Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

THE

MERCERSBURG QUARTERLY REVIEW.

JANUARY, 1855.

ART. I.-SKETCHES OF A TRAVELER FROM GREECE, CONSTANTINOPLE, ASIA MINOR, SYRIA AND PALESTINE.

III. MODERN ATHENS AND THE MONUMENTS ON THE AKROPOLIS.

[Continued.]

Departure from Malta-Hermit of Cape Malea-The Peiraeus in 1834-Removal of the Capital to Athens-Greek Widow and Turkish Embassador-Biography of Colonel Fabricius-Audience with King Otho-Excursion into northern Greece-Professorship at the Military College-Monuments of Athens-The Theseum -Its history and description-Polychrome ornaments-Sculptures -Ancient Market Place-Ascent to the Castle-The AkropolisEquestrian Statues-Temple of Victory-Periklean Portals-Interesting Inscriptions-Gothic Tower-Ancient Temples on the Akrop olis-Worship of Pallas Athene-The Parthenon-Its Cell-Hypathral temples-Sculptures and Polychrome decorations-PhidiasCanova-Thorvaldsen-Colossal Ivory Statue of Athene-History of the Parthenon-Its destruction by the Venetians—Its spoliation by the Robber-lord-Its restoration by King Otho-The Erechtheion Its sculptures and history-The Karyatid Virgins-Lord ByronGeneral Ghouras-Fete of King Otho-Illumination of the temples and moon light scenery on the Akropolis.

THE PARTHENON.

PARTHENON signifies the Dwelling of the Virgin, of Pallas Athene, the emanation of the divine wisdom of Jove. Every one of the many tribes, who afterwards formed the Greek nation, had one particular deity whom it worshipped as its patron; for, though the Greeks did not conceive the lumi

nous idea of a personal unity of the Omnipotent Being ruling the world, like the Hebrews, yet so deep was the feeling of divine unity sunk into their hearts, that every tribe and every family, in their practical worship, venerated one only member of the great number of Olympian divinities, and that they ascribed to this tutelar god their own origin through the descent of the demi-gods and heroes.

Thus the Dorians of Sparta had Apollo, the Achæans Neptune, and the Athenians their beautiful Athene, the blue-eyed daughter of Jupiter, and the foster-mother of the hero Erechtheus, the fabulous founder of the Ionian Athens.

Tradition relates her birth as arising in full armor from the father of the universe, and her victorious contest with Neptune about the possession of Attica.

The sea-god struck with his trident the rock, and produced a spring of salt water. Minerva gave the olive-branch, the generous tree, which still to this day is the principal produce of Attica-and her's was the victory.

This curious contest between Neptune and Minerva is represented in splendid colossal statues from the master hand of Phidias, on the western pediment of the Parthenon, while on the castern was seen the birth of Minerva in the presence of all the gods of Mount Olympus.

The earliest statues of Minerva were made of wood in the rigid Egyptian style, and were placed in wooden sanctuaries. But the Athenians, in their rapid progress toward civilization, soon built a larger temple of yellow lime-stone, ornamented with marble columns and painted in brilliant blue, black, and red colors, without any sculptures.

This temple was called Hekatomped on, being one hundred feet in front and it stood for many centuries on the very site of the present Parthenon, until the great Persian war, in the year 480 before Christ, when it was burnt down and destroyed by Xerxes, the Persian invader.

During our excavations around the temple, several columns from that ancient temple were discovered, deeply sunk into the ground, and at a depth of twenty-five feet, we likewise found large fragments of painted architraves and beams of

burnt wood, which can only be attributed to the old Hekatompedon.

The reader is well acquainted with those beautifully terrible scenes, so powerfully described by Herodotus, which took place here in Athens, when the approach of the hundred thousands of Barbarians was announced to the Athenians. The whole people, men and women, young and old, abandoning the city, the temples of their gods, and the sepulchres of their ancestors, hurried down to the Peiraeus to embark on their fleet, while the vain despot of Asia advanced through the solitary streets and his Persians stormed the Akropolis, and transformed the city with all its venerable monuments into a heap of ruins and ashes. Yet the avenging sword of Nemesis already hung suspended over the invaders. They were defeated in the straits of Salamis, and after their total destruction on the glorious plain of Plata the year following, the joyful Athenians returned in triumph and began immediately to re-build their city.

