Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/127

Rh one or two of which, when taken up, left an opening of easy access into the house, as in Luke, v. 19, and were perpetually used in Greece as missile weapons, in the event of a hostile attack or sedition in the city, by parties of old men, women, and children, who used, as a matter of course, to retire to the roof as a place of convenient defence. By such attacks from the roof with the the Thebans were thrown into confusion in Platæa. (Thucyd., ii. 4.) So, also, we find the roof immediately resorted to in the case of the starving of Pausanias in the Temple of Minerva of the Brazen House, and in that of the massacre of the aristocratic party at Corcyra {Thucyd., iv. 48):—. Now, where the roof was thus a place of frequent resort, there could be no more useful decoration than a balustrade; nor one more appropriate or beautiful, than occasional statues in attitudes of watchfulness, expectation, or observation: and even now, wherever the roof is flat, we have an idea of convenience and facility of access, which still renders the balustrade agreeable, and the statue beautiful, if well designed. It must not be a figure of perfect peace or repose, far less should it be in violent action; but it should be fixed in that quick startled stillness, which is the result