How parts of the Parthenon frieze came to be in England in the first place isan example of imperial arrogance manifest in marble. ‘Wider still and widershall thy bounds be set’ – not content with claiming sovereignty over otherpeoples’ countries, the British Empire appropriated the art in which theethos, history, religious mythology, the fundament of the people is imbued.The ethics of a British national museum, in the early nineteenth century, inbuying the heritage of another country without concern of how and bywhom it came to be on sale, were evidently countenanced, despite somecontroversy, in the name of this same imperial arrogance.But that is the past. Restitution now, in the twenty-first century, is onwider (appropriately) than legal grounds, grounds of dishonesty incolonialism justified as the acquisition of art.