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component parts thrown out of line. | part of the Museum is, for the present, at the Ministry of Education, in Hermes Street, opposite and below Wilberg's library. Here is a copy of the statue of Athenê in the Parthenon.

The substruction, too, seems to have been almost undermined at the N.W. corner, but is now, it is hoped, rendered secure. In the general view, however, all appears nearly perfect, and a large portion of the original coffered ceiling remains at the E. end: these coffers were of Parian marble; all the rest of the construction that remains is Pentelic, and a considerable number of the beams which supported the ceilings of the peristyles are still in their places.

"Both the Theseum and Parthenon look larger than they really are, an effect owing partly to the simplicity of the design and justness of the proportion."-Woods, p. 247. The peculiar position of the Parthenon, occupying the top of a rock of small extent, no doubt enhances the effect in the case of that temple, but not entirely When the temple was converted so; and it is an erroneous idea that into the Church of St. George, the two has sometimes been advocated, that columns between the antæ of the Pro-justness of proportion makes a buildnaos were removed to form the apse, ing look small. and a large western door was made, but it was afterwards walled up to protect the church from the insults of the Turks, who in former times were in the habit of riding into it. After this a small door was pierced in the S. wall. The cella was covered with a semicircular vault; but this has been replaced by a trabeated ceiling suitable to the original design; a restoration which was most desirable, because the effect of the thrust of the vault just mentioned had begun to act injuriously upon the walls and columns of the peristyles.

"The Church of St. Mark at Venice, and the Temple of Theseus at Athens, have several points of comparison. They owe their origin to the operation of the same feelings. They are both at the same time temples and tombs. In both cases the venerated ashes interred within them came from a distant region. The relics of Theseus, real or supposed, were brought by Cimon from the isle of Skyros to the Piræus; those of St. Mark to the quay of Venice, from Alexandria. The latter were hailed on their arrival with the pageantry of a Venetian carnival: the Mu-obsequies of Theseus were solemnised with a dramatic contest of Eschylus and Sophocles. The hero and the saint, placed in their splendid mausoleums, each in his respective city, were revered as the peculiar guardians of those two republics of the sea. Theseus did not enjoy alone the undivided honours of his own temple. He admitted Hercules, the friend and companion of his early toils, to a share in his posthumous glory. He even ceded to him, with the best spirit of Athenian delicacy, the most honourable place in that fabric. On the eastern façade of this temple, all the 10 metopes are occupied with the labours of Hercules, while only four, and those on the sides only, refer to the deeds of Theseus. The same disinterestedness is shown in the selection of the subjects of the two friezes of the pronaos and posticum of the cella.

The chief part of the national seum of Athens is temporarily placed in the interior of this temple, and contains a few works of interest, among which an ancient figure of a warrior found at Marathon, in very low relief, but coloured, should be mentioned. It bears a striking resemblance to the Assyrian figures from Nineveh. There is here also a small figure of Pan, as well as several interesting sepulchral monuments and vases.

In the design of the Theseum the same subtleties of construction in the use of delicately curved horizontal and inclined vertical lines are to be found as in the Parthenon, but on a smaller scale. Part of the national Museum is temporarily placed in the Barbakeion, and should be early visited, on Monday or Wednesday, from 3 to 5 P.M. There is no catalogue of its contents. The remaining

basis. The summit is broken; its present height is about 10 ft.

Here, as before, Theseus has yielded | 11 ft. broad, rising from a graduated to Hercules the most conspicuous spot at the entrance of his own temple. This temple, therefore, possesses an interest not only from the beauty of its structure, but as a consecration of heroic friendship, and an expression of political attachment."-Wordsworth.

