The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-08-12

stadium lat Athens has recently been restored at a cost of more than a mil- lion dollars. The race course Is 670 feet long and little more than 100 feet in width. and the seats are of Pentelic marble Notwithstanding its great capacity 1t cannot contain the crowds that assemble to witness the
 athletic games, renewed there In 1896 by the International Athletic as- sociation. Our country has the dis tinction of having led in the contest of 1896. and again in the contest held at Athens last April. Our representa- tives won eleven prizes each time. and found that these victories had very favorably impressed the people of Athens.
 The stadium is not the only splen- did monument to the public spirit of the modern Greeks. The Academy of Science and the library are magnifi- cent buildings, each costing more than the restoration of the stadium. They illustrate the best In Grecian architecture, reproducing the Corin- thian, the Doric and the Ionic. They are of Pentelic marble and would be worthy of place in any city of the world The library contains several hundred thousand volumes and has all the modern equipment. Athens has a population of but little more than 100000 and it is doubtful whether there is another city of It's size that can boast of as large an ex- penditure of private capital in public buildings. The mountain which has supplied Athens with marble for 2,50o years Is only few miles from the otty and its quarries are still unex- hausted. Modern Athens Is very at- tractive: its streets are paved and clean; its business houses are large and well built; it's government build- ings are substantial, and It's private residences give evidence of taste. We were there in the season of flowers, and we saw them blooming in pro- fusion everywhere.
 Numerous statues adorn the streets and parks, the most noted being the statue of Byron. erected in memory of his unselfiish devotion to Greek in- dependence
 The soldiers and policemen have adopted the costume of the ancient Greeks. but otherwise the people dress like the people of Northern Flu rope.
 As one approaches Athens for the first time his eye Is sure to search for the "tempie-crowned" Acropolis- the hill which art and religion com bined to make immortal It rises from the plain much as Chapultepec rises rom the ptAln or MeXico. IL IS aDouT 500 feet high and at the top 200 yards in length. It must have been surpass-
 ingIy beautiful when the Parthenon
 was completed, that great treasury
 which has not only supplied the art galleries of the world with marvels in stone. but has given law to the ar chitects from that day to this. Peri cles. who deserves the credit for the construction of the Parthenon, can be pardoned for exulting in his work.
 Today, the Acropolis is a picture of desoIation, but the few columns
 that remain bear witness to its de- parted glory. Lord Elgin carried away at one time 250 feet of the sculptured frieze, and scarcely any of its columns. capitals. cornice and pediment would have remained but for the size and weight of the masses of marble. The pillage that for near ly twenty centuries has been robbing
 Greece of her priceless works of art can be understood when 1t is stated that one Roman conqueror celebrated his victory by exhibiting in his tri-
 umphant processon 25O wagon loads of Greek pictures and statues. and that these wagons were followed by