Spacious and lofty gates admitted you into the Astu, through a belt of impregnable fortifications: and the appearance of the interior,[247] though the streets for military purposes were mostly narrow and winding, and the houses low, projecting over the pavement or concealed by elevated front-walls, surpassed in all probability the promise of its distant aspect. The grandeur which peculiarly belonged to the Athenian democracy was visible at every step. But it would weary the reader to lead him in succession through all the public places—the Pnyx, the Agora, the Cerameicos: let us ascend the Acropolis, from whose ramparts the plan of the whole city will unfold itself before us like a map. Footnote 247: Boeckh, Pub. Econ. of Athens, i. 88. seq. Half the beauty of all civilised countries springs out of their religion. At Athens nearly everything costly or magnificent belonged to the Gods; even the Propylæa,[248] apparently a mere secular or military structure, probably owed its erection in so expensive a style to the circumstance of its adorning the entrance to the sacred enclosure of Athena, and the other tutelary divinities of Athens, and spanning the road by which the pomp of the Panathenaic procession descended and ascended the mount. Be this as it may, a road[249] which, by running zigzag up the slope, was rendered practicable for chariots, led from the lower city to the Acropolis, on the edge of the platform of which stood the Propylæa, erected by the architect Mnesicles in five years, during the administration of Pericles. A pile of architecture, similar in name, is usually found at the entrance of the court of Egyptian temples, and the Propylæa Luxor and Karnak, with their aspiring obelisks, couchant sphynxes, and ranges of colossal statues, may be reckoned among the most chaste and beautiful monuments in the valley of the Nile. The Propylæa of Athens, richer in design and materials, and executed with a grace and perfection unknown to the Egyptians, enjoyed in its mere site an immense advantage over their noblest works which, the pyramids and the great temple of Koom Ombos excepted, stand on a dead level, while this occupies the brow of a precipitous rock, visible on every side from afar. Pillars, architraves, pediments, walls, and roof, were all of snow-white marble, with mouldings of bright red and blue, and ceilings of azure bedropped with stars.[250] Externally, on either hand, were equestrian statues of the sons of Xenophon,[251] placed on lofty square basements; and, overlooking the whole on the left, stood the colossal statue of Athena Promachos.[252] Footnote 248: Suid. in v. t. ii. p. 611. d. Harpocrat. in v. p. 254. Paus. i. 22. 4. Leake, Topog. p. 177. Wordsworth, Athens and Attica. p. 112. Footnote 249: