"Athens stands on a bed of hard limestone rock, in most places thinly covered by a meagre surface of soil. From this surface the rock itself frequently projects, and almost always is visible, protruded like the bones under the integuments of an emaciated body, to which Plato has compared it. Athenian ingenuity suggested, and Athenian dexterity has realized the adaptation of such a soil to architectural purposes. In the rocky soil itself walls have been hewn, pavements levelled, steps and seats chiselled, cisterns excavated, and niches scooped; almost every object that in a simpler state of society would be necessary either for public or private fabrics, was thus, as it were, quarried in the soil of the city itself." Wordsworth, p. 63. The traveller, unless prepared beforehand, is apt to be disappointed in the appearance of the city. The houses are small, low and ruinous, the streets narrow, crooked and unpaved. But these are difficulties which every year will help to remove, and after the first disappointment, the eye will seek its gratification in the antiquities, where it will find food for its amplest desires. The first public building which meets one who approaches from the Peiraeus is the beautiful temple of Theseus. It stands alone, a little without the modern city, and is the most perfect specimen of an ancient Grecian temple which exists; no thanks to Lord Elgin, if it be true, as Dr. Clarke states, that it was spared because the metopes had become too much worn by the weather to pay for the expense of their removal. This beautiful building was at once a temple and a tomb, the remains of Theseus, real or supposed, having been brought by Cimon from the isle of Scyros. The pillars, of the Doric order, are all standing, and show no marks of violence except the singular one, that some of the concentric layers of marble have by some means been so turned that the grooves do not correspond, but the angle of one layer comes over the groove of the layer which is below it. Over the whole, time has thrown a delicate golden veil entirely different from the black incrustation which marble acquires by exposure in our inhospitable climate. "Perhaps, to this warm color," says an old traveller," Plutarch refers, when he affirms of the structures of Pericles, that a certain freshness bloomed upon them, and preserved their faces uninjured, as if they possessed a never-fading spirit and had a soul insensible to age." The cella of the temple is at present appropriated as a museum for the antiquities which have recently been, or may be discovered. Some of the inscriptions which have been brought to light by recent investigations are of much interest to the scholar, as well as to the antiquarian. We quote a few illustrations from Mr. Gifford. "Among the novelties were a sarcophagus, of which one side is finished with flowers of the most delicate sculpture; a figure of an orator, in alto-relievo, wanting the head, but the attitude an ddrapery fine, and a pretty monumental group of three figures, in which a lady is represented as taking something from the hands of a female slave, while a tottering baby is supporting itself by holding her knees. The group is easy, graceful, and natural, and the inscription is no less so: Ενθαδε την αγαθην και σωφρονα γαι εκάλυψεν of which this is, I am aware, a very poor translation; "here the earth has covered Archestrate, the virtuous and modest, by her husband most beloved and regretted." There is no expression in the English language, that I have been able to think of, which adequately represents the Greek word novɛivotaτηy. Amidst the thousand fragments here collected, two inscriptions struck us particularly. We had not time in our first visit to decipher more than a few leading words, which excited our curiosity; but on revisiting the temple with Mr. Pittàkys [the inspector of antiquities], he gave us a fuller explanation. The one lately found in the mud of the harbor, is an account of the shipping and stores in the Athenian arsenal at a particular period. The other, found in 1829 in the church of St. Irene (supposed to be the Peiræan temple of Vesta), is still more curious, and will probably when fully deciphered afford valuable information. It seems to be an account of the building of the Long Walls, under the superintendence of Themistocles. It is carved on two marble slabs, of which the exterior margins are much defaced, but the middle is tolerably perfect, and enough of the beginning is legible to explain the general subject. [**] ΕΔΟΞΕΝΤΩΙΔΗΜΩΙ ***** ΤΟΥ ΑΣΤΕΩΣ ΚΑΙΤΟΥ ΠΕΙΡΑΙΕΩΣ ΚΑΙΤΑΜΑΚΡΑ ΤΕΙΧΗΚΑΤΑΣΚΕΥ****ΤΩΝ ΑΘΗΝΑΙΩΝΕΙ ΣΤΟΝ AIIANTAKPONON***** OF THE CITY AND OF THE PEIRAEUS AND THE LONG WALLS Towards the middle of the first column, distinguished by larger letters, the name of Themistocles is conspicuous with that of the archon of the year: ΘΕΜΙΣΤΟΚΛΕΟΥΣΕΚΚΗΔΩΝ **** ΚΑΙ ΑΥΤΟΛΥΚΟΥ ΑΡΧΟΝΤΟΣ THEMISTOCLES SUPERINTENDING***AND AUTOLYCHUS ARCHON." P. 84. The Athenians, like the modern French and Italians, were accustomed to spend much time in the open air; hence the meanness of their private dwellings; hence too the fact that many of their temples and their theatres were uncovered, or covered only by an awning, and their places of public business were entirely in the open air. One of the most interesting of these spots consecrated by ancient genius, is the Pnyx, of which we take the description from Wordsworth. "The Pnyx was part of the surface of a low rocky hill, at the distance of a quarter of a mile to the west of the central rock of the Acropolis; and at about half that distance S. W. of the centre of the Areopagus hill. The Pnyx may be best described as an area formed by the segment of a circle, which, as it is very nearly equal to a semicircle, for the sake of conciseness we shall assume to be such. The radius of this semicircle varies from about sixty to eighty yards. It is on a sloping ground, which shelves down very gently toward the hollow of the ancient Agora which was at its foot on the N. E. The chord of this semicircle is the highest part of this slope; the middle of its arc is the lowest; and this last point of the curve is cased by a terrace wall of huge polygonal blocks, and of about fifteen feet in depth at the centre, which prevents the soil of the slope from lapsing down into the valley of the Agora beneath it. From its being thus consolidated, and, as it were condensed (xvxvovμévn) by the upward pressure of these massive stones, the Pnyx derived its name. massive wall is probably coeval with the birth of oratory at Athens. The chord of the semicircle is formed by a line of rock vertically hewn, so as to present to the spectator, standing in the area, the face of a flat wall. In the middle point of this wall of rock, and projecting from, and applied to it, is a solid rectangular block, hewn from the same rock. This was the Bema or rostra from which the speakers in the assembly of the Pnyx addressed the audience who occupied the semicircular area before them." This This Bema formerly stood about twenty-five yards behind its present position, at a point where the orator commanded a view of the sea, but was removed by the Thirty Tyrants to its present position where the land only can be seen. "This was the throne from which the Olympian Pericles' fulmined over Greece. The Athenian orator spoke from a block of bare stone; his audience sat before him on a blank and open field.**** The Pnyx, from its position and its openness, supplied the orator who spoke there, with sources of eloquence influencing himself, and objects of appeal acting on his audience, which no other place of a similar object, not even the Roman Forum, has ever paralleled in number or in terest. 66 First of all, the Athenian orator had the natural elements at his service. There was the sky of Attica above his head, the soil of At tica beneath his feet, and above all the sea of Attica, visible hehind him. Appeals to the ruling powers of these elements, in other places vague and unmeaning, here were generally just, and sometimes necessary. Here, without any unnatural constraint, he could fetch the deities from those elements, and place them as it were on this platform before him. They would appear to answer his call, not like stage-deities let down ex machinâ, but as stepping spontaneously from those visible elements, in which they were believed to dwell. There must therefore have been something inexpressibly solemn in the ejaculation, ' ' xai Oroì! O Earth and Gods! uttered in his most sublime periods by Demosthenes in this place. "Nor was it merely that the sea and the sky, the vales and the mountains of his native land, by which he was immediately surrounded, gave nerve and energy to the eloquence of the speaker here, (which no other excitement could so well supply), so that we seem still to inhale the air of Attica from the pages of Demosthenes; he had not merely the natural elements in his favor, but he had also those historical objects, both of nature and art, immediately around him, by which the imagination of his audience was most forcibly excited, and in which their affections were