"[3] Born in 1823 in a region of northern Greece under the Ottoman Empire, Rhousopoulos was educated in Constantinople and Athens before receiving financial support from the antiquarian and philanthropist Konstantinos Bellios to pursue formal archaeological training in Germany.

He was also a prominent dealer of antiquities, trading regularly with collectors, museums and society figures from around the world, and heavily involved in the illegal excavation and trafficking of ancient artefacts.

From 1865, his activities came to increasing public and official attention, particularly that of the Ephor General, Panagiotis Efstratiadis; Rhousopoulos was fined after his illegal sale of the Aineta aryballos to the British Museum, and expelled from the Archaeological Society.

In the twenty-first century, study of his extensive correspondence, particularly with the British scholars George Rolleston and Arthur Evans, has provided important evidence for the practice of archaeology and antiquities trading in nineteenth-century Greece.

Athanasios Sergiou Rhousopoulos was born in 1823, in the village of Vogatsiko, near Kastoria in the northern Greek region of Macedonia, then part of the Ottoman Empire.

[13] It had stagnated and all but disbanded between April 1854 and 1858,[14] under pressure from its own financial troubles and a cholera outbreak that had killed its president, Georgios Gennadios.

[4] Rhousopoulos's discovery in the spring of 1863 of the Grave Stele of Dexileos, alongside the contemporary excavation of the nearby funerary enclosure of Agathon, helped to identify the location of the ancient Athenian cemetery known as the Kerameikos.

[19] In 1866, excavations conducted by Rhousopoulos and his fellow archaeologist Petros Pervanoglou near the Theatre of Dionysus on the slopes of the Acropolis of Athens uncovered a marble sphere, approximately 0.91 metres (3.0 ft) in circumference, inscribed with images of the god Helios and magical inscriptions.

The reasons for his dismissal are uncertain: the Greek newspaper Skrip [el] (Σκριπ) reported that he had left his post "on account of old age".

[23] Rhousopoulos has been described as "a particularly vehement critic" of Heinrich Schliemann, the German archaeologist who excavated the site of Hisarlik (Troy) in various phases between 1871 and 1890.

18 August] 1873, the German newspaper Neue Hannoversche Zeitung [de] published a report of a conversation between Rhousopoulos and a number of his friends while he had been visiting Hannover.

Between 1873 and 1874, Rhousopoulos unsuccessfully tried to sell his stone artefacts for £120 (equivalent to £12,027 in 2021) to George Rolleston, professor of anatomy and physiology at Oxford University.

Rhousopoulos opened his house to invited viewers between 2pm and 5pm each day, and offered any item for sale, though commentators noted that his prices were considerably higher than those charged by other dealers in Athens, London and Paris.

[12] His home was often visited by high-status foreign travellers, including Emperor Pedro II of Brazil in 1876 and Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1891.

In the early 1870s, he sold sixty-two gems, which he identified as "Graeco-Phoenician", for £240 (equivalent to £24,054 in 2021) to Charles Newton, then keeper of the museum's Greek and Roman antiquities.

18 August] 1871, he purchased one such pinakion that had been illegally excavated from a tomb at Profitis Ilias, near the Panathenaic Stadium:[48] Galanakis has suggested that Rhousopoulos may have been involved in the sale of many other pinakia now found in European museum collections.

[52] Other objects from Rhousopoulos's collection were purchased by collectors and museums around the world, including several potsherds – of minimal commercial value – which are, as of 2013[update], held by the Antikenmuseum [de] of Heidelberg University.

[54] Rhousopoulos once opined, in 1861, that the Greek nation had "no need of new antiquities", but rather to catalogue and protect those "scattered in every corner of the city [of Athens]" – which, he claimed, were "wearing out, disappearing, and being stolen.

"[55] The archaeologist Helen Hughes-Brock has written that Rhousopoulos had some connection with the illegal excavation of a chamber tomb at Kara on Mount Hymettus on Crete.

[62] In 1896, the numismatist Ioannis Svoronos wrote a pamphlet, entitled Light upon Archaeological Scandals (Φως επί των αρχαιολογικών σκανδάλων), in which he accused Rhousopoulos of being an "antiquities looter" (Greek: αρχαιοκάπηλος, romanized: archaiokapilos, lit.

'antiquities trader');[63][h] as part of a broader set of accusations that the Ephor General, Panagiotis Kavvadias,[i] had failed to address antiquities crime and been inappropriately friendly towards archaeological criminals.

[80] Such artefacts could be sold overseas, provided that their owners secured the judgement of a state committee of three experts that the object was "useless" to Greek museums.

[83] Furthermore, Rhousopoulos was periodically a member of the appraising committee of three, and often acted as a consultant to it, further limiting Efstratiadis's ability to use the state's archaeological apparatus against him.

[2] According to Galanakis and the archaeological historian Magalosia Nowak-Kemp, Rhousopoulos subsequently "went to great lengths" to operate outside the knowledge and scrutiny of the state.

[84] For instance, he asked Evans, to whom he had sold numerous gems and seal-stones[85] over a period of years, to ensure that his name was not mentioned in any publication involving the objects or their excavation.

[92] Rhousopoulos was elected as a member of the Académie Française, to whom he dedicated his book Treatise on an Icon of Antigone (Πραγματείαν περὶ εἰκόνος τῆς ᾿Αντιγόνης).

His extensive correspondence, particularly with Rolleston, has also been used to reconstruct the networks and dynamics of the trade in and collection of ancient artefacts in late nineteenth-century Athens.