Establishment of the scientific mission The Morea expedition was the second of the great military-scientific expeditions led by France in the first half of the 19th century. The
Commission of Sciences and Arts during
Napoleon’s
campaign in Egypt, and especially the publications that followed, had become a model. Since Greece was the other important region of antiquity considered the origin of
Western civilisation (one of the
philhellenes' principal arguments), it was decided, as mentioned by
Abel Blouet, to: ...take advantage of the presence of our soldiers who were occupying Morea to send a scholarly commission. It did not have to equal that attached to the glory of Napoleon […] It did however need to render eminent services to the arts and sciences. The
Interior minister of King
Charles X, the
power behind the throne and real head of the government at the time, the
Viscount of Martignac, charged six academicians of the
Institut de France (
Académie des Sciences:
Georges Cuvier and
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres:
Charles-Benoît Hase and
Desiré-Raoul Rochette.
Académie des Beaux-arts:
Jean-Nicolas Hyot and
Jean-Antoine Letronne) to appoint the chief-officers and members of each section of the Scientific Committee.
Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent was thus appointed director of the commission on December 9, 1828. They also determined the routes and objectives. As Bory will write later: Messrs. De Martignac and Siméon had asked me expressly not to restrict my observations to Flies and Herbs, but to extend them to places and to menThe expedition, composed of nineteen scientists, was divided into three sections While in Egypt and Algeria, scientific work was done under the army's protection, in Morea, while scientific exploration had barely begun, the first troops already started embarking for France from the first days of
April 1829.'' Shortly after the arrival of the scientific commission in Greece and its installation in its headquarters in
Modon, the governor of the First Hellenic Republic Ioannis Kapodistrias came to meet its members on April 11, 1829. He already had the opportunity to meet on his way, between
Argos and
Tripolizza,
Edgar Quinet who had then already parted from the rest of the commission and was heading to Argolida. The historian and future French politician presents on this occasion portraits of the president and his aides-de-camp, the heroes of Greek independence
Kolokotronis and
Nikitaras, who all left strong impression on him. A great dinner was organised at Modon, which brought together for the last time before the expeditionary force returned to France: President
Kapodistrias, Marshal
Maison, the Greek and French officers and principal chiefs (Kolokotronis, Nikitaras,
Makriyannis,
Kallergis,
Fabvier, etc.), and all members of the scientific commission. Bory de Saint-Vincent introduced the members of his section to the president, then both had the opportunity to discuss at length questions of international diplomacy. The only maps available at the time were those made by
Jean-Denis Barbié du Bocage (1808, in 1:500,000 scale), whose map was relatively imperfect, and that of
Pierre Lapie (1826, in 1:400,000 scale), which was more exact for a detailed layout and was used by the members of the expedition. Captain Pierre Peytier, of the
topographic service in the French army, had already been invited to Greece by Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias when the latter had come to Paris in October 1827 to ask the French government for advisers and French army officers to organise the army of the
new Greek state. Kapodistrias also requested the fixing of the map of Greece. Consequently, on the recommendation of the French Ministry of War, Peytier and three other officers were sent to Greece in May 1828, four months before the Morea military expedition, to train young Greek topographical engineers (including the urban engineer
Stamatis Voulgaris, a staff captain in the French army, but of Greek origin). This was intended to serve as a point of departure in all the triangulation operations for topographic and geodetic readings in the Peloponnese. Peytier and Puillon-Boblaye proceeded to perform numerous verifications on the base and on the rulers used. The margin of error was thus reduced to 1 meter for every 15 kilometers. The
longitude and
latitude of the base point at Tiryns were read and checked, so that again the margin of error was reduced as far as possible to an estimated 0.2
seconds. One hundred thirty four geodetic stations were set up on the peninsula's mountains, as well as on
Aegina,
Hydra and
Nafplion. Equilateral triangles whose sides measured about 20 km were drawn, while the angles were measured with Gambey's
theodolites. However, after the departure of the scientific mission from Greece, and although he fell ill with
fever five times, Peytier remained there alone until 31 July 1831 to complete the trigonometric, topographic and statistical work for the establishment of the map of the Morea. The
Map of 1832, very precisely drawn at a 1:200,000 scale on 6 sheets (plus two sheets depicting some of the islands of the Cyclades), was the first map of the Greek territory ever made according to scientifically and
geodetic principles. The Governor of Greece Ioannis Kapodistrias also commissioned
Pierre Théodore Virlet d'Aoust to assess the possibility of digging a
canal on the
isthmus of Corinth, to save ships the journey around the Peloponnese and the dangerous pass of the
capes Maleas and
Matapan (Tainaron) south of the peninsula. Virlet d'Aoust gave him an estimate of the project, which, without taking into account interest on its financing, was assessed to around 40 million
gold francs of the time. This expense, too considerable for the Hellenic government alone, led him to give up the initiation of the works. Although the project was never carried out, Virlet still oprovided the Greek government its potential route, which followed that established by the
Romans between
Loutraki and
Kalamaki, and which was indicated on the
Geological Map in 1:200,000 scale of the scientific expedition. It was not until 1893 that the
Corinth Canal was finally opened.
