symmetry of its proportions is hardly open to question. The temple of Zeus must have been imposing from its size, but its proportions, so far as we can judge from the ruins, do not strike an observer as especially harmonious; and as to the materials, the rough conglomerate of Olympia cannot be compared for beauty with the fine hard limestone of Bassae. [Sidenote: Walls of Messene.] Further, Pausanias describes the walls of Messene with their towers and battlements, and declares them to be stronger than the finest fortifications he had seen elsewhere. The remains of these superb fortifications bear him out. For the scale on which they are planned and for the solidity and perfection of the masonry they are without a rival in Greece. In other places, as at Asea in Arcadia, at Aegosthena in Megaris, and at Lilaea and Drymaea in Phocis, circuits of walls with their flanking towers exist in better preservation, but none of them can vie in style and splendour with the fortifications of Messene. Here again we must pronounce unhesitatingly that so far as our knowledge goes Pausanias was in the right. [Sidenote: Music Halls at Athens and Patrae.] To come down to buildings of a later age, Pausanias tells us that the Music Hall at Patrae was the grandest in Greece except the one built by Herodes Atticus at Athens, which excelled it both in size and style. Here we are in the fortunate position of being able to compare for ourselves the two buildings which Pausanias ranks together as the finest of their kind in Greece, for both of them exist in comparatively good preservation to the present day. That the Music Hall of Herodes Atticus excels in size the one at Patrae, as Pausanias says it did, is obvious at a glance. The former is in fact a spacious theatre, the latter is a tiny one. But both, as appears from the remains, were originally cased with marble and probably presented a splendid appearance. The lions’ paws of white marble which adorn the seats in the Music Hall at Patrae, together with the mosaic pavement of black and white in the adjoining chamber, enable us to form some slight idea of the elegance of those appointments which excited the admiration of Pausanias. [Sidenote: Stadium at Athens.]