Themistokles was then their great general and still greater statesman. Being anxious to fortify Athens, he employed all the ruins of the temples and other public buildings in the hurried and rude construction of the city walls, and the traveler may to his astonishment and delight, still at the present day, behold part of the northern wall of the Akropolis composed of immense blocks of marble columns, altars, and architraves, from the old temple of Minerva. These are certainly some of the most interesting relics of antiquity, because they prove so clearly the accuracy of the Historian Thukydides, when he says, that the Athenians, in the great hurry, with which they re-built their walls after the retreat of Xerxes, and while fearing the hostile interference of jealous Sparta, employed promiscuously, columns, statues of Gods and Heroes-in short, every stone from their sanctuaries, on which they could lay their hands.

Only the more solid foundations of the old Hekatompedon remained on the spot, and on them was erected fifty years later, the most magnificent temple of antiquity: the Parthenon still in ruins standing before us.

The celebtated artists, Kallikrates and Iktinos, were the architects; the greatest sculptor of that or any other age, Phidias, obtained the direction of the work.

The soul-stirring eloquence of Perikles excited the enthusiasm of the victorious Athenian republic to undertake the erection of this great national monument, with almost incredible zeal, and finish it in the short period of five years.

Every Athenian citizen, says Plutarch, pressed forward to have his share in the glorious work. The wealthy offered his treasure, the learned his experience, the artist his genius and taste, and the mechanic his strength and the labor of his hands, in order to promote an enterprise so brilliantly carrying out the political views of Perikles, who said that the Athenian republic, being completely armed and prepared for war, ought to spend its superfluous wealth on such works as would become eternal monuments of its glory, and during their construction would diffuse universal plenty, and thus while every hand was usefully employed, would the active republic be both embellished and supported by herself. But not only the artists and workmen, no, even the beasts of burden who dragged the immense blocks down from the distant quarries of Mount Pentelikon, received their reward from the noble-minded Athenian people, and it is a beautiful feature in their character, that they decreed that the fattest pastures around the city should be reserved for those animals which had toiled during the construction of the Parthenon. It is a Doric Temple, with a double row of eight columns in each front and seventeen in each peristyle, in all sixty-four. The height of its fluted columns is thirty-four feet, and their diameter six feet two inches. The full length of the temple is two hundred and twenty-eight feet, its breadth one hundred and two feet, and it stands raised on an immense platform, having three flights of steps all around the building, while its elevation from the platform to the apex of the pediments is sixty-eight feet.

The cell of the temple itself was divided into two compartments; the larger on the east was the Thalamos or Virgin Hall, where we still distinguish on the marble payement the impression of the base, on which stood the colossal ivory statue of the goddess; we likewise see the rills or grooves all along the marble, which were constantly filled with oil, in order to render the atmosphere more humid in that dry and hot climate, and thus hinder the ivory covering of the statue from bursting.

The small western compartment called the Opisthodomos, served as the treasury of the republic, and was placed under the immediate protection of the tutular deity of Attica.

A large and precious collection of inscriptions lately discovered among the rubbish, gives the most minute account of the state of this treasury at different periods of Athenian history, and contains a highly curious register of all the precious arms, statues, vases, and other votive offerings, adorning the interior of the sanctuary.

The elegant marble roof of the cell was supported by two rows of slender Doric columns, forming the nave and lateral aisles of the hall. Several of these delicately fluted columns have been found on the clearing away of a small Mosque, which the Turks had built within the temple, after its destruction by the Venetian army; nay, we could still trace on the marble floor, the fastenings of a strong bronze lattice, which closed in the principal nave, and secured the costly statue of the goddess, and the glittering trophies and offerings, adorning the walls, from thesac rilegious hands of the daring Athenian thieves and swindlers, so well known from the lively sketches of Aristophanes.

The whole interior of the Parthenon was desolated by the explosion in 1687, but we are glad to state, that we possess, at least, a highly interesting letter of a French missionary, brother Paul Babin, of an earlier date, in which the astonished Jesuit with admiration exclaims, that this Heathen temple in beauty and grandeur surpasses the Santa Sophia in Constantinople-and that even the Chateau of Cardinal Richelieu in France, with all its master-pieces of modern art, presented nothing that could be compared to the magnificent colossal sculptures, adorning the pediments of the temple.*

Great disputes have lately arisen among the learned and the architects with regard to the construction of the roof of this temple.

A difficult passage of Vitruvius, the Roman author on the architecture of the ancients, seems to mention a distinct class of temples, which he calls hypethral, or having an opening, vædijor, or sky-light in the roof, serving to light up the interior of the cell.

"The Hypæethral temples," says he, "have ten columns at each of their fronts and a double colonnade on each of their flanks, and in the interior a double row of columns standing free from the walls. But the centre is without any covering, and the only entrance is through the large folding doors -valve-from the Pronaos and Posticum. No temple of this structure," he adds,

« FöregåendeFortsätt »