corresponded with the British architect Thomas Leverton Donaldson, sharing with him news of archaeological discoveries to which scholars outside Greece no longer had access. Reputed 'columns for cannonballs' exchange According to a much-cited anecdote, during the siege of the Acropolis, the Ottoman occupiers began to run low on lead ammunition, and began to destroy the marble columns of the Parthenon in order to remove the lead clamps which held them together. Pittakis, in an effort to preserve the ancient temple, is said to have offered to send ammunition to the Turkish defenders, as long as they left the columns intact. The laconic phrase 'here are bullets, do not touch the columns!' is often associated with the alleged incident. The story is most likely apocryphal. It is first attested in an 1859 letter by the writer Aristotelis Valaoritis, in which the protagonist is named as Odysseas Androutsos, who only arrived in Athens two months after the Acropolis was retaken; contemporary reports from the siege indicate that the Greeks themselves fired artillery on the Acropolis ruins. The story was first connected with Pittakis by his friend and rival Alexandros Rizos Rangavis in his eulogy for Pittakis after the latter's death in 1863. James Beresford has suggested that the origin, or at least the popularity, of the anecdote may lie in the growth in power of the Megali Idea in the mid-19th century, and the desire to strengthen the perceived links between modern Greeks and the heritage of Ancient Greece so as to justify the 'return' of the Classical Greek lands to Greece. The story has, however, been described as a 'powerful myth' with a prominent place in the Greek national discourse, particularly around the debate over the restitution of the Elgin marbles. It has been referenced by the Greek Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri and the archaeologist Manolis Andronikos as historical fact, in an effort to argue for the sculptures' return. Archaeological career Between 1824 and 1828, he studied medicine at the Ionian Academy on Corfu — a common field of study for Greek intellectuals of the time, as legal, philological and architectural training were difficult for them to come by except in northern Europe. According to Vasileios Petrakos, it was on Corfu that he met his wife, Aikaterini, a fellow native of Athens. During his studies, he continued his archaeological work, returning in 1825–1826 to Salamis to transcribe and catalogue further