Nicolas C. Nicolaides
In 1816, “Monsieur Mertrud” a French merchant and antiquities dealer resident in Athens, discovered a 1st-century BC marble stele inscribed with a decree honoring ephebes and their superintendent (kosmetes), reused as spolia in the wall of a house (Fig. 1). In 1821 the stele was acquired by Percy Clinton Smythe, sixth Viscount Strangford (1780–1855), British ambassador at Constantinople (İstanbul), and entered the British Museum in 1864. Tracing the stele’s movement from Athens to Constantinople and London, this post emphasizes the role of Levantine Frank intermediaries in reshaping the modern afterlives of classical objects through pragmatic negotiations that operated between local households, diplomatic networks, and state museums.

Levantine Franks and Antiquities in Ottoman Athens
André Mertrud, locally known as Mousandreas (a corrupted form of “Monsieur Andreas”), was a French physician, merchant, and antiquities dealer who settled in Athens in 1788 following his marriage to Marguerite Cayrac, herself of Levantine Frank descent (Krakovitch 1985, p. 55–56). Their grand residence, located—according to Manolis Korres (2010, p. 125–128)—at the intersection of modern Adrianou and Navarchou Nikodemou Streets and depicted by Otto Magnus von Stackelberg (1786–1837), reflected the family’s wealth and social standing (Fig. 2). The building shown in Stackelberg’s lithograph, long misidentified as the Logotheti mansion, was identified by Bankel (1986, p. 167, 202) as the Mertrud house on the basis of Haller von Hallerstein’s architectural plans and drawings of the same property. The Mertrud residence likely functioned as a space of antiquarian display comparable to other elite households and foreign consulates in Athens (Petsalis-Diomidis 2018, p. 43).
The Mertruds’ involvement in antiquities drew them into the politics of collecting, as reflected in a 1802 letter by Giovanni-Battista Lusieri (1755–1821), agent of Lord Elgin (1766–1841). In this letter, Lusieri complained that “Monsieur Mertrout [sic]” obstructed the removal of the Parthenon marbles by cutting off the water supply required to wash them (Smith 1916, p. 230).

Strangford and the Decree
Despite André Mertrud’s earlier resistance to Elgin’s enterprise, the family’s later actions reveal a pragmatic recalibration rather than ideological opposition, as his descendants later sold the stele, and possibly other ancient artifacts, to one of Elgin’s successors, Lord Strangford. François Pouqueville, French consul at Ali Pasha’s court in Janina (Ioannina), records that the stele had been reused as spolia in the house of “Stamataki-Hadgi” before being discovered and transcribed by Monsieur Mertrud in 1816 (Pouqueville 1820, p. 105). Panagiotis Eustratiades (1815–1888), Ephor General of Antiquities, identifies “Stamataki-Hadgi” as Stamatios Kodras and locates the house on Deka Street, west of the Metropolitan Cathedral (Malouchou 2019, p. 64, n. 25). Pouqueville’s 1820 publication (Fig. 3) transformed the stele from a locally embedded object into a textualized artifact circulating within Western scholarly networks, likely increasing interest, and in 1821 the family sold the stele to Strangford’s agent, Luigi Canquitz of Smyrna (İzmir) (St Clair 2022, p. 250; TNA; Kew FO 352/15 B, 444). Canquitz’s name points to Levantine Frank origins, underscoring the existence of a transregional network of Levantine Frank settlers active in the antiquities trade.

After Strangford’s death, many of his antiquities entered the British Museum in 1864, among them the Strangford Apollo, an archaic kouros from the island of Anaphi (Fig. 4), and the Strangford Shield, a marble copy of the shield from Pheidias’ statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon. While Strangford’s collection exemplifies the consolidation of antiquities within imperial institutions, the same decades witnessed a parallel redefinition of ancient material within Greece itself.

From Commodities to Symbols of Nationhood
The Greek Enlightenment and the War of Independence fundamentally reshaped perceptions of antiquities. Intellectuals such as Adamantios Koraïs (1748–1833) framed ancient material culture as a cornerstone of national regeneration, while successive revolutionary governments sought to regulate its circulation. Yet ambiguities persisted in practice regarding the status of antiquities, particularly in the blurred boundary between patriotic donation and continued commercial exchange. As Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis (2018, p. 43) observes in the case of Nikolaos Phlogaïtis (1799–1867), a Greek revolutionary and jurist, whose newly acquired collection of sixty vases was donated to the National Museum, founded in 1829 by Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias (1776–1831) on Aegina (Fig. 5). By contrast, André Mertrud’s son Bartholomée sold more than one hundred vases to the same institution in 1831 (Petrakos 2015, p. 46–47, docs. 515–516). This juxtaposition may suggest differing modes of national commitment shaped by distinct social trajectories: on the one hand, an altruistic gesture aligned with emerging ideals of national patrimony; on the other, a Levantine Frank identity grounded in long-standing commercial practice and pragmatic engagement with state institutions. The latter interpretation is consistent with the Mertrud family’s broader activities in early independent Athens, including Petros Mertrud’s advisory role in 1831 to Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun, Duchess of Plaisance (1785–1854), on land acquisitions in the city (Kampouroglou 1923–1925, p. 207).

Conclusion
The trajectory of this 1st-century BC stele, from spolia in an Athenian house to a British Museum artifact, encapsulates the shifting meanings of antiquities in the late Ottoman and early modern Mediterranean. Mediated by Franco-Athenian families, Levantine agents, and diplomatic networks, the object’s movement reflects the transformation of ancient material from commodity to institutionalized heritage. In this context, the Mertruds emerge as key intermediaries, whose antiquarian and commercial strategies illuminate the entanglement of commerce, politics, and identity at the threshold of Greek independence.
Acknowledgments
This research was largely conducted at the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, supported by the 2023–2024 Kathryn and Peter Yatrakis Fellowship. I am grateful to Maria Georgopoulou and Irini Solomonidi for their guidance, and to the library staff for their support and hospitality. I also thank Joshua Williams, whose enthusiasm for epigraphy first introduced me to the field, and Matthew Peebles for comments on an earlier draft. For scholarly advice and other support, I thank Jackson Noah Miller, and Mercedes Volait.
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