1 A few English and Scottish travellers visited Greece in the sixteenth century. These included William Biddulph, William Lithgow and Thomas Dallam, none of whom, in their writings, devote more than a couple of sentences to Athens (on the basis of their accounts, it is unlikely they even visited the Acropolis), nor do they show much interest in ancient architecture. See Mitsi, Efterpi, ‘Painful Pilgrimage: Sixteenth-Century English Travellers to Greece’, in Travels and Translations in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Pincombe, M. (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 19–30.Google Scholar

2 Vernon, Francis, ‘ Mr. Francis Vernons Letter, written to the Publisher Januar. 10th 1675 / 6, giving a short account of some of his Observations in his Travels from Venice through Istra, Dalmatia, Greece, and the Archipelago, to Smyrna, where this Letter was written ’, Philosophical Transactions, 11.124 (1676), pp. 575–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The account is also reproduced in Rupert Hall, A. and Hall, Marie Boas (eds), The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, 13 vols (Madison, 1965-86), XII, pp. 124–32.Google Scholar

3 For travel writing in the Philosophical Transactions, see Carey, Daniel, ‘Compiling Nature's History: Travellers and Travel Narratives in the Early Royal Society’, Annals of Science, 54.3 (1997), pp. 269–92 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schleck, Julia, ‘Forming Knowledge: Natural Philosophy and English Travel Writing’, in Travel Narratives, the New Science and Literary Discourse, 1659–1750, ed. Hayden, Judy A. (Farnham, 2012), pp. 53–70 Google Scholar; and Shapiro, Barbara J., A Culture of Pact, England 1550–1720 (Ithaca, 2000), pp. 70–76.Google Scholar For a general discussion of antiquarian material in the Royal Society, see Hunter, Michael, ‘The Royal Society and the Origins of British Archaeology’, in Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth Britain, ed. Hunter, M. (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 181–200.Google Scholar On the role that antiquarianism played in the scientific revolution in general, see Ashworth, William B. Jr, ‘Natural History and the Emblematic World View’, in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. Lindberg, David C. and Westman, Robert S. (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 303–32.Google Scholar

4 For Spon and Wheler, with brief discussion of Vernon, see Constantine, David, In the Footsteps of the Gods, Travellers to Greece and the Quest for the Hellenic Ideal (London, 2011), ch. 1Google Scholar; Constantine, David, Early Greek Travellers and the Hellenic Ideal (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar; and Stoneman, Richard, Land of Lost Gods, the Search for Classical Greece (London, 1987), pp. 56–83.Google Scholar

5 London, Royal Society Library, MS / 73, Francis Vernon, ‘Journal of Travels in the Eastern Mediterranean’, 1675-76, f. lr.

6 The journal is quarto size, 69 folios /138 pages in length and was re-bound in the twentieth century. It is exclusively in Vernon's hand (with the exception of later pagination). The only publication that has made use of Vernon's journal is Meritt, Benjamin D., ‘The Epigraphic Notes of Francis Vernon’, Hesperia Supplements, 8 (1949), pp. 213–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This is exclusively concerned with epigraphic material. I will, in the future, transcribe and publish Vernon's journal in its entirety. However, given the size of the document, such a task is beyond the scope of this article.

7 For example, the only notes of Wheler's that have survived are copies of inscriptions he made; these are now in the British Library.

8 For Wheler's interest in early Christian architecture, see Knight, Caroline, ‘The Travels of the Rev. George Wheler (1650–1723)’, The Georgian Group Journal, 10 (2000), pp. 21–35.Google Scholar For another reading of Wheler's text, one that locates it within the context of travel writing in general, see Mitsi, Efterpi, ‘Travel, Memory and Authorship: George Wheler's A Journey into Greece, (1682)’, Restoration, Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, 30.1 (2006), pp. 15–29.Google Scholar

9 Vernon was baptized at St Martin-in-the-Fields in January 1637. A very under-researched figure, Vernon's basic biography can be found in: Sturdy, David J., ‘Francis Vernon’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Matthew, H.C.G. and Harrison, B., 60 vols (Oxford, 2004), LVI, pp. 364–65.Google Scholar Like his friend Hooke, no likeness of Vernon has survived.

