Evening capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1888-1893, 1891-11-23

| ference at the base and n thousand feet
in circumference at the top. and three
hundred feet high. On It has been
crowded more elaborate architecture
and sculpture than in any other place
under the whole heavens. Originally
a fortress, afterward a congregation OF
temples and statues and pillars. their
ruins an enchantment from which no
observer ever breaks. No wonder that
Aristides thought it the center of all
things-Greece, the center of the world f.;
; Attica, the center of Greece; Athens,
| the center of Attica, and the Acropolis
the center of Athens. Earthquakes
have shaken it; verres plundered it.
Lord Elgin, the English ambassador
at Constantinople, got permission of the
sultan to remove from the Acropolis
fallen pieces of the building, but he
took from the building to England the
finest statues, removing them at an ex-
pense of eight hundred thousand dol
lars. A storm overthrow many of the
statues of the Acropolis. Morosini, the
general, attempted to remove from a
pediment the sculptured car and horses
Of Victory, but the clumsy machinery
dropped it, and all was lost.
The Turks turned the building into
a powder magazine where the Venetian
guns dropped a fire that by explosion
sent the columns flying in the air and
falling cracked and splintered. But
after all that time and storm and war
and iconoclasm have effected, the
Acropolisis the monarch of all ruins, and
before it bow the learning, the genius,
the poetry, the art, the history of the
ages saw it as it was thousands of
years ago. had read so much about
it and dreamed SO much about it, that
needed no magician's wand to re-
store it.
At one wave of my hand on that
clear morning in 1889 it rose before
me in the glory it had when Pericles
ordered it and Ictinus planned it and
Phidias chiseled it and Protogines
painted it and Pausanias described it.
Its gates, which were carefully guarded
by the ancients, open to let you in, and
you ascend by sixty marble steps the
propylea which Epaminodas wanted
to transfer to Thebes, but permission,
| am glad to say, could not be granted
for the removal of this architectural
miracle.
In the days when ten cents would do
more than dollar now, the building
A,,,,. ,ntII;a,, kl,rna h,,,,I,aI ill.,,
sand dollars. See its five ornamented
gates, the keys intrusted to an officer
for only one day lest the temptation to
go in and inappropriate the treasures
be too great for him; its ceiling a
mingling of blue and scarlet and green,
and the walls abloom with pictures ut
most in thought and coloring. Yonder
Is temple to "a goddess called Victory
Without Wings"
So many of the triumphs of the world
had been followed by defeat that the
Greeks wished in marble to indicate
that victory for Athens had come never
again to fly away, and hence this tenn
Pile to "Victory Without Wings"-a
temple of marble, snow white and gilt
tering. Yonder, behold the pedestal
of Agrippa, twenty feet high and
twelve square. But the overshadowing
wonder of all the hill is the Parthenon.
In days when money was ten times
more valuable than now it cost
four million six hundred thousand
dollars. 1t is a Doric grandeur
having forty-six columns, each col
umn thirty-four feet high and six feet
two inches in diameter Wondrous in
tercolumniations Painted porticoes,
architraves tinged with ocher, shields
of gold hung up, lines of most delicate
curve, figures of horses and men and
women and gods, oxen on the way to
sacrifice, statues of the deities Diony-
sius Prometheus, Hermes, Demeter,
Zeus, Hera, Poseidon; in one frieze
twelve divinities; centaurs in battle;
weaponry from Marathon; chariot of
night; chariot of the morning; horses
of the sun, the fates, the furies; statue
of Jupiter holding in his right hand the
thunderbolt; silver footed chair In
which Xerxes watched the battle of
Salamis only a few miles away.
MINERVA IN FULL ARMoR
Here Is the colossal statue of Minerva
in full armor eyes of gray colored
stone, figure of a Sphinx, on her head,
griffins by her side (Which are lions
with eagles beak), spear In one hand,
statue of liberty in the other, shield
carved with battle scenes, and even the
slippers sculptured and tied ON with
thongs of gold. Far out at sea the
sailors saw this statue of Minerva rising
high above all the temples, glitterinS
In the sun Here are statues of eques-
trians, statue of a lioness, and there are
the Graces and yonder horse in
bronze.
There is statue said in the time OF |
Augustus 20 have Of its own accord |
turned around from east 10 west and
spit blood; statues made out of shields
In battle; statue of Apollo
the eNpeller of locusts; statue of An
acreon, drunk and singing statue OF
a Greek, memorable for
the fact that no was cheerful when
Others were east down, a trait worthy
Of sculpture. But walk on and around
the Acropolis, and yonder you see a
statue OF Hygeia, and the statue OF
Theseus fighting the Mlnotaur and the