APPENDIX X.

Page 168.

ON THE 'OXvμtiεtov, OLYMPIUM, OR TEMPLE OF JUPITER

OLYMPIUS.

THE Athenians began to build a temple to Jupiter Olympius at a very early period. Deucalion was reported to have been the original founder'. About the year 530 в. C. a temple was commenced by four architects, employed by Peisistratus. Their design was magnificent, and probably Ionic, this being the national order in Attica; and hence perhaps the temple was ultimately Corinthian, this order having been in fact a decorated Ionic. Considerable progress appears to have been made by the Peisistratidæ; for, though the building cannot but have suffered injury from the Persians, the cella at least was rendered serviceable soon after their departure, if it be true that one of the earliest employments of Phidias was that of adorning this

1 See above, p. 131.

2 Aristot. Polit. 5, 11. Namque Athenis Antistates et Callæschros et Antimachides et Porinos architecti Pisistrato ædem Jovi Olympio facienti, fundamenta constituerunt: post mortem autem ejus propter interpellationem reipublicæ incepta reliquerunt, itaque circiter annis ducentis (350?) post, Antiochus rex, cum in id opus impensam esset pollicitus, cellæ magnitudinem, et columnarum circa dipteron collocationem, epistyliorum et cæterorum ornamentorum ad symmetriam distributionem magna solertia scientiaque summa civis Romanus Cossutius nobiliter est architectatus. . . . . . . In asty vero Olympium, amplo modulorum comparatu, Corinthiis symmetriis et proportionibus, uti supra scriptum est, architectandum Cossutius suscepisse memoratur. Vitruv. 7. in præf.

temple with paintings'. Its unfinished state in the most flourishing period of the republic seems to have been a common subject of regret 2. About the year 174 B. C. Antiochus Epiphanes employed a Roman architect, named Cossutius, to proceed with it, and his design appears from Vitruvius to have been followed until the building was completed. Upon the death of Antiochus, in the year 164 B. C., the work was interrupted. Seventy-eight years afterwards Sylla carried away some columns which belonged to the Olympieium, probably those prepared by the architects of Peisistratus, and applied them to the use of the Capitoline temple at Rome. The work was not resumed until the reign of Augustus, when the kings and states in his alliance or subjection undertook to complete the building at their joint expense. But the honour of finally executing the design of Cossutius, of dedicating the temple, and of erecting the statue of the god, was reserved for Hadrian, three centuries after its commencement by Antiochus, and 650 years from its foundation by Peisistratus o.

1 Plin. H. N. 35,8 (34). 2 Plutarch. Solon. 32. Lucian Icaro-Menip. 24. 3 Ἐν δὲ ταῖς πρὸς τὰς πόλεις θυσίαις καὶ ταῖς πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς τιμαῖς πάντας ὑπερέβαλλε (Antiochus) τοὺς βεβασιλευκότας· τοῦτο δ ̓ ἄν τις τεκμήραιτο ἔκ τε τοῦ παρ ̓ ̓Αθηναίοις Ολυμπιείου. Athen. 5, 5 (21).

Magnificentiæ vero (Antiochi) in Deos vel Jovis Olympii templum Athenis unum in terris inchoatum pro magnitudine Dei potest testis esse. Liv. 41, 20.

Antiochus Epiphanes qui Athenis Olympieum inchoavit. Vell. Paterc. 1, 10.

Τὸ Ὀλύμπιον ὅπερ ἡμιτελὲς κατέλιπε ὁ ἀναθεὶς (qu. Αντίοχος) βασιλεύς. Strabo, p. 396.

Ολύμπιον, ἡμιτελὲς μὲν, κατάπληξιν δ ̓ ἔχον (διὰ τὴν τῆς οἰκοδομίας Tоурaphy. Dicæarch. Vit. Gr. p. 8, Hudson.

• Athenis templum Jovis Olympii, ex quo Sylla Capitolinis ædibus advexerat columnas. Plin. Nat. Hist. 36. 6 (5). See above, p. 40, n. 2.

5 Reges amici atque socii et singuli in suo quisque regno, Cæsareas urbes condiderunt; et cuncti simul ædem Jovis Olympii Athenis antiquitus inchoatam perficere communi sumptu destinaverunt. Sueton. August. 60.

....

6 Hadrianus. . . . . ad Orientem profectus per Athenas iter fecit, atque opera quæ apud Athenienses ceperat dedicavit et Jovis Olympii ædem et aram sibi. Spartian. Hadrian. 13.