10 Vernon is a frequent presence in Hooke's diary before leaving for Greece in 1673: Hooke, Robert, The Diary of Robert Hooke 1672–1680, ed. Robinson, H.W. and Adams, W. (London, 1935).Google Scholar For Hooke's architectural career, see Walker, Matthew, ‘Architectus ingenio: Robert Hooke, the Early Royal Society, and the Practices of Architecture’ (doctoral thesis, University of York, 2010).Google Scholar

11 Interestingly, Montagu had also been at Westminster School with Hooke and Vernon in the late 1640s and would commission Hooke to design his London mansion, Montagu House, the following decade.

12 Hall and Hall, Oldenburg Correspondence, VI, pp. 147-49.

13 See MacLean, Gerald, The Rise of Oriental Travel, English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 1580–1720 (Basingstoke, 2004).Google Scholar On the whole, most English visitors to the Ottoman Empire in this period limited themselves to the trading outposts (or factories) established by the Levant Company in Constantinople, Smyrna, Alexandria and Aleppo. Vernon seems to have initially planned his journey around these locations, visiting Smyrna and Constantinople. James Crawford revealed in a letter to Oldenburg that Vernon had intended to visit Aleppo, but his journal shows that he changed his plans and never attempted a journey to Syria: Hall and Hall, Oldenburg Correspondence, XII, p. 122.

14 His journal shows him to be proficient in Latin and ancient Greek, and his close friendships with Italian and French academics in Paris suggest that he was fluent in those two languages as well. According to Jacob Spon, Vernon could speak seven or eight different languages: Spon, Jacob, Voyage d'ltalie, de Dalamatie, de Grèce et du Levant, 3 vols (Lyon, 1678), I, p. 154.Google Scholar

15 The letter survives in the British Library: London, British Library, Harley MS 6444, ‘Letter from Francis Vernon to his Mother’, 26 March 1667.

16 See Carey, , ‘Compiling Nature's History’, pp. 271–72Google Scholar, and Illiffe, Robert, ‘Foreign Bodies: Travel, Empire and the Early Royal Society of London. Part 1. Englishmen on Tour’, Canadian History journal, 33.3 (1998), pp. 357–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 2r. Wheler, George, A journey into Greece(London, 1682), p. 38.Google Scholar

18 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 3r.

19 Vernon, ‘Journal’, ff. 8r-22v.

20 Vernon, ‘Journal’, ff. i8v, 22v. Vernon related the details of Eastcourt's death to Bernard Randolph in Athens, who subsequently published them: Randolph, Bernard, The Present State of the Morea, called anciently, Peloponnesus (London, 1686), p. 14.Google Scholar For Vernon's epigraphic activities in Delphi, see Meritt, Benjamin D., ‘The Persians at Delphi’, Hesperia, 16.2 (1947), pp. 58–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Vernon, ‘Journal’, ff. 22V-35V. In particular, Vernon spent time in the company of Jean Giraud, the French, and subsequently English, consul in Athens, who would later entertain Spon and Wheler in the city: Constantine, , Footsteps of the Gods, p. 13.Google Scholar He also socialized with the travel writer Bernard Randolph who was, at the time, a merchant living in Smyrna and was in Athens temporarily: Vernon, ‘Journal’, ff. 4V, 22V. Meritt, , ‘Epigraphic Notes’, p. 213.Google Scholar

22 Vernon, ‘Journal’, ff. 4or–43v.

23 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 34r.

24 Vernon recorded in his journal that he also wrote letters to Henri Justell in Paris and to Gerald Aungier in Surat (for discussion of both these letters, see below): Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 47r.

