THE PARTHENON OF THE ACROPOLIS.
Hence I go at once to the famous Acropolis. The Acropolis is a hill, or a great rock three hundred feet high, jutting out of the valley in which Athens is situated. This rock is oblong in shape, measuring 1,100 feet north and south, and about 500 feet east and west. Its sides are everywhere steep, and on the north perpendicular. This Athenian rock, the Acropolis, was once crowned by five marble temples, the most splendid of which was the Parthenon.
THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS AS IT WAS.
The Parthenon has justly been called “the finest edifice on the finest site in the world, hallowed by the noblest recollections that can stimulate the human heart.” This wonderful temple was 100 by 250 feet, built of the purest Pentelic marble, and surrounded by eighty huge columns. The Parthenon, like most of the other Grecian temples, is now partly in ruins. It has been standing twenty-five hundred years, and yet, despite the combined onslaught and united ravages of the Persian, the Turk, time, war, earthquake, flood and fire, these stately walls and lofty columns still stand to attest the energy, taste, skill and culture of the ancient Greeks. They were
“First in the race that led to glory’s goal,
The Parthenon, the Parthenon!