Articles with the theme: Greece

From Pylos to Karpathos: Archaeology now and then

Slaughter as high art. The Pylos Combat Agate, c. 1450-1500 BCE, length: 3.6 cm, Pylos Archaeological Museum (Wikipedia).

Celebrity-explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent didn’t excavate in the Greek Peloponnese in the 1880s – they would never have been given permits.

The recent state-of-the-art excavations and discoveries at the ‘Griffin Warrior’ tomb, Pylos, Peloponnese, and the present (June 2026) exhibition of its spectacular finds in Athens, give a chance to reflect on the methods employed elsewhere in the Aegean by the Bents in the 1880s: the island of Karpathos (Dodecanese), for instance (and professional archaeologists might like to look away at this point).

The Aegean: Vroukountas, Karpathos, indicated (ToposText).

The Bents were on Karpathos after 5 March until before 21 April 1885, some seven weeks, arriving from Tilos (where they found little, camping, ironically, in the old monastery that now acts as bulwark to the new museum, on whose information panels they, inexplicably, go unmentioned).

The couple ride far and wide over Karpathos, before reaching the distant north-western tip and the once notable city of Vrykous (modern Vroukountas (various spellings) [35.80167678950954, 27.16483337973251]). A site busy with people from neolithic times to the 19th century CE, it was one of the island’s important centres in antiquity (see, e.g., Nigel McGilchrist’s imaginative treatment, in McGilchrist’s Greek Islands #16: Southern Dodecanese: Astypalaia, Tilos, Karpathos, Kasos, Kastellorizo (London, 2011).

Βρυκο͂ς – Brykous, polis near Ag. Marina, north of Avlona, Karpathos, Dodecanese (ToposText).

Arriving from Olympos, via today’s Avlona, the Bent party camped at Vroukountas between 30 March and 2 April 1885, pitching a tent, typically topped with a ‘Union Jack’ it seems, in the level area directly in front of what is now referred to as the cave-church of St John – a strange sight for modern August festival-goers to contemplate no doubt: the Bents washed themselves in the cave’s stone basins and struggled with an unruly tent; their long-suffering dragoman, Mathew Simos from Anafi (in the Cyclades, not very far away to the west) slept outside…

Unaware of these campers, McGilchrist (see above) describes the setting: “At the northern extremity of the promontory, steps lead down into a spacious natural cave deep within the headland… To the left was the spring which served the settlement in antiquity; it is possible that the sanctuary of the Nymphs was here, from which a relief showing Hermes and the Nymphs, formerly immured in the forecourt of the Church of the Koimisis in Olympos, once came. The cave is now organised as the shrine of Aghios Ioannis Theologos, whose screen, font and altar are all composed of various ancient spolia.”

“Proceeding along the cliff we found tombs of every possible description, single chambers, double chambers, tombs one over the other, tombs with steps above them cut in the rock, as if for ornamentation, but the most frequent and those which we found the least disturbed were those constructed like this plan…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 237. Bent would have sketched the plan in his site log, now lost).

Forty-two years after Ludwig Ross (Ross 1845) had visited the island, without reaching Vroukountas due to bad weather, Bent wrote a lengthy article on his researches for The Journal of Hellenic Studies (1885, Vol. VI: 233-242) and sets the scene: “Brykountios was apparently the most considerable town during both the earlier and later occupations, and as it was situated at the extreme north of Karpathos, about two hours distant from the Elympos, and several days’ journey from the Konak, we were able to pitch our tent there and excavate unmolested… The chief interest connected with the pottery I brought back is that it is the first to come from Karpathos and from these rock-cut tombs. But the tombs themselves were extremely interesting, and the great variety of periods of pottery found in close juxtaposition would suggest that the graves had been used again and again, just as the graves of the Karpathiotes [are] now…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 236, 237) (Bent kept notebooks of his researches but unfortunately they all seem to have been lost apart from those of his final journey to Socotra and Aden in 1897.)

(Two further interesting characters besides Ross can be introduced here: the swashbuckling Charles Thomas Newton (see later below), who never visited but acquired important Roman antiquities from Karpathos now in the British Museum; and the aristocratic William Roger Paton, Bent’s friend, who did explore the island’s southern region a year or so after the Bents and acquired fine Mycenaean wares there, also now in the BM (Paton 1887; 1889)

Mabel Bent’s account of their stay at Vroukountas, before Easter 1885

Mabel Bent devotes several pages in her ‘Chronicles’ to what was clearly a happy stay at this campsite, which included Theodore’s 33rd birthday, some notable finds, a few memorable meals, and the arrival of family letters (with belated news of the death of General Charles Gordon at Khartoum on 26 January 1885).

Mabel begins her account:

“You must excuse these smudges as I am sitting cross-legged on Theodore’s bed in our tent and was just interrupted by a man who came for two candles Theodore had sent for that he may explore a cave.

We are encamped for four days at Vourgounda. We came here yesterday [30 March 1885] with two mules and two workmen to make excavations on the site of an ancient city. We only took our medicines, without which we never move, necessaries of clothing, and books for four days, food and bedding; but I had so much to sit on that I had to hold with both hands all the way. As I did not fall off I was pronounced an excellent rider by the men.

There is a long rocky point jutting into the sea on the west of Karpathos, far north, near Tristomo and covered with ruins. Here everyone lunched at noon and then Theodore set the men to work and I went to the end of the point and had the tent pitched by a high rock, which shelters us from south winds. As Sunday night was the only rainless one we have had this long time, the ground was dry and by great good luck we have a level, gravelly floor.

At camp on Socotra: Theodore, Ammar, Manthaios and Ernest Bennett. From the Bents' Southern Arabia (1900). Image © The Bent Archive
“’We always travel with green fly tents with double flaps, the whole made of Willesden canvas, which does not get mouldy when folded up wet.’ – Theodore Bent, Esq., in the ‘Album’. Beware of imitations. Samples and prices from Willesden Paper and Canvas Works, Willesden Junction, N.W.” (‘Field’, Saturday, 10 April 1897). Twenty years after Karpathos, Mathew Simos (standing right) at camp on Socotra, by then fully familiar with tents (Bent, M.V.A. 1900: 365; archive.org).

Neither Mathew nor the other two men had ever seen a tent before, so beginning with turning right side out I had to lead by example and prompt and instruct them in everything; all in Greek too. Do not think I had only to cause the pegs to be driven into the ground and put the eyes or guys, or whatever you call the ropes, over, no, only one peg is done like that. No two ropes are the same, either as to length or the angle from the tent: some are under rocks, some are round rocks, some are over rocks, and one had to be strung through a hole in a rock… I was tired enough in my tongue and limbs when, after hoisting the Union Jack, I sat down to survey the tent, and, really, the ropes all dancing have a very funny effect. The sun was hot outside but it was hotter still setting up the beds inside, ‘tromero sesti’ as they said.

After that I went to the workmen, who had discovered the pavement of a Byzantine church. We turn up our noses at anything ‘tis Vizantines epoches’, so Theodore took them elsewhere.

Soon after our arrival, a messenger came and brought us two letters, the first we have had for more than five weeks and our first news of poor General Gordon’s death. As soon as we had joyfully read them we began to lament the many more that had been lost, but two or three hours later another man came with 23, and two newspapers, February 7 being the latest, and March 9 the latest letter.

“A very steep path leads to the small round entrance and several flights of steps lead down into a large cave. The holy place is shut in by a low wall and some pillars which do not touch the roof. Holy water drips into two little stone troughs and thither we hie with our sponges and towels to wash…” The cave-church of St John, Vroukountas, scene of a three-day festival over 29 August (St John the Baptist/Agios Ioannis Prodromos) (karpathostravel.com).

When the sun set we scrambled home. Next to our tent is a little hut built against the wall as a kitchen for pilgrims who come to a little chapel in the cave beneath. A very steep path leads to the small round entrance and several flights of steps lead down into a large cave. The holy place is shut in by a low wall and some pillars which do not touch the roof. Holy water drips into two little stone troughs and thither we hie with our sponges and towels to wash. The workmen sleep among the rocks; there are plenty of caves about. When it got dark we went to the kitchen to dine. It was Theodore’s birthday.

The sacks of my bed and the tent were laid as a tablecloth on the soft wet earthen floor. We sat on two stones. Theodore leaning against the middle post supporting a lambskin full of water, and I, as I found afterwards, very few inches from the lamb of the period. Mathew built a table and seats next day. All the rocks and stones around were full of food and pots and a candle stuck by its own wax to one of them shed a dim light, except once when it tumbled down and went out.

We had a soup of lamb’s head and a lot of herbs picked by the wayside, onions, and a handful of peas someone had given to Theodore to eat raw. Then the brains and tongue boiled. Then the liver fried; a bowl of sheep’s cream and sugar. Some wine from Samos and coffee. We then strolled on the rocks by moonlight and complained to each other that we did not feel at all excited at the idea of our first night in a tent – indeed, I think all we felt was satisfaction at the idea of a clean, dry shelter.

Mathew spread his bed on brushwood in the kitchen. I undressed outside that I might bring in no fleas. As I had spread all our bedding in the sun, for once it was dry and our clothes in the morning were quite dry too. It rained in the night and Theodore had to go out about two to loosen the guys, and the north wind came on in the morning, so they had to be tightened again.

It is a cold dark day and the sea wild and black. We breakfasted outside. Theodore has gone to dig graves today and I am remaining at home enjoying great peace, nooked in where no one can stare. I am just going to have another read of the letters.