25 Hooke visited James Vernon on 17 October 1677 returning home with ‘Mr. Vernons Letters from Cephalonia, Constantinople and Trapezeum’, Hooke, Diary, p. 321.

26 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 58r.

27 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 59V.

28 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 68r. The details of Vernon's death, which are fairly grim, were established by later travellers to Persia and recorded in: de Tournefort, Joseph Pitton, Relation d'un voyage du Levant fait par ordre duroy, 3 vols (Paris, 1717), II, pp. 280–81.Google Scholar

29 Hooke, , Diary, p. 292.Google Scholar For the tendency of English writers in this period to refer to any Muslim (or indeed any inhabitant of the Middle East) as a Turk, see MacLean, Gerald, Looking East, English Writing and the Ottoman Empire before 1800 (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 201–02.Google Scholar

30 Crawford claimed that Vernon's travel plans were not fixed and that he intended to make a decision about whether to press on to India once he had reached Persia; Hall and Hall, Oldenburg Correspondence, XI, p. 503.

31 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 47r.

32 A note attached to the manuscript reveals that Hooke's friend and biographer Richard Waller gave the journal to the physician and book collector Richard Mead, who subsequently sent it to the antiquarian and orientalist Edmund Chishull in 1709. This note is transcribed in Meritt, ‘Persians at Delphi’, p. 58.

33 Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 576.

34 As discussed below, Vernon's journal reveals that this was the case.

35 Vernon, ‘Letter’, pp. 579-80.

36 For example, the popularity of Wheler's Journey into Greece is evidenced by the fact that it was reprinted and translated into French: Wilson, N.G., ‘George Wheler’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, LVIII, pp. 452–53.Google Scholar

37 On 21 October 1677 Hooke recorded that he had ‘Transcribed Vernons letter from Athens’ and again on 29 October 1677 he ‘transcribd Vernons letter’, the next day he was ‘At home all the morn transcribing Vernons letters’ and by the end of the day had ‘Ended Vernons Letters': Hooke, , Diary, pp. 322, 324.Google Scholar It seems likely that Hooke intended these transcriptions to appear in the Philosophical Transactions as Vernon's earlier letter had done. However, they remained unpublished, perhaps due to the death of Oldenburg in September 1677 and the subsequent hiatus in the journal's print run starting in 1678.

38 Birch, Thomas, The History of the Royal Society of London, 4 vols (London, 1756-57), III, p. 358.Google Scholar

39 In fact, the original letter that Oldenburg received has been lost, its contents are only known through its publication in the Transactions: Hall and Hall, Oldenburg Correspondence, XII, p. 130. It seems that Vernon also sent Hooke either the same letter or similar one at the same time. Hooke received his on 25 February 1676: Hooke, , Diary, p. 217.Google Scholar

40 Birch, , History of the Royal Society, III, p. 312.Google Scholar

41 Philosophical Transactions, 10.122 (1675), pp. 279, 549; 14.155 (1684), p. 466. These reviews are discussed in Geraghty, Anthony, ‘Robert Hooke's Collection of Architectural Books and Prints’, Architectural History, 47 (2004), pp. 113–25.Google Scholar

42 Besides Vernon's letter, other examples include Martin Lister's 1683 account of the Roman ruins of York, a 1694 drawing of the ruins of Persepolis submitted by Nicholaes Witsen and an account of the architecture of Palmyra in Syria that was written by a member of the Levant Company and published in 1695: Lister, Martin, ‘Some Observations upon the Ruins of a Roman Wall and Multangular-Tower at York. By the Judicious Mar. Lister Esq;’, Philosophical Transactions, 13.149 (1683), pp. 238–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Witsen, Nicholaes, ‘A Letter from Monsieur N. Witsen to Dr. Martin Lister, with two Draughts of the Famous Persepolis’, Philosophical Transactions, 18.210 (1694), pp. 117–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Halifax, William, ‘A Relation of a Voyage from Aleppo to Palmyra in Syria ’, Philosophical Transactions, 19.217 (1695), pp. 83–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Oldenburg, Henry, ‘A Preface to the Third Year of these Tracts ’, Philosophical Transactions, 2.23 (1666), p. 413.Google Scholar

