statues of men and women, propped against blocks of marble, some of them armless, some without legs, others headless—but all looking mournful in the moonlight, and startlingly human! They rose up and confronted the midnight intruder on every side—they stared at him with stony eyes from unlooked-for nooks and recesses; they peered at him over fragmentary heaps far down the desolate corridors; they barred his way in the midst of the broad forum, and solemnly pointed with handless arms the way from the sacred fane; and through the roofless temple the moon looked down, and banded the floor and darkened the scattered fragments and broken statues with the slanting shadows of the columns [IA Ch32].

Sam wrote to Captain Duncan for “Several among us” to depart from the planned itinerary in order to take:
“…a short trip…through the Bosphorus & into the Black Sea, all parties will be willing to forego the extension of it to desolate Sebastopol with its notable pile of porter bottles, we respectfully request that you will altar [sic] your programme…” [MTL 2: 79-80].