Let us turn for a moment from the large figures that occupy the centre of the Elgin Room, to the bas-relief of smaller figures that seem to follow each other with living and rapid movement round the whole length of the walls of the room; horsemen on prancing steeds, charioteers in their chariots, animals driven to sacrifice, maidens bearing vases, succeed each other in quick succession; and the conclusion dawns upon us that this must surely have been intended to represent some stately procession, held in honour of those central heroic figures.
We ask, Whence come these people of stone? Who were they meant for? What are they supposed to be doing or celebrating?
Let us first devote a few words as to the place whence they came.
They must carry us to Athens, and, with them to lead us, we must travel back through the long ages to the world's golden youth in Greece—Greece, whose poetry speaks to us from wood, and cave, and ocean—whose mythic heroes are associated with the stars themselves. Turn our thoughts, then, to Greece, and to Athens, its pearl of cities, of which our own Milton writes so lovingly—
"Behold
Where, on the Ægean shore, a city stands,
Built nobly; pure the air and light the soil—
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence."
"What time the nightingale
Trills her thick warbled notes the summer long"
to Plato in the gardens of the Academe, and the bees murmured on the fragrant slopes of Mount Hymettus, as they gathered their sweet honey from its scented flowers, in times long past and gone.
We refer to the time of Plato and Socrates, when, under Pericles, "wisest of rulers," the arts of poetry and sculpture sprang into glorious perfection, and the great name of Pheidias rose.
This was the time of that great war when the Greeks, with Athens at their head, beat back the invading army of Persians, and preserved civilisation for Europe. In that war, Athens itself (with all its beautiful buildings, its theatres, its temples, even its very walls) was levelled to the ground by the invaders; and it was immediately after their glorious success, when the brave little nation had stemmed the tide of Asiatics under Xerxes with his
"ships by thousands,
And men in nations,"