“The monuments of Ancient Greece are in ruins has dwindled so that it would hardly form a constituency for a custom-house collector; and the beer, just taste it; the beer is entirely unfit to drink.”
The beer was very bad, and it turned out that the bottle had been opened the day before for a customer, who concluded to take a cigar instead. We had another bottle with better success, but on the whole were not inclined to praise the Athenian beverage.
The Judge made a topographical survey of the entire city and visited every brasserie, but with no better success. Everywhere the drinks were atrocious, and he ascribed the decayed condition of the country to the bad quality of the national beverage.
“Somebody has said,” he remarked, when telling me of the result of his inspection, “somebody has said, ‘let me make the ballads of a nation and I care not who makes the laws.’
“Now I will back up the correctness of that man’s theory, provided you substitute beer for ballads. What can you expect of a nation with such beer as this?”
The great object of attraction at Athens is the Acropolis, and as soon as we had lunched after our arrival at the hotels, we set out for that interesting hill.
From the square where the palace and principal hotels are situated, it is a walk of half a mile or more to the Acropolis.
A portion of the way is through the new quarter of the city and along a boulevard of recent construction; as we approach the hill we find ourselves among some older buildings, and scattered in these are some of the tombs and monuments that have been fortunately preserved. We face the arch of Adrian, which is in a tolerable state of preservation, and halt at the temple of Jupiter Olympus, the most extensive of all the temples of ancient Athens. History tells us that it was begun five hundred and thirty years before the Christian era, and that various emperors and kings labored upon it. The work was not completed until nearly seven hundred years after the first stone of the foundation was laid. It was originally three hundred and thirty feet long, by about half as many wide, and contained one hundred and twenty marble columns, each nearly seven feet in diameter and sixty feet high!
Only sixteen of these columns remain; one of them lies where it was thrown by an earthquake in 1852, and enables a visitor to see with what excellence the Greek architects performed their work. On thirteen of the columns the architrave remains in position and one is puzzled to know how those immense masses of stone were hoisted into place.
The effect of these ruins is grand, partly on account of the vastness of the columns, and partly by reason of their isolated position, in a large open space, where there are no surroundings of other structures to detract from the general effect. A few soldiers are stationed there to prevent vandalism on the part, of strangers, and an enterprising Greek has established a miserable café, among the columns. To what base uses may we come at last!