44 Fréart, Roland, A Parallel of the Antient Architecture with the Modern', trans. Evelyn, J. (London, 1664), p. bII.Google Scholar

45 Wren's ‘Tracts’ on Architecture and Other Writings, ed. Soo, Lydia M. (Cambridge, 1998), p. 154.Google Scholar

46 Oldenburg, , ‘Preface to the Third Year ’, p. 414.Google Scholar Italics are mine.

47 Carey, , ‘Compiling Nature's History’, p. 276.Google Scholar

48 Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 577.

49 See Mordaunt Crook, J., The Greek Revival, Neo-Classical Attitudes in British Architecture 1760–1870 (Chatham, 1972), pp. 1–6, 69-70.Google Scholar

50 Constantine, , Footsteps of the Gods, pp. 7–10.Google Scholar

51 Hooke, , Diary, p. 234.Google Scholar Wheeler, J.R., ‘Notes on the so-called Capucin Plans of Athens’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 12 (1901), pp. 221–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 Some examples of moments in Vitruvius where the author implied that there were differences between Greek and Roman architecture include his discussion of masonry construction techniques in the second book and the differences between Greek and Roman theatres and houses: Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, ed. Rowland, I.D. and Howe, T.N. (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 39–40, 68-70, 82-83.Google Scholar As we shall see, the lack of clarity over Greek architectural form in Vitruvius fundamentally shaped Vernon's own analysis of the Athenian ruins.

53 Wheler, , Journey, p. 362 Google Scholar, Spon, , Voyage, pp. 146–47.Google Scholar For this, they were later castigated by Stuart and Revett: Stuart, James and Revett, , The Antiquities of Athens, Measured and Delineated, Volume II (London, 1787), pp. 4–5. Google Scholar

54 Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 577.

55 Randolph, , Present State, p. 23.Google Scholar

56 For the Acropolis, post-antiquity, see Hurwitt, Jeffrey M., The Athenian Acropolis, History, Mythology and Archaeology from the Neolithic Era to the Present (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 291–302.Google Scholar Also various entries in Travlos, John, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (London, 1971).Google Scholar The image I show here is an Italian drawing of the Acropolis dating from 1670, though not widely circulated at the time. It is discussed in Beschi, Luigi, ‘Un disegno veneto dell’ acropoli atheniese nel 1670’, Arte Veneta, 10 (1956), pp. 136–41.Google Scholar

57 Pausanias Book 1, Chapter 22, Section 4: Pausanias's Description of Greece, trans. Frazer, J.G., 6 vols (London, 1898), I, p. 31.Google Scholar See Tanoulas, Tasos, ‘The Propylaea and the Western Access of the Acropolis’, in Acropolis Restoration, the CCAM Interventions, ed. Economakis, R. (London, 1994), pp. 53–68.Google Scholar

58 Wheler, , journey, p. 364.Google Scholar

59 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 33r. By his use of the Italian word ‘muratura’, Vernon was referring to the blank masonry of the sides of the temple. For his use of Italian architectural terminology, see below.

