greatest admirer of Athens, and conferred most benefits on the city, both in the way of architectural adornment and otherwise. He erected a number of magnificent buildings in the heart of the city, one of which (as Pausanias tells us) had a hundred columns of Phrygian marble, another a hundred columns of Libyan marble, while a third, which was used as a library, was adorned with a gilded roof and alabaster. Part of a rich colonnade has been preserved, and is known as the Stoa of Hadrian. But the emperor’s greatest monument was the Olympieum, or temple of Olympian Zeus, situated to the south-east of the Acropolis, on the right bank of the Ilissus. The foundation of the temple had been laid by Peisistratus nearly 700 years before, and the work had been considerably advanced by Antiochus Epiphanes nearly 400 years later; but it was reserved to Hadrian to complete the great undertaking, which he did in a munificent style. Unfortunately only fifteen of the hundred or more Corinthian columns of Pentelic marble are now standing, occupying but a small part of the vast platform (about 2200 feet in circumference) on which the temple stood. But such is the grandeur of the columns, rising to a height of nearly 57 feet and fully 5½ feet in diameter, that they form one of the most imposing ruins in the world. Even before the commencement of the temple of Peisistratus, the place was regarded with peculiar veneration as the traditional site of a temple erected by Deucalion, the survivor of the Flood; and in the days of Pausanias a cleft was to be seen in the ground, into which the subsiding waters were said to have sunk, and where, every year, the people cast in wheaten meal kneaded with honey, probably in memory of those who perished in the Deluge. Somewhere in this neighbourhood--though the exact locality has not been determined--was the Lyceum, a gymnasium named after an old temple of Lycean Apollo, in the midst of spacious grounds, where military reviews were sometimes held, but chiefly famous as the place where Aristotle and his followers had their daily walk and conversation, on account of which they received the name of _Peripatetics_. Between the Acropolis and the Olympieum, probably in the line of the old city wall, stands the Arch of Hadrian, a handsome structure of Pentelic marble, almost 60 feet high, with an archway 20 feet wide. On one side of the entablature, facing the city, are inscribed the words, “This is Theseus’ Athens, the old city,” and on the other side, “This is the city of Hadrian and not of Theseus.” The emperor’s hope of a new city of Athens has been fulfilled in modern times, but the extension has not taken place in the direction of Hadrianopolis, but rather to the north.