APPENDIX IX. Page 167. OF THE Oηoεtov, OR TEMPLE OF THEseus. EIGHT centuries after the death of Theseus, the people of Athens suddenly became ashamed of the ingratitude of their ancestors towards this great benefactor, in driving him out of Athens, to die by violence in a foreign country: it was reported that his spectre had been seen fighting against the Medes at Marathon; and the Pythia having been consulted, directed the removal of his bones to Athens, and that he should be honoured as a hero. Cimon, son of Miltiades, who about seven years before had reduced and colonized Scyrus, was sent to that island to obtain the remains. Bones of large stature were found, with the head of a spear and a sword of brass lying by them. These having been recognised as the bones of Theseus, were brought by Cimon to the Peiræeus. The Athenians received them with processions and sacrifices, and interred them on a height in the middle of the Asty. This event occurred in the archonship of Apsephion, B. c. 469-8'. The present temple, therefore, which was erected over the tomb, was finished, allowing five years for its completion, about the year 465 B.c. It was unequalled in sanctity, except by the temple of Minerva in the Acropolis and the Eleusinium'. Its sacred inclosure 1 Thucyd. 1, 98. Plutarch. Thes. 35. 36. Cimon. 8. Diodor. Sic. 4, 62. 11. 41. 48. Pausan. Attic. 17, 6. Lacon. 3, 6. Plutarch and Pausanias are incorrect in connecting the conquest of the island with the search for the bones. 2 Plutarch. de Exil. 17. was so large as occasionally to serve as a place of military assembly', and it enjoyed the privilege of an asylum2, which had the effect of rendering it a prison to those who fled from justice3. The temple faces about 8° to the southward of east. It is a peripteral hexastyle with thirteen columns on the sides, one hundred and four feet long and forty-five feet broad on the upper of two steps which form the stylobate. It consists of a onkos or cella, having a prodomus or prothyræum to the east, and an opisthodomus or posticum to the west. These were separated only from the ambulatory of the peristyle by two columns and perhaps a railing, which may have united the columns with one another, and with the antæ at the end of the prolongation of the walls of the cella. The prodomus was deeper than the opisthodomus, as well as more distant from the adjacent front of the temple; the sum of the two dimensions in the pronaus being thirty-three feet, and in the posticum twenty-seven feet. The ambulatory at the sides of the temple is no more than six feet in breadth. The thirty-four columns of the peristyle, as well as the four in the two vestibules, are near three feet four inches in diameter at the base, and near nineteen feet high, with an intercolumniation of five feet four inches, except at the angles, where, as usual in the Doric order, the interval is made smaller in order to bring the triglyphs to the angle, and at the same time not to offend the eye by the inequality of the metopes. The height of the temple, from the bottom of the stylobate to the summit of the pediment, is thirtythree feet and a half. The eastern fronting of the temple, marked by the greater depth of the pronaus, is shown still more strongly by the sculpture. In the eastern pediment only, are there any traces in the marble of metallic fastenings for statues; and the ten metopes of the eastern front, with the four adjoin 2 Diodor. Sic. 4, 62. Plutarch. Thes. 36. Hesych., Etymol. Mag. in Onoɛčov. ing of either flank, are exclusively adorned with figures, all the other metopes having been plain'. But no Doric temple had yet been attempted, either in Greece or its colonies, in which sculpture had been employed in decorating the entire frieze of the peristyle, still less of the cella. For Phidias was reserved the glory of leaving no part of either unadorned with sculpture in relief, at the same time that he filled both the pediments with statues, and thus left in his great work, the Parthenon, no difference in the magnificence of the two fronts or of the two sides of the temple. In the Theseium the cella was adorned, as the temple of Jupiter at Olympia appears from Pausanias to have been, with a sculptured frieze over the columns and antæ of the prodomus and opisthodomus. In the Theseium it stretches across the whole breadth of the cella and ambulatory, and is more than thirty-eight feet in length. When the Theseium was converted into a Christian church, the two interior columns of the pronaus were removed to make room for the altar and its semicircular inclosure, customary in Greek churches. A large door was at the same time pierced in the wall which separates the cella from the opisthodomus: when Athens was taken by the Turks, who were in the habit of riding into the churches on horseback, this door was closed, and a smaller one was made in the southern wall. The roof of the cella is entirely modern, and the greater