In 1803, more than 200 pieces of marble statues and friezes, considered to be among the highest expressions of classical civilization, were removed from the ancient Parthenon in Athens and taken to England. The feat was the work of Scottish Lord Thomas Elgin, British Ambassador to Constantinople, in his attempt to rescue the pieces from certain devastation by Turkish troops. Instead of accolades for his accomplishment, Elgin met with imprisonment, bankruptcy and the loss of his wife. Even the marble he had tried to preserve became a subject of intense controversy, prompting poet Lord Byron to allegedly write, "What the Goths spared, the Scots destroyed.”