The area of the platform was capable of containing from 7000 to 8000 persons. From 5000 to 7000 seems to have been the greatest number ever assembled. To be heard from the pulpit must indeed have been so 6. The Hill of the Nymphs.-The difficult, that we need not wonder that hill immediately to the S.W. of the Demosthenes found it necessary to Theseum is the Nymphæum, a remark-strengthen his voice in order to qualify able object in modern Athens from himself for speaking in the Pnyx. the observatory with which it is surmounted. This hill, in the first plans of Athens, used to be called Lyca

true name.

bettus, but incorrectly: an inscription found on its summit has restored the To the S. of this hill is the indication of an ancient road in the direction of the Piræus. From the Nymphæum we proceed southwards to

7. The Pnyx.-The place of Parliament, or Assembly, of the Athenian people is, according to the opinion almost universally received, an artificial platform to the W. of the Acropolis, of which the boundary is nearly a semicircle with an obtuse-angled triangle added to it on the opposite side of the diameter, so that the whole outline has the form of a semicircular bow with the string partly drawn. The semicircular boundary towards the N.E., where anciently was the Agora, is retained by a wall of support which must at one time have been considerably higher than at present. That which remains is about 16 ft. high in the middle, or highest part, and composed of large blocks of various sizes. One stone is 10 ft. by 8 on the face: they are for the most part quadrangular. In the opposite direction the platform was bounded by a vertical excavation in the rock which is from 12 to 15 ft. high. The foot of this wall inclines towards the centre, thereby showing that originally the entire platform sloped towards the position of the orator, who stood on the celebrated Bîμa, or pulpit, often called the rock, & íeos; it was a quadrangular projection of the rock,

The name is derived from the word

ПÚKvos, signifying probably the throng dedicated to Jupiter. In the artificial of persons assembled. It was especially wall of rock, and on each side of the Bema, are niches, below which a number of votive offerings representing different parts of the human body, and now in the British Museum, were found.

The question as to this site being that of the Pnyx, would be set at rest if we were sure that the walls, of which we see traces running across the top of the hill behind this second terrace, were the original city walls; but authorities differ as to this point.

"The area of the Pnyx contained about 12,000 square yards, and could therefore easily accommodate the whole of the Athenian citizens. The remark of an ancient grammarian, that it was constructed with the simplicity of ancient times (Pollux, viii. 132), is borne out by the existing remains. We know, moreover, that it was not provided with seats, with the exception of a few wooden benches in the first row (Aristoph., Acharn., 25). Hence the assembled citizens either stood or sat on the bare rock (xaual, Aristoph., Vesp., 43); and accordingly the Sausage-seller, when he seeks to undermine the popularity of Cleon, offers a cushion to the demus (Aristoph., Equit., 783). It was not provided, like the theatres, with any species of awning to protect the assembly from the rays of the sun; and this was doubtless one reason why the assembly was held at day-break (Mure, vol. ii. p. 63).

"It has been remarked that a traveller

that it could ever have been used as the ordinary assembly of the citizens; and it is much more probable that it served for purposes connected with the great assembly in the Pnyx below, being perhaps covered in part with buildings or booths for the convenience of the Prytanes, scribes, and other public functionaries."-Dr. Smith's

who mounts the bema of the Pnyx | Pnyx, that it is impossible to believe may safely say, what perhaps cannot be said with equal certainty of any other spot, and of any other body of great men in antiquity-Here have stood Demosthenes, Pericles, Themistocles, Aristides, and Solon. This remark, however, would not be true in its full extent, if we were to give credence to a passage of Plutarch (Them. 19), who relates that the bema | Dict., p. 283. originally looked towards the sea, and that it was afterwards removed by the Thirty Tyrants so as to face the land, because the sovereignty of the sea was the origin of the democracy, while the pursuit of agriculture was favourable to the oligarchy. But from no part of the present Pnyx could the sea be seen, and it is evident, from the existing remains, that it is of much more ancient date than the age of the Thirty Tyrants. Moreover, it is quite incredible that a work of such gigantic proportions should have been erected by the Thirty, who never even summoned an assembly of the citizens. And even if they had effected such a change in the place of meeting for the citizens, would not the latter, in the restoration of the democracy, have returned to the former site? We have therefore no hesitation in rejecting the whole story along with Forchhammer and Mure, and of regarding it with the latter writer as one of the many anecdotes of what may be called the moral and political mythology of Greece, invented to give zest to the narrative of interesting events, or the actions and characters of illustrious men.

