Erechtheium.

ledge rendered their admiration the chief object of the artist's ambition, would find the means of obtaining a nearer view; for it cannot be doubted that facilities were given to artists, and to curious natives and strangers, to mount to the summit of the temple, for the purpose of obtaining a close inspection of the pediments, metopes, and frieze '.

The extreme brevity of Pausanias in noticing the Propylæa and the Parthenon, has at least the advantage of not misleading his reader in any essential particular. In describing the Erechtheium at greater length, his want of method and perspicuity is such that it is only by comparing his testimony with that of some other authors, and with the existing ruins, that his account of this building becomes intelligible. After having remarked that the Erechtheium was a double building (διπλοῦν οἴκημα) which had a well of salt-water within it, Pausanias proceeds to give a description of the temple of Minerva Polias and its contents, and then adds some observations upon the sacred olive-tree, in which, although he does not assert that the tree was in the temple of Polias, that impression is inevitably left on the reader's mind. Of the temple of Pandrosus, he observes, only, that it was contiguous (ovvexns) to

1

It is probable that the following observations by Pausanias on the interior construction of the temple of Jupiter, at Olympia, were nearly, if not exactly, applicable to the Parthenon: σrýKAOL δὲ καὶ ἐντὸς τοῦ ναοῦ κίονες, καὶ στοαί τε ἔνδον ὑπερῷοι· καὶ πρόοδος δι' αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τὸ ἄγαλμά ἐστι· πεποίηται δὲ καὶ ἄνοδος ἐπὶ τὸν ὄροφον σκολιά. Eliac. pr. 10, 3. It would seem, from these words, that the winding stair was behind the statue, where it would be concealed from view.

that of Polias', so that Herodotus and other authors having made mention of a temple of Erechtheus, it was a natural conclusion of Stuart and others, that there were three temples, all comprehended in that compound, irregular, and very beautiful structure which stands to the north of the Parthenon, near the northern wall of the Acropolis.

There are some passages, however, in ancient history, which, when compared with Pausanias and with the existing remains, serve sufficiently to explain the original intention of the building, and to show that it consisted, not of three, but of two temples. By Herodotus we are informed that the temple of Erechtheus contained both the well and the olivetree, and by two other authors that the olive-tree stood in the temple of Pandrosus. On comparing these testimonies, therefore, with that of Pausanias, we

1 Pausan. Att. 27, 3.

2 Εστι ἐν τῇ ̓Ακροπόλι ταύτῃ Ερεχθῆος τοῦ γηγενέος λεγομένου εἶναι νηὸς, ἐν τῷ ἐλαίη τε καὶ θάλασσα ἔνι· τὰ λόγος παρὰ Αθηναίων Ποσειδέωνά τε καὶ ̓Αθηναίην, ἐρίσαντας περὶ τῆς χώρης, μαρτύρια θέσθαι. Herodot. 8, 55.

3 Ἧκεν οὖν πρῶτος Ποσειδῶν ἐπὶ τὴν ̓Αττικὴν καὶ πλήξας τῇ τριαίνῃ κατὰ μέσην τὴν ̓Ακρόπολιν ἀνέφηνε θάλασσαν, ἣν νῦν Ερεχθηΐδα καλοῦσι· μετὰ δὲ τοῦτον, ἧκεν ̓Αθηνᾶ καὶ ποιησαμένη τῆς καταλήψεως Κέκροπα μάρτυρα, ἐφύτευσεν ἐλαίαν, ἢ νῦν ἐν τῷ Πανδροσίῳ δείκνυται. Apollod. 3, 14, § 1.

Κύων εἰς τὸν τῆς Πολιάδος νεὼν εἰσελθοῦσα καὶ δῦσα εἰς τὸ Πανδρόσιον, ἐπὶ τὸν βῶμον ἀναβᾶσα τοῦ Ερκεῖου Διὸς τὸν ὑπὸ τῇ ἐλαίᾳ, κατέκειτο πάτριον δ' ἔστι τοῖς ̓Αθηναίοις κύνα μὴ ἀναβαίνειν εἰς ̓Ακρόπολιν. Philochorus ap. Dionys. de Dinarch. 3.

