Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-11-23

by the ancients, open to let you in, and
you ascend by sixty marble steps the
propyliea, 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 a dollar now, the building
cost two million three hundred thou
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
| pie to Victory Without Wings"-a
temple of marble, snow white and gilt
| tering. Yonder, behold the pedestal
of Agrippa, twenty seven 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
Salanis only few miles away.
MINERVA IN FULL ARMOR
Here is the colossal statue of Minerva
in full armor eyes of gray colored
stone, figure of 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, glittering
in the sun. Here are statues of eques-
TRANS. statue of lioness, and there are
the Graces and yonder a horse in
bronze.
There is a statue said in the time of
Augustus to have of its own accord
turned around from east to west and
spit blood; statues made out of shields
conquered in battle; statue of Apollo,
the expeller of locusts; statue of An
acreon, drunk and singing; statue of
Olympodorus, q Greek, memorable for
the fact that he was cheerful when
others were cast down, 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 Minotaur, and the
statue of Hercules Staying serpents.
No wonder that Petronius said it was
easier to find god than a man in
Athens Oh, the Acropolis. The most
of its temples and statues made from
the marble quarries of Mount Pentei-
cum, a little way from the city.
have here on my table a block of
IL H., 81 III
and on it is the sculpture of Phidias. I
brought it from the Acropolis This
specimen has on it the dust of ages,
and the marks of explosion and battle,
but you can get from it some idea of
the delicate luster of the Acropolis
when it was covered with a mountain
of this marble cut into all the exquisite
shapes that genius could contrive and
striped with silver and afiame with
gold The Acropolis in the morning
light of those ancients must have shone
as though it were an aerOlite cast off
from the MONDAY sun. The temples
must have looked like petrified foam.
The whole Acropolis must have seemed
like the white breakers of the great
pecan Of time
TILL APOSTLE PAUL ON MARS HILL.
But we cannot stop longer here, for
there is q hill near by of more interest,
though it has not one chip of marble to
suggest a statue or a temple. We has
ten down the Acropolis to ascend the
Areopagus, or Mars Hill, as it is called.
1t took only about three minutes to
walk the distance, and the two hill
tops are SO near that what | said in re-
ligious discourse on Mars Hill was heard
distinctly by some English gentlemen
on the Acropolis This Mars Hill is q
rough pile of rock fifty feet high. 1t
was famous long before New Tesla
ment times.
The Persians easily and terribly as
saulted the Acropolis from this hilltop.
Here assembled the court to try crimi-
nails. It was held in the nighttime so
that the faces of the judges could not
be seen, nor the faces of the lawyers
who made the plea, and So instead of
a trial being one of emotion, it must
have been one of cool justice; but there
was one occasion on this hill memora-
BILE above all others.
A little man, physically weak, and
his rhetoric described by himself as
contemplate, had by his sermons
rocked Athens with commotion, and he
was summoned either by writ of law or
hearty invitation to come upon that |
pulpit of rock and give specimen of
his theology. All the wiseacres of Ath-
ems turned out and turned up to hear
him. The more venerable of them sat
in an amphitheater, the granite seats
of which are still visible, but the other
people swarmed on all sides of the hill
and at the base of it to hear this man,
whom some called fanatic and others |
called a madcap and others a bias
phemer and others styled contemptu-
ously, This fellow"
Paul arrived in answer to the writ or |
invitation, and confronted them and |
gave them the biggest dose that NOR
tails ever took. He was SO built that |
nothing could scare him, and as for Ju- |