part of the ancient beams and lacunaria of the peristyle are wanting. In other respects the temple is complete, though the sculptures have suffered greatly from time or violence, and some of the component blocks of the columns have been thrown out of their line, probably by the effect of earthquakes. The building consists entirely of Pentelic marble, and stands upon an artificial foundation formed of large quadrangular blocks of 1 It is not impossible that the contrast of these latter metopes with the high reliefs of those at the eastern end, may have been diminished by means of painted figures; and that the western pediment may have been filled with figures in clay. ordinary lime-stone. At the north-western angle of the temple, where the hill upon which the temple stands is steep, six courses of the substruction are apparent to view, the form of the ground having here a tendency to expose the foundations to be undermined by torrents. The Theseium was not only the sepulchre and heroum of Theseus, but it was a monument also in honour of Hercules, the kinsman, friend, and companion of Theseus, who had delivered him from the chains of Aidoneus, king of Molossi; in return for which, Theseus was said to have brought Hercules with him from Thebes to Athens, that he might be purified for the murder of his children. Theseus then not only shared his property with Hercules, but gave up to him all the sacred places which had been conferred upon Theseus by the Athenians, changing all the Theseia of Attica, except four, into Heracleia '. The Hercules Furens of Euripides, which, like the temple itself, seems to have been intended to celebrate unitedly the virtues of the two heroes, represents Theseus promising to Hercules that the Athenians should honour him with sculptured marbles, and appears to refer to the decorations of this among other buildings at Athens 2. 1 Philochorus ap. Plutarch. Thes. 35. Two of the Long Walls, and in Peiraeus. See above, p. 393. 419. Colonus. Pausan. Attic. 30, 4. 2 Επου δ ̓ ἅμ ̓ ἡμῖν πρὸς πόλισμα Παλλάδος. Ζῶντος· θανόντος δ', εὖτ ̓ ἂν εἰς "Αιδου μόλης, Τίμιον ἀνάξει πᾶσ ̓ ̓Αθηναίων πόλις. *Ανδρ ̓ ἐσθλὸν ὠφελοῦντας, εὐκλείας τυχεῖν. Κἀγὼ χάριν σοι τῆς ἐμῆς σωτηρίας Τήνδ' ἀντιδώσω. others were in the The third was at Eurip. Here. fur. 1323, If it was perfectly in harmony with Athenian tradition to select the exploits of Hercules as well as those of Theseus for the sculptural decorations of the Theseium, it was equally so to give the more conspicuous situation to those of Hercules, as Theseus had yielded to him the first honours of his native country. We find, accordingly, that all the metopes in the front of the temple, which can be deciphered, relate to the labours of Hercules, and that all those on the two flanks, which can be deciphered, relate to the labours of Theseus. As the great actions of Hercules were much more numerous than the metopes in front of the Theseium, the artist had to select ten'. These were, beginning from the south: 1, Hercules and the Lion of Nemea; 2, Hercules and Iolaus destroying the Hydra; 3, Hercules taming the stag of Ceryneia; 4, Hercules and the Erymanthian boar 2; 5, 1 The twelve labours of Hercules were the invention of a later age; when they seem to have been assimilated in number, as well as to have had some recondite mythological reference to the twelve gods, the twelve months, and the twelve signs of the zodiac. Apollodorus who has described the labours of Hercules called the Twelve, together with other exploits called the Пáрɛрya, observes that anciently ten only was the number, and ten also is the number described in the Hercules Furens of Euripides. They are not the same, however, as those represented on the Theseium, but as follows 1, Hercules kills the Lion of Nemea; 2, overthrows the Centaurs of Mount Pelium; 3, kills the deer of Diana; 4, tames the horses of Diomedes; 5, kills Cycnus; 6, destroys the dragon of the Hesperides; 7, relieves Atlas from the burthen of the Heavens; 8, conquers the Amazones, and brings the girdle of Hippolyta to Mycenæ ; 9, destroys the hydra of Lerna; 10, kills Geryon the triple-bodied pastor of Erytheia. It is evident, therefore, that in the fifth century B.C., artists and poets felt themselves at liberty to choose among the actions of Hercules, when celebrating those which they wished to represent as his ten principal labours. 2 This, Stuart supposed to be the Cretan bull; but the outline of the hinder part of the animal is that of a boar, and not a bull, as becomes evident, on comparing it with the bull and the sow represented by the same artist on the metopes relating to the labours of Theseus. Besides this, the vase upon which Hercules sets one foot, generally accompanies the representations of Hercules and the Erymanthian boar: it refers to the story of Eurystheus having hid himself in a vase when Hercules brought home the boar. Hence on ancient monuments the head of Eurystheus |