Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/43

 edifice stands in the garden in the place of the academy. In the surrounding space, the walks of the Peripatetics can be discerned, and some olive-trees of high antiquity still command the reverence of the beholder. The long walla are totally destroyed, though the foundations are yet to be found on the plain. The Piræus has scarcely any thing of its ancient splendor, except a few ruined pillars, scattered here and there: the same is the case with the Phalerum and Munychia. It appears probable, that, in the time of Pausanius, many monuments were extant which belonged to the period before the Persian war; because so transitory a possession as Xerxes had of the city, scarcely gave him time to finish the destruction of the walls and principal public edifices. In the restoration of the city to its former state, Themistocles looked more to the useful, Cimon to magnificence and splendor; and Pericles far surpassed them both in his buildings. The great supply of money which he had from the tribute of the other states, belonged to no succeeding ruler. Athens at length saw much of her ancient splendor restored; but, unluckily, Attica was not an island, and, after the sources of power, which belonged to the fruitful and extensive country of Macedonia, were developed by an able and enlightened prince, the opposing interests of many free states could not long withstand the disciplined army of a warlike people, led by an active, able and ambitious monarch. When Sylla destroyed the works of the Piræus, the power of Athens by sea was at an end, and with that fell the whole city. Flattered by the triumvirate, favored by Adrian's love of the arts, Athens was at no time so splendid as under the Antonines, when the magnificent works of from eight to ten centuries stood in view, and the edifices of Pericles were in equal preservation with the new buildings. Plutarch himself wonders how the structures of Ictinus, of Meuesicles and Phidias, which were built with such surprising rapidity, could retain such a perpetual freshness. Probably Pausanius saw Greece yet uuplundered. The Romans, from reverence towards a religion approaching so nearly to their own, and wishing to conciliate a people more cultivated than themselves, were ashamed to rob temples where the masterpieces of art were kept as sacred, and were satisfied with a tribute of money, although in Sicily they did not abstain from the plunder of the temples, on account of the prevalence of Carthaginian and Phœnician influence in that island. Pictures, even in the time of Pausanias, may have been left in their places. The wholesale robberies of collectors, the removal of great quantities of the works of art to Constantinople, when the creation of new specimens was no longer possible, Christian zeal, and the attacks of barbarians, destroyed, after a time, in Athens, what the emperors had spared. We have reason to think, that the colossal statue of Minerva Promæhos was standing in the time of Alaric. About 420 A. D., paganism was totally annihilated at Athens, and, when Justinian closed even the schools of the philosophers, the recollection of the mythology was lost. The Parthenon was turned into a church of the Virgin Mary, and St. George stepped into the place of Theseus. The manufactory of silk, which had hitherto remained, was destroyed by the transportation of a colony of weavers, by Roger of