8. The Agora was immediately beneath the Pnyx. It is difficult to define its exact limits; its most peculiar and central space was the hollow which lies between the Pnyx, the Areopagus, and the Acropolis, but is open towards the S.E. The Agora formed the eastern portion of the quarter called Keramicus, of which the principal feature was a street, probably the high street of Athens, which led from the gate Dipylum into the centre of the Agora. The Agora must have resembled more or less a "place," or square, and was planted with plane-trees. This street was continued beyond the Agora under another name as far as the fountain Callirrhöe.

The accounts of ancient authors do not enable us to fix the exact sites of most of the monuments of the Agora, and there are no actual traces either to help our inquiry or to call for description.

The following short account by Dr. Wordsworth will show what were the principal objects, and what were their purposes; but the determination of the sites must be considered in many instances hypothetical. At the same time they could not, for the most part, have been far from the sites here assigned.

"Wordsworth, however, accepts Plutarch's story, and points out remains which he considers to be those of the ancient Pnyx a little behind the pre- "It is evident that the site of the sent bema. It is true that there is Pnyx would have been so selected that behind the existing bema, and on the it should be of easy access to the summit of the rock, an esplanade and people who were assembled there. It terrace, which has evidently been arti- would therefore be placed near the ficially levelled; and near one of its Agora. Accordingly, we find that the extremities are appearances on the Agora was in the valley immediately ground which have been supposed to beneath it. Again, there would be betoken the existence of a former a presumption that the Senate-house bema. This esplanade, however, is was in the neighbourhood of the so much smaller than the present | Pnyx. For a similar reason we should

infer, that, as the existing laws were frequently appealed to by the orators in the Pnyx, the depository of those laws would be of easy access from that place. The facts are so. Both the Senatehouse (Bovλevτnpiov) and that depository (the MnTpov), as can be shown from Pausanias, were placed in the valley of the Agora below the Pnyx." [Not long ago the discovery of a number of laws inscribed on slabs of marble near the so-called Gate of the Agora led some persons to think that the Bouleuterium was on the N. side of the Acropolis, but, as the excavations advanced, and no traces of any building were discovered, this new theory respecting the Bouleuterium fell to the ground.] "The Council of the Areopagus was called the 'Higher Senate (ἡ ἄνω βουλή). Hence we should infer that the lower senate met at no great distance from it. Accordingly, the senate-house was at the foot of the Areopagus hill. Again, the Prytanes, as presiding in the Pnyx, and as members of the senate, would have their official residence near to both. Their residence (the óxos) It was close to the senatehouse. The altar of the Twelve Gods was the milliarium aureum from which the roads of Attica were measured. It would therefore stand in some central spot, as did its counterpart at Rome; and, in fact, the altar in question stood in the Athenian Agora, probably in its centre. A little to the E. of the Tholus stood the statues of the Ten heroes (the núvvuoi) who gave names to the twelve Athenian tribes. To these statues the programmes of laws were attached for public inspection, before they were discussed in the Assembly. The situation of these statues illustrates that practice. They stood in the Agora, in the centre of the political quarter of Athens. Mars, at the southern foot of his own hill, occupied a temple between the statues of those Ten Heroes on the W. and those of Harmodius and Aristogeiton on the E.; and thus we are brought to the western foot of the Acropolis, at which point, as has before been noticed, these two statues stood.

was so.

"We return to the Metroum, and proceed westward from that point. Near this temple to the mother of the Gods, was that of the father-deity of the Athenians-of Apollo Patrous. It was on the N.W. of the Metroum. Farther in the same direction was the spot chosen by Plato for the scene of Euthyphro's dialogue with Socrates. It was the porch in which sat the Archon who took cognizance of religious suits, and from him was called Stoa Basileios. Parallel and contiguous' to it was another porch much frequented by the same philosopher, Socrates; this was the Stoa of Jupiter Eleutherius. Not far to the N.W. of this stoa, as Pausanias informs us, was the western wall of the city, and a city-gate in the wall; a little to the E. of which, and therefore within the city, were two buildings, one the temple of Ceres, the other the Pompeium.