“But the best thing is quite perfect, a bowl shaped like a pineapple about 4 or 5 inches across…” (BM 1886,0310.6: Megarian bowl, black ware. Hellenistic, 3rd c. BCE – 1st c. BCE; © Trustees of the British Museum).

In the afternoon, or rather about 10, I went and with difficulty found the diggers, as they were in catacombs whose openings were quite invisible from above. They had already begun to find things, though many of the graves had evidently been opened in the Byzantine times. Most things were broken but still there were many whole and during the whole time we became possessed of many earthen plates (20 in one grave), the remains of copper mirrors and boxes, some glass things broken, and some broken but very pretty vases, etc. But the best thing is quite perfect – a bowl shaped like a pineapple about 4 or 5 inches across. Besides this, three round boxes and two lids made of lead, we think, a sort of button with a hanging ring, but we know not what metal, and some little twisted bits that seem to be gold. The prettiest lamp, quite perfect, has a word on the bottom and Theodore copied some inscriptions painted on the stucco of the vaults. We are altogether very much pleased with our success, and if we do not find things on Saría may return…

On Thursday morning (March 31st, I mean April 2nd), I did not go at all to the digging. To get there one must climb up, down, or over 17 walls, and as I did this three times the day before, besides wandering in search of tombs, I am sure I had a good deal of climbing. I was not much use as the men preferred grouping themselves round me when Theodore’s back was turned, talking to me, looking at my eyeglass, scissors, gloves, never before seen in Karpathos I am sure, and asking innumerable questions. In vain I suggest they should work but when the ‘aphentiko’, as they address Theodore, comes it is different.

“Besides this, three round boxes and two lids made of lead, we think, a sort of button with a hanging ring, but we know not what metal, and some little twisted bits that seem to be gold…” (From Mabel Bent’s notebook “her chronicle in the Sporades &c., 1885”, p. 78, archive of The Hellenic Society, London, CC).

Besides there was much to do in cleaning out the earth from the pots with very little water. I had to mind the camp while Mathew went to seek a meal in the sea. I had a visit from five women and girls who, without any ceremony, called me nothing but Verghinía. This is the first time I have not been called Kyria Verghinía, but I suppose these people really never have seen anyone superior to themselves and their only idea of a ‘Kyria’ must be the Blessed Virgin. They said ‘come with us Verghinía and we’ll give you cream’, but they terrified me by playing with the pots and I gave them no encouragement to remain and was glad when they left.

I packed our personal possessions and the more delicate ‘finds’ and after luncheon Theodore went off again and I broke up the camp with Mathew, though Theodore had sent me a man, which I told him was quite unnecessary. The man was busy all the time turning a lamb into food, which I fortunately did not find out till he was dead. By the by, Mathew had not slept a 2nd night in the kitchen, which was really as airtight as a nutmeg grater, but taken refuge in a cave about 30 feet above our heads.

We had three mules as we had two huge baskets of pots and seaweeds. About 4 pm, Theodore and his men came and everything was carried about three-quarters of a mile and they and I were loaded on the mules and we reached Elymbo by dark. Sunny day.

Good Friday was a fine sunny day and we unpacked the panniers, for we were quite too tired to look at anything on our arrival. It is very exciting work digging – first finding something, then is it whole? Then have we all the pieces? The men grind the edges trying to fit them, and any metal they cut with their knife. Fortunately they never saw the little boxes. Theodore found and pocketed them.

We cleaned as much as our limited means would allow (a milk jug and a Russian wooden bowl such as grocers have with 2 lbs of tea). We packed the pots into three boxes, all except a very large earthenware jug, two of which were found whole and one of which Theodore gave away. It is to be carried loose all the way home and now we empty our bowl into it. These two days before Easter are employed making bread and cakes with red eggs stuck into them and every oven is smoking…” (Bent, M.V.A. 2006: 99-125)

(We leave the Bents here; they now return to Olympos for the Easter celebrations…)

The Bents’ collections from Karpathos

BM 1886,0310.2: lekythos, white ground. Corinthian, ca. 500 BCE – 450 BCE. Unspecified site, Vroukountas (© Trustees of the British Museum).

Restrictions on the unauthorised removal of antiquities from Greece were already in force when the Bents were active in the Aegean (1880s). The position for Turkish areas was arguably more fluid, but from Mabel Bent’s notes in her diaries it is clear that had their ‘finds’ from Vourgounda been inspected on the waterfront, contemporary warehouses can still be seen at Pigadia, they would have been confiscated immediately. Just a few years later, the couple had considerable difficulties along the Turkish littoral, exiling them to distant regions (Africa, Arabia) under ‘British Protection’ where they could excavate freely.

The many crates, cartons and sacks containing the Bents’ acquisitions from Karpathos (including some very important village embroideries) left with the couple on the steamer Roúmeli on 21 April 1885. Mabel records in her diary: “The next excitement was getting the things at Pegadhia. I decided to remain on board and became a perfect queen-bee. I gave up moving at last for I was always followed. I eagerly watched the proceedings on shore. Mathew set off to run to the house where was a very hideous statue, more than the size of a baby, half a mile off. Theodore and the Turks sat down at the café… We mean to deposit it in bond at the customhouse of Syra with all the cases and things we do not want.”

Fierce storms forced the Roúmeli to seek shelter (as St Paul is said to have done) at Kali Limenes, southern Crete, before continuing via Kythera to Syra: “At Kythera a ‘manifesto’ was made and signed by the captain, saying he had picked us, and our cases, up in Turkey, and by the Kythera customs people to say we had not started from there… And now Thursday [23 April 1885] we are at Syra, all the things are in the customhouse, the great jars tied up to the wall.”

With, according to Mabel, all their acquisitions and paraphernalia (via Messina and Malta): “We reached home via Millwall Dock in safety with our 24 pieces of the most varied luggage, and I am more convinced than ever that there is no place like it.” Unfortunately she does not add a date, but it will have been around the middle of May 1885 – too late for them to attend the Hellenic Society meeting of 7 May, but Theodore did speak about the Karpathos finds at the Annual Meeting on 25 June (Bent, J.T. 1885: xlv). (For all Mabel Bent’s diary entries, see Bent, M.V.A. 2006: 99-125)

From Vroukountas Grave 1, Karpathos, BM 1886,0310.15: squat lekythos, red-figured ware. Attic, 430-400 BCE, purchased 1886 from Theodore Bent (© Trustees of the British Museum).

From Syra, Bent wrote a candid letter dated 24 April 1885 to Sir Charles Newton (see an earlier reference to him above), at that time Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. The use of the word ‘plunder’ is jarring : ‘We returned from Karpathos yesterday and had hoped to catch a steamer which would have brought us and our things straight to England. Unfortunately we shall have to wait a week at least, and as we have so much plunder we cannot take the Marseilles route… We were fairly successful in Karpathos, finding a large number of rock cut graves unopened which have produced pottery, etc., which, if not of the highest order, offer a good deal which I believe to be of a new character. I have likewise got a good-sized statue of one of those quaint figures which I got at Antiparos last year; it is of stone and nearly a yard long. It is decidedly uglier than any which have yet come to hand. Of quaint manners and customs I have got a fine collection, also of old Karpathiote dresses and jewelry… We had rather a rough time of it, Karpathos being very far behind the world in comforts, and decidedly we enjoyed ourselves best when living in our own tent. Mrs. Bent survives and is well and begs her kind regards. Yours very truly, J. Theodore Bent” (Archive of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum)

Items from Vroukountas purchased by the British Museum from Theodore Bent in 1886 (* = on display at the BM as of June 2026)

‘Grave 1’

‘Grave 2’

‘Grave 3’

‘Grave 4’

Unspecified graves

(The Bents returned to London from Karpathos in May 1885, i.e. suggesting a period of deliberation and negotiation by both parties. Many finds referred to by Mabel in her diaries, and Theodore in his article for the Hellenic Society, i.e. the mysterious ’20 plates’, the large pithoi, etc., did not go to the BM and are presumably in various other collections today, unprovenanced. Over the centuries, how many other adventurers have come and gone among such islands, removing similar artefacts?) 

Items from Vroukountas donated by Mabel Bent to the British Museum in 1926

Mabel Bent’s sister, Ethel Bagenal (1848-1930), to whom she left her estate on her death in July 1929, in turn, Ethel’s daughters were responsible for their aunt’s collections (The Bent Archive).

The Bents leased a fine townhouse near Marble Arch, London, at 13 Great Cumberland Place; Mabel continued to live there until her death in 1929. It was a veritable museum, if not a treasure chest, of decades of collecting and inherited items and clearly she wanted to hold on to certain souvenirs of her travels with Theodore, or items that were particularly decorative – including some discoveries from Vroukountas made during that obviously happy spring of 1885. Towards the end of her life she was inevitably thinking of what was to happen to her collections (alas, creating some sort of permanent home for them does not seem to have been considered). In her will, everything was left to her surviving sister, Ethel Bagenal (or effectively her two daughters, i.e. Mabel’s nieces). However in 1926 Mabel presented to the British Museum a large number of artefacts from all the regions they had travelled to, including the following Vroukountas pieces (they lack specific grave numbers):

  • 1926,0410.42: kantharos, black-glazed ware. Attic, ca. 4th BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.
  • 1926,0410.41: kantharos, black-glazed ware. Attic, ca. 4th BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.
  • 1926,0410.40: salt-cellar, black-glazed ware. Hellenistic, ca. 3rd c. BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.

(For an overview of the Bents’ collections see this summary) 

The ‘Karpathos Lady’

‘The Karpathos Lady’, acquired there by the Bents in 1885. BM 1886,0310.1: Limestone female figure, Neolithic, 4500-3200 BCE, purchased 1886 (© Trustees of the British Museum).

