Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/177

Rh shield and spear, and with its pedestal rising seventy feet. The Theseium near the Cerameicus was of rather an earlier date, and the Propylaea—the stairs and entrance gateway on to the Acropolis—was begun towards the end of this period (B.C. 437). The Erechtheium, the double temple which took its name from the mythical King Erechtheus and contained many objects of time-honoured sanctity, was also begun in this period, but not finished. These buildings represent the restoration that followed the destruction wrought by the Persians in B.C. 481–479. To the same age probably belong the Odeum, or Music Hall, with conical roof in imitation of the tent of Xerxes, the temple of Athena Nike (Nike Apteros), and the Theseium. The auditorium of the Dionysian Theatre, hollowed out of the southern rock of the Acropolis, went through various stages of construction, and probably did not attain its ultimate form for more than a hundred years later. The vast temple of Olympian Zeus had been begun by Peisistratus a century before this period, but was on such a scale that the Athenian state was never rich enough to complete it. That was reserved for the Emperor Hadrian. Besides these buildings streets and colonnades were gradually filled with monuments of various sorts. A whole street, for instance, leading from the Dionysian Theatre to the town was adorned by monuments raised by men who had supplied the choruses for plays which had gained a prize. Of these only one is extant of the year B.C. 335, in the shape of a circular-domed temple with engaged columns of the Corinthian order