OBJECTS OF THE TEMPLE.

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their own temporary banishment to Salamis and Trozen, was to restore their national hero, Theseus, who had been exiled by their ancestors, to his own city. His remains were brought by Cimon from the Island of Scyros, the scene of his banishment and death, to this place; and, as upon that occasion the Athenians were beginning to erect for themselves a new and magnificent city, and to adorn it with public buildings of great splendour, so they raised for him this noble structure, in which he is buried as a man and worshipped as a God. Hercules, as its sculptures show, is, associated with his kinsman and companion, Theseus, in the honours of this Temple. It is an agreeable sight to witness this enduring record of their friendship, and also of the alliance subsisting between the two nations, Argos and Athens, who are represented, in the present case, by these two heroes; and who entered into a confederacy at the very period when this fabric was erected, so that this Temple may be considered as a treaty of peace, consecrated by the sanctions of religion.

Another reminiscence of the same amity is preserved in the tradition, that Hercules espoused Melite, from whom the district of Athens in which the Temple of Theseus stands derived its name. Thus the two heroes are locally connected; nor are we surprised to find a temple to Melanippus, the son of the Athenian hero, in the same neighbourhood.

If the eye passes to the south-west from the Theseum, over the small mound of Colonus, not that without the walls, but the tumulus which stands at the

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THE PNYX, OR PARLIAMENT OF ATHENS.

northern entrance of the Agora, it will rest on a low hill sloping down to the north at the western verge of the city, and at a quarter of a mile to the west of the Acropolis. Here is a large semicircular area, of which the southern side, or diameter, is formed by a long line of limestone rock, hewn so as to present the appearance of a vertical wall, in the centre of which, and projecting from it, is a solid pedestal carved out of the living rock, ascended by steps, and based upon seats of the same material. The lowest or most northern part of the semicircular curve is supported by a terrace wall of polygonal blocks.

This area is the PNYX, the place of public assembly for the People of Athens. They do not meet beneath the roof, or within the walls of a closed building, but in this open space, for which Art has done nothing except by hewing the native rock at the south, and raising the wall at the north, which has just been mentioned.

To form an idea of an Athenian assembly in the flourishing times of the Republic, we must imagine this open space, consisting of about twelve thousand square yards, occupied by nearly six thousand citizens seated in groups within it. In the presence of this vast multitude, one Man arises. and ascends the stone steps, and takes his station on the pedestal, which is called the BEMA, at the centre of the perpendicular rock. He has before him not merely these six thousand Athenians, but the whole of the city of Athens. Lying at a little distance beneath him he beholds the Agora, filled with statues and altars and temples, and he is thus brought into the presence of the Great

SCENERY OF THE PNYX.

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Men of old, the Heroes and the Gods of Athens. Beyond it he sees the AREOPAGUS, the most ancient and venerable tribunal of Greece: above it, on the right, is the Acropolis, presenting to his eyes the wings, the portico, and the pediment of the Propylæa; towering above them in the air, and looking towards him, is the bronze colossus of MINERVA PROMACHUS, armed with helmet, spear, and shield, appearing from her proud eminence to challenge the world in defence of Athens; rising in severe and stately splendour to the right, is the PARTHENON, exhibiting its front of eight huge marble columns, surmounted with sculptured metopes and pediment filled with marble figures of horses, men, and gods, and both dazzling the eye with painting and with gold. Visible to the north, beyond the city and its walls, are the plains and villages of Attica, its corn-fields, and olive-grounds, and vine-yards, lying in quietness made more peaceful by its contrast with this stirring scene: further in the distance, are the castellated passes of PHYLE and DECELEA, and in the horizon of the scene, the high mountain ridges of Parnes, Brilessus, and Pentelicus.