“[At] Pegadia or ‘wells’ … there are evidences of pre-historic inhabitants, the graves of whom I was unfortunately unable to open owing to the presence of the Turkish authorities, but I was able to obtain a large stone figure of a female idol, similar to the smaller ones I found at Antiparos…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 235)

This is the most bizarre of all the Bents’ acquisitions from any of their travels – an enigmatic stone figurine, still without a known parallel. The British Museum’s data record its findspot  as Vroukountas, but the Bents purchased it from the Pigadia area; it left Karpathos whole, clandestinely in a blanket, but now is shown mended (in two parts).

Not currently exhibited (June 2026), it is a much travelled object, having featured in loan exhibitions to the Far East. (How Bent can think it resembled one of the marble figurines he recovered from Antiparos in 1884 is hard to explain.)

Bibliography

Bent, M.V.A. (1885) Her Chronicle in the Sporades &c., 1885, Archive of The Hellenic Society, London.
Bent, M.V.A. (1900) Southern Arabia, London.
Bent, M.V.A (2006) The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford: 99-125.
Bent, J.T. (1885) ‘The Islands of Telos and Karpathos’. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. VI: 233-242.
Paton, W.R. (1887) Vases from Calymnos and Carpathos. Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 8: 446-460.
Paton, W.R. (1889) Mycenaean tombs in Carpathos. The Classical Review, Vol. 3: 333.
Ross, L. (1845) Reisen auf den griechischen Inseln des agäischen Meeres, Vol. 3, Stuttgart: 50-69.

Further reading

Bent was very much taken with elements of Karpathian life and wrote several articles:

There are several (June 2026) spectacular videos of the location on YouTube, e.g.:

 

Two watercolours by Theodore Bent: The Old Town, Rhodes (1885) and the Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Istanbul (1886)

Theodore Bent as artist: recent acquisitions by the Bent Archive (June 2026)

Two watercolours by Theodore Bent. Left: A view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes, 1885 (46 x 30 cm); Right: The Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul, 1886 (46 x 30 cm) (the Bent Archive collection).

Left: Facing eastwards, a view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes, 1885 (46 x 30 cm)

Theodore and Mabel Bent were on Rhodes from 6 – 20 February 1885, arriving from Alexandria, before moving on to the islands of Nisyros, Tilos, and Karpathos to look for antiquities and traditional artefacts, including embroideries and ceramics. As ‘Franks’ they were not permitted to stay overnight in the famous walled Old Town and took a pension in ‘Niochori’ (the new district) not far from where the casino is today. Mabel clearly feels she cannot do justice to the wonders of the Old Town; leaving descriptions for the guidebooks, she writes in her diary: “It is quite a little walk to the town where no one but Jew or Turk may remain after sunset. The town is very interesting and full of coats of arms and bits of carving and other traces of the Knights, but see Murray” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, 2006, p. 69). Theodore Bent publishes later an account of the social dimensions of their fortnight on the island (‘Rhodian Society’, Macmillan’s Magazine, Vol. 52, 1885 May/Oct, pp. 297-303) – he finds the Old Town’s famous hammam open: “Another easy method of studying this conglomerate society is afforded by the bath. Every Rhodian, of whatever nationality, indulges in the Turkish bath on some day or another in the week, from the lowest menial to the exiled pashas, and everyone pays according to his rank”.

Theodore Bent’s watercolour (1885) of a view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes (46 x 30 cm) (Bent Archive Collection).

A keen watercolourist and sketcher ever since his schooldays, Bent illustrated most of his 20 years of travel with his wife (E. Med, Africa, Arabia), of course he couldn’t resist the multi-period charms of Rhodes’  Old Town. His scene, facing eastwards, from an elevated position, at first difficult to locate, is explained for us by a resident historian of today: “I think the sea on the horizon is the key detail here. Bent is clearly looking from an elevated point across the city towards the sea, not inland ‘uphill’. The perspective actually fits the topography of Rhodes quite well: the line of today’s Sokratous Street descending on the right side helps orient the scene, and the two principal mosques can be identified fairly convincingly – [firstly] the tall minaret of the Süleymaniye Mosque and, further back/right, the Ibrahim Pasha Mosque. That makes the composition much less imaginary than it first appears.

Detail from Fr. Bedford’s 1862 panoramic photo of Rhodes taken from the (now demolished) Naillac Tower. The eastwards-pointing arrow gives an idea of Bent’s line of view for his 1885 watercolour, from above and behind the Süleymaniye Mosque (public domain).

The windmill also makes more sense in that context: rather than the Omirou/Pythagora mill, it is probably one of the mills associated with the commercial harbour area, visible beyond the Ottoman skyline. In fact, excavations carried out around 2000 in the commercial harbour uncovered the foundations of several mills, showing that there was once a whole cluster of them there. Today only the first mill survives, restored, while the others have disappeared. So Bent was likely recording a real feature of the late Ottoman harbour landscape. Overall, the painting seems to represent a genuine seaward panorama of Ottoman Rhodes” (personal communication, Apostolos Papageorgiou, May 2026).

Detail of Theodore Bent’s watercolour (1885) of a view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes (46 x 30 cm). The muezzin can just be seen on the minaret of  the Süleymaniye Mosque (Bent Archive Collection).

The line, colouring, foliage, and detail of his watercolour are typical of Bent’s naïve ‘style’, influenced, inter alia, by the work of Edward Lear (who was aware of Bent and owned a copy of his popular book on the Cyclades). One of Bent’s characteristic figures is represented by the muezzin seen calling the faithful to prayer, perched high on the Süleymaniye Mosque’s minaret. Rhodes remained in Ottoman hands until the Italian invasion of 1912. For more on the Old Town’s mosques, see  Giorgos Ntellas & Katerina Manousou-Ntella, ‘The Ottoman Mosques of the Medieval City of Rhodes’, in The Ottoman Monuments In Greece Revisited: A Tribute In The Memory Of Machiel Kiel, Athens, 2025, pp. 467 ff.

Right: The Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul, 1886 (46 x 30 cm) (the Bent Archive collection)

Theodore Bent, the Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul, 1886 (46 x 30 cm) (the Bent Archive collection).

The Bents’ first stay of any length in Constantinople, based at the Hôtel de Byzance, was from 23 January until 17 February 1886. Although they did visit the region in the spring of 1883, disembarking  at Smyrna, Mabel makes no reference to sailing into the Bosporus then; later business took them to Constantinople several times during the months they spent in Turkey in 1888. In 1886 the couple were en route for various islands off the Turkish coast, including Chios, Samos, and Patmos, looking for antiquities.

Mabel’s diary does not give the actual date of their excursion to the Roumeli Hissar Fortress on the Bosphorus, but she refers to it: “We went to Roumeli Hissar and to Bouyoukder and got to know that part of the Bosphoros pretty well and really on the whole we had very fine weather, but the inhabitants were desiring snow” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, 2006, p. 135).

Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul (Wikipedia).

Skilful engineers designed the fortress complex to roll up and down over the hilly contours of the landward Bosphorus here. Linked by its walls, the great features of the defences are its three massive bastions: the cylindrical Saruca Pasha tower to the north; the Zaganos Pasha tower (also cylindrical); and the Halil Pasha tower on the waterfront, with its 12 sides – originally bristling with guns to help control the strait. It is this latter tower that attracts Theodore Bent on their day out, taking a position that enables him to include the eastern (Asian) shores of this historic waterway in the distance. The tower, seeming to tilt slightly, is the obvious eye-catcher, Bent emphasising its power by the bulk and width; pleasingly, the structure is echoed by one on the far bank, two finger-pines adding elevation. Most of the tower’s adjacent structures visible to Bent have been removed and the area is undergoing extensive restoration (2026). (Mabel also mentions going to see the ‘Bouyoukder’ (Büyükdere) area, the smart quarter with fine Turkish mansions, then much favoured by diplomats and other elites.)

Bent’s articles on the immediate vicinity include:

Talks by Ann French on Greek embroideries – with references to the Bents’ collections – 2026 and 2014

1) “Embroideries and Archives: A Research Journey”, The Annual Bader Archive Lecture at the British School at Athens, 11 May 2026.

“Embroidered tunic and skirt of linen crepe with square sleeves, embroidered in tent and long cross stitches with various repeating patterns of debased floral and other forms arranged geometrically.” Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (no: 346-1886; from Karpathos in the Dodecanese, acquired from the Bents (in 1886) after their visit to the island in early 1885). Similar ‘frocks’ purchased by the Bents on Karpathos are now in the Benaki Museum, Athens (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).

In the early twentieth century, a group of BSA students put together significant collections of Greek domestic embroidery.   Many of which are now in museum collections across the UK, in particular the V&A and National Museums Liverpool.  The primary collectors were R.M. Dawkins and A.J.B. Wace.  As the granddaughter of Wace and as a textile conservator, Ann French has been researching how these collections were compiled, studied, exhibited and promoted by them and their colleagues and friends. During her talk (at mins 33-35) we are introduced to some ‘frocks’ bought by the Bents while on Karpathos in 1885, and their slow, circular journey back to Greece (Athens) in the early 1930s. (The tale is also brilliantly told in the scholarly journal of the Benaki Museum, 2015-2016-2017, pp. 75-90. French includes very rare photographs, essential bibliography and notes.)

2) “Greek Dress at the Hellenic Centre, London – 4 February until 2 March 2014” – The Bents’ acquisitions and their stories!

