The site of the Agora, on the other hand, cannot be determined within a hundred paces; and I do not know in what direction to place it. In it was the _Bouleuterion_ of the Council of the Five Hundred, the _Prytaneion_ or Tholos, and the altars, which more than anything else show that the Athenians were animated by a different spirit from that of the other Greeks. I allude to the Βωμὸς Ἐλέους and the Βωμὸς Αἰδοῦς, that is, the altar of Mercy and of Modesty. These altars are characteristic, and shew the amiable nature of the Athenians: that people did not conceive mercy and modesty as demonlike ghosts, nor did they view them abstractedly like the Romans; they declared by those altars, that they had established mercy and the dread of everything that is vulgar, as rules to guide their own conduct. And it was not in vain that they had raised mercy to the rank of a divinity: he who found mercy nowhere, experienced it at Athens during the period of her power. With all their faults, and notwithstanding many acts that make our hearts bleed, the Athenians were the most amiable among the Greeks; and we cannot help asking: was there ever a powerful republic, completely left to itself, which restrained itself so much by its aversion against what is bad? They also had an altar of Report and Impulse (ὁρμή) to preserve their good report, and to prevent their being carried away by impulse. The Pnyx was the hill where the popular assemblies were held, but it cannot possibly have contained the whole body of the people. The hill of the Museum was regarded as the strongest point of the city next to the Acropolis, and after the Lamian war it was occupied by a Macedonian garrison, though previously it had not been a place of any importance. The account of the deliverance of Athens by Olympiodorus, shows that the Museum was not a real fort, but only an inaccessible post capable of containing a considerable body of troops. What was the real nature of the place, and what made it so strong, are questions to which no definite answers can be given. The new town was the strange scheme of Hadrian, who planned buildings the splendour of which was to eclipse that of the ancient ones; but the Olympieum was not completed.[45] Soon after Hadrian, Herodes Atticus, whose life has been written by Philostratus, constructed at Athens a whole stadium of Pentelic marble; his wealth is said to have been immense and almost fabulous, and his grandfather is reported to have found a treasure of Athena. Although the Pentelic marble was obtained in the vicinity of Athens, yet such a building erected by a private person was an amazing undertaking. The buildings of Hadrian and this stadium are still discernible in their ruins. In the vicinity of Athens there were three gymnasia, the Academy, a park with trees and buildings in which gymnastic exercises were carried on; the Lyceum and the Cynosarges served similar purposes, but their sites cannot be determined.