Such are the objects which the Athenian orator sees before him from this pedestal of stone. To the left of him is the road to Eleusis, the SACRED WAY, which, passing through the beautiful suburb of the Cerameicus, and by the groves of the Academy, and crossing the stream of the Cephissus, climbs over the western heights of Mount Egaleos; visible in the rear are the two long lines of wall, which, running along the plain for nearly five miles, unite the city with the Peiræus: there are the masts of vessels riding in the harbour,— merchantmen bound for Pontus, Egypt, or for Sicily; fleets which have

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ATHENIAN ELOQUENCE-THE AREOPAGUS.

gained for Athens empire and glory in distant lands,-in the islands of the Egæan, in the peninsula of Thrace, and on the coast of the Euxine. Further to the left, is the glorious Gulf of Salamis; on one side of it is the hill on which Xerxes sat to view the battle fought beneath him; and on the other is the Cape, where stands the trophy of Themistocles.

This, then, is the scenery of the Pnyx: such are the objects which surround the Athenian orator as he stands on its Bema. In their presence he speaks. In dread, therefore, mixed with delight, inspired by such a spectacle, he proceeds to address his vast audience like a General going to a field of battle, where he sees all the flags and banners of his country's glory unfurled and streaming before his eyes.

These objects are to the Athenian Statesman and Orator standing on the rostra of the Pnyx, what his brave Epirots were, in after-ages, to Pyrrhus upon the plains of Italy. They are the wings upon which he flies to glory. They are also, if we may so say, the levers by which he uplifts his audience,— for they stir their hearts as well as his own. Let no one, therefore, wonder, that in such a soil as this, Eloquence has flourished with a vigour yet unknown.

Not to their natural genius alone, though in that they stood pre-eminent, -nor to rules of Art, though ingeniously contrived and elaborately studied, -nor to frequency of rhetorical exercises, nor to the skill of their teachers, though they were well disciplined by both,-nor yet to the sagacity of their audience, though in that they enjoyed a high privilege, was Athens indebted for the piercing eloquence of Pericles, and the resistless impetuosity of Demosthenes, but also, and especially to these objects, which elevated their thoughts, moved their affections, and fired their imagination as they stood upon this spot. The school of Athenian oratory was the Pnyx.

On the north-east side of the Agora, and between the Pnyx and the Acropolis, is the hill of the AREOPAGUS. The ascent to it is by a flight of steps hewn in the limestone rock of which it consists, covered with thin herbage. Above the steps, on the rocky pavement of the hill, are the Stone Seats on which the Court of the Areopagus sits. In this spot, distinguished by a rude simplicity, is assembled the Council by whose predecessors Heroes and Gods are said to have been judged, and whose authority commands respect and enforces obedience when all other means fail, and whose wisdom has saved their country in times of difficulty and danger when there appeared to be no longer any opportunity for deliberation.

THE AREOPAGUS AND TEMPLE OF THE FURIES.

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Beneath it, at its north-east angle, and visible from our position on the Acropolis, encircled with a sacred Enclosure, fenced with a thick grove, and placed in a dark chasm of high rocks, is the sacred shrine of the Venerable Goddesses, the Eumenides, whose name is not uttered by the mouth of an Athenian without a feeling of dread, and who by the order of Minerva were conducted to this spot from the Areopagus after the trial of Orestes there, in which they were the accusers.

By this local and religious connexion of the Tribunal of the Areopagus with the Temple of the Furies, the one partakes in the sanctity and inviolability of the other and it has thus become not merely a political delinquency, but also an act of sacrilege, to impair the dignity or encroach on the privileges of the Areopagus.

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The appearance of this consecrated spot, rendered more awful by antique traditions and by the peculiar features of its scenery, placed as it is near the Agora, in the very heart of the city, is very striking, from the contrast it presents by its sacred seclusion to the busy stir by which it is surrounded; nor can it fail to impress a feeling of sober gravity on the minds of many, whose thoughts would otherwise be carried round in the whirl of the city and its concerns which eddies about it.

Between the hills of the Pnyx on the south and the Acropolis on the north