60 Korres, M., ‘The Parthenon from Antiquity to the 19th Century’, in The Parthenon and its Impact in Modern Times, ed. Tournikiotis, P. (Athens, 1994), pp. 137–61.Google Scholar See also Ousterhout, Robert, ‘“Bestride the Very Peak of Heaven”: The Parthenon After Antiquity’, in The Parthenon, From Antiquity to the Present, ed. Neils, J. (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 293–330 Google Scholar, and Beard, Mary, The Parthenon (London, 2010), pp. 68–71.Google Scholar

61 Hurwitt, , Athenian Acropolis, p. 295 Google Scholar.

62 All accounts of Athens in this period could not fail to mention this fact. Both Spon and Wheler repeatedly stressed the dangers of recording the Acropolis. Vernon, in his letter, reported that taking measurements of the temples was ‘difficult’ as the Acropolis was ‘a garrison, and the Turks are jealous, and brutishly barbarous, if they take notice that any measures it’: Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 577.

63 For the expectation that contemporary travellers might carry some form of measuring instruments, see Pearl, Jason H., ‘Geography and Authority in the Royal Society's Instructions for Travelers’, in Travel Narratives, the New Science and Literary Discourse, 1659–1750, ed. Hayden, Judy A. (Farnham, 2012), pp. 71–83.Google Scholar

64 Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 578.

65 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 32r.

66 Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 578. In the letter Vernon seems to have rejected the traditional name given to the onument — ‘Demosthenes’ Lantern’ — although he used that designation in his journal despite his recognition of Hercules in the frieze: Vernon, ‘Journal’, ff. 3V, 41. Spon was the first to decipher the monument's true purpose: Spon, Voyage, II, pp. 172-75. De Cou, Herbert F., ‘The Frieze of the Choragic Monument of Lysikrates at Athens’, American Journal of Archaeology and of the History of the Fine Arts, 8.1 (1893), pp. 42–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 Vernon, ‘Letter’, pp. 578-79. Vernon had taken the name ‘Temple of Pandrosus’ from Pausanias who used it to describe a building in the vicinity of the Erechtheion (it was actually a lost temple adjacent to the surviving one). As historians of the Acropolis have observed, Pausanias's discussion of the Erechtheion is extremely confusing, as well as lacking any architectural description, and perhaps we can forgive Vernon for his mistaken nomenclature (particularly given the fact that Erechtheion was not the ancient word for the temple in question anyway): see Hurwit, , Athenian Acropolis, p. 203.Google Scholar Indeed, in his letter Vernon admitted that he was not sure if the Erechtheion was a temple to Pandrosus ‘or whom I cannot tell': Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 579.

68 Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 578.

69 Shapin, Steven, A Social History of Truth, Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago, 1994), pp. 317–18.Google Scholar

70 Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 382.

71 A good example of this is the account of Palmyra that appeared in the Transactions in 1695, accompanied by a lengthy account of the author's journey to and from the desert city that included much seemingly superfluous information relating to travel arrangements: ‘An Extract of the Journals of Two Several Voyages of the English Merchants of the Factory of Aleppo, to Tadmor, Anciently Call'd Palmyra’, Philosophical Transactions, 19.218 (1695), pp. 129–60. For the classic account of the importance of circumstantially and prolixity in early Royal Society literature, see Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985), pp. 60–65.Google Scholar

72 Dear, Peter, ‘Totius in Verba: Rhetoric and Authority in the Early Royal Society’, Isis, 76.2 (1985), pp. 144–61.Google Scholar

73 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 4V.

74 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 32r.

75 Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 578.

76 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 33V.

77 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 32r.

78 Spon's words here seem to confirm the suspicion one gets from the journal that Vernon was more interested in ancient architecture than any of his contemporary travellers. Spon, Voyage, II, p. 163.

