English Photo Co., Athens
Plate XLIX
the blank wall of the older temple, where it could not be seen and could scarcely be passed, for it encroaches right over the stylobate of the old colonnade.
I have only mentioned some of the wonderful objects on the sacred rock. When Pausanias saw it, it was crowded from end to end with works of art, sacred or commemorative. No profane person inhabited it.
It was to the Acropolis that the attention of Pericles and his artists was first directed when the time came to beautify Athens. In the city below you would be struck with the plainness of the private houses, presenting no decorative aspect whatever to the narrow and tortuous streets. They were all of one story, with a roof sloping inwards to an open colonnade, round which the rooms were grouped. The agora was the centre of commercial and social life. Close by were some famous porticoes or cloisters, shady and cool to lounge in. In the Royal Portico the “king archon” sat to do his business, mostly connected with religion. Here the Council of the Areopagus met in later days. Here Socrates conversed, and here he was tried for impiety. Ancient laws were inscribed upon the walls of it. The Portico of Freedom contained statues and celebrated frescoes painted by Euphranor in the fourth century. The Decorated Portico (Stoa Poikilē) in the agora was even more famous for its historical and mythological pictures, including one of the battle of Marathon by Panainos, and one by the master Polygnotus of the taking of Troy. It was in this Stoa that Zeno developed in later times his Stoic philosophy. All these pictures have perished utterly, but we can still see reflections of them in the vase-paintings of the day.
Close by upon a low hill stands a Doric temple of the fifth century in almost perfect preservation. This is commonly called the Theseum, but it is undoubtedly the temple of Hephæstus mentioned by Pausanias.[66] The temple is of Pentelic marble, surrounded on all sides by columns, with six at each end. It is of a slightly earlier date than the Parthenon, and it has very little of the subtle system of optical corrections employed there. It was not a very important building in ancient Athens; in fact, it is scarcely mentioned in antiquity; but as the best-preserved building in all Greece it is of great architectural interest to us. The metopes were not all carved; the rest were probably painted. There is also a sculptured frieze. The subject of the metopes was the Labours of Heracles and Theseus. They are rather badly weathered, and in their present condition not very attractive. Not far away is the Dipylon Gate, with its ancient burial-ground, of which we shall see more in a later section. At the opposite end of the city the visitor in the fifth century B.C. would have been struck by the immense columns of the temple of Olympian Zeus begun by Peisistratus, but never finished. Close under the Acropolis rock was the Theatre of Dionysus, where the tragedies and comedies were performed, and a music hall, or Odeion, erected by Pericles. There was a Cave of Pan on the precipitous slope of the rock. The public meetings of the Athenian Assembly were held on the hill of Pnyx, to the west of the Acropolis. Here there was a sort of open-air theatre. We can still see the platform where Pericles addressed the people, and the seats for the presiding committee behind it.
So entirely does Athens focus upon herself the culture of the fifth century, we are apt to forget that Athens was not Greece. The Temple of Zeus at Olympia was the most celebrated temple in all Greece, but chiefly for the wealth of the dedications there and the number of athletic statues. Delphi too was enriched with countless artistic offerings sent, in spite of the Pythian’s faint-hearted counsels, from the spoil of the war. There was a famous tripod with a stand of twisted serpents, on whose coils were inscribed the names of those cities which had taken part in the battle of Platæa. A forlorn remnant of it still exists at Constantinople. Both Olympia and Delphi have been recently excavated, the former by the Germans and the latter by the French. But neither site has quite realised expectations. The greatest finds at Olympia
