Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/232

 1 86 Outlines of European History profoundly touched by the new and exalted vision of the State, thrust into the foreground of his life. Painting We can still follow the citizen and note a few of the inspir- ing monuments that met his eye as he went about the new Athens which Pericles was creating. Wandering into the market place (see plan, p. 173, and Fig. 91), the citizen found an impos- ing colonnaded porch along one side, presented to the cit}^ by a wealthy noble : the wall behind the columns bore a long series of paintings by an artist from one of the island possessions of Athens, a gift of the painter to the Athenians, depicting their glorious victoiy at Marathon. Here in splendid panorama was a vision of the heroic devotion of the fathers. In the thick of the fray the citizen might pick out the figure of Themistocles, of Miltiades, of Callimachus who fell in the battle, of ^schylus the great tragic poet. He could see the host of the fleeing Persians and perhaps hear some old man tell how the brother of ^schylus seized and tried to stop one of the Persian boats drawn up on Dipylon Gate in the Potters' Quarter (see plan, p. 173). In the fore- ground is the temple of Theseus, the legendary unifier of Attica, whom all Athenians honored as a god, and to whom this temple has long been supposed to have been erected. It is built of Pentelic marble and was finished a few years after the death of Pericles ; but now, after twenty-three hundred years or more, it is still the best preserved of all ancient Greek buildings. Above the houses, at the extreme right, may be seen one corner of the hill called the Areopagus (see plan, p. 173), often called Mars' Hill, where sat the ancient criminal court of Athens — a court made up of the most influential and respected old citizens. It was probably here that the apostle Paul (p. 300) preached in -Athens (see Acts xvii). The great hill of the Acropolis was once crowned by the dwellings of the prehistoric kings of Athens (p. 136). The buildings we now see there are all ruins of the structures erected after the place had been laid waste by the Persians (p. 174). At the right (west) are the approaches built by the architect Mnesicles under Pericles (p. 188). The Parthenon (p. 188), in the middle of the hill (see plan, p. .173), shows the gaping hole caused by the explosion of a Turk- ish powder magazine ignited by a Venetian shell in 1687, when the entire central portion of the building was blown out. The space be- tween the temple of Theseus, the Areopagus, and the Acropolis was largely occupied by the market place of Athens (p. 186 and plan, p. 173)-
 * In this view we stand inside the wall of Themistocles, near the