Although Theodore and Mabel Bent lived not so far away, Marylebone, in Central London, might seem an unlikely place for an exhibition of Greek costume, but it is the home of the Hellenic Centre, a focus for philhellenes and London’s Greek community. From 4 February until 2 March 2014, there was a rare opportunity to see an impressive range of Greek dress outside its native land. As part of the event (on Friday 28 February, 7.15 pm), Ann French, Textile Conservator at the Whitworth Art Gallery, the University of Manchester, used selected embroideries from the 1914 pioneering  embroidery exhibition (click for the online catalogue) at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London, to trace their individual collecting histories and reveal the different contexts, interpretations and values placed on them within UK based collections and museums.  This exhibition, which drew on the leading collections of the day, primarily from the collection of Theodore and Mabel Bent and the archaeologists R M Dawkins & A J B Wace, of Greek Embroideries displayed, for the first time in the UK, historic Greek Embroideries as an art form. There is a short, but wonderful, promotional video on YouTube (April 2021).

The exhibition features several  of the Bent’s finest costumes and pieces, and Ann refers to them in the last five minutes or so of her talk in a fascinating account of how, on Mabel’s death, one of her Karpathos frocks found its way back to Greece! (One other is in store at the V & A, and two more from Nisyros are untraced – if you have them, let us know!)

Another of the dresses acquired by the Bents on Karpathos in 1885. After a long journey, this exquisite cotton costume of the 18th century returned to Greece and is now in the Benaki Museum, Athens (EE 923).

 

Click here also for the small collection of ‘Turkish’ embroideries once owned by the Bents and now in the Harris Museum and Gallery, Preston, UK, and here for dresses from Anafi in the Cyclades.

(For the Bents in Greece and Turkey, see Mabel Bent’s Chronicles, published by Archaeopress, Oxford, in 3 volumes)

For a 19th-century collection of East Mediterranean costumes, see Les Costumes Populaires…

 

The costume worn by Ekaterina Lorenziades of Ios in the Cyclades to impress the Bents during their stay, now in the National Historical Museum, Athens (photo = Alan King).

See also the blog ‘Folk Costume and Embroidery‘ and Alan King’s post elsewhere on the costume worn by Ekaterina Lorenziades to impress the Bents during their stay on Ios, now in the National Historical Museum, Athens.

‘The Naxos Mysteries and the Bents’ – An article by Vanessa Gordon

Vanessa Gordon

After Vanessa Gordon, author of The Naxos Mysteries, kindly contributed to our Reading “The Cyclades” series, we asked if she would like to write us a short piece about her erstwhile Cycladic encounters with Theodore and Mabel Bent, and were delighted when she agreed.

Beginning her article on the island of Antiparos, where the Bents spent some happy weeks in early 1884, making their own mysterious discoveries, Vanessa writes…     

Antiparos collage (Wikipedia).

We eventually reached Antiparos, having made several visits to its larger neighbour, Paros, on other trips without managing to include Antiparos in our itinerary.

By the time I stood on the southern shore of Antiparos, looking out over the islet of Despotiko, I already knew something about Theodore and Mabel Bent. Their activities here had made an impression on me when I first read Theodore’s book The Cyclades, or Life among the Insular Greeks (1885), which I had discovered on the  bookcase of a good friend in Athens who, being a classicist and archaeologist, had many interesting books that I scanned and subsequently acquired.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when we were told that there would be no more ferry crossings to Despotiko that day.  My husband and I consoled ourselves with a superb fish lunch, and resolved to return the following summer.

Bent’s map of the Cyclades from the first edition of his 1885 book. The arrow points to Despotiko (archive.org).

And so we did, and were much better prepared that time. Schedules had been consulted and hours put aside for exploring on Despotiko. In fact, we arrived too early, and ordered a coffee at a taverna close to the jetty. There we met another English couple, Steve and Diana, and a conversation began. They, too, were waiting for the ferry to Despotiko, and we ended up spending the whole day together. We first visited the ruined Sanctuary of Apollo, where the Bents had been long before us, and then re-boarded the ferry which took us round the coast to a swimming bay at the far side of the islet. It was there, as we walked into the warm water to have our swim, that our companions informed us they were once members of the British Olympic swimming team. We have remained friends ever since.

It was a serendipitous first encounter with the indomitable Bents, although with our new friends, and the inevitable feast afterwards at the local taverna, I’m not sure just how much I thought about them after we left the sanctuary. By the end of the day, though, I regarded them in a different way from how I had thought of them on reading Life Among the Insular Greeks. I had picked up even then that Theodore’s approach to antiquity was, in a sense, rather cavalier. I had formed an impression that some things might have been damaged in his search for other antiquities. That was understandable: these were early days, and the principles of archaeology, especially concerning the protection, conservation and sensitive excavation of finds, had barely been established at the time – and not established at all in the mind of Theodore. What else was to be expected from an enthusiastic explorer in a science that was barely past its adolescence? The bond I had formed with Theodore, therefore, was a fellow-feeling between two come-lately but passionate amateurs. I also admired him, of course, for having done so much in the pursuit of his passion, undeterred by hardships, adversity and ill-health.

Mabel V.A. Hall-Dare, later Mrs J Theodore Bent, as a young woman. She, famously, had long, red hair (courtesy Turtle Bunbury).

Then there was Mabel, his wife. Photographer and diarist, older than her husband, vivacious Irish woman, desperate to escape the confines of Victorian Ireland, she had accepted Theodore as her husband and his proposal to travel to foreign lands. They had set off soon after their wedding (1877) and were to explore together for many years; even after Theodore’s early death, Mabel continued this journeying. I was reminded of Joan Leigh-Fermor, partner and wife of Paddy, who crossed Greece with him in an era when it was almost as difficult to do so as for the Bents. Also of Agatha Christie, whose late marriage to Max Mallowan had taken her to remote archaeological sites in Egypt, where, with her trusty typewriter in her luggage, she had written some of her mysteries in makeshift accommodation in the desert. These were women whose husbands – archaeologists and explorers, writers and travellers – had opened up for them the possibility of a life which most women of the time had no chance to experience.

So it was that, inevitably perhaps, I introduced small references to the Bents in my own writing. The Naxos Mysteries pivot on archaeology and history, and my hero Martin Day gives long and enthusiastic explanations on his beloved subject to anyone who will listen. This gives me the perfect platform for introducing all sorts of interesting historical anecdotes into my books, and this includes the Bents.

It is not Martin Day, however, who first introduces the Bents to my readers: it is an elderly retired academic called Edward Childe, a character who quickly became one of my favourites. Edward persuades Day to create a documentary series on the subject of Greek marble, a series which is to be structured using Edward’s eclectic collection of historical memorabilia which, he explains, includes some unusual letters:

Kouros of Apollonas, Naxos. Mabel Bent writes in her diary: “We had a great deal of difficulty in the morning about starting to go and see an unfinished colossal statue said to be of Apollo, 1½ hour off near the sea… We had to leave the mules and climb with hands as well as feet to the quarry and on to the statue, which is enormous and very rough and weather worn” (Wikipedia).

“There will be a major focus on Naxos, not only as a historic centre for Greek marble but also because I have some letters written by Mrs Mabel Bent to a friend in London, in which she describes how she and her more renowned husband Theodore were exploring Naxos in the late nineteenth century. I also have a couple of her photographs. One of them shows the Kouros of Apollo.”
“How on earth did you get hold of the Bent material, Edward?” interrupted Day.
“The letters were left to me when I was a student by an Oxford classicist I very much admired. His name was Augustus Bent Middleton. I don’t know if there’s a family connection with the famous Bents – perhaps you’d like to look into it, Martin?” (The Search for Artemis, 2021)

How did Edward acquire such material, you may ask? Mabel’s diaries, which formed the basis of her husband’s famous books, are in safe keeping now, not to mention being digitally accessible; but this is fiction, and there is always the chance of personal letters showing up decades later, don’t you agree?

The Bents are mentioned again later in the same book, when Day talks about them to his friend (later wife) Helen, in his usual, informative way:

Theodore Bent, an image used in his obituary in ‘St. James’s Budget’, 14 May 1897 (Bent died on 5 May 1897) (from the British Library Collection, shelfmark MFM.MLD32, 14/05/1897, page 15, reproduced with permission).

“Edward said he had original letters from the wife of Theodore Bent. Do you know about him?”
“No, who was he?”
“He was a young Englishman from Yorkshire who lived at the same time as the giants of archaeology, like Arthur Evans and Heinrich Schliemann. note 1  He was completely self-taught, very young and inexperienced. Undeterred, he committed his short life to travel and archaeology, and his equally young wife Mabel went with him. They travelled through the Cyclades, writing about what they saw, not only about the ancient remains they found but also the lives of the local people. I’ll lend you the book, it makes good reading. It’s called something like Life among the Insular Greeks, I have a copy here in the house. Theodore was an Oxford graduate with no experience of excavation, yet when he had an opportunity to excavate on Antiparos, off Paros, it made his reputation. He died tragically young, in his mid-forties. His wife wrote travel notebooks, which are in library collections in London. Edward told me that he had some letters she wrote to a friend describing her time on Naxos with Theodore. I’ve seen her notebooks; I’d love to see those letters. note 2 ”
“I’d like to read the book.” (The Search for Artemis, 2021)

Another Naxos Mystery in which the Bents are specifically mentioned is The House in Apíranthos. The book is structured around a series of filming sessions, already referred to in The Search for Artemis, that take place at locations in the Cyclades. Day is presenting episodes based on current excavation sites, one of which is the exciting sanctuary on Despotiko, which I had visited years earlier with our new Olympian friends (see above). Here he is speaking into the camera:

The Sanctuary of Apollo on Despotiko, off Antiparos. The Bents were the first modern travellers to record its ruins in 1884 (Wikipedia).

