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12 J. Art Crime 77 (2014)
A Brief History of Art Theft in Conflict Zones

handle is hein.journals/jartcrim12 and id is 82 raw text is: 


Noah  Charney


A  Brief History   of Art  Theft  in Conflict  Zones


Because  conflict zones represent unusual legal and security
circumstances, in which  laws, expectations, and behavior
patterns of civilians and soldiers alike change  in often
unexpected ways, it is useful to examine conflict zone or war
looting as distinct from similar actions in times of peace, when
existing laws are more likely to be followed and enforced.

     Art has been looted in war since pre-history. Whether the
goal of the looting is the seizure of objects for their monetary
value, to express the  domination  of the victor over the
vanquished, or to provide trophies of war for the conquerors
to display back home, war has caused the greatest movements
of art in history. Napoleon, Hitler, and GOring wear joint
crowns  as emperors among  art thieves, but we will examine
the phenomenon   of war looting beginning in 212 BC.  We
will see how later annies rationalized their practice of looting
art by noting that past civilizations, particularly the Romans,
did so, and how  looted art was seen both symbolically and
practically: as a trophy and a funding source.

Sack of Siracusa (212 BC)

In 212  BC  the Roman   Republican  army under  Marcellus
sacked the Greek  city of Siracusa, in Sicily. Of this, Livy
wrote:

     Marcellus removed  to Rome  the beautiful statues
     and paintings which Syracuse (Siracusa) possessed
     in such abundance. These  were, one must  admit,
     legitimate spoils, acquired  by  right of  war;
     nonetheless their removal  from  Rome   was  the
     origin of our admiration of Greek art and started
     the universal and reckless spoliation of all buildings
     sacred and profane which prevails today.2

Enamored   by the art they saw there, this sack launched a
Roman   craze for collecting Hellenistic vases and sculpture,
and resulted in the conscious alteration of military strategy in
order to secure more looted art. This was continued in times
of peace, for instance in the famous legal case which Cicero
tried against the tyrannical governor of Sicily, Gaius Verres,

1    Adapted from a talk prepared for the 2014 conference of the UIA
(Unione Internationale des Avocats) and ABA (American Bar Association),
held in Florence, Italy.
2    Livy Ab Urbe Condita, 24.40.3, available inLivy The Early History
ofRome (Penguin, 2002)


begun 5 August 70 BC  in Rome (see below).

Military-Sanctioned  Looting from, and by, Ancient Rome

General  Lucius Cornelius  Sulla stole the columns of the
great Temple of Zeus in Athens when  the city fell in 86 BC
and brought them back  in triumph, like fallen war heroes, to
Rome,  to reuse them in the Temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline
Hill.3 The general and later emperor Titus looted the Temple
of Herod in Jerusalem at the end of the Jewish War (70 AD).
Carved  in relief on the Arch of Titus and Vespasian in the
Roman  Forum  is a depiction of the Roman soldiers carrying
off the treasures of the temple, including the hom that Joshua
blew to fell the walls of Jericho and the giant silver menorah
that burned in the temple on Hannukah.'

     Titus would establish a museum in Rome to display the
trophies carried back from this war and others-an outdoor
sculpture gallery near the Porta Octaviana.  It contained
sculptures by the greatest Greek masters, including Phidias,
Lysippus, and  Praxiteles, all of which had been taken as
trophies of war.

     That very museum   would be  looted during one of the
many  Sacks of Rome (particularly those in 410 and 455 AD).5
For Rome  herself became the victim of pillaging on numerous
occasions, and in each case art was a primary target of the
ravishers of the city: the Gauls sacked Rome after the Battle
of Allia in 387 BC; Alaric, king of the Visigoths, did so in 410
AD;  a mere 45 years later, so did Genseric, king of the Vandals,
in 455 AD; Totila, king of the Ostrogoths sacked Rome when
he was  at war with the Byzantines in 546; the Arabs looted
the old Saint Peter's Basilica in 846; the Normans tried their
luck under Robert Guiscard in 1084; and finally the city was
sacked by the army  of Holy Roman   Emperor  Charles V in
1527.

     The  plundering during  the Roman   era is important
not only in itself but because subsequent military looting
was  sanctioned by the very fact that the Romans did it. If
it was acceptable to ancient Rome, seen by later empires as
exemplary  and the pinnacle of civilization, then it might be

3    Plutarch Roman Lives (Oxford University Press, 2009), the biography
of Sulla is on pages 169-215
4    Josephus The Jewish War (Penguin Classics, 1984)
5    See Miles (2008)


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