Botany and Zoology '' Bory & Chaub)
Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent led the Morea scientific expedition, He gathered a multitude of specimens:
Flore de Morée (1832) lists 1,550 plants, of which 33 were
orchids and 91 were
grasses (just 42 species had not yet been described);
Nouvelle Flore du Péloponnèse et des Cyclades (1838) described 1,821 species. In Morea, Bory de Saint-Vincent limited himself to collecting only the plants. He proceeded to their classification, identification and description upon his return to the
Museum d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris. He was then helped, not by his collaborators from Greece, but by the eminent botanists of his time,
Louis Athanase Chaubard, Jean-Baptiste Fauché and
Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart. Similarly, the well-known naturalists
Étienne and his son
Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire helped him to write and edit the expedition's scientific works, under the supervision of
Georges Cuvier at the institute. As the gathering process went along, they sent the plants, as well as birds and fish, to France. of the Morea (
Canis aureus moreoticus) described for the first time by the Morea Expedition (Lithographs by
Jean-Gabriel Prêtre, published by
Bory de Saint-Vincent) In zoological matters, relatively few new species were described. However, the Morea expedition identified for the first time the species of jackal,
Canis aureus, or
golden jackal, that populates the region. Although earlier travel narratives had mentioned its presence, these were not considered trustworthy. Moreover, the subspecies described by the Morea Expedition was
endemic to the region: Bory de Saint-Vincent gave it the name of the Morea (
Canis aureus moreoticus) and brought back to the Museum of Natural History in Paris some pelts and a skull. Bory was accompanied during his explorations of the Peloponnese by the
zoologists Gabriel Bibron, Sextius Delaunay and Antoine Vincent Pector, by the
entomologist Gaspard-Auguste Brullé, by the
conchologist,
malacologist and geologist Gérard Paul Deshayes, by the
geologists Pierre Théodore Virlet d’Aoust and Émile Puillon Boblaye, and by the
botanist specialist of
cryptogams,
lichens,
fungi and
algae, Louis Despreaux Saint-Sauveur. The painter Prosper Baccuet, also accompanying Bory, made illustrations of the landscapes visited that were published in Bory's ''Relation de l'Expédition scientifique de Morée
(1836) and Atlas
(1835). The sculptor and Hellenist Jean-Baptiste Vietty from Lyon, who belonged to the Architecture and Sculpture section), tolerating with difficulty his subordinate role in the expedition, also separated from his companions after he arrived in Greece and travelled through the Peloponnese separately. He pursued his research in Greece under extremely difficult material conditions until August 1831, long after the expedition had returned to France at the end of 1829. Amaury-Duval later gave some picturesque portraits of both Quinet and Vietty in his Souvenirs (1829-1830)''. Thus, the members of this section each left in different directions, with Dubois failing to impose his authority and to prevent them doing so, a fact that elicited rather sarcastic comments from Baron
Georges Cuvier, the Commissioner of the
Academie who was supervising the "competing" Physical Sciences section. Their results will never be published. The main archaeological work was performed then by the Architecture and Sculpture section, which the remaining members of the Archaeology section joined.