interested most deeply. "Visible behind him at no great distance was the scene of Athenian glory, the island of Salamis. Nearer was the Peiraeus, with its arsenals lining the shore, and its fleets floating upon its bosom. Before him was the crowded city itself. In the city, immediately below him, was the circle of the Agora, planted with plane trees, adorned with statues of marble, bronze and gilded, with painted porticoes, and stately edifices, monuments of Athenian gratitude and glory; a little beyond it was the Areopagus; and above all, towering to his right, rose the stately Acropolis itself, faced with its Propylæa as a frontlet, and surmounted with the Parthenon as a crown. Therefore, the Athenian orator was enabled to speak with a power, and almost an exultation, which the presence of such objects alone could give either to himself or his hearers. Thence he could extol the generous sacrifices made by his and their common state, as being the efficient causes ἀφ ̓ ὧν κτήματα ἀθάνατα αὐτῷ περίεστιν, τὰ μὲν τῶν ἔργων ἡ μνήμη, τὰ δὲ τῶν ἀναθημάτων τῶν ἐπ ̓ ἐκείνοις ἀνατεθέντων τὸ κάλλος, Προπύλαια ταῦτα, ὁ Παρθενών, Στοαὶ, Νεώσοικοι * * * whence there still survive to her, everlasting possessions; on the one hand the memory of her exploits; on the other, the splendor of the monuments consecrated in former days; yon PROPYLEA, that PARTHENON, PORTICO ES and Docks. These objects were all present before their eyes to witness to the truth of this appeal. The sight of these objects stirred the soul of every Athenian; and it is evident from the productions of eloquence of which this passage is a specimen, and from the considerations above suggested, that much of the peculiar spirit which distinguishes Athenian oratory is to be ascribed not merely to the character of the speaker, and the physical quickness of his audience, but also, if we may so say, to the natural scenery of that theatre on which that eloquence was displayed. What was said of their warriors in the field, might therefore be repeated of their statesmen in the assembly, that they were supplied by a local power with peculiar recources which rendered them matchless, αὐτὴ γὰρ ἡ γῆ ξύμμαχος κείνοις πέλει. For Earth itself upon their side did fight. "We have not spoken yet of the vast size of the place provided for the meetings of the Athenian assembly. In its area, of more than twelve thousand square yards, it could accommodate with ease the whole free civic population of Athens. The orator from this Bema often addressed an audience of six thousand Athenians. The peculiar character of such an assembly is not to be neglected by one who would consider what part that man had to play who held the reins of the Pnyx. Before Demosthenes ventured to meet such an audience, remarkable alike for the enormity of its numbers and the impetuosity of its passions, well might he have gone, day by day, down to the beach of Phalerum, and have paced along the shore in order to prepare himself, by practising, as he there did, upon the surf of the Egean sea, to face with less alarm the winds and storms of the Athenian assembly." Wordsworth, 66-70. In the heart of the Athenian city rose a bare rock, precipitous and rugged on three of its sides, the north, east and south, and inclined by a rapid and uneven descent on the west to the plain below. The greatest length of the irregular surface of this oblong rock was a thousand feet, its greatest breadth, five hundred. But this little inclosure became, by virtue of the genius of Grecian artists, the "most interesting spot of ground on the face of the heathen earth." This was the Acropolis," the fortress, the sacred inclosure, the treasury, and the museum of art of the Athenian nation." Here were the Propylæa, the Erectheum, the statue of Minerva, the Parthenon. Up that steep ascent, through those magnificent gates, as the bronze leaves folded back, over those marble pavements, where the deep-worn ruts of the chariot wheels are still visible, rolled the joyous procession in the Panathenaic festival. Here now are the Propylæa, the Erectheum, the Parthenon, glorious in their decay. The statues are gone. Not one can be found of the three thousand which were said to remain after the spoliation by Nero. Yet some very interesting fragments have recently been discovered bearing inscriptions, descriptive doubtless of some of those statues. "Alexander the Great was said to have erected in the Propylæa a statue to Aristotle. This, considering Aristotle's unpopularity at Athens, seemed not probable; but Mr. Pittàkys has found in the rub |