A RELIC OF THE ATHENIAN FORUM.
Another memorial of Athens which well repays a visit is the Temple of Theseus,—that legendary hero of old Greece, half-man, half-god, whose exploits glimmer through the dawn of history, much as a mountain partially reveals itself through morning mists. Fortune has treated this old temple kindly. There is hardly an ancient structure extant that has so perfectly resisted the disintegrating touch of time or the destroying hand of man. For the Theseum was built nearly five hundred years before the birth of Christ, in commemoration of the glorious battle of Marathon, where Theseus was believed to have appeared to aid the Greeks in driving from their shores the invading Persians.
TEMPLE OF THESEUS.
When in 1824 Lord Byron died upon Greek soil, striving to free the Hellenic nation from the Turkish yoke, the Athenians wished his body to be buried in this temple. No wonder they were grateful to him, for the action of that ardent admirer of the Greeks in hastening to their land to consecrate his life and fortune to the cause of liberty, was not, as some have thought, unpractical and sentimental. Byron, unlike many other poets, was no mere dreamer. He could, when he desired, descend from Poesy's empyrean to the practical realities of life; and during his short stay in Greece, whether he was securing loans, conciliating angry chiefs, or giving counsel to the government, he showed the tact and firmness of an able statesman.
As if, then, this classic temple were a Greek sarcophagus, within which was enshrined the form of the immortal dead, I seemed to see among its marble columns that noble statue representing Byron at Missolonghi, the little town where, with such fatal haste, his life was sacrificed. It would be difficult to imagine anything more distressing than Byron's last illness. He was in a wretched, malarial district, utterly devoid of comforts. No woman's hand was there to smooth his brow or give to him the thousand little comforts which only woman's tender thoughtfulness can understand. Convinced at last by the distress of his servants that his death was near, he called his faithful valet, Fletcher, to his side, and spoke with great earnestness, but very indistinctly, for nearly twenty minutes. Finally he said, with relief, "Now I have told you all."
BYRON AT MISSOLONGHI.