The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-10-09
THE ACR0P0LlS OF ATHENS
DIR. DOERPFELD ON THE "oLYMPUs
 OF THE xRTS,U

N AAAe Ho"fois III rahcy Up the ZiG-zag Path to the Summit of the Sacred Hill-- Portrayed in Words and Views the Past and Present Condition of the Histor;c spot-A Lecture Abounding in Interest.
 Rome, and Corinth, and Olympia. and Babylon are full of magical interest. l and their charm is their own; but Athens is the heart of Greece, and the Acropolis is the heart of Athens. Last night Dr. DoerpfeId conducted his au- dience, in thought, and almost in act,t- al1ty of real experience, up the zig-zas road, winding to the summit of the sa | cred Acropolis, and took them on a tour of exploration around and within the walls crowning the hill Under the | hand and touch of the skilled Cicerone the buried shafts rose from ruins and gleamed once more in the light of day;l buried statues and gilded figures glint- l ed once again with the splendor they knew of old. Then, when the circuit was complete and the wanderer stood again at the starting point the ruins and fragments and debris were made | to tell their history.
 iG OiiF doCCHI lO luG LOp IS Dy Ill6 single path on the west. Pericles form l ed the idea of covering this space, one | hundred and sixty-eight feet wide, with single structure. This he began, un- | der the management of the architect Mnesicles, and the Propylaea was the result-not quite completed, however, even by the noted builder, for the on- l coming Pelopennesian wars interrupted the work It stands yet much as it must have looked when PericIes left it. | On each side of the five doors stood rows of Doric columns; to the right, in recess or ell, stood the old temple of Winged Victory; near the most in l teresting fragment in all Athens, the | remains of an old Pelasgic wall that came down from almost legendary
 times, saved from destruction because
 the Delphic oracle had declared it was not to be removed. Its value as an archaeological landmark is beyond measure to modern scholars.
 Eastof theright wing of the Propylae,
 between that and the Parthenon, lies. | the precinct of Artemis, wall-encircled, and beyond it, further toward the east, | the mighty ruins of the Parthenon it. self. The ancient wall that stood about
 the southern side of this huge temple is also voice from out the dim, myth-
 ical past, and is much like the Cyclop-
 aean walls at Tiryns and Mycenae. | The excavations of modern times have unearthed the broad steps leading
 up to the temple from the east side. the I broken pediments and columns and tri-S glyphs The eastern pediment repre- 1 scented the battle of Poseidon with Atil- ena. A dark spot on the pavement of
 the exhumed temple marks where stood
 the figure of Athena. which gave the
 earliest name to the sedifice; later the
 name of Parthenon, which originally
 referred to merely the western room.
 was applied to the whole.
 But most interesting of all are the | older ruins found beneath the building,
 belonging to an earlier age, and over | which the Greeks built the temple of | later times.
 West of the Parthenon, directly in l front of the Propylaea, stood the tem-
 pie of Athena; west of this the Erec- l theion or temple of the two cities, Atll-
 ena and Erectheus. Beneath the ruins
 were found the fragments of two old
 shafts, the remains of an early palace l that had stood on the site long before. l Pious veneration of ancient legends l lead the Athenians to mark a depres-
 sion in the floor of the ErectheiOn, on
 the naked rock of the cliff, where tra-s dition said Poseidon struck his trident. I The grave of Cecrops is located, 1t is thought, at the southern edge of they i Erectheion. A beautiful hallway led
 from the one temple to the other, roy- ally ornamented. The names of tho
 various halls and apartments in all the
 temples have been learned beyond caviI from numberless inscriptions, in which the entire Acropolis is especially rich. | The doorway opening out upon the hall of the temple of Athena on the west is
 said to be the most beautiful in all Greece.
 The explorations revealed the fact that there was a lower and an upper city, proved by the old Pelasgic walls
 and the buried columns of very an-
 cient date, buried at least 1,500 years B. c. in the battles of kings, perhaps | King Cecrops. The remains of cita- del on the southwest elevation mark the
 site where the tyrants defended then- selves against the enemy. The wonder full fact about the whole hill is the striking conformity between the dls-
 coveries of recent years, the inscrtp- tions on the walls and the statements of Pausanius, who made an itinerary
 around the walls of the hill. One thing
 the historian did not notice was the ded- ication of the Parthenon to Nero in i Roman times This inscription gave much trouble to scholars and was read for the first time last year by the Amer
 ican archaeologist Andrew, of Cornell.
 The vicissitudes of time have left in
 delible imprint on the face of the fam ous Acropolis Sad is the story in many respects, and full of melancholy | interest. It was over the historical l features that the lecturer seemed to finger almost regretfully and as the
 glory of the mighty city of old flashed upon thought the visible tremor of the speaker found an echo of response in
 the feeling of his listeners when he
 said in closing: '"To the Greeks of to- day the Acropolis of Athens is a nation
 al and sacred relic; to all scholars it is
 an endless source of interest, the Mecca
 of classical pilgrims.
 II Ten Seamen Drowned.
 London, Oct. S-A dispatch to Lloyds | e I1,,I so1rr tho Swedish steamer