“Welcome to the Sanctuary of Apollo on the island of Despotiko. This is one of the most important excavations currently being undertaken in Greece, yet it is also one of the least well-known. Despotiko has been uninhabited for some time, protected by law both for its unspoilt natural habitat and its archaeological significance. Its long history, since first being mentioned by Pliny the Elder, has involved Venetians, Ottomans, and even pirates, and the English traveller Theodore Bent was here in the second half of the nineteenth century. Christos Tsountas, the brilliant Greek archaeologist, began excavating here at the end of that century, and more discoveries were made in the 1950s when an early Cycladic settlement was found.”
Day paused slightly to allow Ben to change to a different angle for the next line.
“Then, in 1997, the current excavation here began.”
He put on his sunglasses and turned away from the camera. note 3  (The House in Apíranthos, 2024)

The significant Antiparos finds purchased from Theodore Bent in 1884 formed the core of the British Museum’s Cycladic collection. Parian marble figure, Keros-Syros Culture, 2700BC-2600 BCE (1884,1213.14, © The Trustees of the British Museum).

And with that brief reference I abandon Theodore and Mabel to their bravely-earned place in the history of early archaeological exploration and travel, but with a great deal of respect and fondness. There is just one more memory to share with you.

I was giving a talk on Naxos in 2025 to an audience of readers, archaeologists and locals about The House in Apíranthos. During the Q&A session I was surprised and delighted when one of the archaeologists expressed her pleasure that I knew about the Bents. I wondered fleetingly whether my introducing them had seemed rather presumptuous to readers not familiar with them, but the thought faded quickly. The Bents deserve their place and they are welcome in my books, not least because of the special bond I made with them, long gone though they are, on the island of Despotiko.

 The Secrets of Stelida, Vanessa’s 7th book in ‘The Naxos Mysteries’ series has just been published (Spring 2026).

Footnotes

Note 1:  Indeed, the Bents were acquaintances of Arthur Evans and the Schliemanns, lunching with the latter in Athens in January 1890 (Travel Chronicles, Vol. 1, 2006, p.271).
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Note 2:  Mabel’s travel diaries (her Chronicles as she calls them) are kept in the archives of the Hellenic Society, Senate House, London. They have recently been digitised. Her letters do occasionally surface. There are several (to her family in Ireland) in the archive of the Royal Geographical Society, London.
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Note 3:  The Bents’ documentary series (The Eastern Mediterranean; Africa; Arabia) still awaits its producer.
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Some further reading:

J. Theodore Bent, The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks (an edited reprint, Oxford, 2002)
The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1: Greece and the Levantine Littoral (Oxford, 2006)
A selection of Theodore Bent’s articles on Greece
Scanned versions of Mabel Bent’s ‘Chronicles’ from the Hellenic Society’s archive
‘Of Crows and Swans and Calamine – the Archaeology Theatre of Antiparos’
‘The skeletal material excavated on Antiparos in 1883/4 by Theodore Bent’
In exalted female company – Mabel Bent, other women travellers, and the RGS women Fellows scandal of 1893

Reading “The Cyclades” – Marking the 140th anniversary (1885-2025) of a classic travelogue

Map and title page of Bent’s bestseller on the Cyclades (1885) (archive.org).

“The Islands of the Aegean Sea offer plenty of scope for the study of Hellenic archaeology, but they are more particularly rich in the preservation of manners and customs which have survived the lapse of years, and the result of a special study of both these points, made during two winters passed by my wife and myself amongst the islanders, in their distant hamlets, and in their towns by the sea-coast, I here place before the public.” (From Bent’s Preface, page v) note 1 

“… Mr. Theodore Bent’s excellent book on the ‘Cyclades’, the only recent book which is really serviceable to teach ordinary readers the details of the subject.” (Prof. Sir John Pentland Mahaffy, Irish classicist, in Good Words, 1888: Vol. 29, 305 ff.)

(Jump to the Readings)

Detail from a raised-relief map of Greece (Glyn Griffiths 2024).

Theodore Bent’s evergreen (ever-blue perhaps?) account of two winters happily spent island-hopping in the Greek Cyclades was published on 28 February 1885 in London by Longman, Green and Co. The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks was the first such travelogue to appear in English and to this day features regularly in the bibliographies of those writing about these iconic islands.

Reviews spanning the century:

“Mr. Bent’s book deserves all success, for it is the result of researches pursued in the most laudable manner. When an educated man selects for his field of observation an interesting and little-explored area of country, and, after learning the language, spends a considerable part of two winters there, living among all classes of people so as to familiarise himself with the details of their life, and to become intimately acquainted with their ideas and modes of thought, he deserves the title of an enthusiastic investigator.” Academy 27, Jan/June 1885, p. 322.

“It is the classic of Aegean travel in English and will never be superseded, for one good reason that Bent was lucky enough to visit the islands when they were still, as it were, intact and only just waking out of the sleep of centuries.”  Ernle Bradford,  The Companion Guide to the Greek Islands (1983, Collins, London, p. 156).

“James Theodore Bent (1852-1897), author of The Cyclades (London, 1885), much the most valuable book on the Aegean.” (Robert Liddell, Aegean Greece, London, 1954, p.107, n.1)

“Seriphos and Siphnos sound like Heavenly Twins, and are very similar in size and scope. Kimolos and Sikinos are hard to visit, and harder to escape from… frankly it is not worth the trouble to do so, unless you are as determined and thorough about your Aegean as old Theodore Bent – who wrote the real classic on the area.” (Lawrence Durrell, The Greek Islands, London, 1980, p.254)

Reading The Cyclades

As an audiobook of The Cyclades has yet to appear, to mark its 140th anniversary (2025) we have asked ‘Cycladists’, those with affinities to the islands, to read memorable extracts from Bent’s guide for us.

The order of appearance is in accordance with how Bent sequenced them, not as the couple actually visited them – for this you need to see the diary of his wife, Mabel, for the winter of 1883/4. The dates given, where possible, of when they made their visits are from this diary – and not always reliable. The Bents’ first winter in the area, 1882/3, is unchronicled by Mabel, seeming to have been limited to a few Easter weeks, taking in Tinos and Amorgos. The diarist notes on their return to London in the Spring of 1884 that “though we like good food and beds and ease and comfort as well as others, we think the pleasure we have had quite pays for all the pains”. (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford, 2006, p. 61)

The  tsabouna played by Yannis Pantazis of Santorini.

Most readings begin with a short melody on the island bagpipes (tsabouna) played by Yannis Pantazis of Santorini. The Bents would have been very familiar with this sound, even acquiring their own instrument (now in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford).

So, πάμε, click on an audio file below to transport yourself to the Bents’ Cyclades as they found them in 1883/4 (zoom out on the map below to slowly reveal the islands). Further reader contributions will be added, of course, as they sail in, σιγά-σιγά! note 2 

(All rights remain with the individual readers, 2025-)

The Readings

Introduction and Bent’s Preface (pp. v-viii), dated November 1884

An introduction to ‘Reading “The Cyclades”‘, followed by Bent’s Preface to the first edition, providing a little background and his main objectives in visiting the islands over the course of two winters…

 

 

Serifos [Bent’s Ch. 1: Saturday 1st December – Tuesday 4th December 1883]

“The Church of St. Athanasius was worth seeing, being round with two little apses. It has a lovely iconostasis… carved in wood, with vine tendrils, and festoons, and niches for twenty eikons…” Metropolitan Church of Agios Athanasios, Ano Chora, Serifos (C. Messier, Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0).

After a short stay on Syros, Siphnos was the first island the couple visited on their second winter tour, with Bent also choosing to begin his travelogue here. This ‘very pretty island’, as Mabel calls it, still makes the perfect overture to Bent’s Cycladic idyll, introducing us to all the themes that reappear throughout his work – ‘Zorba’-like characters, myths and legends, food and drink, custom and costume, antiquities, the ups and downs of travel, everyday life ‘among insular Greeks’ indeed… Our first reader is Elizabeth Boleman-Herring, author, inter alia, of The Aegean Islands Insight Pocket Guide: Mykonos and Santorini, publishing-editor of Weekly Hubris, and Cycladophile.

Melos [Bent’s Ch. 4: Saturday, 15th December – Friday, 21 December 1883]

View of the ancient theatre of Melos (330 x 558 mm, graphite, pen and ink, and watercolour) by James Skene, c. 1841 (CC Trustees of the British Museum (asset number 1280633001)).

Bent’s ‘Note on the Antiquities of Melos’ read by Ina Berg, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Manchester. Ina has a long-term association with the Cyclades generally, her articles including ‘Island Attractions? Travel Writing on the Cyclades from the Middle Ages Until the Modern Day‘, in Mediterranean Studies (2012, 71-87), and (with J.R. Edelheim) ‘The Attraction of Islands: Travellers and tourists in the Cyclades (Greece) in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries‘, in Journal of Tourism and Culture Change 2012 (10:1, 84-98).

Anafi [Bent’s Ch. 5: Wednesday, 9 January 1884 – Friday, January 11 1884 or Saturday, 12 January 1884]

A photo from the early 1940s giving some idea of what Anafi’s harbour jetty might have looked like 100 years after the Bents sailed from the island (Margaret Kenna).

