For Britain, renewed demands by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece’s prime minister, to relinquish the Parthenon marbles brings the country face to face with its colonial past. For Greece, repatriating the sculptures, which have been housed in the British Museum since 1817, is a matter of national identity.
For the past 200 years, Greeks have leaned heavily on the idea that the present-day nation is an extension of ancient Greece. From a young
