We told our guide we had no more use for him, until we had done with the Acropolis; we could be our own guides, philosophers, and friends.
We gathered all the books in our possession—English, French, and German—that had anything to say about the Acropolis, and we borrowed all that were accessible at the hotels. Equipped with these and a lunch basket well filled, we sallied forth, determined to “do” the ruins most thoroughly.
We began at the beginning, and at each ruin or part of a ruin that we visited, one of us read aloud while the others listened. It was slow work, and we took turns in the reading; we were three days at the Acropolis, and I do not believe any party of non-professional tourists ever “did” the place more thoroughly.
At this lapse of time and distance, the Acropolis and its temples and monuments stand clear and distinct before me, and there is no confusion in the picture. This is more than I can say of many other places that I have visited, where I was obliged to limit to hours and minutes what should have consumed entire and successive days.
The Acropolis is an elevated rock, scarped on all sides, and is of an irregular oval form, about nine hundred feet long and four hundred feet across its greatest width. It is comparatively level on the summit, and its height above the sea is about five hundred feet.
The first walls erected there were for purposes of fortification, and are attributed to the Pelasgians; they are said to be more than three thousand years old, and were evidently built with great care. Portions of them have been revealed by the excavations of M. Beule, and are still visible; the stones are matched only on their exterior surface and that rather roughly; they consist of the rock of the Acropolis, and not like the stones in the Greek walls, of material brought from a distance.
Not much of the Pelasgian wall remains, as it was cut away in several places to make room for the Greek foundations of the Propylæ. Near this wall there was a Greek pavement in front of the Temple of Victory. In 1853 this pavement was removed, and revealed the rock of the Acropolis, bearing the traces of chariot wheels which rolled there more than thirty centuries ago. The ancient road is clearly defined, and at its edges one can see the marks of the rude implements that were employed in smoothing it.