Green Mountain Freeman

The Temples of Athens.—In the center of the city, on its western slope, was the Propylaea, one of the masterpieces of ancient art, also of Pentelic marble, costing 2000 talents, or $2,300,000, when gold was worth more than twenty times what it is now, Then there was the Erechtheum, then temple of Athena Polias, the most revered of all the sanctuaries of Athens, with its three Ionic porticoes, and its frieze of black marble, with its olive statue of the goddess, and its sacred inclosures. The great temple of Zeus Olympius, commenced by Pisistratus and completed by Hadrian, the largest ever dedicated to the deity among the Greeks, was four stadia in circumference. It was surrounded by peristyle which had ten columns in front and twenty on its sides. The peristyle being double on the sides, and having a triple range at either end, besides three columns between the anta at each end of the cella, consisted altogether of one hundred and twenty columns. These were sixty feet high, and six and a half feet in diameter, the largest which now remain of ancient architecture in marble, or which still exist in Europe. This vast temple was three hundred and fifty-four feet in length, and one hundred and seventy-one in breadth, and was full of statues. The ruins of this temple, of which sixteen columns are still standing, are among the most imposing in the world,—and indicate grandeur and majesty in the city of which we can scarcely conceive. The theatre of Bacchus, the most beautiful in the ancient world, would seat thirty thousand spectators.—"Old Roman World," by Dr. Lord.