The general shape of the hill, and its subsequent alteration, are best realized by Dr Dörpfeld’s simple illustration[13]. A vertical section of the natural rock, it is roughly of the shape of a house (Fig. 3) with an ordinary gable roof. The sides of the house represent the steep inaccessible cliffs to north and south and east; the lines of the roof slope like the lines of the upper part of the hill converging at the middle. Suppose the sides of the house produced upwards to the height of the roof-ridge, and the triangular space so formed filled in, we have the state of the Acropolis when Kimon’s walls were completed. The filling in of those spaces is the history of the gradual ‘levelling of the surface of the hill, the work of many successive generations.’ The section in Fig. 4 will show that this levelling up had to be done chiefly on the north and south sides; to the east and west the living rock is near the surface. [Illustration: FIG. 4.] It has already been noted that on the north side of the Acropolis the actual remains of the Pelasgian wall are few and slight; but as the wall of Themistocles which superseded it follows the contours of the rock, we may be sure that here the two were nearly coincident. The wall of Themistocles remains to this day a perpetual monument of the disaster wrought by the Persians. Built into it opposite the Erechtheum, not by accident, but for express memorial, are fragments of the architrave, triglyphs and cornice of poros stone, and the marble metopes, from the old temple of Athena which the Persians had burnt. Other memorials lay buried out of sight, and were brought to light by the excavations of 1886. The excavators[14] were clearing the ground to the north-east of the Propylaea. On the 6th of February, at a depth of from 3-4½ metres below the surface, they came upon fourteen of the ‘Maidens[15].’ The section[16] in Fig. 5 shows the place where they had slept their long sleep. We should like to think they were laid there in all reverence for their beauty, but hard facts compel us to own that, though their burial may have been prompted in part by awe of their sanctity, yet the practical Athenian did not shrink from utilizing them as material to level up with.