Bent’s entire chapter read by social anthropologist and Anafi specialist Margaret Kenna (Professor Emerita, Swansea University), who has spent 50 years researching in Greece, most of it focussed on the islanders and migrants of Anafi, spending a year on the island doing fieldwork for her doctorate in 1966 (Greek Island Life: Fieldwork on Anafi, Sean Kingston Publishing, 2017).

Santorini [Bent’s Ch. 6: Monday, 7th January – Wednesday, 23 January 1884]

Travel writer Jennifer Barclay reads the Bents on Santorini (photo = Ian smith).

Travel writer and Tilos resident Jennifer Barclay first got to know the Bents a few years back when they went with her some of the way on her breezy Dodecanese travelogue Wild Abandon (Bradt Guides 2020); she wrote an article for us about the adventure too (In the Footsteps of Theodore and Mabel).  Needless to say, we’re now very happy she has agreed to sail a little west from Tilos into the Cyclades to read a few of her favourite extracts from Bent’s visit to Santorini (no introduction required there, of course), where she spent a summer in the early 1990s. And if you think you can hear cicadas in the background now and then, you can; Jennifer has her window open as she reads…

(Now click for a slideshow of Jen’s reading!)

Ios [Bent’s Ch. 7: Wednesday, 23 January – Sunday, 27 January 1884]

P.M. Iannetta; Ios harbour in the 1930s (after Liddell 1954); Ekaterina Lorenziadis’ costume (National Historical Museum, Athens); Ios, the Chora today (Joshua Doubek: Wikipedia).

English language teacher and island-hopper P.M. Iannetta narrates the Bents’ landing on Ios – ‘Little Malta’ – and their first impressions of the main town. We meet mayor Lorenziadis and his family and are treated to a fashion show by his daughter Ekaterina – the dress she is modelling is now on display at the National Historical Museum, Athens.

 

 

 

Sikinos [Bent’s Ch. 8: Sunday, 27 January 1884 – Friday, 1 February 1884]

Prof. Rebecca Sweetman, Director, British School at Athens (BSA).

Bent’s ‘storm-stayed’ chapter on Sikinos is read by Prof. Rebecca Sweetman, who very kindly takes some time off from her busy job as Director of the British School at Athens to make this contribution. We are particularly  grateful to her (coincidentally, she tells us she went to school near Mabel Bent’s birthplace, Beauparc, Co. Meath). Rebecca’s interests have long led her to the islands – having begun by writing on Roman and Late Antique Crete, she is currently working on the Cyclades, with a monograph (The Archaeology of the Cyclades in the Roman and Late Antique Periods – Globalization, Christianization and Resilience) due later in 2025 from Cambridge University Press.

“Few remains in Greece are more perfect than this temple of Apollo …” Episkopi, Sikinos, before the recent restoration works (Rebecca Sweetman).

The Bents had a happy relationship with the British School (founded in 1886) and were frequent guests at 52 Souedias Street (in April 1896 Theodore was asked to take charge of a small dig near the Athens Olympieion). Rebecca’s reading ends with the Bents’ ride to Sikinos’ atmospheric Episkopi monument, very recently restored to great acclaim. (By the way, Mabel has her 38th birthday on this remote Cycladic island.)

 

 

 

Delos [from Bent’s Ch. 10, Mykonos (as ‘Note II – The Excavations at Delos’): Saturday, 1 March 1884]

Delos – bases and monuments north of Theophrastos’ Agora, the ‘Hypostyle Hall’, photographed in 1908, i.e. 25 years or so only after the Bents’ visit. The photographer is unknown (CC Archimage).

Rather like today’s tourists, the Bents spent a day on Delos, legendary birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, at the end of their visit to Mykonos. Then as now, excavations on this island, the heart of the Cyclades, are under the aegis of L’École Française D’Athènes in coordination with the Greek State. Bent, of course, finds the remains tantalising. His archaeological thoughts are read by Catherine Bouras, Secrétaire de rédaction pour La Chronique des fouilles en ligne, l’EFA.

Naxos 1 & 2 [Bent’s Ch. 14: Sunday, 23 December 1883 – Monday, 7 January 1884]

Portara, the large portal of the Sanctuary of Delian Apollo, Naxos (C. Messier, Wikipedia).

An early extract from Bent’s chapter on Naxos (‘The Town of Naxia’), where the couple spend Christmas, 1883. The passage – referencing the famous islet off the main town and its trademark temple remains that still salute every arrival by sea – is read by our friend the cartographer Glyn Griffiths, who has kindly provided many maps for our website and publications over the last twenty years, and for whose work we are most happy to thank here.

Revis Cruttenden, “Island Chapel” (detail, 2010, oil on board, 35.5 x 20.5).

A second extract from Bent’s Naxos chapter (‘In the Mountains of Naxos’) takes us inland and up into the mountains by paths still traceable among the picture-book villages of the interior region of Potamia. It is read by garden-designer/artist Revis Cruttenden, Cycladic traveller and erstwhile Mani resident. (Mabel’s diary gives the date of the rainy mule ride as 29 December 1883.)

Naxos 3 [Bent’s Ch. 14: Sunday, 23 December 1883 – Monday, 7 January 1884]

Vanessa Gordon

For our third reading from Bent’s extended Naxos chapter in his classic 1885 Cyclades travelogue, who better to ask than Vanessa Gordon, author of The Naxos Mysteries – her choice being Theodore and Mabel’s ride up into the north-east quarter of the island to see if the reputation of the villagers of Apiranthos can be as bad as it was made out, and then to scramble down to the coast to admire the famous unfinished statue at Apollonas.

The Naxos Mysteries: 1 – 4 (Vanessa Gordon, 2025).

Vanessa’s six books in her series The Naxos Mysteries are all to do with ‘archaeology, mystery and murder on the beautiful Greek island of Naxos’, involving her lead character, the archaeologist Martin Day; all themes, not totally disconnected from Theodore Bent’s narrative.

Kouros of Apollonas, Naxos. Mabel Bent writes in her diary: “We had a great deal of difficulty in the morning about starting to go and see an unfinished colossal statue said to be of Apollo, 1½ hour off near the sea… We had to leave the mules and climb with hands as well as feet to the quarry and on to the statue, which is enormous and very rough and weather worn.”(Wikipedia)

We should not be surprised, therefore, to find Theodore and Mabel making cameo appearances in two of Vanessa’s books – The Search for Artemis (2021, pp. 39-49, 129-30) and The House in Apíranthos (2024, p. 142) – this latter village featuring prominently in her reading here.

In this extract, Bent makes one of the earliest descriptions in English of the gigantic statue of ‘Apollo’ at Apollonas, and listen out, too, for references to the village of Komiaki (Koronida), where the Bents first encountered their mercurial dragoman Manthaios Simos, from neighbouring Anafi. As faithful as mercurial, Simos was instrumental in the rescue of the desperately ill Bents, east of Aden, in early 1897.

Area of Apíranthos, Naxos, Cyclades (Google Maps).

The Secrets of Stelida, Vanessa’s seventh title in her series will be released on 25 February 2026. She writes: ‘I love the mystery genre, which enables me to explore the magic of Greek antiquity, the wonderful landscape and the cuisine of Greece, and the rich complexities of human nature. In The Naxos Mysteries I try to appeal to both the mind and the heart of my reader, engaging them in the passions and tragedies of the characters in a context of discovery and exploration.’

Bonus Material

Travel-writer Marc Dubin’s dealings with the Bents (Marc Dubin/Bent Archive).

By way of ‘bonus material’, here is a modified reading of the Preface written by well-known travel-writer Marc Dubin for the Archaeopress edition of the Bents’ collected writings on the Dodecanese, in which he makes several references to Bent’s The Cyclades. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Marc, for it was his listing of Bent in a bibliography decades ago that indirectly gave rise to the Bent Archive some 40 years later.  The reading is by Marc’s friend and Rhodes resident, Constance Rivemale.

 

Notes

Note 1:  In terms of contemporary English visitors (tourists) to the region, Bent would have found little in the way of popular literature. There exists a superficial, anonymous, article that he most probably would have read, written by a young male(?) traveller who decided to make a short sail from Athens in February 1880, ‘to woo the sea breezes among the Cyclades’. His tour takes in Syros, Tinos, Delos, Naxos, Paros, and Antiparos. On Tinos he makes reference to the famous annual pilgrimage – an event that draws Bent there in the spring of 1883. The article, barely recommendable, is A Cruise in Greek Waters (The St. James’s Magazine and United Empire Review, v.39 (12) JY-D (1880), pp.39-46). Curiously, its title is identical to the earlier (1870) travelogue by the affable maverick Frederick Trench Townshend. This is well worth the trouble of finding, although the Cyclades are not included.
Return from Note 1

Note 2: More readings will be added as and when they appear. For details of how to participate, contact info[at]thebentarchive[dot]com
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People come and go: to the memory of the kind William Pryor Binney, H.B.M. Consul on Syros and friend to the Bents

The kind William Pryor Binney (21 July 1839 – 12 March 1888), date unknown, presumably the 1870s, and perhaps wearing the medal of Chevalier from the King of Greece, or ‘the order of the Saviour and Order of the Iron Cross from the Emperor of Austria’. (From the ‘Genealogy of the Binney family in the United States’ 1886).

Wonderful to hear (3 Jan. 2026) that a team of volunteers has cleared up the charming but neglected Westerners’ Cemetery on Syros (Greek Cyclades), a small area that leads to the immaculately tended Commonwealth War Graves/Syra New British Cemetery, below  Ano Syros. The original Westerners’ Cemetery site, including the memorial to William Pryor Binney, has been so badly maintained that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission even has a warning on its webpage, imploring those who want to visit to take great care: “Please remain within the pathway while accessing the CWGC plot due to danger of tripping on debris and being hit by falling stone from the damaged walls.”  See the end of this article for photos.

