A little more than a quarter of a mile west of the Acropolis is another rocky hill,—the Pnyx,—celebrated as the place where the assembly of all the citizens met to transact the business of the state. A large semicircular area was formed, partly by excavation, partly by building up from beneath, the bounds of which can be distinctly traced. Considerable remains of the terrace-wall at the foot of the slope exist,—huge stones twelve or fourteen feet in length by eight or ten in breadth. The chord of the semicircle is near the top of the hill, formed by the perpendicular face of the excavated rock, and is about four hundred feet in length by twenty in depth. Projecting from it at the centre, and hewn out of the same rock, is the bema or stone platform from which the great orators from the time of Themistocles and Aristides, and perhaps of Solon, down to the age of Demosthenes and the Attic Ten, addressed the mass of their fellow-citizens. It is a massive cubic block, with a linear edge of eleven feet, standing upon a graduated base of nearly equal height, and is mounted on either side by a flight of nine stone steps. From its connection with the most celebrated efforts of some of the greatest orators our race has yet seen, it is one of the most interesting relics in the world, and its solid structure will cause it to endure as long as the world itself shall stand, unless, as there is some reason to apprehend will be the case, it is knocked to pieces and carried off in the carpet-bags of travellers. No traces of the Agora, which occupied the shallow valley between the Pnyx and the Acropolis, remain. It was the heart of the city, and was adorned with numerous public buildings, porticoes, temples, and statues. It was often thronged with citizens gathered for purposes of trade, discussion, or to hear and tell some new thing.
Half a mile or more to the southeast, on the banks of the Ilissus, stood a magnificent structure dedicated to Olympian Zeus,—one of the four largest temples of Greece, ranking with that of Demeter at Eleusis and that of Diana at Ephesus. Its foundations remain, and sixteen of the huge Corinthian columns belonging to its majestic triple colonnade. One of these is fallen. Breaking up into the numerous disks of which it was composed,—six and a half feet in diameter by two or more in thickness,—and stretching out to a length of over sixty feet, it gives an impressive conception of the size of these columns, said to be the largest standing in Europe. The level area of the temple is now used as a training-ground for soldiers. Close by, and almost in the bed of the stream, which is dry the larger part of the year, issues from beneath a ledge of rock the copious fountain of sweet waters known to the ancients as Callirrhoe. It furnished the only good drinking-water of the city, and was used in all the sacrifices to the gods. A little way above, on the opposite bank of the Ilissus, is the site of the Panathenaic stadium, whose shape is perfectly preserved in the smooth grass-grown hollow with semicircular extremity which here lies at right angles to the stream, between parallel ridges partly artificial.
Northward from the Acropolis, on a slight elevation, is the best-preserved and one of the most ancient structures of Athens,—the temple of Theseus, built under the administration of Cimon by the generation preceding Pericles and the Parthenon. It is of the Doric order, and shaped like the Parthenon, but considerably inferior to it in size as well as in execution. It has been roofed with wood in modern times, and was long used as a church, but is now a place of deposit for the numerous statues and sculptured stones of various kinds—mostly sepulchral monuments—which have been recently discovered in and about the city. They are for the most part unimportant as works of art, though many are interesting from their antiquity or historic associations. Among these is the stone which once crowned the burial-mound on the plain of Marathon. It bears a single figure, said to represent the messenger who brought the tidings of victory to his countrymen.
Near the Theseium was the double gate (Dipylum) in the ancient wall of the city whence issued the Sacred Way leading to Eleusis, and bordered, like the Appian Way at Rome, with tombs, many of them cenotaphs of persons who died in the public service and were deemed worthy of a monument in the public burying-ground. Within a few years an excavation has been made through an artificial mound of ashes, pottery, and other refuse emptied out of the city, and a section of a few rods of this celebrated road has been laid bare. The sepulchral monuments are ranged on one side rather thickly, and crowd somewhat closely upon the narrow pavement. They are, for the most part, simple, thick slabs of white marble, with a triangular or pediment-shaped top, beneath which is sculptured in low relief the closing scene of the person commemorated, followed by a short inscription. The work is done in an artistic style worthy of the publicity its location gave it. On one of these slabs you recognize the familiar full-length figure of Demosthenes, standing with two companions and clasping in a parting grasp the hand of a woman, who is reclining upon her death-bed. The inscription is, Collyrion, wife of Agathon. On another stone of larger size is a more imposing piece of sculpture. A horseman fully armed is thrusting his spear into the body of his fallen foe,—a hoplite. The inscription relates that the unhappy foot-soldier fell at Corinth by reason of those five words of his!—a record intelligible enough, doubtless, to his contemporaries, but sufficiently obscure and provocative of curiosity to later generations.
There are other noted structures at Athens, such as the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates—the highest type of the Corinthian order of architecture, as the Erechtheum is of the Ionic and the Parthenon of the Doric,—but want of space forbids any further description.
[ THE ISLES OF GREECE.]
HENRY M. FIELD.
[History and poetry alike celebrate the beauty of those charming isles, which fill with their sunny grace and rich fertility the seas of Greece, and on which many of the poets of that song-girdled land were born. No work on general travels can be complete without some description of these celebrated islands, and we select from Dr. H. M. Field’s “The Greek Islands” an appreciative account of their aspect to the modern traveller.]
In the old picture-books there used to be a picture of the Colossus of Rhodes, which stood bestriding an arm of the sea with ships in full sail passing between his mighty legs. Though it was a picture for children, yet to some who are not children the chief association with the island of Rhodes is the place where the Colossus stood; and there are travellers still who come on deck, and look round inquiringly for some fragment of a ruin which should mark the site of that majestic figure. But not a vestige remains. Though “His Highness” lifted his head so proudly, as if he disdained the earth on which he stood, he did not hold it up very long. Pride must have a fall. He did not live even to the allotted age of man. He had been standing but fifty-six when an earthquake shook him down, and for nearly a thousand years he lay like Dagon, prone upon the ground, with all his glory buried in the dust, his disjecta membra being trodden underfoot by the barbarous Turk, till at last they were sold to a Jew(!), who broke them up as men break up the hull of an old ship, and, packing them on the backs of nine hundred camels, carried them away. Such was the ignominious end of one of the Seven Wonders of the World.