79 Tournefort, Relation, II, p. 280.

80 Oldenburg, Henry, ‘Preface to the Eleventh Volume’, Philosophical Transactions, 11.123 (1676), p. 552.Google Scholar

81 For the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and the Theatre of Dionysus, see Wycherley, R.E., The Stones of Athens (Princeton, 1978), pp. 203–18Google Scholar; Travlos, , Pictorial Dictionary, pp. 378–86, 537-52Google Scholar; and Hurwit, , Athenian Acropolis, pp. 217–18, 256-58, 277.Google Scholar

82 Pausanias, Book 1, Chapter 21, Section 1: Frazer, Pausanias, p. 29.

83 Julien-David Le Roy, for example, referred to the Odeon of Herodes Atticus as the Theatre of Bacchus in 1758: Le Roy, Julien-David, The Ruins of the Most Beautiful Monuments of Greece, trans. Britt, David (Los Angeles, 2004), pp. 259–61.Google Scholar As discussed below, Stuart and Revett would do likewise. Incidentally, most seventeenth-century writers on Athens, Wheler amongst them, confusingly referred to the ruins of the actual Theatre of Dionysus as ‘the Odeon’: Wheler, , Journey, p. 382.Google Scholar

84 Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 579. 78

85 George Guillet de Saint-George, Athènes ancienne et nouvelle et Vestat présent de Vempire des Turcs (Paris, 1675).Google Scholar

86 de Saint-George, George Guillet, An Account of a Late Voyage to Athens (London, 1676).Google Scholar

87 Webb, Timothy, English Romantic Hellenism, 1700–1824 (Manchester, 1982), p. 1.Google Scholar In 1678, the veracity of Guillet's account was famously challenged by Spon and Wheler; see Constantine, David, ‘The Question of Authenticity in Some Early Accounts of Greece’, in Rediscovering Hellenism, the Hellenic Inheritance and the English Imagination, ed. Clarke, G.W. (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 1–22.Google Scholar However, as we shall see, Vernon's letter reached London and Paris before Spon and Wheler returned and was the first to expose Guillet's text.

88 See Constantine, , ‘Question of Authenticity’, pp. 3–9.Google Scholar As Constantine argues, Guillet himself may have set out to write a romantic, literary account of Greece rather than a verbatim travel record. However, regardless of Guillet's own motives, Royal Society members such as Vernon and Oldenburg had little respect for more ‘romantic’ travel literature and were always going to treat Guillet's account at face value.

89 Vernon consulted Guillet numerous times whilst he was in Athens: Vernon, ‘Journal’, ff. 25r, 25V.

90 Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 579.

91 Hooke, , Diary, pp. 165,167,172.Google Scholar

92 Questions of plausibility and lying in the early Royal Society and its intellectual milieu are extensively explored in Shapin, , Social History of Truth, pp. 65–125, 243-309.Google Scholar

93 See Sekler, Eduard, Wren and his Place in European Architecture (London, 1956), pp. 38–42.Google Scholar See also Geraghty, Anthony, ‘Wren's Preliminary Design for the Sheldonian Theatre’, Architectural History, 45 (2002), pp. 275–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

94 Birch, , History, III, p. 312.Google ScholarPubMed

95 Hall and Hall, Oldenburg Correspondence, XII, p. 251.

96 Fréart, Parallel, p. b11. Vernon's refutation of Guillet was not the only example in the Transactions of scepticism and the subsequent exposure of false architectural information. The veracity of the Dutch author Johann Michael Vansleb's 1677 account of Egypt — a text which contained a significant amount of architectural information — was challenged in the journal in 1684: Huntington, Robert, ‘ A Letter from Dublin to the Publisher of these Tracts, concerning the Porphyry Pillars in Egypt’, Philosophical Transactions, 14.161 (1684), pp. 624–29.Google Scholar

97 Guillet's text does not appear in the sale catalogue of Hooke's library that was compiled upon his death. This suggests that Hooke gave it away, or perhaps never bothered to get it back from Boyle: Sale Catalogues of Libraries of Eminent Persons, Volume II: Scientists, Elias Ashmole, Edmund Halley, Robert Hooke, John Ray, ed. Feisenberger, H.A. (London, 1975), pp. 37–116.Google Scholar Vernon's letter seems to have made Hooke more suspicious about the accuracy of travel writing in general. Two days after he had received a similar letter from Vernon, he wrote in his diary that he was planning to write to Vernon to request a drawing of a piece of Greek statuary. The diary entry reveals that he was concerned about malicious forces at work in the reporting of Greek sources in general: ‘To send to Vernon. To Coppy Greek face, beware Jesuits send Duplicates’: Hooke, , Diary, p. 218.Google Scholar Hooke's suggestion that Vernon sent duplicates of any visual material perhaps reflects a heightened awareness of the possibility that inaccurate images could enter circulation. This wariness presumably came as a result of Vernon's exposure of Guillet's image of the Athenian theatre.

