Lastly, our author observes that the stadium at Athens, built of white marble by Herodes Atticus, was “wonderful to see, though not so impressive to hear of,” and that the greater part of the Pentelic quarries had been exhausted in its construction. The latter statement is, of course, an exaggeration. Mount Pentelicus is made of white marble, and there is a good deal of it left to this day, though the great white blotches on its sides, visible even from the coast of Epidaurus, tell plainly where the quarrymen have been at work. But we may easily believe Pausanias that the stadium was a wonderful sight when tiers of white marble benches, glistening in the strong sunshine, rose steeply above each other all along both sides of the valley. For a valley it is still, and a valley lined with white marble it must have been in the days of Pausanias. Those who have seen the stadium since it was partially refitted with white marble benches for the games of 1896 can better picture to themselves what its aspect must have been when the benches were complete. Before the time of Herodes Atticus the spectators may have sat either on the earthen slopes, as at Olympia, or on benches of common stone, as at Epidaurus and Delphi. On the whole, then, so far as we can judge from the existing monuments and the testimony of ancient writers, especially of Lucian, the artistic taste of Pausanias was sound and good, if somewhat austere. [Sidenote: Intrinsic evidence of Pausanias’s truthfulness.]