 

People come and go; everyone travels; everyone leaves traces of their travels. You will find such a trace on a memorial in the rarely visited Westerners’ cemetery in Ermoupoli, on Cycladic Syros, near the junction of Taxiarchon and Katramadou, on the way to Ano Syros. The cross and monument of some grandeur is of fine Tinos marble; the inscription testifies to the trickiness of English lettering for Greek masons; it was expensive, and the deceased’s family wished to honour a significant man. There is no space for the word ‘kind’:

William Binney’s grave in the Westerners’ cemetery, Syros (detail) (The Bent Archive).

“To the Memory of William Pryor Binney, H.B.M. Consul, Divisional Manager Eastern Telegraph Company. Born in Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada, the 21th [sic] July 1839, died at Syra the 12th March 1888. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job 1, 21.”

The year of Binney’s birth, however, is given as 1840 in an arcane ‘Genealogy of the Binney family in the United States’, published by Charles James Fox Binney in 1886 (Albany, N.Y., J. Munsell’s Sons):

“William Pryor Binney, son of Stephen and Emily (Pryor) Binney, of Moncton, N[ew] B[runswick], was born July 21, 1840; married Polexine [Polyxena/Πολυξένη] Pateraki, daughter of the late George Pateraki[s], of Constantinople. Mr. Binney is the general manager of the submarine telegraph cable in the kingdom of Greece and Turkey, has held the office for twenty-five years past, and in 1884, lived at Syra, Greece. He is H.B.M. consul at Syra. Had no children in 1873. He had the title of Chevalier from the King of Greece and decoration of the order of the Saviour and order of the Iron Cross, from the Emperor of Austria.”

Stephen Binney (1805–1872), William’s father (from ‘Genealogy of the Binney family in the United States’, 1886).

The first Binney to surface, one captain John, of Nottinghamshire, set sail with his wife Mercy in 1678 or 1679, for Hull, Massachusetts. There, with John now a ‘fisherman’ and ‘gentleman’, the couple (with their six children) became the ‘ancestors of almost all of the name’. In the 19th century one of their descendants, Stephen Binney (1805–1872), a merchant of Halifax, and later first mayor, married Emily Pryor (1808 and still living in 1884); the couple had seven children, one of whom was our William Pryor Binney and Mabel remembers him for posterity as ‘kind’. As Halifax mayor, in early 1842 Stephen made the long Atlantic crossing to London with a message of congratulations on behalf of the city to Queen Victoria on the birth of her son (later King Edward VII). During his extended absence his business affairs at home suffered and he sought new opportunities, buying property near Moncton (New Brunswick). From his new base, Stephen Binney set up a successful wharf and shipyard, making a new start as a wholesaler, trading in timber and agricultural produce. With its access to the Bay of Fundy, and William’s father thrived as a merchant ship-owner, with a vessel that bore his own name, the ‘Stephen Binney’.

Pryor-Binney House, 5178 Morris Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J, Canada (Heritage Division NS Dept. of Tourism, Culture and Heritage, 2005)

It was Stephen’s father (William’s grandfather), Hibbert Newton Binney, who forged links initially with the Pryors, when the two families cooperated on the building of a fine house in Halifax in 1831, and which H.N. Binney then bought outright in 1834. The ‘Pryor-Binney House’ still stands at 5178 Morris Street, Halifax.

One of William’s brothers was Moncton’s head of Customs, Irwine Whitty Binney (b. 1841). It was probably Irwine, as prosperous clan head, who supervised in some way William’s funeral in 1888, in the quiet Westerners’ cemetery on Syros. William’s widow, Πολυξένη, being Orthodox, probably rests in the Greek cemetery a few 100 metres away. We don’t know when the couple married (1860s?); Polyxena’s father, George Paterakis, was from Constantinople, and probably of some standing. The Binneys had had no children by 1873.

The former premises of the Eastern Telegraph Company, Syros, now the Merchant Marine Academy of Syros for Marine Deck Officers.

And of William’s career? And how he came to Syros? Follow the money. William, as part of a very  well-to-do and successful extended family who made their livings from commerce, merchant-shipping and the sea, was clearly ambitious to compete and strike out on his own; and quite prepared to travel and leave traces of his own. By the mid 1880s maritime nations were being linked by the invention of undersea cable-telegraphy, and the needs of the British Empire provided a booming market for companies in this sector. One of these was the Eastern Telegraph Company, a consolidation, in 1872, of a dynamic group of telegraphy businesses, involving some 23,000 miles of cabling by the late 1880s. This enterprise, of course, morphed eventually into today’s Cable and Wireless plc. A pivotal routing and operations hub for the Eastern Mediterranean, and British interests East, was based on Syros, and its capital, Ermoupoli, the main ‘port’ for all (‘new’) Greece before the growth of Pireaus around 1900. It was plain commercial sense that the Eastern Telegraph Company’s regional cable station and depot should be built on a (then) disconnected rock (Νησάκι), a hop from Ermoupoli’s seafront. The solid building (which probably housed Binney’s consular office too) still stands and now houses the island’s Merchant Marine Academy.

Announcement of William Binney’s appointment as ‘Her Majesty’s Consul in the Islands in the Greek Archipelago’ (‘The London Gazette’, 24145/5113, Tuesday, October 27, 1874).

William Binney held the important post of general manager for ETC’s Syros hub by 1883 at least, if not earlier; it is recorded that he had already been an employee for 25 years by around that date. His skillset obviously included diplomacy, and in 1874 we learn that “the Queen has been graciously pleased to appoint William Pryor Binney, Esq., to be Her Majesty’s Consul in the Islands in the Greek Archipelago, to reside in the Island of Syra [Foreign Office, September 5, 1874. The London Gazette, 24145/5113, Tuesday, October 27, 1874, and ‘The Morning Post’ of Wednesday, October 28, 1874].

 

Presumably this appointment helped Binney acquire his gongs, i.e. “the title of Chevalier from the King of Greece and decoration of the order of the Saviour and order of the Iron Cross, from the Emperor of Austria.” His duties would have included looking after his country’s interests and personnel in the region and reporting on the activities of potential rivals. Copies of communications between William and the UK Foreign Office can be found in the FO Volumes of the British Consuls in Greece, in the National Archive, Kew (i.e. 1881 FO 32/534; 1882 FO 32/546; 1892 FO 32/644; 1893 FO 32/653).

And as well as all this, Mabel Bent refers to William as not only fastidious, but ‘kind’ (she adds ‘so’ and underlines it). Theodore Bent met Binney first in Athens, in late November 1883. He became a friend it seems as well as Consul, providing the Bents with information and letters of introduction to contacts in the Cyclades generally. Theodore at this time was not particularly influential and it seems that Binney was being helpful to a British citizen as part of his consular duties. One of the contact names he slipped into Theodore’s pocket was Robert M.W. Swan, a Scottish miner on Antiparos. Swan was later to be central to Bent’s expedition to ‘Great Zimbabwe’ for Cecil Rhodes in 1891. But by then Binney was dead.

Let’s leave the last paragraphs on kind William Pryor Binney to Mabel Bent, as recorded in the pages of her Greek ‘Chronicles’. The final reference to his fatal illness comes as a shock:

A watercolour of Syros in the mid 19th century by Edward Lear; ‘the old sparkly pile’ he called it (diary entry for Wednesday, 6 April 1864).

“[Saturday, 1 December 1883] We had a quick but very rough passage, starting at 7 and getting [to Syros] about 3.30 a.m. Wednesday [28 November]. The ‘Pelops’ was quite new and very clean and I should have slept well but for the fleas. We landed at Ermoupolis at 6.30 and sat on the balcony overlooking the port for 2 hours as there was no bedroom vacant, nor did we get one till 5 o’clock. Mr. John Quintana, H.B.M. Vice Consul on whom Theodore called, came and fetched us and we spent 2 hours at the Consulate in Mr. Binney, the Consul’s room, very large and nice and so tidy. Mr. Binney must be a most orderly man for everything was ticketed and docketed. Theodore called on him in Athens, says he is like a slight Greek, foreign accent and Greek wife.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, pages 7–8]

“[Tuesday, 18(?) December 1883]. Rode 1½ hour to the nearest point to Antiparos carrying only our night things and a card of introduction from Mr.  Binney for Mr. R. Swan who has a calamine mine on this island.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 21]

“[Saturday, 22 March 1884] We fortunately got a room at the Hôtel d’Angleterre [Syros] and thoroughly enjoy ‘taking mine ease in mine inn’. We packed a box of our spoils for England and this afternoon I rode and the others walked to Ano or Upper Syra, a hideous place with a view over this barren island. We got very tired of Syra by Friday and as we found a kaïke of Kythnos or Thermiá we packed and prepared to start. But the strong Boreas would not permit ships to leave the port so after constant expectations up to Sunday morning the 23rd we gave up and went to church, a very poor little place and very ‘low’, according to the wishes of Mr. Binney the Consul. Afterwards we lunched with Mr.  Binney, Mr. Quinney the parson, being there also. N.B. Mr. Binney’s clerk is Mr. Finney.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 54]

“[Thursday, 26 January 1888] We only got to Syra on Thursday. We landed

The Syra British Cemetery
The Syra British Cemetery, Ermoupoli, near the junction of Taxiarchon and Katramadou, on the way to Ano Syros (photo: Alan King).

and found to our sorrow that our kind consul Mr. Binney was dreadfully ill.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 228]

“[Saturday, 25 February 1888] On Thursday… about 4 we left ‘The Town’ [Constantinople] in the ‘Alphée’ for Syra, picking up letters at the post on the way. We had no remarkable fellow passengers and reached Syra on Saturday morning about 4… We went to church on Sunday to a tidy little chapel, which they say will be closed if Mr. Binney is no longer there to keep it up.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 234]

William Binney’s grave in the Westerners’ cemetery, Syros (The Bent Archive).

