In order, however, to convey a more complete idea of the ancient home of Democracy and the Arts, we must, as far as possible, open up a view into the interior of Athens, which, with its harbours, docks, arsenals, its market-places, bazārs, porticoes, public fountains and gymnasia, probably formed the noblest spectacle ever presented to the eye by a cluster of human dwellings. From whatever side approached, whether by land or by sea, the city appeared to be but one vast group of magnificence. In sailing up along the shore from the promontory of Sunium, the polished brazen helmet and shield of the colossal Athena,[223] standing on the brow of the Acropolis, were beheld from afar flashing in the sun. On drawing nearer, the Parthenon, the Propylæa, the temple of Erectheus, with the other marble edifices crowning the Cecropian rock, glittered above the pinnacles of the lower city, and the deep green foliage of the encircling plain and olive groves. Among its principal ornaments in the later ages of the republic was a remarkable monument in the road to Eleusis,—the tomb of the hetaira Pythionica, who dying while her beauty still bloomed and her powers of fascination were unimpaired, the love she had inspired survived the grave and manifested itself by rearing a costly pile of marble over her ashes.[224] Footnote 223: Paus. i. 28. 2. Footnote 224: Athen. xiii. 67. Upon sailing into the Peiræeus,[225] where generally ships from every quarter of the ancient world lay at anchor, the stranger was immediately struck by manifestations of the people’s power and predilection for stateliness and grandeur. The entrance into the port, barely wide enough to admit a couple of galleys abreast, with their oars in full sweep, lay between two round towers, in which terminated on either hand the maritime fortifications of the city. Across the mouth vast chains were extended in time of war, rendering the Peiræeus a closed port;[226] arrived within which, the pleased eye wandered over the spacious quays, wharfs, and long ranges of warehouses extending round the harbour, with tombs and sepulchral monuments rising here and there in open spaces between. Among them was a cenotaph in the form of an altar, raised by the repentant people in memory of Themistocles,[227] the founder of the naval power of Athens, whose bones however it has sometimes been supposed were brought thither from Magnesia. The Peiræeus consisted of three basins, Zea, Aphrodision, which was by far the largest, and Cantharos. On the western shore were the vast docks and arsenals of the commonwealth erected by Philon,[228] in which, during peace, all that portion of the public navy not engaged in protecting its trade in distant colonies, was drawn up in dry docks, roofed over and surrounded by massive walls. Towards the centre of the town stood the Hippodameia,[229] an agora or market place, which appears to have resembled Covent Garden, with ranges of stalls in the area and