Cust, Lionel; Colvin, Sidney [Hrsg.]: History of the Society of Dilettanti (London, 1898)

History of the Society of Dilettanti 69

for the encouragement and patronage of the
fine arts at home. We now approach a different
and by far the most fruitful field of its activity.
To the Dilettanti belonged for many years the
chief, and in several instances the whole, credit
of initiating and supporting those undertakings by
which the remains of classical antiquity in Greece
and the Levant have been explored and published
for the benefit of students and of the world. Before
recounting in detail their enterprises of this nature, a
few words on the previous history of archaeological
discovery and research in Europe will be in place.

From the days of the early Renaissance, the soil Earlier
of Italy, and especially that of Rome and its neigh- history of
bourhood, had been continually yielding up its studJ-
treasures, and the passionate curiosity and admira-
tion excited by these, as well as by the remains of
ancient architecture still above ground in the same
country, had revolutionized the arts and the taste
of Europe. But Greece itself, and the sites of
Greek civilization in Thrace, Macedonia, Asia
Minor, and the Archipelago, had under the Turkish
dominion become practically inaccessible to students
from the West. Beyond the small number of
objects obtained from Greece by Poggio Bracciolini,
and the remains observed and inscriptions copied in
the islands by Ciriaco of Ancona, both of them in
the fifteenth century, there had existed only a very
meagre importation of antiquities from those coun-
tries into Venice; and these had consisted chiefly
of the casual spoils of conquest. In promoting the
regular search for such antiquities, and thus laying
the foundations of what we now call the science
of Greek archaeology, England may fairly claim to
have taken a lead among the nations of Europe.