The Hazel Green herald. [volume] (Hazel Green, Wolfe County, Ky.) 1885-19??, 1891-12-25

Lord Elgin, the English ambassador
ut Constantinople, got permission of
the sultan to remove from the Acropo-
lis fallen pieces of the building. but he
took from the building 20 England the
finest statues, removing them at the
expense of $500 600 A storm over
threw many of the statues of the Aero
polls. Morogini, the general. attempt
cd TO remove from n pediment the
sculptured car and horses of Victory,
but the clumsy machinery dropped It,
and all was lost. The Turks turned
the building into n powder magazine,
whore the Venetian guns dropped n fire
that by explosion sent the columns fly
ing in the air and falling cracked and
splintcrcd
But after all that time and storm
and war and icouoclasm have effected,
the Acropoli3 is the monarch Of all
ruins, and before 10 bow the learning,
the genius, the poetry, the art, the
history of the ages. l saw it as it was
thousands of years ago, l had read so
much about it and dreamed so much
about it that / needed no magician's
wand to restore ii. At one wave of my
hand on that clear morning in 1850 it
rose before me in the glory it had when
Pericles ordered it, and Ictnus planned
it, and Phidias chiseled it, and Proto.
gines painted it and Pausanias de-
scribed it.
Its gates, which were carefully
guarded by the ancients, open to let
you in, and you ascend by sixty marble
steps the propylpa, which kpaminon-
das 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 81, 800, 900.
See its five ornamental gates the keys
intrusted to an officer for only one day
lest the temptation togoin and appropri-
ate .he treasures be too great for him;
its ceiling mingling of blue and scar
let and green, and the walls abloom
with pictures utmost in thought and
coloring.
Yonder is a temple to a goddess called
Victory without Wings" SO many of
the triumphs of the world had been fol-
lowed by defeat that the Greeks wished
in marble to indicate that victory for
Athens had come never again to fly
away, and hence this temple to Vic
tory without Wings, "a temple of mar
BILE, snow-whte and glimmering. Yon.
der behold the pedestal of Agrippa,
twenty-seven feet high and twelve feet
square. But the overshadowing won
der of all the hill is the Parthenon. In
days when money was ten times more
valuable than now, it cost 81, 600, OOo.
1t is Doric grandeur, having forty-six
columns each column thirty-four feet
high and six feet two inches in dame
ter. Wondrous DETERMINATIONS!
Painted porticos, architraves tinged
with ochcr 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 Dionysius, Prometheus,
Hermes, Demeter, Zeus, Hera, Boseidon;
in one frieze twelve divinitics, centaurs
in battle; weaponary from Marathon;
chariot of night; chariot OF the morn
ing; horses of the sun. the
fates, the furies; statue Of Jupiter hold
ing in his right hand the thunderbolt;
silver-footed chair in which NerXes
watched the battle of Salanis only a
few miles away 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, a shield carved with battle
scenes, and even the slippers sculp-
tured and tied on with thongs of gold.
Far out at sea the sailors saw this
statue of Minerva raising high above
all the temples, glittering in the sun.
Here are statues of equestrians, statue
of a lioness, and there are the graces,
and yonder horse in bronze.
There is a statue said in the time OF
Augustus to have of its own accord
turned around from cast to west and
spit hood: statues made out of shields
conquered in battle; statue of Apollo,
the expeller of locusts; statue OF Anac-
reon, drunk and singing; statue OF
Olympodorus, a Greek, memorable for
the fact that he was cheerful when
others were cast down, trait worthy
of sculpture. But, walk on and around
the. Acropols, and yonder you see a
statue OF Hygen. and the statue OF
Thescus fighting the Minotaur, and the
statue of Hercules Staying serpents.
No wonder that Petronius said it was
easier to find a god than man in
| Athens.
Oh, the Acropolis The most OF its
temples and statues made from tho
marble quarries Of Mount Petroleum.
a little way from the city. ! have here
! : -, toI,Ia a block OF the Pantheon