Although it has been shown that the historians and biographers of ancient Greece made no attempt to treat architects with especial favor, it would not be just, however, to close this chapter without quoting from Homer to prove that lie, at least, could rank them as among those who, by serving the people in the highest sense, were entitled to unusual hospitality: “... What man goes ever forth To bid a stranger to his house, unless The stranger be of those whose office is To serve the people, be he seer, or leech, Or architect, or poet heaven-inspired, Whose song is gladly heard?...” FOOTNOTES: [1] There is an old ecclesiastical tradition, which is much doubted, that the architect of the Coliseum was a Christian by the name of Gaudentius, who suffered martyrdom in its arena, and that the services of thousands of Jews contributed to its erection. CHAPTER II. THE MYTHICAL AND ARCHAIC ARCHITECTS AND BUILDERS. History does not probe so deeply into the earliest annals of the races that inhabited the Peloponnesian peninsula, that it does not show them to have been pre-eminent as builders; nor does it follow the ancient Greek people throughout the long ages that spanned their evolution and decadence, that it does not find them in all the stages through which they passed, leaving at least some of their walls, temples or monuments to resist the ravages of all time, and the decaying influences of the elements. They built, therefore, not only well, but perhaps better than they knew, and have proved that if the creations of their intellects were immortal, as we know, the works of their hands were not altogether perishable. The Pelasgic tribes, who were the first of which there is any record to have inhabited Greece, were great wall-builders, and past-masters of defensive architecture in those early ages. Although we may not have the names of the individual architects among them, we have their racial works still before us to evidence the fact that whoever the architects were, they knew their business eminently well. The Acropolis at Athens possesses the finest example that remains of Pelasgic mural work, in the fortified retaining wall which surrounds it, and which is sometimes called after the race that built it, the Pelasgicum. It is claimed also by some authorities that the Pelasgi were the original architects and builders of the “Long Walls” that connected Athens with her seaport gates, and of such parts of the peribolus as were not the authentic work of the builders under Themistocles and Cimon, and subsequent architects to be hereafter mentioned. The Cyclopes, who belonged to Pelasgic times, were likewise remarkable wall-builders, lending their name to a kind of mural work in a manner original with them, and having the attributes of great solidity and endurance. The ruins of houses and other structures erected by them have been found also at Tiryus and Mycenæ, on the plain of Argos.