Itineraries The publication of the works on archaeology and art followed the same pattern as with the publication of the works on physical and natural sciences: that of an itinerary with descriptions of the roads travelled, noteworthy monuments along these routes, and descriptions of their destinations. Hence, volume I of
Expédition de Morée. Section des Beaux Arts describes
Navarino (pp. 1–7) with six pages of drawings (fountains, churches, the fortress of Navarino and the city of
Nestor); then on pages 9–10, the road
Navarino-
Methoni is detailed with four pages of plates (a church in ruins and its frescoes, but also bucolic landscapes reminding the reader that the scene is not so far from
Arcadia); and finally three pages on Methoni with four pages of drawings. in the “shepherd of Arcadia” style and influenced by Hubert Robert The bucolic landscapes were rather close to the "norm" that
Hubert Robert had proposed for the depictions of Greece. The presence of the troops from the expeditionary corps was important, alternating with that of the Greek shepherds: "[...] their generous hospitality and simple and innocent manners reminded us of the beautiful period of pastoral life which fiction calls the
Golden age, and which seemed to offer the real characters of the
Theocritus' and
Virgil's
eclogues." The archaeological expedition travelled through Navarino (
Pylos),
Methoni,
Koroni,
Messene and
Olympia (described in the publication's first volume);
Bassae,
Megalopolis,
Sparta,
Mantineia,
Argos,
Mycenae,
Tiryns and
Nafplion (subjects of the second volume); the
Cyclades (
Syros,
Kea,
Mykonos,
Delos,
Naxos and
Milos),
Sounion, Aegina,
Epidaurus,
Troezen,
Nemea,
Corinth,
Sicyon,
Patras,
Elis,
Kalamata, the
Mani Peninsula,
Cape Matapan,
Monemvasia,
Athens,
Salamis Island and
Eleusis (covered in volume III).
Methods of exploration and identification of Ancient Pylos The artistic and archaeological exploration of the Peloponnese unfolded in the manner in which archaeological research was then conducted in Greece. Similarly, a little further, he says about the city of Modon (
Methoni), the Homeric city of
Pedasus: "the ancient remains of the port, whose description agrees perfectly with that of Pausanias, are sufficient to determine with certainty the location of the ancient city."
First archaeological excavations of the Ancient Messene Having explored Navarino, Methoni and Koroni, the members of the section went to the ancient city of
Messene (founded in 369 BC by the Theban general
Epaminondas after his victory over Sparta at
Leuctra), located on the slopes of Mounts
Ithome and Eva. They spent a full month there from April 10, 1829, where they were warmly welcomed by the inhabitants of the village of
Mavrommati. They were the first archaeologists to carry out scientific excavations on this site of
classical Greece. They found there the famous fortified and crenelated surrounding walls of Epaminondas in a perfect state of preservation. There were two monumental
portals in the wall, one of which, having a
lintel or
architrave of an extraordinary 6 meters in length, was described by Blouet as "perhaps the most beautiful in all of Greece". This enclosure initially allowed them to delimit the site and to "give a general plan of Messene with the most meticulous and precise topographic details."
Léon-Jean-Joseph Dubois (Archaeology section) and
Abel Blouet (Architecture and Sculpture section) undertook the first excavations there. They were accompanied by the painters
Frédéric de Gournay,
Pierre Achille Poirot,
Pierre Félix Trézel and
Amaury-Duval, as well as a troop of more than a hundred workers. The site of Olympia had been rediscovered in 1766 by the English antiquarian
Richard Chandler. Since then, it had been visited by many other travellers such as
Fauvel,
Pouqueville,
Gell,
Cokerell and
Leake. Its general identification by the archaeologists of the Morea expedition was made possible thanks to the more precise descriptions of
Edward Dodwell (for Dubois) and
John Spencer Stanhope (for Blouet). Most of the buildings were invisible, because as Abel Blouet noted, they must have been covered with a thick layer of sediment due to the frequent overflows of rivers
Alfeios and
Kladeos. Only a single large fragment of a Doric column was visible. It had already been spotted by the previous travellers because the inhabitants of neighboring villages had dug trenches there to remove the stone, but none of them had attributed it with certainty to the temple of Zeus. Abel Blouet specified: "Therefore, there could have been no merit in discovering a monument there. But what could have been a discovery was to find evidence that this monument was the famous
temple of Olympian Jupiter. And this is what our excavations have enabled us to demonstrate. When we arrived at Olympia, Mr. Dubois, director of the Archaeology section of our expedition, had already been there for a few days with Mr. Trézel and Mr. Amaury Duval, his collaborators. Following the instructions which had been given to him by the commission of the Institute, this antiquarian (Dubois) had begun the excavations of which the result had been the discovery of the first bases of the two columns of the
pronaos and several fragments of sculpture." The archaeological advice of
Jean-Nicolas Huyot was thus followed. Dubois installed his workers on the front side of the temple and Blouet installed his own on the back side in order to give these excavations all possible extension. The painter
Amaury-Duval gave in his
Souvenirs (1829-1830) a personal, direct and precise, testimony of the events which led to the exact identification of the
Temple of Olympian Zeus, which was thus determined for the first time. of
Olympia transferred to the
Louvre with the authorization of the Greek government by the Morea expedition Here again, the precise descriptions of the sculptures, structural elements of the temple and
metopes representing the
Twelve Labours of Heracles made by
Pausanias who visited the site during the second century AD, proved crucial to validate the identity of the temple of Zeus. These sculptures, which reflect the beginnings of classical art and of the
severe style, strongly struck the archaeologists in Olympia and in Paris at the Academy by their novel type imbued with naturalism. (by Abel Blouet) As with the excavations led at Messene, the site was divided topographically into squares, trenches were dug, excavations were undertaken in straight lines, and models for restoration were proposed: archaeology was becoming rationalized. The simple treasure hunt was beginning to be abandoned. The fundamental contribution of the Morea scientific expedition was its total indifference towards looting, treasure hunting, and antiquities smuggling.