The following lines, part of an Attic song, seem to show

may conclude that the whole building, which according to the Athenian traditions was founded by Erechtheus and became the place of his interment, was named Erechtheium; and that the Pandroseium was one of its two component parts, the temple of Polias having been the other. It does not appear that Erechtheus had any separate chamber or shrine sacred to him, but only an altar common to him and Neptune, with whom he was often identified in Athenian mythology'. Considerable ambiguity in regard to the edifice, has arisen from the circumstance of the entire structure having often been called the temple of Minerva Polias, as well as the Erechtheium; a custom easily understood, when we consider that the temple of Polias was the most important part of the building; that the statue of the goddess here worshipped, was the most ancient and sacred in Attica, and that it peculiarly represented the goddess in her capacity of protectress of

that the olive garland of Victory was gathered in the temple of Pandrosus:

1

Ἐνικήσαμεν ὡς ἐβουλόμεσθα

καὶ νίκην ἔδοσαν οἱ θεοὶ φέροντες

παρὰ Πανδρόσου, ὡς φίλην ̓Αθηνῶν.

Ekóλov ap. Athen. 15, 14 (50). Ερεχθεύς· Ποσειδὼν ἐν ̓Αθήναις. Hesych. in v. A sophist of the time of the Emperor Julian, says, ὁ Πολιάδος νεὼς καὶ τὸ πλnσioν TOũ Hoσεidwvos Téμevos. Himerius ap. Phot. Myriobibl. p. 1104. But Plutarch more accurately, vravla yoūv kai rews κοινωνεῖ μετὰ τῆς ̓Αθηνᾶς, ἐν ᾧ καὶ βωμός ἐστιν Λήθης ἱδρυμένος. The temple of Neptune was identical with that of Polias, and contained altars of Neptune Erechtheus, and of Oblivion (with reference to the Contest). Sympos. 9, 6.

the citadel in an inscription, however, which relates to this building, and is coeval with its reconstruction, it is not designated by either of the names above mentioned, but only as the temple which contained the ancient statue (ὁ νεως ἐν ᾧ τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἄγαλμα 1).

The space of sixty-two feet in length from east to west, and of thirty-three in breadth from north to south, which formed the interior of the main building, was divided into three apartments by two transverse walls, leaving to the eastern and middle apartments about twenty-four feet each from east to west, and to the western nine feet. The inscription

This very curious inscription is the record of a public report made by a commission appointed by the people of Athens, to take and state an account of the unfinished parts of the building. The commission consisted of two inspectors (¿TiσTárαi), an architect (apXITEKTwv) named Philocles, and a scribe (ypaμμarɛús). The report is dated in the archonship of Diocles, who held that office in the fourth year of the 92d Olympiad (B. c. 409-8). Greek literature is indebted for this important document to Dr. Chandler, and his employers the Society of Dilettanti, who presented the marble to the British Museum. Chandler failed in the reading and interpretation of some parts of the inscription. Stuart supposed it to refer not to the ruins now existing, but to a temple more ancient. Mr. Wilkins confuted this opinion, and explained many of the terms of art employed in it. It has since exercised the learned ingenuity of several other persons, particularly of Pr. K. O. Müller of Göttingen (Minervæ Pol. 4to, Gott. 1820), of Pr. Aug. Boeckh of Berlin, (C. Ins. Gr. No. 160), of the Rev. H. J. Rose (Inscr. Gr. Vet. p. 145), and of Mr. Wilkins, a second time, in his Prolusiones Architectonicæ, part I. For a copy of the inscription, and some further remarks on the Erechtheium, see Appendix XVII.

above mentioned, notices three poorάous, which were obviously the three projections on the east, north, and south of the main walls, and which may be distinguished as the eastern, the northern, and the southern prostasis or portico. The two former consist of six Ionic columns each, but differently disposed, those of the eastern prostasis standing in a single line before the wall of the cella, the extremities of which are adorned with antæ opposite to the extreme columns, whereas the northern prostasis has four columns in front, and one in each flank, before a corresponding anta in the wall on either side of the door before which this portico is constructed. Its columns are of the same order as those of the eastern prostasis, but they are near six inches greater in diameter, and proportionally more lofty than the former, which measure two feet three inches and eight-tenths at the base. Of the southern prostasis the roof was supported by six Caryatides or columns, of which the shafts represented women in long drapery of these, four still remain 2 standing upon a

'Mr. Wilkins supposes them to have been Hydriaphora, and that each had a water-jar in one hand. This conjecture is, in some degree, supported by the consideration that daughters of the Metoci carried water-jars (vdpeĩa), and parasols (σkiádeia), in the sacred processions (J. Poll. 4, 55. Demetrius ap. Harpocr., ap. Phot. Lex. in Ekapnpópos. Hesych. in eâd. v.), and that it was perfectly consonant with the pride of Attic citizens to represent Metœci, as Caryatides supporting a roof.

2 A fifth has since been found in an excavation near the spot where it had stood. That which is in the British Museum, therefore, is the only one now wanting.-Note of