Music received a considerable share of attention in the education of the Greeks, and such was the influence which it is said to have possessed over the physical as well as the mental nature of the people, that it was credited with being an antidote for many of the infirmities of the body as well as the mind. The Odeon was therefore an institution of considerable importance in Athens. Here Pericles conducted in person the musical contests between the Choruses which the wealthy citizens of Athens instituted, and awarded to the winners the tripod-trophies, which as marks of special honor they were permitted to place upon their monuments. A street in Athens was devoted almost entirely to these choragic monuments, many of which were architecturally most beautiful. The architect of the Odeon of Pericles is not known, but after its destruction by Aristion in the Mithridatic war, it was rebuilt by Ariobarzanes II, Philopator, king of Cappadocia, in the original form, who employed for the purpose the brother Roman architects, Caius and Marius Stallius, together with a third architect by the name of Menalippus, who recorded their connection with the building upon the base of a statue which they erected in honor of their patron Ariobarzanes. It is said that on certain days this later Odeon was used as a grain market. If in the Parthenon on the Acropolis the acme of Doric magnificence was reached by Ictinus and Callicrates, there was another temple located below the Acropolis, which by many is ranked as the peer of the Parthenon, in its perfection of Doric symmetry and grace. This was the building to which allusion has already been made as another example of the genius and skill of Mnesicles, the slave-architect of the Propylæa. It was dedicated to the founder of Athens, the adventurous Theseus, and stood not only as a temple in his honor, but as a mausoleum for his ashes. Wordsworth, whose words of praise for the Propylæa have been quoted, is also enthusiastic in his admiration of this second example of the skill of the talented Mnesicles: “Such is the integrity of its structure and the distinctness of its details that it requires no description beyond that which a few glances might supply. Its beauty defies all; its solid yet graceful form is, indeed, admirable; and the loveliness of its coloring is such that from the rich, mellow hue which the marble has now assumed it looks as if it had been quarried not from the bed of a rocky mountain, but from the golden light of an Athenian sunset.”