Blouet refused to perform excavations that risked damaging the monuments, and banned the mutilation of statues with the intent of taking a piece separated from the rest without regard, as
Elgin had done on the Parthenon some twenty-five years before. It is perhaps for this reason that the three metopes of the temple of Zeus discovered at Olympia were transferred in their entirety to the
Louvre Museum (with the authorization of the Greek Government of Ioannis Kapodistrias). However, many precious works they excavated were re-buried in order to protect them, according to the direct testimony of
Amaury-Duval.
Byzantine Greece ) The French did not limit their interest to antiquity; they also described, reported plans and meticulously drew
Byzantine monuments. ====Foundation of the
French School at Athens==== The results obtained by the Morea scientific expedition underscored the need to create a permanent, stable structure that would allow its work to continue. From 1846, it was possible to systematically and permanently continue the work initiated by the Morea scientific expedition due to the creation on rue Didot, at the foot of
Mount Lycabettus, of a French scientific institution, in the form of the
French School at Athens.
End of the scientific mission The vast majority of members of the scientific expedition paid a heavy price for the
fevers they suffered during their sojourn in Morea. Many were forced to shorten their stay on the peninsula and to be repatriated to France before the beginning of 1830. The topographic brigade was severely affected: out of eighteen officers who had been successively employed in the topographical works of the Morea, three had died there and ten, whose health was ruined, were forced to retire. Captain Peytier wrote in 1834: "It is geodesy that ruins my health and I do not want anymore to do it in the mountains, at any cost whatsoever." They were therefore reduced to work only during the cool season and to stop for summer, the season during which they drew their maps.
Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent, meanwhile wrote: "The horrible heat that beset us in July placed the entire topographic brigade in disarray. These gentlemen, having worked in the sun, have nearly all taken ill, and we grieved to see M. Dechièvre die at
Napoli eight days ago."
Émile Puillon Boblaye wrote: "Out of twelve officers employed in the geodetic service, two are dead and all have been sick. Besides them, we have lost two sappers and a household servant." As for the physical sciences section, its members had forgotten to install mosquito nets in their tents before exploring the mouth of the
Eurotas in July 1829, and subsequently they were bitten by a species of mosquito that
Gaspard Auguste Brullé was the first to describe scientifically as the
Culex kounoupi Br.,
Pierre Théodore Virlet d'Aoust,
Sextius Delaunay,
Prosper Baccuet,
Gaspard Auguste Brullé, three muleteers, two sappers, an interpreter and the valet Villars, were all seized with violent fevers, which sometimes worsened to the point of delirium, and which precipitated the departure of the section for
Malvoisie, thus suspending their works. Bory de Saint-Vincent, one of the only members of the section to be spared from the disease, took a
caïque and immediately went to
Nafplio by sea, despite the storms, to seek help. The Bavarian philhellene doctor Mr. Zuccarini was then sent to Malvoisie and saved all his patients, except a sapper and the valet Villars who both died. President Ioannis Kapodistrias then placed a steamship at their disposal to repatriate them to Nafplion, then from there, to France. Bory de Saint-Vincent, Pierre Félix Trézel, Virlet d'Aoust and Peytier will then explore the Cyclades and Attica. In the Archaeology section,
Léon-Jean-Joseph Dubois,
Edgar Quinet and
Amaury-Duval have been also affected by fever and were then prematurely repatriated to France. Only
Jean-Baptiste Vietty and Pierre Peytier continued their research in the country, until August 1831 for the first and March 1836 for the second. '', opposite
Mounts Ithome and Evan, near
ancient Messene (detail of a lithograph by
Prosper Baccuet) == Members of the Morea expedition ==