98 Spon, Jacob, Réponse à la critique publiee par M. Guillet sur le ‘Voyage de Grèce’ de Jacob Spon (Lyon, 1679), pp. 284–302.Google Scholar Constantine, , Footsteps of the Gods, p. 23.Google Scholar

99 ‘Extrait Du Journal D'Angleterre. Contenant l'extrait d'une letter ecrite de Symrne par M. Vernon’, Journal des Sçavans, 20 July 1676, pp. 167–68.Google Scholar

100 Journal des Sçavans, 25 February 1675, pp. 61-68.

101 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 4V. The various Italian words here translate as: Bassamento: base; Scannelleto: fluting. For Vernon's use of Italian architectural terminology, see below.

102 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 32r. ‘Fustio’, or fusto, is an Italian word for the shaft of the column, again see below.

103 For English knowledge of baseless Roman Doric columns in the period, see Worsley, Giles, ‘The Baseless Roman Doric Column in Mid-Eighteenth-Century English Architecture: A Study in Neo-Classicism’, The Burlington Magazine, 128.998 (1986), pp. 331–37.Google Scholar

104 Other books Vernon possessed or had access to in Athens included a text by Ovid (Vernon does not reveal which) and a book by the early seventeenth-century Dutch antiquarian Johannes Meursius (again, unclear which), Vernon, ‘Journal’, ff. 30V, 25r.

105 These are the Italian words for fluting, guttae, base and frieze respectively. Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 32V.

106 Cesarino, Cesare, Di Lucio Vitruvio Pollione de architectura libri dece traducti de latino in vulgare affigurati (Como, 1521).Google Scholar Barbaro, Daniele, I died libri dell'archittura di M. Vitruvio (Venice, 1556).Google Scholar

107 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 30V.

108 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 30V.

109 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 30V. The passage in Vitruvius is Book 3, Chapter 2, Section 8: Rowland and Howe, Vitruvius, p. 49.

110 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 32V. By ‘Sparle’, Vernon meant the cross timbers that were symbolically represented by the triglyphs and mutules of the Doric entablature.

111 The passage in Vitruvius that this comment relates to is the account of the cornice of the Doric order in Book 4, Chapter 3, Section 6: Rowland, and Howe, , Vitruvius, p. 58.Google Scholar

112 Barbaro, , I died libri, p. 93 Google Scholar; Cesariano, , Di Lucio Vitruvio, p. LXV.Google Scholar

113 Vernon, ‘Journal’, ff. 33r, 33V.

114 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 32r. By ‘anuelli’ Vernon meant the annulets of the capitals.

115 Barbaro, I Died Libri, p. 90.

116 Vernon, ‘Letter’, p. 576.

117 Vernon had written about the Colosseum in the letter that he wrote from Rome in 1667: Vernon, ‘Letter to his mother’, f. 2ir.

