A Tour Up the Straits, from Gibraltar to Constantinople: With the Leading Events in the Present War Between the Austrians, Russians, and the Turks, to the Commencement of the Year 1789Sutherland, David, Captain
History
A Tour Up the Straits, from Gibraltar to Constantinople: With the Leading Events in the Present War Between the Austrians, Russians, and the Turks, to the Commencement of the Year 1789
Sutherland, David, Captain
Mediterranean Region -- Description and travel; Russo-Turkish War, 1787-1792
The temple is an elegant edifice, supported by a beautiful colonnade, on
a similar plan to the largest at Pestum. It was erected in the
administration of Cimon, who, having discovered the bones of Theseus in
the island of Shyros, where he was killed by a fall from a precipice,
restored them to his native city. The metopes on the front, and part of
the sides, are ornamented with basso relievo, representing the battle of
the Centaurs. These, you may recollect, were nothing more than the
cavalry of Thessaly, where the men were so perfect in the management of
their horses, that, when mounted, they were supposed to be part of the
same animal.
The east gateway, which was also erected to Theseus, remains tolerably
perfect. It was repaired by Adrian, who added an inscription, importing
that Athens was now become his city; and, indeed, by his liberality, he
in some measure made amends for the depredations the Romans committed
upon her ornaments, and earned the title of one of her founders. It was
this Emperor who raised that superb pile the Pantheon, dedicated to all
the Gods; which, by its grandeur, elegance and beauty, justly merited
that exalted title. Out of an hundred and twenty columns, each eighteen
feet in circumference, only nine are standing. They are of the finest
marble, with very rich Corinthian capitals. Those of Theseus and Minerva
are Doric.
The monument vulgarly called the Lanthorn of Demosthenes, being
inhabited by a French Monk, and the octagonal Temple of the Winds, by a
Turkish Dervise, are still entire. The former is light and elegant; the
latter has nothing but its antiquity to recommend it; for the figures
which represent the different winds, are so indifferently executed,
that, were not their names inscribed below them, it would be impossible
to know their qualities.
Some triumphal columns, and other monuments, are still left in tolerable
preservation, besides a considerable part of the Theatre of Bacchus, and
many other fragments and ruins, which I am less particular in
describing, because we have taken exact plans of all of them.
The channel of the Ilyssus, whose banks were formerly so famous, is dry,
even at this rainy season; and I have several times walked in its bed,
as well as in the olive groves where Plato delivered his lectures. I
have also been as far as the plains of Marathon, to pay my oblations at
the shrine of Miltiades--an interesting scene to a Soldier, and of which
my military friends may expect an exact description.
THE BATTLE OF MARATHON,
MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED
TO
THE RIGHT HONORABLE
GENERAL ELIOTT,
LORD HEATHFIELD.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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