Kind William Pryor Binney died 16 days after Mabel’s last reference to him, on 12 March 1888, of what she doesn’t say. (Appropriately, the new British Cemetery behind where he lies takes in the scattered Commonwealth war burials from the islands of the Cyclades.) He was not yet 50. Another William took over from him as Consul at Syros, W.H. Cottrell. People come and go; everyone travels; everyone leaves traces of their travels.

[The extracts from Mabel Bent’s diaries are taken from ‘The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J Theodore Bent‘, Vol. 1. Archaeopress, Oxford, 2006, and see also Theodore Bent’s ‘The Cyclades‘]

See also Alan King’s article on Binney and the Syra cemetery here.

[If you enjoyed reading about the likeable William Binney, you might enjoy a recent (2020) online article on him by Panagiotis Kouloumbis of Syros Today.]

The following three photographs (Jan. 2025) show the results of volunteers’ recent efforts “to clear the weeds, cut the bushes, throw the rubble and sweep”. The final resting place of Mabel Bent’s particular friend, William Pryor Binney (1839-1888), and the others buried there, is once again respected. Many thanks to all involved.

Syros Westerners’ Cemetery, recently cleaned by a group of volunteers over three days (Jan 2026). The large memorial on the right is the reverse side of William Pryor Binney’s grave. Reproduced with permission.
Syros Westerners’ Cemetery, recently cleaned by a group of volunteers over three days (Jan 2026). Reproduced with permission.
Syros Westerners’ Cemetery, recently cleaned by a group of volunteers over three days (Jan 2026). The doorway leads to the Commonwealth War Graves section of the cemetery. Reproduced with permission.

Reading “The Cyclades” – Ios

Delighted to add P.M. Iannetta’s choice of Ios for our ‘Reading The Cyclades’ project, marking the 140th (1885-2025) anniversary of Theodore Bent’s classic The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks. If you want to join in, just Messenger us! (photo credits: see link)

Click here for other readings!

Ios [Bent’s Ch. 7: Wednesday 23 January 1884 – Sunday 27 January 1884]

P.M. Iannetta; Ios harbour in the 1930s (after Liddell 1954); Ekaterina Lorenziadis’ costume (National Historical Museum, Athens); Ios, the Chora today (Joshua Doubek: Wikipedia).

English language teacher and island-hopper P.M. Iannetta narrates the Bents’ landing on Ios – ‘Little Malta’ – and their first impressions of the main town. We meet mayor Lorenziadis and his family and are treated to a fashion show by his daughter Ekaterina – the dress she is modelling is now on display at the National Historical Museum, Athens.

Santorini: Jen Barclay reads from Theodore Bent’s ‘The Cyclades’ (1885)

While we wait for an audiobook of Theodore Bent’s “The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks“, to mark its 140th anniversary (2025) we are asking ‘Cycladists’, those with affinities to the islands, to read memorable extracts for us.

Click here for other readings!

Santorini [Bent’s Ch. 6: Monday 7 January – Wednesday 23 January 1884]

Travel writer Jennifer Barclay reads the Bents on Santorini (photo = Ian smith).

Travel writer and Tilos resident Jennifer Barclay first got to know the Bents a few years back when they went with her some of the way on her breezy Dodecanese travelogue Wild Abandon (Bradt Guides 2020); she wrote an article for us about the adventure too (In the Footsteps of Theodore and Mabel).  Needless to say, we’re now very happy she has sailed a little west for us, from Tilos, into the Cyclades to read a few of her favourite extracts from Bent’s visit to awe-inspiring Santorini (no introduction required there, of course), where she spent a summer in the early 1990s. And if you think you can hear cicadas in the background now and then, you can; Jennifer has her window open as she reads…

For an accompanying slideshow, click the start ikon below:

 

Bent’s “The Cyclades”: An anonymous review from the “Pall Mall Budget” of 17 April 1885

The Isles of Greece*

Title page from the first edition (1885) of Bent’s “The Cyclades; or Life Among the Insular Greeks”.

“Though Mr. Bent is an Oxford man, he knows some Greek, and has managed somehow to retain or acquire a profound interest in things Hellenic. That is always something, for Greece is a country towards which, in spite of our education, we all possess somewhat of a filial affection: but Mr. Bent does more than this – he takes an active interest in the living Greeks, his ways and modes of thinking, largely tempered by the modern anthropological and sociological point of view, too often wholly wanting or absolutely repellent to the confirmed Hellenist. If there is one form of savant left on earth upon whose ears the echo of the sociological revolution falls dull and muffled, it is your old-fashioned classical scholar, hermetically sealed in his own sturdy with his grammar and his lexicon, his editions and manuscripts. For him, Lubbock and Tylor are not: the Folk-lore Society sings to him like a siren, all in vain: no savage myth rises vague upon his narrow horizon: no dim memory of forgotten barbarism shines faintly on him from the storied pages of Plato or Pausanias. His world begins with the First Olympiad: his history finishes with the death of Odoacer. Not of such as these is Mr. Bent. A folk-lorist to the backbone, eager to discover and compare while yet they survive the lingering relics of native Hellenic popular mythology, he has spent two winters hard at work among the almost unbroken ground of the Cyclades, and has finally recorded his net results for us in this pleasant, amusing, and instructive volume.

A detail from Bent’s map of the Cyclades from his 1885 edition.

“[Bernhard] Schmidt had been beforehand with him, it is true, on the Greek mainland; but then, the Greek mainland is largely Albanian, and its folk-lore is largely tinctured with alien elements. The islands, on the other hand, have been always Greek, and, practically speaking, always free. So hither Mr. Bent went with his wife, in search of habits and manners, and dwelling among the people in their own hamlets, collected a goodly store of facts and fancies, which he knows how to detail for us with a cunning pen. At first he studied his human subjects with the aid of a dragoman; but as time went on, and as he began to acquire fluency in the language which we are all supposed to have learned at school, he went direct to the fountain head, and extorted from the not unwilling lips of demarchs and priests and hostesses and pretty Greek maidens innumerable tales of Fates and Nereids, of Boreas and St. Demetrius, of ancient god and Christian martyr, in the picturesque confusion of medieval Europe. The nymphs of the fountain take the place, among the Cyclades, of our northern fairies; Dionysus has got himself thinly Christianized as St. Dionysius; and Charon, properly baptised no doubt for the occasion, still ferries over orthodox Greeks to their last resting-place, as he used to do rightminded Pagans of old to the realms of Hades. Nowhere does the thin veneer of the new religion lie more lightly over the solid and enduring substructure of the old than among the Greek Islands. Essentially pagan still in all his underlying mythological conceptions, the insular Hellene remains a living relic of ages far earlier than even those of the Attic dramatists – he goes back in part to the most primitive stratum of European belief and philosophy. We could have wished that Mr. Bent had given us a little more of actual description of these beautiful and barren islands, but we recognize at the same time how much his book gains from its unique devotion to a difficult, elusive, and fascinating pursuit.

Detail from the front page of the “Pall Mall Budget” for 17 April 1885.

“Sometimes, indeed, as in the episode of the ardent collector waiting patiently at Myconos till somebody should die, and inquiring with sinister anxiety after the health of the various failing invalids, in order that he might be present at one of the death-wails which form the staple product and pride of the island – the eagerness of the folk-lorist becomes positively weird and gruesome in its intensity. A modern story-teller might improve upon the position by making the single-hearted inquirer poison his host so as to provide a victim for the wailing women in the interests of science. We present the hint gratuitously as a valuable property to Mr. Wilkie Collins. If we have repeated none of Mr. Bent’s own good stories, it is only in order that we may send our readers direct to his amusing pages in search of them at first hand. There is matter enough in this little volume to stock half a dozen ordinary bookmakers’ fat notebooks.”

* “The Cyclades.” By J. Theodore Bent. 12s. 6d. (London: Longmans.)

……………………..

Anonymous review of Bent’s The Cyclades; or Life Among the Insular Greeks, from the Pall Mall Budget – 17 April 1885, page 28.

Bent’s book was published on 28 February 1885.

Anafi: Margaret Kenna reads from Theodore Bent’s ‘The Cyclades’ (1885)

While we wait for an audiobook of Theodore Bent’s “The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks“, to mark its 140th anniversary (2025) we are asking ‘Cycladists’, those with affinities to the islands, to read memorable extracts for us. Who better to read from Bent’s Anafi chapter than Professor Emerita Margaret Kenna who carried out her fieldwork there for a doctorate in 1966-1967.

Click here for other readings!

Anafi [Bent’s Ch. 5: Wednesday, 9 January 1884 – Friday, January 11 1884 or Saturday, 12 January 1884]

A photo from the early 1940s giving some idea of what Anafi’s harbour jetty might have looked like 100 years after the Bents sailed from the island (Margaret Kenna).

Bent’s entire chapter read by social anthropologist and Anafi specialist Margaret Kenna (Professor Emerita, Swansea University), who has spent 50 years researching in Greece, most of it focussed on the islanders and migrants of Anafi, spending a year on the island doing fieldwork for her doctorate in 1966 (Greek Island Life: Fieldwork on Anafi, Sean Kingston Publishing, 2017).