118 For the role of architectural erudition in the new science in general, see Gerbino, Anthony, Francois Blondel, Architecture, Erudition, and the Scientific Revolution (New York, 2010).Google Scholar

119 Lister, , ‘Some Observations’, pp. 239–41.Google ScholarPubMed

120 Wragge-Morley, Alexander, ‘Restitution, Description and Knowledge in English Architecture and Natural Philosophy, 1650–1750’, Architectural Research Quarterly, 14.3 (2010), pp. 247–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

121 For a recent discussion of the culturally-relative standards of accuracy in seventeenth-century English scientific writings, see Doherty, Meghan C., ‘Creating Standards of Accuracy: Faithorne's The Art of Graveing and the Royal Society’, in Science in Print: Essays on the History of Science and the Culture of Print, ed. Apple, Rima D., Downey, Gregory J. and Vaughn, Stephen L. (Madison, 2012), pp. 15–36.Google Scholar

122 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 33r. By ‘mignomeneus’ Vernon meant slender or delicate (he would describe the Erechtheion as delicate in his letter), ‘portico of ala’ referred to the north porch: ‘ala’ being wing in Italian.

123 Wheler, , Journey, p. 364 Google Scholar; Spon, , Voyage, p. 159–60Google Scholar. Twentieth-century archaeologists of the Erechtheion have speculated over the apparent absence of the caryatid porch in Spon and Wheler's accounts. Both authors make reference to three female statues in the same passage as they discuss the temple (they both suggested that these depicted the Three Graces), but they locate these to the South of the Parthenon, making it unlikely that they were the caryatids. The conclusion in the 1920s was either that Spon and Wheler (and Vernon for that matter) got hopelessly confused in their account of the Erechtheion or that they simply did not see the porch. The only writer to make reference to the caryatid porch before 1687 was Cornelio Magni, who visited the Acropolis with the Marquis de Nointel in 1674 and wrote a later account of the visit. However, even in this text, the author was not clear if he thought that the porch was part of the Erechtheion or another temple: Magni, Cornelio, Relazione della Città d'Athene (Parma, 1688), pp. 56–57.Google Scholar See The Erechtheum, ed. Paton, J.M. (Cambridge, Mass, 1927), pp. 528, 531.Google Scholar

124 Pausanias, Book 1, Chapter 26, Section 6: Frazer, , Pausanias, pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

125 See Hurwitt, , Athenian Acropolis, p. 203.Google Scholar For the temple of Castor and Pollux and Vitruvius's account of it, see Tucci, Pier Luigi, ‘Imagining the Temple of Castor and Pollux in Circo Flaminio ’, in Res bene gestae: recherché di storia urbana su Roman antice in onore di Eva Margaretta Steinby (Rome, 2007), pp. 411–25.Google Scholar

126 Wheler, , Journey, p. 360 Google Scholar; Spon, , Voyage, p. 142.Google Scholar

127 Lister, Martin, ‘An Account of a Roman Monument Found in the Bisho-Prick of Durham, and of Some Roman Antiquities at York’, Philosophical Transactions, 13.145 (1683), pp. 70–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lister, , ‘Some Observations’, p. 238.Google ScholarPubMed

128 Vernon, ‘Journal’, f. 31V.

129 Although Vernon's journal contained a wealth of information, it would have been very difficult for someone else to have edited it without him. Much of it is in note form, and it would have required a first-hand knowledge of Greece to decipher. The antiquary Anthony à Wood saw the manuscript in the 1690s and declared it ‘not fit to be published, because imperfect and indigested’: Wood, Anthony à, Athenae Oxonienses, 2 vols (London, 1692), II, p. 445.Google Scholar Meritt, , ‘Persians at Delphi’, p. 58.Google Scholar

130 Stuart, James and Revett, Nicholas, The Antiquities of Athens, Measured and Delineated: Volume III (London, 1794), pp. Bii, 3–5.Google Scholar Constantine, , Footsteps of the Gods, p. 23.Google Scholar

131 See Arbuthnott, Catherine, ‘The Life of James “Athenian” Stuart, 1713–1788’, in James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, 1713–1788, the Rediscovery of Antiquity, ed. Soros, S. W. (New Haven and London, 2006), pp. 59–102.Google Scholar See also Salmon, Frank, ‘Stuart as Antiquary and Archaeologist in Italy and Greece’, in the same volume, pp. 103–44.Google Scholar