̓Αδριανὸς δὲ τό τε Ολύμπιον τὸ ἐν ̓Αθήναις, ἐν ᾧ καὶ αὐτὸς ἵδρυται,

We perceive from the existing remains, that the temple consisted of a cella, surrounded by a peristyle, which had ten columns in front and twenty on the sides; and that the peristyle, being double in the sides, and having a triple range at either end, besides three columns between antæ at each end of the cella, consisted altogether of 120 columns; sixteen of which, six and a half feet in diameter above the base, and above sixty feet high, with their architraves, are now standing; thirteen of them at the south-eastern angle, and the remaining three, which are of the interior row of the southern side, not far from the south-western angle. There was a seventeenth column belonging to the western front, standing until about the year 1760, when it was taken down, by order of the Turkish governor of Athens, to build a new mosque in the Bazár1. The entire length of the building was 359 feet, and its breadth 173. Livy accurately remarks, translating perhaps the words of Polybius, that the Olympium was " unum in terris inchoatum pro magnitudine Dei" -"inchoatum," because it was not finished at the period to which he refers, nor indeed in his own time, and "unum," because it was a greater work than any other temple of Jupiter; for although its length is found to be a few feet shorter than the Agrigentine temple, with an equal breadth, the latter was not even peripteral, but was formed of semi-columns, and was still unfinished when destroyed by the Carthaginians". The temple at Selinus, being dipteral, furnishes a closer comparison, but its dimensions were only 331 feet by 161; and this also was never completed, as some of its unfinished flutings demonstrate. Of the three great models of architecture in marble, which Vitruvius unites with the Olympieium of Athens, that of Ephesus was the greatest of all, if Pliny is correct in stating its dimensions to have been 425 feet by 220; for not a vestige has yet been found of this

ἐξεποίησε· καὶ δράκοντα ἐς αὐτὸ ἀπὸ Ινδίας κομισθέντα ἀνέθηκε. Dion. Cass. 69, 16.

1 Stuart, Antiq. of Athens, III, 2. Chandler, Travels in Greece, 13.

? Diodor. 13, 82.

3 Plin. H. N. 36, 14 (21).

great edifice to confirm or invalidate his assertion. Two others are still extant, and sufficiently preserved, to enable us to compare them with the Olympieium of Athens. These are, the temple of Apollo Didymeus at Branchidæ, near Miletus, which was 304 feet long and 165 broad, and the mystic cell of Eleusis, which was 217 feet by 178. The former was never completed; this indeed is generally the fate of such immense undertakings. Pericles and Phidias judged more correctly. By confining themselves to a more moderate scale, utility and perfection of art were both more attainable, and unrivalled works, of much longer duration than those immense monuments, were completed in a few years.

The eastern side of the peribolus, being about twenty feet high above the present level of the soil, shows that there was no access to the temple by steps in the centre of this side, and leaves us to conclude, that, although this was doubtless the front of the temple, the approach to it, as in the instance of the Parthenon, was from the west. The gate of Hadrian formed an entrance to the peribolus at the north-western angle, and presented to the spectator the same kind of view that he obtained of the Parthenon on emerging from the Propylæa. In both instances, his eye, by comprehending at once a view of one of the fronts and one of the sides of the building, enjoyed a more imposing prospect of those magnificent edifices than could have been presented to him, by an approach immediately in front. There was a similar approach at the temples of Minerva at Sunium and Priene, and at the Panhellenium of Ægina.

APPENDIX XI.

Page 183.

ON THE PNYX.

THE Pnyx was an artificial platform on the north-eastern side of one of the rocky heights which encircled Athens on the west, and along the crest of which is still traced the ancient inclosure of the Asty. In shape this platform differed only from a circular sector of about 155 degrees, inasmuch as the radii forming the angle were about 200 feet in length, while the distance from the angle to the middle of the curve was about 240 feet. On this latter side, or towards the Agora, the platform was bounded by a wall of support, which is about sixteen feet high in the middle or highest part, and is composed of large blocks, of various sizes, and for the most part quadrangular. In the opposite direction the platform was bounded by a vertical excavation in the rock, which, in the parts best preserved, is from twelve to fifteen feet high. The foot of this wall inclines towards the angle of the sector, thereby showing that originally the entire platform sloped towards this point as a centre, such being obviously the construction most adapted to an assembly which stood or sat to hear an orator placed in the angle. At this angle rose the celebrated ẞñμa, or pulpit, often called the rock (ó íos1). It was a quadrangular

· ἐν ἀγορᾷ πρὸς τῷ λίθῳ. Plutarch. Solon. 25. Six centuries earlier we find the same term familiarly applied to it by Aristophanes. See above, P. 180.