"The Pompeium, as its name indicates, served as a depository for the objects employed in the sacred Пoμnal or processions, namely, in the Panathenaic procession, and in that to Eleusis. Such a building must necessarily have stood in a spot by which those processions passed. and that spot was the Dipylum gate."

[The reader should compare the account of the course of Pausanias given by Dr. Smith (Dict.) There is certainly a great difficulty in reconciling the probability that Pausanias entered by the Piraic gate, and that therefore the Pompeium was near that gate, with the improbability that the magazine of sacred inplements should be kept in a place near which the processions never passed. Along the street, whichever it be, that Pausanias describes, were continued colonnades, σroaí open to the street, as is common in many continental towns.]

"Not far to the E. of the Theseum a building of considerable interest is supposed to have stood, the Stoa, which, from the frescoes with which it was adorned, was called the Pocile.” [Theso frescoes were greatly cele

brated.] "The Poecile has been identified with an ancient building which still exists in the position above specified" [that which we have called the Gymnasium of Ptolemy ]. "This opinion does not seem to me to be well founded. I should place the Pacilé at the northern entrance of the Agora; for it stood near the Temple of Hephaestus, which was in the urban Colonus: and also near the Mercury Agoræus, who guarded the entrance of the Agora" (Wordsworth, p. 166 sq.).

It may be mentioned, with respect to the newly-discovered gateway which led from the eastern extremity of the Agora into the Acropolis, that the gateway and the marble wall containing it are said to be the work of a decidedly debased period; at least four hundred years later than the building of the Propylæa. The gateway is placed irregularly, and not in the line of the centre of the great flight of steps. The wall is so weak that it could not have been the external defence of the citadel: a fact which would not disagree with the conjectural restoration of these outworks, given above, p. 147.

9. The Museum.-Proceeding southward from the Pnyx to the Museum Hill, we cross the line of one of the principal roads leading between the two hills in the direction of Piræus. At the northern foot of the Museum, and opposite to the Acropolis, are three remarkable ancient excavations in the rock; that in the middle of an irregular form, the other two 11 ft. square. One leads towards another subterranean chamber of a circular form, 12 ft. in diameter at the bottom, and diminishing towards the top in the shape of a bell. This may have been a granary. They are sometimes called baths, sometimes prisons, one especially the prison of Socrates." On the western slopes of this hill there are many traces of the foundations of houses; stairs hewn in the rock occur in several places.

On the summit of the Museum is the monument of Philopappus. Pau

sanias merely says "of a certain Syrian," but the name is on the monument, Philopappus of Besa. He resided at Athens, where he took the offices of Agonothetes and Choregus, and died about A.D. 105. The monument is of white marble, with a slightly concave front, of considerable size, but of no great architectural merit.

There are indications of ancient walls leading down from the summit of the Museum into the valley, in the direction of the Ilissus, and

10. Callirrhöe, otherwise called Enneacrunus, from the nine pipes which conveyed the water. This fountain, according to Pausanias, supplied the only sweet running water in Athens, the rest of the supply was from wells. The water of Enneacrunus was used especially for the sacred purposes of lustrations, &c. It is now a small spring of water issuing from the foot of a ridge of rock which here crosses the bed of the Ilissus, so that in times of heavy rain the spring is lost in a small cascade of the torrent falling over the rock, but which, when the bed is in its ordinary state, that is to say dry, or nearly so, forms a pool permanent through the summer, which is resorted to by the inhabitants of the adjacent part of Athens. spring is still called, as well as the river itself, Kaλλiþþón.

The

On the left bank of the Ilissus, near the fountain, but a little lower down, is the site of the elegant Ionic building which was seen by Stuart, and published in his first volume, but which has since utterly perished, except the foundations of the apse of the church into which it has been converted, and called Παναγία στὴν πέτραν, or St. Mary's on the rock. The temple was tetrastyle, amphiprostyle, the material of white marble, and the architecture Ionic, of an early and simple kind; the length and breadth on the upper step 42 ft. and 20, respectively. Leake calls this the Temple of Triptolemus; Forchhammer, that of Artemis Eucleia. Near this the bed of the Ilissus forms a small island, which is generally

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